‘Don’t you think it’s beginning to go too far?’ I asked.
He turned towards me.
‘You know what I mean,’ I pressed on. ‘We’ve talked about this constant drinking before, but when you want your son to be part of it as well, then I think you’re crossing the line.’
‘I’m sorry, Hans Thomas,’ he admitted at once. ‘I suppose those drinks were slightly too strong for you.’
‘Maybe. But you might slow your tempo a little, too. It would be a terrible shame if the only joker in Arendal ended up a good-for-nothing like all the others.’
He reeked of a guilty conscience, and for a moment I felt sorry for him, but I couldn’t always rub him the right way.
‘I’ll think about it,’ he replied.
‘Then I think you should think about it fast. I doubt whether Mama is particularly fond of sloppy philosophers who are always on the bottle, either.’
He squirmed in his seat. It must have been quite a blow for him to be put in his place like that by his son, so I wasn’t that surprised when he said, ‘Actually, I have been thinking the same thing, Hans Thomas.’
His reply was so assertive that it would do for now. There was something else which struck me, however. I don’t know why, but I suddenly got the feeling that I hadn’t heard all the reasons why Mama left us.
‘How do we get to the Acropolis, then?’ I asked, pointing to the map.
We were back in business.
To save time we took a taxi to the entrance, and from there we walked through an avenue of trees along the side of the mountain before we began the ascent to the temple site itself.
When at last we reached the largest temple, which was called the Parthenon, Dad started to pace back and forth.
‘Wonderful … It is truly wonderful,’ he declared.
We wandered around for quite a while, until we stood peering down at two ancient theatres which lay directly below a sheer mountain drop. The tragic tale of Oedipus had been one of the dramas performed in the oldest theatre.
Dad finally pointed to a large rock and said, ‘Sit here,’ and so the long lecture on the Athenians began.
When the lecture was over and the sun was so high in the sky that there were hardly any shadows, we examined every single temple. Dad pointed here and there and taught me the difference between Doric and Ionic columns and showed me how the Parthenon didn’t have a single straight line. The enormous building had been empty except for a twelve-metre-high statue of Athena, the goddess of Athens.
I learned how the Greek gods had lived on Mount Olympus in the north of Greece, and how now and then they climbed down to mingle with the people. Dad said they were like huge jokers in a pack of cards made of human beings.
There was a small museum here, too, but once again I begged for mercy. I was excused, and we agreed on where I could sit and wait.
I definitely would have gone into the museum with him, because he was such a interesting guide, but something in my pocket prevented me from doing so.
I had listened to everything Dad told me about the ancient temples, but I had also been wondering what would happen at the great Joker Banquet. The fifty-two dwarfs on the magic island had all made a big ring in the banqueting hall, and now each of them was about to recite a line.
SEVEN OF DIAMONDS
… a big party where the guests had
been told to turn up as playing cards …
The dwarfs all sat chatting away, but the Joker soon clapped his hands and shouted across the gathering: ‘Has everyone thought of a sentence for the Joker Game?’
‘Yes,’ the dwarfs replied in harmony, so that it resounded around the hall.
‘Then let the sentences begin!’ declared the Joker.
With that, the dwarfs immediately recited their sentences. Fifty-two voices droned together for a few seconds, and then a hush fell on the hall, as though the whole performance was over.
‘It happens every single time,’ whispered Frode. ‘Of course, nobody hears anything except their own voice.’
‘Thank you for your attention,’ said the Joker. ‘From now on, let us concentrate on one sentence at a time. We’ll begin with the Ace of Diamonds.’
The little princess stood up, brushed her hair away from her forehead, and said, ‘Destiny is a cauliflower head which grows equally in all directions.’
She sat back down, her pale cheeks blushing furiously.
‘A cauliflower head, I see …’ The Joker scratched his head. ‘Those were … wise words.’
The Two suddenly jumped up and said, ‘The magnifying glass matches chip in goldfish bowl.’
‘You don’t say?’ commented the Joker. ‘It would have been even more helpful if you had told us which magnifying glass matches which goldfish bowl. But all in good time, all in good time! The whole truth cannot be squeezed into two diamonds. Next!’
It was now the Three of Diamonds’s turn: ‘Father and son search for the beautiful woman who can’t find herself.’ She sniffed, and began to cry.
I remembered that I had seen her cry on a previous occasion, and while the King of Diamonds comforted her, the Joker said, ‘And why can’t she find herself? We won’t know that until all the cards are turned picture-side-up. Next!’
The rest of the diamonds followed in turn.
‘The truth is that the master glassblower’s son has made fun of his own fantasies,’ said the Seven. She had said exactly the same thing to me at the glassworks.
‘The figures are shaken out of the magician’s sleeve and appear out of thin air bursting with life,’ stated the Nine assertively. She was the one who had said she would really like to think a thought which was so difficult she wasn’t able to think it. I thought she had learned that art pretty well.
The last to speak was the King of Diamonds: ‘The solitaire is a family curse.’
