I whistled.
‘Several years had passed since the assembly of cards had been completed, and I never expected a Joker to come to the island, even though there had been such a card in the pack. I think I thought that I was the Joker. One day, however, the little fool came strolling into the village. The Jack of Diamonds spotted him first, and for the first time in the island’s history there was a bit of a commotion over a newcomer. Not only did he have funny clothes with jingling bells, but he didn’t belong to any of the four families either. Above all, he could provoke the dwarfs by asking them questions they were unable to answer. After a while he kept more and more to himself. He had a separate cabin on the outskirts of the village.’
‘Did he understand more than the others?’
The old man breathed deeply and sighed. ‘One morning when I was sitting on the front steps he jumped out from round the corner of the house. He turned a frisky somersault, bounced up to me with his bells jingling, cocked his little head, and said ‘Master, there’s something I don’t understand …’
‘I was surprised that he called me “master”, because the other dwarfs had never called me anything but Frode. They didn’t normally begin a conversation by saying they didn’t understand anything, either. When you realise there is something you don’t understand, then you’re generally on the right path to understanding all kinds of things.
‘The sprightly Joker cleared his throat a couple of times; then he said, “There are four families in the village, with four Kings, Queens, Jacks, Aces, and Twos to Tens.”
‘“That’s right.”
‘“So there are four of each kind, but there are also thirteen of each kind, because they are all either diamonds, hearts, clubs, or spades.”
‘It was the first time one of the dwarfs had given such a precise description of the order they were all a part of.
‘“Who could possibly have structured everything so wisely?” he went on.
‘“It is probably sheer coincidence,” I lied. “When you throw some sticks into the air, they will always land in a way which is open to interpretation.”
‘“I don’t agree,” said the little jester.
‘It was the first time anyone on the island had ever challenged me. I was no longer dealing with a piece of cardboard – this was a person, and in a way I was pleased about that. The Joker might prove to be a creditable conversationalist. However, I was also worried – what would happen if the dwarfs suddenly understood who they were and where they came from?
‘“What do you think?” I asked him.
‘He stared at me intently, and although his body was as still as a statue, one of his hands trembled, making his bells jingle.
‘“Everything seems so planned,” he said, trying hard not to look worried. “So organised and thought-out. I think we’re standing with our backs to something which will choose either to turn us picture-side-up – or to leave us as we are.”
‘The dwarfs often used words and expressions taken from card games; in this way, they could express exactly what they meant. When it was appropriate I would answer them in the same way.
‘The little jester now flipped over a couple of times, making his bells ring crazily.
‘“I am the Joker!” he exclaimed. “Don’t forget that, dear master. I’m not as clear-cut as all the others, you see. I am neither King nor Jack, nor am I diamond, club, heart, or spade.”
‘I had cold feet now, but I knew I couldn’t put the cards on the table.
‘“Who am I?” he pressed. “Why am I the Joker? Where do I come from, and where am I going?”
‘I decided to take a chance.
‘“You have seen everything I have made from the island’s plants,” I began. ‘“What would you say if I told you I had created you and all the other dwarfs in the village, too?”
‘He stared at me fixedly, and I saw how his little body shook, his bells jingling nervously.
‘With trembling lips he said, “Then I would have no other choice, dear master – I would have to try to kill you, to regain my pride.”
‘I forced a laugh.
‘“Of course,” I replied. “But fortunately it isn’t so.”
‘He stood looking at me suspiciously for a second or two; then he dashed around the corner of the cabin. Within seconds he was standing in front of me again, and this time he had a little bottle of Rainbow Fizz in his hand. I had kept it in the back of a cupboard for many, many years.
‘“Cheers!” he said. “Yum, yum, says the Joker!” and with that he put the bottle to his mouth.
‘I was stunned. I wasn’t frightened for myself, I was afraid everything I had created on the island would fall apart and disappear as quickly as it had once come.’
‘But that didn’t happen?’
‘I realised the Joker had drunk from the bottle, and the remarkable drink had suddenly made him very astute.’
‘Didn’t you say Rainbow Fizz dulls your senses and disorients you?’
