The Christmas Mystery

by Jostein Gaarder

  On a rise with a view over the sea, they met another shepherd, who was sitting under a pine tree to protect himself from the strong sun. He had the same light blue tunic as Joshua, Jacob, and Isaac. When he saw the procession of pilgrims approaching, he got to his feet and came to meet them.

  “Glory to God in the highest,” he said. “My name is Daniel and I have been waiting here for many years, but I knew you would pass through Dalmatia sometime during the seventh century. I am coming with you to Bethlehem.”

  “Yes, indeed!” said Impuriel. “For you are one of us.”

  Joshua struck his crook against the pine tree. “To Bethlehem! To Bethlehem!”

  Soon they came to a large lake. At the end of the lake was a town.

  “This town is called Scodra, and the lake is the Lake of Scodra,” said Ephiriel. “After many centuries, this land will be called Albania. We have left the Roman Catholic region now and have reached the territory that will be governed from Byzantium.”

  Elisabet felt confused by all the strange names, but the angel explained, “The angel watch shows that 602 years have passed since Jesus was born. At this time, and throughout the Middle Ages, the Christian Church had two different capitals. The one is Rome, and the other is Byzantium, at the mouth of the Black Sea.”

  “But didn’t they believe the same things?”

  “On the whole, yes. But they showed it in slightly different ways. For people have come and gone, and so have church traditions and services. Though the start of it all was something that happened one Christmas night in Bethlehem, the city of David.”

  Impuriel ruffled his wings and said, “Yes, indeed! For there was only one Mary and only one Christ Child. Since then, many millions of images of Mary and the Christ Child have been painted and chiseled, and no two of them are alike. There was only one Christ Child, but every person’s imagination is a little different.”

  Elisabet hid these words in her heart.

  Impuriel beat his wings and came right up to her. “God created only one Adam and one Eve as well. They were little children who played hide-and-seek and climbed the trees in the Garden of Eden. For there was no point in creating a Paradise if there were no children who could play in it. But then these two little rascals ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and they grew up. That was the end of playing in the world, but only for a short while. Soon grownup Adam and grownup Eve had children of their own, and then grandchildren. In this way, God made sure that there would always be plenty of children in the world. There’s no point in creating a whole world if there are no little children to keep on discovering it. That’s how God goes on creating the world over and over again. He will never quite finish, for new children keep on arriving, and they discover the world for the very first time. Yes indeed!”

  The two Wise Men looked at one another.

  “Well, well!” said Balthazar.

  And Caspar added, “This explanation is perhaps a little dubious. But all good stories may be understood in at least two or three ways, and only one story can be told at a time.”

  “But even though many billions of children have lived on earth, no two of them have been exactly alike,” said Impuriel. “There are no two blades of grass in the whole of creation that are absolutely exactly alike. That’s because God in heaven is so full of imagination that every now and again it bubbles over and a little spills onto the earth. ‘Fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth,’ He said as He slaved away at creating the world in six days. ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind…’”

  Impuriel glanced at Elisabet. “I know it all by heart.”

  Elisabet clapped her hands. She had always found it difficult to learn old stories and rhymes by heart.

  Joshua thumped his shepherd’s crook on the ground. “To Bethlehem! To Bethlehem!”

  On they went, up through the Macedonian highlands.

  * * *

  WHEN Mama finished reading, they sat smiling at one another.

  “This flower seller certainly doesn’t lack imagination,” said Papa.

  He turned the pages of one of the atlases. “They’ve run through all of Yugoslavia. That’s quite a lot for one day.”

  “For a hundred years, you mean,” said Joachim. “Every single day is a hundred years.”

  “But that’s only for us,” argued Mama. “For Elisabet and all the others, it goes very fast. Besides, it’s not called Yugoslavia anymore. It wasn’t in the seventh century either. Then it was called Croatia and Dalmatia.”

  Papa went on studying the map. He showed Joachim where they had been running. Finally he pointed out the towns of Split and Dubrovnik.

  * * *

  WHEN Papa came home from work that afternoon, he said, “I went to the police station today.”

  Mama looked surprised. “To find John?”

  Papa shook his head. “No, no. I wanted to find out a little more about this girl who disappeared in 1948. She was only seven years old and she really did vanish. The police searched for her for months, but she never turned up. The only thing they found was her knitted cap. It was lying in the woods just outside the town. So that little girl must have had a brief life.”

  “I don’t think you should be so certain of that,” said Mama.

  Papa went on, “I contacted her family, too. I made a few phone calls, and finally managed to talk to her mother. She’s now an old lady in her seventies.”

  Mama and Joachim both spoke at once.

  “What did she say?”

  “Did she know John?”

  “One question at a time, please,” said Papa. “She couldn’t tell me much more than the police. But she did say that once, many, many years ago, she had talked to a man who came from Syria. His name was John. The girl’s father died a few years ago. He had traveled to Syria and many other countries. But…” Papa took a deep breath. “She hadn’t heard about the picture that was taken in Rome ten to fifteen years after Elisabet disappeared. I promised to send her a copy.”