‘Very interesting,’ exclaimed the Joker. ‘Even after the first quarter, many important pieces have fallen into place. Do we understand the depths of this?’
There was a rush of whispers and hushed discussions, and then the Joker continued: ‘We still have three-quarters of the wheel of fortune left. Next – clubs!’
‘Destiny is a snake which is so hungry it devours itself’, said the Ace of Clubs.
‘The goldfish does not reveal the island’s secret, but the sticky bun does,’ continued the Two. I realised that he must have gone around with this sentence on the tip of his tongue for a long time, and had spat it out just before he had fallen asleep in the field because he was afraid he might forget it.
All the other dwarfs now followed in turn – the rest of the clubs, the hearts and finally the spades.
‘The inner box unpacks the outer box at the same time as the outer box unpacks the inner,’ recited the Ace of Hearts – exactly as she had done when I had met her in the woods.
‘One beautiful morning King and Jack climb out of the prison of consciousness.’
‘The breast pocket hides a pack of cards which is placed in the sun to dry.’
The rest of the fifty-two dwarfs stood up in running order and contributed a sentence each more absurd than the previous one. Some delivered their sentences in a whisper, some with a laugh, some boldly, and some with a sniffle or a tear. The general impression – if you could use such a term for something so confused and disordered as these speeches – was void of any kind of meaning or coherence. Nevertheless, the Joker strove to make a note of all the statements and the order in which they were delivered.
The King of Spades was the last to speak, and with a piercing glance at the Joker he concluded: ‘The one who sees through destiny must also live through it.’
I remember thinking that this last sentence was the wisest thing to have been said. The Joker obviously thought so too, because he started to clap so wildly that his bells jangled and he sounded like a one-man band. Frode shook his head in despair.
We got up and climbed down to join the dwarfs, who were milling around between the
tables.
I got a sudden flashback to my earlier notion that this island must be a sanctuary for the incurably mentally ill. Perhaps Frode was the medical orderly, who had promptly become deranged himself. If so, a doctor’s visit to the island some time next month wouldn’t help.
Everything he had told me about the shipwreck and the playing cards – or the fantasy figures who had suddenly burst into life – could be the confused ramblings of a man who had lost his mind. I had only one piece of solid evidence to suggest otherwise: my grandmother’s name really was Stine – and Mother and Father had spoken of a grandfather who had fallen from the rigging and injured his arm.
Perhaps Frode really had lived on the island for fifty years. I had heard tales of others who had survived a shipwreck just as long. He could well have had a pack of cards on him, too, but I could not believe that the dwarfs were figments of Frode’s imagination.
I knew there was another possible explanation – all this absurdity could be going on inside my head, I could be the one who had suddenly gone mad. For example, what had been in the berries I had eaten by the lake with all the goldfish? Well, it was too late to think about that now …
My thoughts were interrupted by what I assumed was the sound of ship’s bells and by somebody tugging at my uniform. It was the Joker and the ship’s bells were the bells on his costume.
‘What do you make of the cards’ convention?’ he asked, and stood gazing up at me with a knowing look. I didn’t reply.
‘Tell me,’ the little fool continued, ‘wouldn’t you think it rather strange if something which somebody thought suddenly started to jump around in the space outside the head which had thought it?’
‘Yes, absolutely,’ I said. ‘Of course, it … it is totally impossible.’
‘Yes, it is impossible,’ he agreed. ‘Yet at the same time it seems to be true.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘As I said, we’re standing here looking at each other beneath the sky, so to speak … bursting with life. How does one manage to “climb out of the prison of consciousness”? What kind of ladder does one use to do that?’
‘Maybe we’ve been here all the time,’ I said in an attempt to shake him off.
‘Indeed, but the question still remains unanswered. Who are we, sailor? Where do we come from?’
I didn’t like the way he was involving me in his philosophical contemplation, and I had to admit I had no answers to any of his questions.
‘We were shaken out of the magician’s sleeve and appeared out of thin air, bursting with life,’ he exclaimed. ‘Bizarre, says the Joker! What does the sailor think?’
It was at this point that I realised Frode had gone.
‘Where is Frode?’ I asked.
‘One should really answer the question in hand before asking a new question of one’s own,’ he said, rippling with laughter.
‘What happened to Frode?’ I repeated.
‘He had to go out for some air. He always has to do that at this point in the Joker Game. Sometimes he worries so much about what is said, he pees his pants, and then Joker thinks it is far better he go outside.’
I felt terribly vulnerable when I was suddenly left alone with all the dwarfs in the large banqueting hall. Most of them had left the tables, and the colourful figures were running around us like children at an over-large birthday party. There was no need to invite the whole village, I thought to myself.
As I watched them, I understood that this was not a normal birthday party. It was more like a large fancy-dress party where the guests had been told to turn up as playing cards, and then everybody had been given a drink at the door to make them shrink so there would be enough room for all the guests. I had turned up for the party just slightly too late to taste the secret aperitif.
‘Would you like to taste the sparkling drink?’ the Joker said, smiling broadly.