‘Of course, but not right away. At first the drink makes you brilliantly clever, because all your senses are stimulated at the same time. Then the drowsiness gradually takes over. This is what makes the drink so dangerous.’
‘What happened to the Joker?’
‘“We’ll say no more for now!” he cried. “But I’ll be seeing you!”
‘He ran down to the village, and there he let the bottle go round among the dwarfs, and ever since that day everyone in the village has drunk Rainbow Fizz. The clubs go out several times a week to fetch purpur nectar from the hollow tree trunks, and the hearts brew the red drink, which the diamonds bottle.’
‘Did all the dwarfs become as clever as the Joker?’
‘No, not quite. Some days they were so sharp-witted I was afraid they would see through me, but then they became even vaguer than before. What you have seen here today are only the remains of something that once was.’
I thought about all the colourful costumes and uniforms, and I suddenly pictured the Ace of Hearts in her yellow dress.
‘Still, the remains are beautiful,’ I said.
‘Oh yes, they are beautiful, but oblivious to everything. They are part of the lush natural world, they just don’t know it. They see the sun and the moon, they taste all the produce here, but it doesn’t register. When they made the big leap, they were proper people, but when they started to drink Rainbow Fizz, they became more and more distant. It was as though they withdrew into themselves. Of course, they can hold a conversation, but they forget what they have said almost as soon as they’ve said it. The Joker is the only one who still has some of the old spark left in him, and possibly the Ace of Hearts. She is always saying she’s trying to find herself.’
‘There’s something I don’t understand,’ I interrupted.
‘Yes?’
‘You said the first dwarfs came to the island only a few years after you landed here yourself – but they all look so young; it is difficult to believe that some of them are almost fifty years old.’
An enigmatic smile crept over the old man’s face. ‘They don’t get old.’
‘But –’
‘When I was alone on the island, the images in my dreams grew stronger and stronger. Then they slipped out of my thoughts and threw themselves into existence here. But they are still fantasy – and fantasy has the wonderful ability to keep what was once created, young and full of life for ever.’
‘That’s unbelievable …’
‘Have you heard of Rapunzel, my boy?’
I shook my head.
‘But you’ve heard of Little Red Riding Hood? Or Snow White? Or Hansel and Gretel?’
I nodded.
‘How old do you think they are? A hundred? A thousand maybe? They are both very young and very old. That’s because they have leapt from people’s imagination. No, I hadn’t thought the dwarfs on the island would become old and grey-haired. Even the clothes they wear haven’t got so much as a tear in them. It is different for us mortals. We
are the ones who become old and grey. We are the ones who become worn at the seams and disappear. But not our dreams. They can live on in other people even after we have gone.’
He stroked his white hair and pointed to his threadbare jacket.
‘The big question for me,’ he continued, ‘was not whether the figures would be ravaged by time but whether they really were in the garden and whether they could be seen by other people if someone ever visited the island.’
‘And they were!’ I said. ‘First I met the Two and Three of Clubs, then I met the diamonds in the glassworks ..’
‘Mmm …’
The old man was in a world of his own, as though he wasn’t listening to a word I said.
‘The other big question,’ he said eventually, ‘is whether they will remain here after I am gone.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t have an answer to that question, and I never will. Because when I’m not here, then I won’t know whether my figures are here or not either.’
Once again he sat for a long while without saying anything. I found myself wondering whether everything was a dream. Maybe I wasn’t sitting in front of Frode’s cabin. Maybe I was somewhere else completely – and everything else was something inside me.
‘I will tell you more tomorrow, my boy. I must tell you about the calendar – and about the great Joker Game.’
‘The Joker Game?’
‘Tomorrow, son. We both need to sleep now.’
He led me to a bed made of skins and woven blankets, and gave me a nightshirt made of wool. It was good to change out of my dirty sailor’s uniform.
That evening Dad and I sat on the balcony looking down over the town and further out across the Bay of Corinth. Dad was so full of impressions that he didn’t say very much. Maybe he was wondering whether he could trust the oracle’s prediction that we would meet Mama.
Later that night a full moon rose above the horizon in the east. It lit up the whole of the dark valley and made the stars in the sky seem pale.
It was like sitting in front of Frode’s cabin, spying down over the village of dwarfs.
