The Solitaire Mystery

by Jostein Gaarder

  The solitaire is a family curse. There is always joker to see through the delusion. Generation succeeds generation, but there is a fool walking the earth who is never ravaged by time. The one who sees through destiny must also live through it.

  TEN OF HEARTS

  … there is a fool walking the

  earth who is never ravaged by time …

  It wasn’t easy getting to sleep at the Hotel Mini Baradello after reading the last pages of the sticky-bun book. The hotel didn’t seem so ‘mini’ any more. Hotel Baradello and the surrounding town of Como joined together to form part of something infinitely bigger.

  With regard to the Joker, it was just as I had thought. The dwarf at the garage was the same cunning trickster who had darted in between the boat sheds in Marseille, and he had been in the world ever since.

  Now and again he had appeared before the bakers in Dorf; otherwise he had probably wandered the world without settling anywhere. One day he was in a village, the next day he was somewhere else entirely. The only thing hiding his true self was a thin suit which he wore over his violet costume with the jingling bells. With an outfit like that, he couldn’t just move to a normal suburban area. It would also look rather odd if he lived in a place for too long and didn’t change in ten, twenty, or a hundred years.

  From the magic island, I remembered that the Joker could run and row without getting tired like ordinary mortals. For all I knew, he could have run after Dad and me all the way from when we first saw him at the Swiss border. Then again he could quite simply have jumped on a train.

  I was sure the Joker had frolicked around in the great game of solitaire, having escaped from the mini-solitaire on the mysterious island. He had an important mission here just as he had there: large and small men alike are to be reminded at regular intervals that they are remarkable creations bursting with life but have far too little understanding of themselves.

  One year he was in Alaska or the Caucasus, the next he was in Africa or Tibet. One week he showed up at the harbour in Marseille, the next week he was running across the Piazza San Marco in Venice.

  So now all the Joker Game pieces were in place. It was wonderful to see how beautifully all the sentences Baker Hans had forgotten joined together to form a whole.

  One of the Kings’ sentences had eluded Baker Hans: ‘Generation succeeds generation, but there is a fool walking the earth who is never ravaged by time.’ I would have liked to let Dad read precisely this sentence to prove that the picture he had drawn of the ravages of time was not as bleak as he would have it. Not everything is ripped to shreds by time. There is a Joker in the pack of cards who runs up and down the generations without losing so much as a milk tooth.

  Ha! I felt this promised that mankind’s wonder at existence would never die. This appreciation might indeed be a rare gift, but it would never be wiped out. It would show up time and time again, as long as history and mankind existed for jokers to frolic around in. Ancient Athens had Socrates, Arendal had Dad and me. There were sure to be more jokers in other places and other times, even if there weren’t multitudes of us.

  The very last sentence Baker Hans had heard in the Joker Game, and which had been repeated three times because of the King of Spades’s impatience, was : ‘The one who sees through destiny must also live through it.’

  Maybe this sentence was directed at the Joker, who lived through one century after another. But I thought I had also seen my destiny, thanks to the long story I had read in the sticky-bun book. But doesn’t everybody? Although our lives on earth can seem negligibly short, we are part of a common history which outlives us all. We don’t just live our own lives. We can visit ancient places like Delphi and Athens. There we can walk around and sample the atmosphere of those who lived on earth before us.

  I looked out of the hotel window, which faced onto a back yard. It was pitch black outside, but a brilliant light shone inside my head. I felt as if I had received a rare comprehensive view of the history of mankind. That was the great solitaire. Now only one little card was missing from my family solitaire.

  Would we meet Grandpa in Dorf ? Might Grandma already be with the old baker ?

  The darkness in the back yard was just beginning to turn blue when I fell asleep, fully clothed, on the bed.

  JACK OF HEARTS

  … a little man rummaging

  around in the back seat …

  Nothing was said about Grandpa as we drove north the next morning until Mama declared that this idea about the baker in Dorf was just about as much as she could tolerate of boyish pranks.

