OPHIA’S grandmother had been a Scout leader when she was young, and, in fact, it was thanks to her that little girls were even allowed to be Scouts in those days. The girls never forgot what good times they had had, and they often wrote to Grandmother and reminded her of this or that incident, or quoted a verse of some song they used to sing around the campfire. It all seemed a little out of date to Grandmother now, and she thought the old girls were being just a bit sentimental, but she would think some friendly thoughts about them all the same. Then she’d think about how the Scouting movement had grown too large and lost its personal touch, and then she’d forget the whole thing. Grandmother’s children had never been Scouts. No one had had the time, somehow, and it never came up.

One summer, Sophia’s father bought a tent and put it up in the ravine so he could hide there if too many people came. The tent was so small that you had to crawl in on all fours, but inside there was enough room for two if they lay close together. But no candles or lamps were allowed.

“Is it a Scout tent?” Sophia asked.

Grandmother snorted. “We sewed our own tents,” she said, remembering what they had looked like—huge, sturdy, grayish-brown. This was a toy, a bright yellow plaything for veranda guests, and not worth having.

“Isn’t it a Scout tent?” asked Sophia anxiously.

So her grandmother said maybe it was, after all, but a very modern one, and they crawled in and lay down side by side.

“Now you’re not allowed to go to sleep,” Sophia said. “You have to tell me what it was like to be a Scout and all the things you did.”

A very long time ago, Grandmother had wanted to tell about all the things they did, but no one had bothered to ask. And now she had lost the urge.

“We had campfires,” she answered briefly, and suddenly she felt sad.

“And what else?”

“There was a log that burned for a long time. We sat around the fire. It was cold out. We ate soup.”

That’s strange, Grandmother thought. I can’t describe things any more. I can’t find the words, or maybe it’s just that I’m not trying hard enough. It was such a long time ago. No one here was even born. And unless I tell it because I want to, it’s as if it never happened; it gets closed off and then it’s lost. She sat up and said, “Some days I can’t remember very well. But sometime you ought to try and sleep in a tent all night.”

Sophia carried her bedclothes to the tent. She closed the door to her little cottage and said goodbye as the sun went down. All by herself, she walked out to the ravine, which this evening had become an infinitely distant place, forsaken by God and man and Scout—a wilderness with an entire night ahead. She zipped shut the door of the tent and stretched out with the quilt up to her chin. The yellow tent glowed in the sunset, and suddenly it seemed very small and friendly. No one could look in and no one could look out; she was wrapped in a cocoon of light and silence. Just as the sun disappeared, the tent turned red and she fell asleep.

The nights were already long, and when Sophia woke up, there was nothing to see but the dark. A bird flew over the ravine and screamed, first close by and then once more far away. It was a windless night, yet she could hear the sea. And there was no one in the ravine, yet the gravel crunched as if under someone’s foot. The sheltering tent had let in the night, as close as if she’d been sleeping on the open ground. More birds cried in various ways, and the darkness was filled with strange movements and sounds, the kind no one can trace or account for. The kind no one can even describe.

“Oh, dear God,” Sophia said, “don’t let me get scared!” And immediately she started thinking about what it would be like to get scared. “Oh, dear God, don’t let them make fun of me if I do get scared!”

She really listened for the first time in her life. And when she got out in the ravine, she noticed for the first time what the ground really felt like under her toes and the soles of her feet. It was cold, grainy, terribly complicated ground that changed as she walked—gravel and wet grass and big flat stones, and every now and then some plant as high as a bush would brush against her legs. The ground was dark, but the sky had a faint, gray light. The island had grown tiny, floating on the water like a drifting leaf, but there was a light in the guest room window. Sophia knocked very gently, because every sound had become too large.

“How’s it going?” Grandmother asked.

“Good,” Sophia said. She sat on the foot of the bed and looked at the lamp and the nets and the raincoats hanging on the wall, and her teeth stopped chattering and she said, “There’s no wind at all.”

“No,” said Grandmother. “It’s quite calm.”

Grandmother had two blankets. If you put one of them down on the rug and got a cushion, it would make a bed. It wouldn’t be like going back to the cottage—it was almost like outdoors. No, it was indoors, it really was. But even if she wasn’t out in the tent all alone, nevertheless, she had been. She had slept outdoors.

“So many birds tonight,” Grandmother said.

There was another possibility: she could take a blanket and sleep on the veranda right next to the wall of the house. That would be outdoors and all alone. Oh, dear God!

“I couldn’t sleep,” Grandmother said, “and I got to thinking about sad things.” She sat up in bed and reached for her cigarettes. Sophia handed her the matches automatically, but she was thinking about other things.

“You’ve got two blankets, don’t you?” Sophia said.

“I mean it all seems to shrink up and glide away,” Grandmother said. “And things that were a lot of fun don’t mean anything any more. It makes me feel cheated, like what was the point? At least you ought to be able to talk about it.”

Sophia was getting cold again. They had let her sleep in a tent, even though she was too little to sleep in a tent. None of them knew what it was like, and they had just let her sleep in the ravine all by herself. “Oh is that so?” she said angrily. “What do you mean it’s no fun?”

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Grandmother said. “All I said was that when you’re as old as I am, there are a lot of things you can’t do any more...”

“That’s not true! You do everything. You do the same things I do!”

“Wait a minute!” Grandmother said. She was very upset. “I’m not through! I know I do everything. I’ve been doing everything for an awfully long time, and I’ve seen and lived as hard as I could, and it’s been unbelievable, I tell you, unbelievable. But now I have the feeling everything’s gliding away from me, and I don’t remember, and I don’t care, and yet now is right when I need it!”

“What don’t you remember?” asked Sophia anxiously.

“What it was like to sleep in a tent!” her grandmother shouted. She stubbed out her cigarette and lay down and stared at the ceiling. “In my country, in Sweden, girls had never been allowed to sleep in tents before,” she said slowly. “I was the one who made it so they could, and it wasn’t easy. We had a wonderful time, and now I can’t even tell you what it was like.”

The birds started screaming again—a big flock of them flew by, screaming steadily. The lamplight on the window made it look much darker outside than it really was.

“Well, I’ll tell you what it’s like,” Sophia said. “You can hear everything much clearer, and the tent is very small.” She thought for a moment and then went on. “It makes you feel very safe. And it’s nice that you can hear everything.”

“Yes,” Grandmother said. “You can hear everything outside.”

Sophia realized she was hungry and pulled the food box out from under the bed. They ate hard bread and sugar and cheese.

“I’m kind of sleepy,” Sophia said, “so I think I’ll go back now.”

“Do,” Grandmother said. She turned out the lamp, and after the initial darkness the room became lighter again and she could see everything distinctly. Sophia went out and closed the door. When she had gone, Grandmother rolled up in her blanket and tried to remember what it had been like. She could remember better now, much better, in fact. New images came back to her, more and more of them. It was cold in the first light, but she fell sound asleep in her own warmth.