He held out a tiny bottle, and in my confusion I put it to my lips and swallowed a mouthful. A little taste could hardly do any harm.
However, although the mouthful had been ever so little, it completely overpowered me. All the flavours I had tasted in my short life – and many more – charged through my body, washing through me like a tidal wave of desire. There was a relentless taste of strawberry in one of my toes, and peach or banana in a lock of my hair. In my left elbow bubbled a taste of pear juice, and in my nose there steamed a mix of heavenly scents.
It was so good that I was motionless for several minutes. When I now looked at the swarm of dwarfs in their colourful costumes, it was as if they were figments of my own imagination. At once I felt as though I was lost inside my own head, and then the next moment I thought the figments of my imagination had stormed out of my head in protest at being held back by the limitations of my own thoughts.
I continued to think many more weird and wonderful thoughts; it was as though something was tickling the inside of my head. I decided I would never part with this bottle and I would refill it as soon as it was empty. Nothing in the world was more important than having plenty of this sparkling drink.
‘Did it taste … good or bad?’ asked the Joker, grinning from ear to ear.
It was the first time I had seen his teeth, and when he smiled there was a faint tinkle from the bells on his costume. It was as though each tiny tooth was somehow connected to each little bell.
‘I’ll have another sip,’ I said.
At that moment Frode came rushing in from the street. He tripped over the Ten and the King of Spades before he snatched the bottle out of the Joker’s hands.
‘You lout!’ he roared.
The figures in the hall looked up for a moment, but then returned to their festive pleasures.
I suddenly noticed smoke rising from the sticky-bun book and felt a burning sensation on one of my fingers. I threw down the book and the magnifying glass and the people around me stared as if I had just been bitten by a poisonous snake.
‘No problem!’ I shouted, picking up the magnifying glass and the sticky-bun book again.
The magnifying glass had acted as a burning-glass, and as I now thumbed through the book, I found a large scorch mark on the last page I had read.
Something else had begun to burn, too, only it had a slow-burning fuse: it wouldn’t be long before I realised that a great deal of what was written in the sticky-bun book was a reflection of things I experienced.
I sat whispering to myself some of the sentences the dwarfs on the island had said.
‘Father and son search for the beautiful woman who can’t find herself … The magnifying glass matches chip in goldfish bowl … The goldfish does not give away the island’s secret, but the sticky-bun does … The solitaire game is a family curse …’
There could be no doubt about it: there was a mysterious connection between my life and the sticky-bun book. I didn’t have the faintest idea how it was possible, but Frode’s island wasn’t the only magic thing, the little book was a magical piece of work in itself.
For a moment I wondered whether the book wrote itself as I experienced the world around me, but when I leafed through further, I saw that it was already complete.
Even though it was still very hot, I felt a shiver down my spine.
When Dad finally appeared, I jumped down from the rock I was sitting on and asked him three or four questions about the Acropolis and the Greeks. I had to have something else to think about.
EIGHT OF DIAMONDS
… We are conjured up
and tricked away …
Once again we strolled through the grand entrance of the Acropolis, and Dad stood for a long time looking down over the town.
He pointed to a hill called Areopagus. The apostle Paul had once delivered a great speech to the Athenians there about an unknown God who didn’t live in a temple built by human hands.
The ancient market square of Athens was situated below Areopagus and was called the agora. The great philosophers had walked and meditated along the colonnades, but now ru
ins lay where magnificent temples, official buildings, and courtrooms had once stood. The only thing left standing on a small hill is the ancient marble temple of Hephaestus, the god of fire and metalworkers.
‘We’d better make our way down, Hans Thomas,’ Dad said. ‘For me this is what it must be like for a Muslim to arrive in Mecca. The only difference is that my Mecca lies in ruins.’
I think he was afraid the agora would be a big disappointment, but when we hustled into the ancient market square and started to clamber among the blocks of marble, he soon managed to revive the culture of the old city. He was helped along by a couple of good books about Athens.
There were hardly any people here. There had been thousands of people milling around up at the Acropolis, but here there were only a couple of jokers who showed up now and again.
I remember thinking that if it were true, as some people claimed, that you have several lifetimes, then Dad would have been walking around this square a thousand years ago. When he spoke about life in ancient Athens, it was as if he ‘remembered’ how everything had been.
My suspicions were confirmed when he suddenly stopped, pointed across the ruins, and said, ‘A young child sits building sandcastles in a sandbox. It constantly builds something new, something which it treasures for only a moment before it knocks it all down again. In the same way Time has been given a planet to play with. This is where the history of the world is written, this is where the events are engraved – and smoothed over again. This is where life bubbles like in a witch’s cauldron. One day we’ll be modelled here, too – from the same brittle material as our ancestors. The wind of Time blows through us, carries us and is us – then drops us again. We are conjured up and tricked away. There is always something lying and brewing in anticipation of taking our place. Because we’re not standing on solid ground, we’re not even standing on sand – we are sand.’
His words frightened me, not only his choice of words but also the powerful way in which he said them.