‘Maybe, but the baker told me he had been in Grimstad during the war.’
‘Is that what he said ?’
‘Well, not in Norwegian exactly, but when I told him I came from Arendal, he exclaimed that he had also been in der grimme Stadt. I presumed that he meant Grimstad.’
Dad shook his head.
‘Grimme Stadt? That means ‘that awful town’, or something. He could well have meant Arendal … but there were a lot of German soldiers in the south of Norway, Hans Thomas.’
‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘But only one of them was my grandpa, and that was the baker in Dorf. You know these things.’
In the end Dad phoned Grandma at home in Norway. I don’t know whether this was because of what I had said or simply because he owed his mother a phone call to tell her we had found Mama in Athens. When Grandma didn’t answer, herang Aunt Ingrid, and she told him that Grandma had suddenly taken off on a trip to the Alps.
When I heard this I whistled.
‘The sticky-bun man shouts down a magic funnel, so his voice carried hundreds of miles,’ I said.
The look of astonishment on Dad’s face was so great that it could have held all the mysteries of the world at once.
‘Haven’t you said that before ?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘It’s not impossible that the old baker finally realised that he had met his own grandson. Besides, he saw you, too, and blood is thicker than water, Dad. Or possibly he thought, after all these years, that he might try to make a little telephone call to Norway – seeing as he had just had a boy from Arendal in his shop. And if he did that, then it’s not inconceivable that old romance flares up in Dorf just as strongly as in Athens.’
So it came to be that we sped north in the direction of Dorf. Neither Mama nor Dad believed that the old baker was Grandpa, but they knew they would never get any peace if they didn’t go and check it out for themselves.
When we reached Como, we spent the night at the Mini Hotel Baradello like before. The fair had gone – with the fortune-teller and all – but I comforted myself with the fact that I had a room to myself again. Although I was exhausted after all the driving, I decided to read the rest of the sticky-bun book before I fell asleep.
EIGHT OF HEARTS
… such a fantastic miracle that it’s hard
to know whether to laugh or cry …
I stood up and went outside the cabin. It was hard to walk straight, because different tastes fought for attention throughout my whole body. As the most delicious strawberry cream slid through my left shoulder, a bitter mixture of redcurrants and lemon stabbed my right knee. The tastes chased through my body so quickly and so frequently that I couldn’t name them all.
There are people sitting all over the world eating different things right at this moment, I thought to myself. That meant many thousands of different tastes, and it was as if I were present at all those meals – as if I were tasting everything people all over the world were eating.
I started to wander up into the woods above the cabin. As the firework display of tastes slowly began to subside, I felt something I have never lost since.
I turned round and looked down at the village, and for the first time I realised how fantastic the world is. How is it possible that there are people on this planet, I thought to myself. I felt I was experiencing something completely new, but at the same time it was something which had been out in the open ever since I was a small child. I had been asleep; my life on earth had been one long hibernation.
I am alive! I thought to myself. I am a person bursting with energy. For the first time in my life I understood what it meant to be a person, and at the same time I understood that if I had continued to drink the strange drink, then this feeling would gradually slip away until at last it disappeared completely. I would have tasted the whole world so often that I would become one with it. I would no longer have any feeling of existing. I would become a tomato – or a plum tree.
I sat down on a tree stump, and a roe deer appeared between the trees. It wasn’t that unusual really; wild animals were always roaming around in the woods above Dorf. However, I couldn’t remember that I had ever seen how much of a miracle a living creature is. Of course, I had seen roe deer, I saw roe deer almost every day, but I had never understood how unfathomably mysterious every single roe deer is. Now I understood why this was so – I had never taken the time to experience these wild animals because I had seen them so often.
It was the same with everything – with the whole world, I thought to myself. As long as we are children, we have the ability to experience things around us – but then we grow used to the world. To grow up is to get drunk on sensual experience.
I now understood exactly what had happened to the dwarfs on the magic island. They had been unable to experience life’s deepest secrets. Perhaps that was because they had never been children. When they started to catch up on what they had missed, by drinking the powerful drink every single day, it wasn’t surprising that they finally became one with everything around them. Now I appreciated how much of a victory it must have been for Frode and the Joker to have given up the Rainbow Fizz.
The roe deer stood watching me for a second or two before it bounded away. For a moment there was an incomprehensible silence, then a nightingale started to sing its heavenly tune. That such a little body could produce so much sound, breath, and music was a marvel.
This world, I thought to myself, is such a fantastic miracle that it’s hard to know whether one ought to laugh or cry. Perhaps one should do both, but it isn’t easy to do both at the same time.
My thoughts wandered to one of the farmers’ wives down in the village. She was only nineteen, but one day she had come into the bakery with a little baby girl who was two or three weeks old. I had never been all that interested in babies, but when I peeped into the basket I thought I saw a look of wonder in the little baby’s eyes. I hadn’t thought any more about it, but now as I sat on the tree stump in the woods and listened to the nightingale’s song and a carpet of sunshine unfolded over the fields on the other side of the valley – yes, then it struck me that if the little baby had been able to talk, she would have said something about how wonderful the world was. I had had enough sense to congratulate the young mother on the birth of her child, but really it was the child I should have congratulated. One should bend over every single new citizen of the world and say, ‘Welcome to the world, little friend! You are tremendously lucky to be here.’
