The Solitaire Mystery

by Jostein Gaarder

  I went over to him and bowed respectfully.

  ‘Good evening, Jack of Diamonds,’ I said, attempting to sound cheerful. ‘Can you tell me which King is in power at the moment?’

  The Jack stuck his sword back in its sheath and stared at me with a glazed look in his eyes.

  ‘The King of Spades,’ he said shortly. ‘Because tomorrow it is Joker. But it’s not allowed to discuss the cards.’

  ‘That’s a shame, because I really need to ask you to show me where the island’s highest official is.’

  ‘Sdrac eht ssucsid ot dewolla ton si ti,’ he said.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Sdrac eht ssucsid ot dewolla ton si ti,’ he repeated.

  ‘I see. And that means?’

  ‘Selur eht wollof tsum uoy taht!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Ees uoy!’

  ‘You don’t say?’

  I looked at his little face closely. He had the same shiny hair and pale skin as the diamonds at the glass workshop.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me, but I don’t know that language,’ I said. ‘Is it by any chance Dutch?’

  The little Jack now looked up at me smugly.

  ‘Only Kings, Queens, and Jacks know the art of speaking both ways. Seeing as you don’t understand this, you are below me.’

  I thought it over. Did the Jack mean he’d been talking backwards?

  ‘Ees uoy’ … That was ‘you see.’ Then twice he had said, ‘Sdrac eht ssucsid ot de wolla ton si ti.’ If I began from the very end, it was ‘It is not allowed to discuss the cards.’

  ‘It is not allowed to discuss the cards.’ I said.

  He was on his guard now.

  ‘Neht uoy od yhw?’ he asked hesitantly.

  ‘Uoy tset ot!’ I replied confidently.

  Now he looked like the one who had just fallen from the moon.

  ‘I asked if you knew which King was in power at the moment, just to see if you could stop yourself from answering,’ I continued. ‘But you couldn’t manage that, so you broke the rules.’

  ‘That is the most impudent thing I have ever heard,’ he declared.

  ‘Oh yes, and I can certainly be a lot more impudent.’

  ‘Taht si woh dna?’

  ‘My father’s name is Otto,’ I replied. ‘Can you say that name the other way round?’

  He looked at me.

  ‘Otto,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right. Can you say it the other way round as well?’

  ‘Otto,’ he said again.

  ‘Yes, I can hear that,’ I continued, ‘but can you say it the other way?’

  ‘Otto, Otto!’ snarled the Jack.

  ‘It was a good try anyway,’ I said to calm him down. ‘Shall we try something else?’

  ‘Neht no emoc!’ replied the Jack.

  ‘Pull up.’

  ‘Pull up,’ said the Jack.

  I just waved my hand and said, ‘And now say the same thing backwards.’

  ‘Pull up, pull up!’ said the Jack.

  ‘Thank you, that’s enough. Can you translate a whole sentence as well?’

  ‘Esruoc fo!’

  ‘Then I want you to say, “Red rum sir is murder,” I said.

  ‘Red rum sir is murder!’ said the Jack at once.

  ‘Yes, right, and now the other way.’

  ‘Red rum sir is murder!’ he said again.

  I shook my head. ‘You’re just mimicking me. That’s probably because you can’t say it the other way round.’

  ‘Red rum sir is murder! Red rum sir is murder!’ he shouted again.

  I felt a bit sorry for him, but I wasn’t the one who had started the tricks.

  Now the little Jack pulled his sword out of its sheath and took a swing at a bottle, sending it crashing against a cabin wall. Some hearts who were passing by stopped and stared, but then quickly turned away.

  Again I thought the island had to be an asylum for the incurably mentally ill. But why were they so small? Why did they speak German? And above all – why were they divided into suits and numbers like a pack of cards?

  I decided not to let the Jack of Diamonds out of my sight until I got some kind of explanation for what everything meant. I just had to be careful not to express myself too clearly, because the one thing these dwarfs had difficulty understanding was clear speech.