  Dad gave the impression that he didn’t believe any more than Mama did about the baker in Dorf, but nevertheless he defended me now, and I appreciated it greatly.

  ‘We’ll drive the same way home,’ he said, ‘and we’ll buy a big bag of buns in Dorf. At least we’ll be nice and full. And as far as boyish pranks go, you must admit that you have been spared this for many years.’

  Mama put her arm over his shoulder and said, ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

  ‘Careful now,’ he murmured. ‘I’m driving.’

  So she turned to me instead. ‘I’m sorry, Hans Thomas. But please don’t be too disappointed if this baker doesn’t know any more about Grandpa than we do.’

  The bun feast would have to wait until we reached Dorf much later that evening, but we needed to eat something in the meantime. Later that afternoon Dad pulled into Bellinzona and parked in a back alley between two restaurants.

  While we ate pasta and roast veal, I made my biggest mistake of the whole trip: I started to tell them about the sticky-bun book.

  Perhaps it was because I couldn’t keep the great secret that it all happened …

  I began by telling them I had found a tiny book with microscopic writing in one of the sticky buns I had been given by the old baker. Therefore, it had been perfect that I’d already received a magnifying glass from the dwarf at the garage. Then I told them roughly what the sticky-bun book was about.

  I have asked myself many times since then how I could have been so stupid as to break the formal promise I had given the old baker, when we were only a few hours from Dorf. I think I know the answer now : I so much wanted it to be Grandpa I had met in the little Alpine village – and I really wanted Mama to believe it, too. However, I just ended up making everything much more difficult.

  Mama glanced at Dad before returning her attention to me. ‘It’s good that you have a lively imagination. But the imagination must have limits as well.’

  ‘Didn’t you tell me something like this on the roof terrace in Athens?’ Dad piped up. ‘I remember I was envious of your imagination – but I have to agree with Mama that all this about the sticky-bun book is stretching things pretty far.’

  I don’t know why exactly, but I started to cry. I felt as though I had carried so much on my own, and now that I had spilled the beans to Mama and Dad, they didn’t believe me.

  ‘Just wait,’ I sniffed. ‘Just wait until we get back to the car. Then I will show you the sticky-bun book, even though I promised Grandpa to keep it a secret.’

  Dinner was finished at top speed, and I hoped that Dad would at least keep an open mind to the possibility that I might be telling the truth.

  Dad left a hundred Swiss franc note on the table, and then we rushed out into the street without waiting for the change.

  As we approached the car, we saw a little man rummaging around in the back seat. It is a mystery to this day how he managed to open the car door.

  ‘Hey, you !’ shouted Dad. ‘Stop !’

  With that, he ran at full speed over to the red Fiat. However, the man who had been half inside the car dashed out onto the street and hurried around the next corner. I could have sworn I heard the sound of bells as he disappeared.

  Dad followed; he wasn’t a bad runner. Mama and I stood by the Fiat and waited almost half an hour before he came lumbering round the same corner he had taken at furious speed.

  ‘As if he sa
nk into the ground,’ he said. ‘The devil !’

  We started to check the luggage.

  ‘I’m not missing anything,’ Mama said after a while.

  ‘Neither am I,’ said Dad with one hand inside the glove compartment. ‘Here’s my driving licence, our passports, my wallet and my chequebook. He’s even left the jokers. Maybe he was just after a drink.’

  They both got inside the car, and Dad let me into the back seat.

  I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, because I remembered I had only hidden the sticky-bun book under a sweater. Now it was gone!

  ‘The sticky-bun book,’ I said. ‘He’s taken the sticky-bun book!’

  I broke down again.

  ‘It was the dwarf,’ I sobbed. ‘The dwarf stole the sticky-bun book because I couldn’t keep the secret.’

  It ended with Mama joining me in the back seat and sitting for a long while with her arm around me.