I sat thinking how terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as extraordinary as living. One day we suddenly take the fact that we exist for granted – and then, yes, then we don’t think about it any more until we are about to leave the world again.
I now felt an. intense strawberry taste surge through my upper body. Of course it tasted good, but it was also so strong and rich that I almost felt sick. No, I needed no persuasion not to drink Rainbow Fizz again. I knew that I had more than I needed with the blueberries in the woods and a little visit from a roe deer or a nightingale now and again.
As I sat there, I suddenly heard a rustling of branches beside me. When I looked up, I saw a little man peering out from between the trees.
I felt my heart somersault as I realised it was the Joker.
He walked forward a couple of paces, and from a distance of ten or fifteen metres he said, ‘Yum, yum !’
He licked his tiny lips. ‘You have refreshed yourself with the delicious drink? Yum, yum! says the Joker.’
I still had the long story of the magic island in my head, so I wasn’t frightened. The initial surprise of seeing him soon disappeared as well. I felt as though we belonged together – I was a joker in the pack of cards, too.
I got up from the tree stump and walked over to him. He was no longer wearing the jester’s purple costume with bells; instead, he had on a brown suit with black stripes.
I stretched out my hand and said, ‘I know who you are.�
�
As he shook my hand, I heard a faint jingle of bells, and I realised he had simply put a suit on over his jester’s costume. His hand was as cold as the morning dew.
‘I have the pleasure of shaking the hand of the soldier from the land in the north,’ he said.
He smiled strangely when he said this, and his tiny teeth shone like mother-of-pearl. Then he added: ‘Now it is this Jack’s turn to live. Happy birthday, brother!’
‘It’s … it’s not my birthday,’ I stammered.
‘Sssh, says the Joker. It’s not enough to be born only once. Last night the baker’s friend was born again, because the Joker knows, and therefore the Joker wishes him a happy birthday.’
He had a squeaky doll’s voice. I let go of his icy hand and said, ‘I … I have heard everything … about you and Frode and all the others …’
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘because today is Joker Day, my boy, and tomorrow is the beginning of a whole new round. Fifty-two years will pass until the next time. By then the boy from the land in the north is a grown man, but before that he visits Dorf. Luckily, he has been given a magnifying glass on his journey. Fancy magnifying glass, says Joker. Made from the finest diamond glass, he says. Because one can put things in one’s pocket when an old goldfish bowl is smashed. Joker clever boy, but it is this Jack who gets the most difficult task.’
I didn’t understand what the dwarf meant, but then he moved closer and whispered, ‘You must remember to write about Frode’s playing cards in a little book. Then you will bake the book in a sticky bun because the goldfish does not give away the secret of the island but the sticky bun does, Joker says. Enough !’
‘But… the story of Frode’s playing cards will hardly fit in a sticky bun,’ I protested.
He laughed heartily at this. ‘It depends on how big the sticky bun is, my boy. Or how small the book is.’
‘The story of the magic island … and everything else… is so long it will have to be a.very large book,’ I protested again. ‘And so it’ll have to be a giant sticky bun, too.’
He looked at me cunningly. ‘One mustn’t be so cocksure, Joker says. Bad habit, he repeats. The sticky bun needn’t be so big if all the letters in the book are tiny.’
‘I don’t think anybody can write that small,’ I insisted. ‘And even if it was possible, hardly anyone would be able to read it.’
‘Joker says just write the book. You might as well begin right away. Then you can make it small when the time comes. And he who has the magnifying glass will see.’
I looked across the valley. The golden carpet had already drawn in over the village.
When I turned back to face the Joker, he was gone. I looked round, but the little jester had darted away between the trees as artfully as a roe deer.
I felt quite exhausted as I made my way back down to the cabin. At one stage I almost lost my balance when a powerful spurt of cherry shot through my left leg just as I was about to step on a rock.
I thought about my friends in the village. If only they knew. Soon they would be gathering in the Schöner Waldemar again. They had to have something to talk about, and there was nothing more natural to gossip about than an old man living alone in a wooden hut away from everyone else. They probably thought he was a bit strange, and for safety’s sake they declared him crazy. However, they were part of the biggest mystery themselves – it was all around them, they just didn’t see it. Perhaps it was true that Albert had a big secret, but the biggest secret of all was the world itself.
I knew that I would never drink wine in the Schöner Waldemar again. And I also knew that one day it would be me they would gossip about down there. In a few years I would be the only joker in the village.
Eventually I dived into bed and slept until late afternoon.
NINE OF HEARTS
… the world is not mature enough
to hear about Frode’s playing cards …
I felt the last pages of the sticky-bun book tickle my right index finger, and now I noticed that these pages were written with normal-sized lettering. I could put the magnifying glass down on the bedside table and read the book without it.