  ‘I’ve just landed here,’ I said. ‘But I thought the country was as uninhabited as the moon. Now I’d really like to know who you all are and where you come from.’

  The Jack took a step back and said defeatedly, ‘Are you a new Joker?’

  ‘I didn’t know Germany had a colony in the Atlantic Ocean,’ I continued. ‘Although I’ve been in many lands, I’m afraid I have to admit this is the first time I have seen people so small.’

  ‘You are a new Joker. Bother! As long as no more show up. It can’t possibly be necessary for each suit to have its own Joker.’

  ‘Don’t say that! If the Jokers are the only ones who know the art of holding a proper conversation, then this game of solitaire would be solved much more quickly if everyone were a Joker.’

  He tried to shoo me away with his hands.

  ‘It is terribly strenuous to have to relate yourself to all sorts of possible questions,’ he said.

  I knew this would be difficult, so I tried again. ‘You see, you’re all shuffling around on an amazing island in the Atlantic Ocean. Wouldn’t it be reasonable, therefore, if you had an explanation for how you’d all got here?’ I asked.

  ‘Pass!’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘You’ve upset the game, you hear. I am passing!’

  Now he took out a little bottle from his jacket pocket and gulped down the same sparkling liquid as the clubs had drunk. When he had put the cork back in the bottle, he stretched out one of his arms and said loudly and masterfully, as though he were reading the beginning of a poem, ‘Silver brig drowns in foaming sea.’

  I shook my head and sighed in despair. He’d probably fall asleep soon. Then I’d have to try to find the King of Spades on my own. At the same time, I sensed I wouldn’t get much further with him.

  Then I suddenly remembered something one of the dwarfs had said.

  ‘I’ll have to go and see if I can find Frode …’ I muttered to myself.

  With that the Jack of Diamonds suddenly sprang to life. He jumped up off the bench he’d been sitting on and raised his right arm to stiff attention.

  ‘Did you say Frode?’

  I nodded. ‘Can you lead me to him?’

  ‘Esruoc fo!’

  We set off between the houses and soon came to a little market square with a big well in the middle. The Eight and Nine of Hearts were busy pulling a bucket of water up from the well. Their bloodred dresses stood out brightly in the square.

  All four Kings were now standing in front of the well in a ring, with their arms over each other’s shoulders. Perhaps they were deliberating over an important command. I remember thinking it must be impractical to have four Kings. They had the same colour clothing as the Jacks, they were just grander, and each of them had his own splendid gold crown.

  The four Queens were also on the square. They flitted back and forth between the houses, constantly taking out a little mirror, which they looked into. It appeared as though they forgot who they were and what they looked like so quickly and so often that they had to keep checking their mirrors. The Queens were also wearing crowns, but they were slightly taller and narrower than the Kings’ crowns.

  Over on the far side of the square I spotted an old man with white hair and a long white beard. He was sitting on a large stone, smoking a pipe. What made the old man even more interesting was his size – he was as big as me. However, there was something else which distinguished him from the dwarfs. The old man was wearing a grey cloth shirt and a pair of wide-legged brown trousers. His clothes had a poor, homemade quality about them, which contrasted sharply with the colourful uniforms of the dwarfs.
r />   The Jack walked straight over and presented me to him.

  ‘Master,’ he said, ‘a new Joker has arrived.’

  He was unable to say more than that before he sank into a heap on the square and fell asleep. Undoubtedly it was because he had drunk from the little bottle.

  The old man jumped up from the stone he was sitting on and looked me up and down without saying a word. Then he started to touch me. He ran his hand over my cheek, carefully pulled my hair, and felt the material of my sailor’s uniform. It was as though he had to make sure I was a real human being made of flesh and blood.

  ‘This is … the worst thing I have seen,’ he said in the end.

  ‘Frode, I presume,’ I said, and shook his hand.