  ‘Poor little Hans Thomas,’ she said over and over again. ‘It’s all my fault. We’ll go back to Arendal, but first I think you should try and get some sleep.’

  I sat bolt upright. ‘But we are driving to Dorf ?’

  Dad swung onto the highway.

  ‘Of course we’re going to Dorf,’ he assured me. ‘A sailor always keeps his word.’

  Just before I fell asleep, I heard Dad whisper to Mama, ‘It was a bit strange. All the doors were locked, and you have to admit he was a little guy.’

  ‘That fool can probably move through locked doors,’ I said. ‘And that’s because he is an artificial person.’

  Then I fell asleep in Mama’s lap.

  QUEEN OF HEARTS

  … then suddenly an elderly lady

  came out of the old pub …

  I awoke a couple of hours later and jumped up in the back seat to discover we were high in the Alps.

  ‘Are you awake now?’ Dad asked. ‘We’ll be in Dorf in about half an hour. And we’ll spend the night at the Schöner Waldemar.’

  A little later, when we drove into the village – which I felt I knew better than anyone else in the car – Dad pulled right up in front of the little bakery. The grown-ups tried to exchange secretive glances, but I saw through them.

  The bakery was completely empty. The only sign of life was a little goldfish which swam round and round inside a glass bowl with a big chip out of it. I felt like a fish in a glass tank, too.

  ‘Look,’ I said, pulling the magnifying glass out of my jeans pocket. ‘Don’t you see, it’s exactly the same size as the chip in the glass bowl.’

  It was the only piece of visible evidence I had to prove I wasn’t telling any old cock-and-bull story.

  ‘Well, I’ll be blowed,’ exclaimed Dad. ‘But it doesn’t look as if it’s going to be that easy to find the baker.’

  I wasn’t sure whether he said this to conclude the discussion in a kind way, or whether deep down he had believed everything I had said and was suddenly terribly disappointed that he hadn’t met his father there and then.

  We left the car and trudged in the direction of the Schöner Waldemar. Mama started to quiz me about who I usually played with in Arendal, but I tried to shake her off. The baker and the sticky-bun book was certainly no game.

  Then suddenly an elderly lady came out of the old pub. When she saw us, she came hurrying over.

  It was Grandma!

  ‘Mother !’ Dad cried out.

  If nobody else heard him, then at least the angels in heaven must have, it was such a heartrending cry.

  Grandma threw her arms around us all. Mama was so bewildered she didn’t know what to do with herself. In the end, Grandma hugged me tightly and cried.

  ‘My boy,’ she wept. ‘My sweet boy.’

  ‘But – why … how …’ Dad stammered.

  ‘He died last night,’ said Grandma sadly, looking at us all.

  ‘Who died?’ Mama asked.

  ‘Ludwig,’ whispered Grandma. ‘He called me last week, and then we spent a few days together here. He told me he had had a visit from a young boy in his little bakery. Only when the boy had gone did he realise that it could have been his own grandchild and the man driving the red car could be his son. It is all so terribly sad, and yet at the same time wonderful. It was so good to see him. Then he had a heart attack. He … he died in my arms at the village infirmary.’

  Now I broke down completely, weeping bitterly. I felt as though my own misfortune had clouded everyone else’s. The three adults did all they could to comfort me, but I could no longer be comforted.

  Grandpa was not the only one who was gone. I felt as though the whole world had disappeared with him. He could no longer confirm everything I had said about Rainbow Fizz and the magic island. But maybe – maybe that had been the intention. Grandpa was an old man, and I’d only had the sticky-bun book on loan.

  When I had pulled myself together a few hours later at the Schöner Waldemar, we sat in the tiny dining room with the four tables.

  Now and then the fat lady came over to me and said, ‘Hans Thomas ? Nicht wahr?’

  ‘Don’t you think it was amazing that he knew Hans Thomas was his own grandchild?’ asked Grandma. ‘He never even knew he had a son.’

  Mama nodded in agreement. ‘It’s quite extraordinary,’ she said.