It won’t be long now until you visit Dorf and collect the secret of Frode’s playing cards and the magic island, mein sohn. I wrote everything down I remembered from when Albert with me spoke. Only two months after this nacht, the alte baker died and I the next baker here in the village became.
I wrote the story of the Rainbow Fizz at once, and I decided to write the story in Norwegian. That was so you verstechen would, but also so that the locals could not that – book find and read. Now have I alles Norwegian forgotten.
I thought that I contact you up there in Norway could not. Didn’t know how Line accept me would, and dared not I to break the old prophecy. Because I knew yes, that you one day to the village come would.
The book I wrote on a normal typewriter. It was very impozzible smaller letters to write. But then – only a few weeks ago, heard I that them in the bank here in the village a wonderful machine have got. It was ein machine which copy could – so dass ein page smaller and smaller could be. When I copied my page eight times, the writing was so small that a very little book put together could. And you, mein sohn, you have indeed a magnifying glass off Joker got?
When I should the whole story write, had I only the sentences which Baker Hans remembered had. But yesterday I got a letter. There all the Joker Game written was – and that letter natürlich from the Joker was.
As soon as you in Dorf have been, will I Line telephone. And maybe one day we all can meet.
Oh – we bakers in Dorf are all some jokers who carry a fantastisch story. And that story must never get wings to fly like other stories. But like all jokers – both in large and small solitaire games – have we the task to tell the people about what an unbelievable fairy tale the world is. We know it is not easy to open their eyes so people see that the world is something big and unbelievable. But before they see what lies quite open in the day is a puzzle; the world is not mature enough to hear about Frode’s playing cards on the magic island.
Once – in the land of tomorrow – can the whole world about my sticky-bun book hear. Until then must some drops of Rainbow Fizz drip once every fifty-two years.
And ein other ding must you never forget: Joker is in the world. If all the cards in the great solitaire totally blind become, will Joker never give up the belief that some people their eyes open all the same have.
So farewell, sohn. Maybe you have your mother found In the land in the south. And so you are here to Dorf when you are grown sure to come.
The last pages in this sticky-bun book are the Joker’s notes of the great Joker Game which all the dwarfs on the magic island recited many, many years ago.
The Joker Game
Silver brig drowns in foaming sea. Sailor is washed ashore on island which grows and grows. The breast pocket hides a pack of cards which is placed in the sun to dry. Fifty-three pictures are company for the master glassblower’s son for many long years.
Before the colours fade, fifty-three dwarfs are cast in the lonely sailor’s imagination. Peculiar figures dance in the master’s mind. When the master sleeps, the dwarfs live their own lives. One beautiful morning King and Jack climb out of the prison of consciousness.
The images jump out of the creative space into the created space. The figures are shaken out of the magician’s sleeve and appear out of thin air bursting with life. The fantasies are beautiful in appearance, but all except one have lost their minds. Only a lonely Joker sees through the delusion.
Sparkling drink paralyses Joker’s senses. Joker spits out the sparkling drink. Without the lie-nectar the little fool thinks more clearly. After fifty-two years the shipwrecked grandson comes to the village.
The truth lies in the cards. The truth is that the master glass-blower’s son has made fun of his own fantasies. The fantasies lead a fantastic rebellion against the master. Soon the master is dead; the dwarfs hav
e murdered him.
Sun princess finds her way to the ocean. The magic island crumbles from within. The dwarfs become cards again. The baker’s son escapes the fairy tale before it is folded up.
The fool slips away behind dirty boat sheds in the homeland. The baker’s son escapes over the mountains and settles in remote village. The baker conceals the treasures from the magic island. The future lies in the cards.
The village shelters neglected boy whose mother has passed away. The baker gives him the sparkling drink and shows him the beautiful fish. The boy grows old and his hair turns white, but before he dies, unhappy soldier comes from land in the north. The soldier guards the secret of the magic island.
The soldier does not know that shaven girl gives birth to beautiful baby boy. The boy must run away to sea because he is the enemy’s son. The sailor marries beautiful woman who gives birth to a baby boy before she travels to land in the south to find herself. Father and son search for the beautiful woman who can’t find herself.
The dwarf with cold hands points the way to remote village and gives the boy from the land in the north a magnifying glass on his journey. The magnifying glass matches chip in goldfish bowl. The goldfish does not reveal the island’s secret, but the sticky bun does. The sticky-bun man is the soldier from the land in the north.
The truth about the grandfather lies in the cards. Destiny is a snake which is so hungry it devours itself. The inner box unpacks the outer box at the same time as the outer box unpacks the inner. Destiny is a cauliflower head which grows equally in all directions.
The boy realises that the sticky-bun man is his own grandfather at the same time as the sticky-bun man realises that the boy from the north is his own grandson. The sticky-bun man shouts down a magic funnel, so his voice carries hundreds of miles. The sailor spits out strong drink. The beautiful woman who can’t find herself finds her beloved son instead.
The Solitaire Mystery Page 26