  He squeezed my hand tightly and for a long time. Then he suddenly seemed to be in a hurry, as though he had remembered something unpleasant.

  ‘We must leave the village immediately,’ he said.

  I thought he seemed as confused as all the others. However, his response was not as uninterested. It was enough to give me at least some hope.

  The old man hurried out of the village, though his legs were so weak that he almost fell over a couple of times.

  Again I saw the log cabin completely alone above the village on a hill in the distance. We were soon standing in front of it but we didn’t go inside. The old man offered me a seat on a little bench.

  Just as I sat down, the head of a strange figure appeared from round a corner of the cabin. It was a funny character in a violet suit, wearing a red-and-green hat with donkey ears. Small bells, which jingled crazily every time he moved, were attached to his hat and his violet suit.

  He ran right up to me. First he pinched my ear; then he gave me a little pat on my stomach.

  ‘Go down to the village, Joker!’ ordered the old man.

  ‘Now, now!’ chided the little fellow with a roguish smile. ‘One eventually gets a visitor from the homeland, and then it pleases the master to disown old friends. Dangerous conduct,’ said the Joker. ‘Mark my words.’

  The old one sighed in despair.

  ‘Don’t you have quite a bit to think about for the big party?’ he asked.

  The frisky figure did a couple of athletic donkey kicks with his little body. ‘It cannot be denied, that’s true. One mustn’t take anything for granted.’

  He bounced back a couple of paces.

  ‘Well, we won’t say any more for now,’ he said. ‘But I’ll see you soon!’

  With that he disappeared down the hill to the village.

  The old man sat beside me. From the bench we could watch all the colourful little people moving around between the brown wooden cabins.

  SEVEN OF CLUBS

  … that enamel and ivory

  grew in my mouth …

  I read the sticky-bun book late into the night. When I awoke early the next morning, I shot up in bed. The light was still on above the bedside table. I realized I must have fallen asleep with the magnifying glass and the book in my hands.

  I was relieved to see that Dad was still asleep. The magnifying glass lay on my pillow, but I couldn’t find the sticky-bun book. I eventually discovered it under the bed and hurriedly hid it in my pocket.

  Having removed all the evidence, I climbed out of bed.

  Everything I had read before I fell asleep was so disturbing I felt nervous and restless.

  I parted the curtains and stood between them and the window. There was water as far as the eye could see. I didn’t see any other ships, apart from a few small fishing boats. It was just before sunrise, and dawn lay in a thin glowing strip between the sea and sky.

  How could the mystery of all the dwarfs on the magic island make sense? Of course, I couldn’t be sure that what I read was true, but everything I had read about Ludwig and Albert in Dorf had seemed so real.

  The Rainbow Fizz and all the goldfish had definitely come from the island Baker Hans had landed on … and I had seen a goldfish in a bowl with my own eyes in the little bakery in Dorf. I hadn’t tasted any Rainbow Fizz, but the old baker who gave me a fizzy drink that tasted of pears had said something about a drink which was much better …

  Of course, everything could be made up. I had no exact proof that there was any such thing as Rainbow Fizz, because everything written in the sticky-bun book could be pure fantasy. It wasn’t that strange that the baker in Dorf brightened up his window with a goldfish either … but it couldn’t be denied that it was a bit strange that he baked a little book inside a sticky bun which he put in a bag and gave to a random traveller. Whatever the case, it was quite an achievement to write a whole book with such tiny lettering; and another thing – which I couldn’t get out of my head either – was that, just before this, I had been given a magnifying glass by a mysterious dwarf.

  Yet this morning it was not these technical details that bothered me the most. My mind was in turmoil for a totally different reason. I had suddenly realised people living on earth were just as oblivious to things as all the drowsy dwarfs on the magic island.

  Our lives are part of a unique adventure, I thought to myself. Nevertheless, most of us think the world is ‘normal’ and are constantly hunting for something abnormal – like angels or Martians. But that is just because we don’t realise the world is a mystery. As for myself, I felt completely different. I saw the world as an amazing dream. I was hunting for some kind of explanation of how everything fitted together.