  A few minutes after Mama and Papa said good night, Joachim got out of bed and sat at his desk.

  Who was the young woman John had taken a picture of in Rome? Was she called Elisabet—or something else?

  “Sabet … Tebas…” he said. But why did he say that? They sounded almost like sorcerers’ words.

  Joachim opened his little notebook and looked at the way he had written the two names before. Now he wrote:

  Was that a window? Or was it a cross?

  Maybe it was an Advent calendar.

  17

  DECEMBER 17

  … many things have been done in the name of Jesus that do not please heaven …

  ON December 17, Joachim woke up first. He even opened the magic Advent calendar before Mama and Papa got up. The picture was of the entire procession of pilgrims on their way down a steep mountainside.

  The minute he had unfolded the thin piece of paper, Papa came in. “You haven’t opened it already, have you?” he asked.

  Joachim started. “Yes. But I haven’t read the piece of paper.”

  And Papa hurried into the bedroom and got Mama out of bed. She wasn’t even allowed to brush her teeth first. They sat down on the edge of the bed and peered at the piece of paper. It was Papa’s turn to read.

  SERAPHIEL

  It was the very end of the sixth century. Across the Macedonian chain of mountains sped a long procession of pilgrims.

  Down on the bank of the Axios River, a sheep farmer looked up at the mountains. First he saw the seven godly sheep rolling down the mountainside like a pearl necklace. Around them fluttered a white bird. Behind the sheep came four men, one of them holding a shepherd’s crook in his hand. Behind the four shepherds came even more people.

  The amazing sight lasted only a second or two. Then it was gone. The sheep farmer rubbed his eyes, but remembered that his father had told him of having a
similar vision many years ago, a little farther down the Axios Valley. He had seen a mysterious company escorted by two angels.

  Long after the vision of the pilgrims’ procession had gone, the sheep farmer realized that the white bird had not been a bird at all. He, too, had seen one of the angels of the Lord.

  The pilgrims followed the river down to where it ran out into the Thermaic Gulf in the Aegean Sea. Elisabet had never seen such blue water.

  Ephiriel pointed up at a mountain peak far away to the right of the Gulf they were gazing at. “That’s Mount Olympus. In the old days, the Greeks believed the gods lived there. They were called Zeus and Apollo, Athena and Aphrodite. But now angel time tells us that 569 years have passed since the birth of Jesus, and no one believes in the Greek gods anymore.”

  “Do they believe in Jesus?” asked Elisabet.

  The angel nodded.

  “But it’s only about forty years since the Church closed the Academy, the ancient school of philosophy in Athens. That was founded almost a thousand years ago by a famous philosopher called Plato.”

  “Why did they close the old school?”

  Ephiriel said something that Elisabet hid in her heart.

  “Many things have been done in the name of Jesus that do not please heaven. Jesus wanted to talk to everyone. He never expected people to keep their opinions to themselves. Only a few years later, Paul came to Athens. He was the first great missionary for Christendom, and when he arrived in Athens he wanted to speak with the Greek philosophers. He asked them to listen to the words of the Lord, but he wanted to hear what they thought as well.”

  He couldn’t say any more because Joshua struck the ground with his shepherd’s crook and said, “To Bethlehem! To Bethlehem!”

  After a while, they came to a city located at the innermost point of the Gulf. Ephiriel said that the time was 551, that the city was called Thessalonica, and that the Romans had made it the capital of Macedonia.

  “As early as fifty years after the birth of Jesus, Paul established a Christian community here. And we’re still a long way from the Holy Land. Paul wrote two letters to the Christians in this city. We can read them to this day, for both those letters are in the Bible.”

  Elisabet thought about the angel’s words. She had not realized that it was possible to keep a few letters for so long.

  They entered the city by the town gate. It was early in the morning and hardly a soul was to be seen in the streets. Ephiriel pointed to the many churches and said that some of them were several hundred years old. He stopped by one of them and said, “Fifteen hundred years shall pass, and this Church of St. George will still stand here.”

  They sped east and soon came to another city.

  “This is Philippi,” said Ephiriel. “Here Paul made his first speech on European soil. Here he established the first Christian community in Europe. In the Bible there is a letter which he wrote to the Philippians when he was imprisoned because of his faith.”

  Ephiriel pointed to an octagonal church. All of a sudden, one of the doors was opened from the inside. Impuriel had already started to say, “Fear not,” when out of the octagonal church strode another angel. He took a few steps toward Elisabet and said, “Greetings, my daughter. I am Seraphiel, and I am coming with you to Bethlehem to welcome the Christ Child into the world.”

  Joshua struck his shepherd’s crook against the church wall. “To Bethlehem! To Bethlehem!”

  They set off along the old road between the Ionian Sea and Constantinople. Seraphiel told them that the road was called the Via Egnatia.

  They stormed eastward. As they ran, Ephiriel said, “The time is 511 after Christ, and we shall be in Constantinople before it’s 500.”

  * * *

  PAPA looked in the atlas to see which way the pilgrims had gone.

  “Here’s the Macedonian mountain chain. Then they came down to the Axios River, that’s here. And this is the Thermaic Gulf. When they’re standing here, they can see Mount Olympus on their right. That’s correct. Yes, it all fits.”