  It wasn’t quite so simple for Dad, however. ‘I think it is even more mysterious how Hans Thomas knew it was Grandpa,’ he said.

  All the adults looked at me.

  ‘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.’

  They all stared at me seriously, they seemed almost worried, but I continued: ‘The sticky-bun man shouts down a magic funnel, so his voice carries hundreds of miles.’

  In this way I received some kind of compensation for all the doubt which had surrounded my judgment. I also understood that I would never be able to share the sticky-bun book with anyone.

  KING OF HEARTS

  … the memories float further

  and further away from that which once created

  them …

  There were four people in the car when we headed north again, two more than when we had driven south. I thought it wasn’t such a bad trick, but I also felt as though the King of Hearts was missing.

  Once again we passed the little garage with only one petrol pump, and I think Dad had a deep desire to meet the mysterious little man again. However, the little fool wasn’t to be found. It didn’t surprise me, but Dad cursed and swore.

  We made a few enquiries around the neighbourhood, but the people there could tell us only that the garage had been shut down ever since the oil crisis in the seventies.

  This is where the great journey to the philosopher’s homeland came to an end. We had found Mama in Athens, and we had met Grandpa in the little Alpine village. But I also felt that my soul had been wounded, and that wound branched from the depths of European history.

  Only after we had been home a long time did Grandma confide in me that Ludwig had managed to bequeath everything he owned to me. She said that he had also joked about me one day taking over the bakery in Dorf.

  Several years have now passed since Dad and I made the long journey from Arendal to Athens to find Mama, who had lost herself in the fashion fairy tale.

  I remember as if it were only yesterday that I sat in the back seat of the old Fiat. I am absolutely positive that I was given a magnifying glass by a little man on the Swiss border. I still have the magnifying glass, and Dad can confirm that the dwarf at the garage gave it to me.

  I can swear that Grandpa had a goldfish in his bakery in Dorf, because we all saw it. Both Dad and I also remember the white pebbles in the forest above the wooden cabin in Dorf. Time has passed, but it can’t erase the fact that I was given a bag of sticky buns by the old baker. I still have the pear taste of the fizzy drink in my body, and I haven’t forgotten that Grandpa said something about a drink which tasted even b
etter.

  But was there really a little book in the sticky bun ? Did I really sit in the back seat and read about Rainbow Fizz and the magic island? Or did I just sit and imagine the whole thing?

  As time passes – and the memories float further and further away from that which once created them – the doubt always comes sneaking into my mind.

  Because the Joker stole the sticky-bun book, I have had to write everything down from memory. Whether I have remembered everything or whether I have added bits here and there, only the Delphic Oracle knows.

  It must have been the old prophecy from the magic island which made me finally realise that I had met my own grandpa in Dorf. Because I didn’t realise whom I’d met until we’d found Mama in Athens. But what had made him understand ?

  I have only one answer : Grandpa wrote the sticky-bun book. He had known about the old prophecy since the end of the Second World War.

  Maybe the greatest mystery was where we had met—in a tiny bakery in a mountain village in Switzerland. How did we get there? We had been fooled into taking that long detour by a dwarf with cold hands.

  Or was the greatest mystery that we met Grandma in the same village on our way home?

  Maybe the greatest mystery of all was how we managed to free Mama from the fashion fairy tale. The greatest thing of all is love. Time can’t pale that as easily as it fades old memories.

  Now all four of us are living happily on Hisøy Island. I say four, because I now have a little sister. She was the one wading through the leaves and horse chestnuts on the road outside. Her name is Tone Angelica, and soon she’ll be five years old. She talks like a waterfall all day long. Maybe she is the greatest philosopher.

  Time is turning me into an adult. Time is also making the ancient temples crumble and even older islands sink into the sea.

  Was there really a sticky-bun book in the biggest of the four buns in the bag? No question crosses my mind more often. As Socrates said, the only thing I know is that I know nothing.