  While I watched the sky grow redder and redder and then lighter and lighter, I felt something all over my body which I had never felt before, and have never lost since.

  I stood in front of the window, feeling like a magical creation bursting with life, yet at the same time knowing almost nothing about myself. I realised I was a living being on a planet in the Milky Way. I had probably always known this, because it was not so easy to ignore that sort of thing when you had had an upbringing like mine, but it was the first time I’d felt it myself. Something had taken over every single cell in my body.

  I felt as though my body was something odd and unknown to me. How could I stand here in the cabin and think all these strange thoughts? How could I grow skin, hair, and nails? Not to mention teeth ! I couldn’t grasp the fact that enamel and ivory grew in my mouth, that these hard things were me. But most people don’t normally think about that sort of thing until they have to go to the dentist.

  It was a mystery to me how people on earth could simply roam around the world without asking questions, over and over again, about who they were and where they came from. How could life on this planet be something you either turned your back on or took for granted?

  I was brimming with all these thoughts and feelings, which made me feel happy and sad at the same time. They made me feel lonely, too, but this kind of loneliness was good.

  I was pleased, however, when Dad suddenly let out one of his gravelly lion roars. Before he got out of bed, it struck me that it was certainly important to keep your eyes open, but nothing mattered more than being with a person you loved.

  ‘You up already?’ Dad said, sticking his head under the curtain just as the sun rose above the expansive sea.

  ‘So is the sun,’ I replied.

  That’s how the day we would spend at sea began.

  EIGHT OF CLUBS

  … if our brain was simple enough

  for us to understand it …

  There was quite a bit of philosophical chat during breakfast. Dad jokingly suggested we hijack the ship and interrogate all the passengers to find out if any of them knew anything that might throw light on the mystery of life.

  ‘We have a unique opportunity here,’ he said. ‘This boat is like human society in miniature. There are more than a thousand passengers, who come from all corners of the world. But we are all on board the same ship. We’re all being carried along on the same keel …’

  He pointed around the dining room, then continued. ‘There has to be someone who knows something we don’t. With such a good hand, th
ere ought to be at least one joker!’

  ‘There are two,’ I said, and looked at him. I could tell by his smile that Dad knew what I meant.

  ‘We really ought to round up all the passengers,’ he said, ‘and ask each of them if they can tell us why they are living. Those who cannot answer we simply throw overboard.’

  ‘What about the children?’ I asked.

  ‘They pass the test with flying colours.’

  I decided to carry out some philosophical inquiries that morning. After swimming for a long time in the pool while Dad read a German newspaper, I sat on deck watching all the people.

  Some of them rubbed greasy suntan lotion all over their bodies; some read French, English, Japanese, or Italian paperbacks. Others sat talking intensely while they drank beer or red drinks filled with ice cubes. There were also some children : the older ones sat in the sun like the adults; the slightly younger ones ran back and forth on deck, tripping over bags and walking sticks; the smallest ones sat on laps whining – and a little baby was being breast-fed by its mother. The mother and baby were as comfortable as if they were sitting in the kitchen at home, in France or Germany.

  Who were all these people? Where had they come from? And above all, was there anyone apart from Dad and me who asked these sorts of questions at all?

  I sat looking at every one of them to see if anything gave them away. For example, if there was a god who decided what everyone should say and do, then an intensive study of these functions might give some kind of result.

  I also had one important advantage. If I found a particularly interesting guinea pig, that person wouldn’t be able to escape until we arrived in Patras. In a way, it was easier to study people on board a boat than hyperactive insects or lively cockroaches.

  People stretched their arms, some got up from their deckchairs and stretched their legs. An old man managed to put his glasses on and take them off four or five times in the course of one minute.

  It was obvious the people on the boat were not aware of everything they did. Every little movement was not consciously made. In a way they were more alive than they were conscious.