  He opened the second atlas, the one that showed how the countries of Europe had looked in the sixth century. “The Via Egnatia must be this road,” he said. “Here you see Thessalonica and Philippi.”

  “Isn’t there a map of Paul’s travels?” Mama wanted to know.

  Papa paged through the atlas. Joachim thought that was a little magical, too, since it showed how the world had looked in every age. It even showed cities that had been buried in earth and sand many, many years ago.

  “Here it is!” exclaimed Papa. He had found the map that showed Paul’s four great missionary journeys. “Paul visited Philippi and Thessalonica on his second journey.”

  * * *

  WHEN Joachim came home from school, the telephone was ringing. He thought it must be Mama or Papa because they sometimes called to tell him they would be home a little later, or to say he could find something to eat in the refrigerator. He hated that more than anything.

  He lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

  “It’s John.”

  What should he say? Joachim thought hard, then repeated the phrase Mama usually used when he had been playing with a friend and had come home much too late.

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “I’m somewhere out in the wilderness,” John said. “But we can meet some other time. I just wanted to know how it’s going with the magic Advent calendar.”

  “Fine,” said Joachim. “It’s like having a birthday every day, because now Mama and Papa are reading all the pieces of paper, too. We do it together.”

  “Is that so? It’s still possible to read them, then?”

  Joachim didn’t understand what he meant.

  “We read them every day.”

  “Fine—yes, that’s fine. Where are the pilgrims now?”

  “I think it’s called Philippi,” said Joachim. “We’ve looked it up on the map.”

  “That’s good. That was the point of it, too.”

  “Oh?”

  “But, Joachim?”

  “Yes?”

  “What do you think the Greek sheep farmer thought when he saw the angel procession coming down to the Axios Valley?”

  “I’m sure he was very frightened,” said Joachim.

  “You can say that again.”

  “There are a lot of things Mama and Papa want to ask you about,” continued Joachim. “Can you come and have coffee with us?”

  John laughed. Then he said, “It’s not Christmas yet.”

  “You can have coffee and cakes anyway. We’ve baked a lot already.”

  He was suddenly afraid that John might stop talking, so he quickly asked, “Are you sure the woman in the photo is called Elisabet?”

  “I’m almost sure…” said John. “If not, she’s called Tebasile.”

  Joachim thought of the strange Advent calendar Quirinius had given Elisabet, and he thought of what John had said when they met by the garden gate.

  “Perhaps she’s called both,” he said. “Perhaps she’s called Elisabet Tebasile.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Yes, maybe so. Maybe so, yes!”

  “Was she Norwegian?”

  John sighed. “Yes and no, yes and no. She was from Palestine, from a little village near Bethlehem. She said she was a Palestinian refugee. But it seems she was born in Norway. The whole thing’s so strange.”

  “So she ran to Bethlehem with Ephiriel and the little lamb?” asked Joachim, breathlessly.

  “What a lot of questions!” said John. “But now I must hang up. We must learn to wait, you see, Joachim. Did you know that ‘Advent’ means something that is to come?”

  And he hung up!

  Joachim couldn’t concentrate on anything until Mama and Papa came home. He had to tell them about John’s phone call over and over again, because Papa wanted to be absolutely sure John hadn’t said anything important that Joachim had forgotten.

  “Elisabet Tebasile!” he muttered. �
�There can’t be anyone called that.”

  But there was something else. Joachim knew that a refugee was someone who had to flee from his or her own country because of war and danger. But he didn’t know that anyone had had to flee from Bethlehem.

  Papa consulted the atlas again. He told Joachim that many people in the villages around Bethlehem had had to move because of war. Some of them had lost all their possessions and were in such difficulties that they had to live in refugee camps.

  “A Good Samaritan should have come to help them,” Joachim said. “Because Jesus wanted to teach people to help one another when in need. And then there would have been peace. For peace is the message of Christmas.”

  18

  DECEMBER 18

  … God’s kingdom is open to everyone, even people who travel without a ticket …

  PAPA hadn’t liked it that Joachim opened the magic Advent calendar door before he and Mama got up. On December 18 he woke Joachim.

  That day, there was a picture of a rod with a shining gold ball on one end.

  “That’s a scepter,” explained Mama. “Kings and emperors use rods like that as a symbol of dignity. The round ball is probably meant to be the sun.”

  Joachim unfolded the thin piece of paper which had fallen out of the calendar and began to read to Mama and Papa. They sat on either side of him on his bed.

  THE EMPEROR AUGUSTUS

  A strange procession swept through Thrace toward Constantinople on the Golden Horn between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. They were going to Bethlehem. Five hundred years had passed since Jesus was born in a stable, was swaddled in cloth and placed in a manger because there was no room for Mary and Joseph in the inn. But that story was familiar all over the world.

  They stopped in front of one of the city gates, which were guarded by soldiers. The soldiers drew their swords and raised their spears when the first sheep reached the gate. Then the angel Seraphiel flew up beside the sheep and placed himself between them and the soldiers.