ACE OF DIAMONDS
… a fair man who
wanted all the cards on the table …
As usual I got up before Dad, but it wasn’t long before his muscles began to twitch.
I decided to see whether it was true that he woke up every single morning with a bang, as he had claimed the day before.
I concluded that he was right, because when he opened his eyes, he really did look pretty startled. He could just as well have woken up in a totally different place – in India, for example, or on a little planet in another galaxy.
‘You are a living person,’ I said. ‘At this moment you are in Delphi. It is a place on earth, which is a living planet at present orbiting a star in the Milky Way. It takes 365 days for this planet to circle this star.’
He stared at me intently, as though his eyes had to adjust to the change from dreamland to the bright reality outside.
‘Thanks for the clarification,’ he said. ‘I normally have to work all that out for myself before I climb out of bed.’
He got up and walked across the room.
‘Maybe you should whisper some words of truth like that in my ear every morning, Hans Thomas. It would certainly get me into the bathroom more quickly.’
It didn’t take us long to pack, eat breakfast, and get back on the road.
‘It’s incredible to think how gullible they were,’ Dad said as we drove past the old temple site.
‘You mean believing in the oracle?’
He didn’t reply right away; I was worried that he had started to doubt the oracle’s word that we would meet Mama in Athens, but then he said, ‘Well, that, too, but think about all the gods: Apollo, Asclepias, Athena, Zeus, Poseidon and Dionysus. For years and years people built costly marble temples to these gods, which normally meant dragging heavy blocks of marble across huge distances.’
I didn’t know a great deal about what he was describing; nevertheless, I said, ‘How can you be so sure that these gods didn’t exist? They might not be here now – or they’ve found some other gullible people – but once upon a time they walked around on this earth.’
Dad glanced at me in the rear view mirror. ‘Do you believe that, Hans Thomas?’
‘I’m not quite sure. But in a way they were in the world, as long as people believed in them. People see what they believe – the gods didn’t grow old or frayed at the edges until people started to doubt.’
‘Well said,’ Dad exclaimed. ‘That was damn well put, Hans Thomas. Maybe you’ll be a philosopher one day, too.’
For once I felt I had said something so profound that even Dad had to think about it. At any rate, he didn’t say anything for a long time.
I’d actually fooled him a little, because I would never have said anything like that if I hadn’t read the sticky-bun book. I wasn’t really thinking of the Greek gods, I was thinking of Frode’s playing cards.
It was quiet in the car for such a long time that I carefully tried to sneak out the magnifying glass and the sticky-bun book. Just as I was about to start reading, however, Dad braked sharply and pulled off the road. He jumped out of the Fiat, lit a cigarette, and stood poring over a road atlas.
‘Here! Yes, it must be here,’ he exclaimed.
I said nothing. To our left was a narrow valley; otherwise I didn’t see anything that might explain this sudden outburst.
‘Have a seat,’ Dad said.
I could tell a mini-lecture was on its way, but this time it didn’t bother me. I knew I was really very lucky.
‘That’s where Oedipus killed his father,’ he said, pointing down to the valley.
‘Well, of course that was pretty dumb of him,’ I remarked, ‘but what on earth are you talking about?’
‘Destiny, Hans Thomas. I’m talking about destiny, or the family curse, if you prefer. It’s something which should particularly concern us – seeing as we’ve come to this country to find a lost wife and mother.’
‘And you believe in destiny?’ I had to ask. Dad stood next to me, with his foot on the stone I was sitting on and a cigarette in his hand.
He shook his head. ‘But the Greeks did, and if you rebelled against your destiny, you paid for it.’
I was already starting to feel guilty.
‘In an old town called Thebes, which we will soon be passing, lived King Laius and his wife, Jocasta. Laius had been told by the Delphic Oracle that he must never have any children, because if he had a son that boy would kill his father and marry his mother, so when Jocasta gave birth to a son, Laius decided to abandon the child to starve to death or be torn apart by wild animals.’
‘That’s barbaric,’ I exclaimed.
‘Of course, but wait until you hear the rest. King Laius ordered a shepherd to get rid of the child, and to be safe the King slashed the boy’s Achilles tendons, so there would be no way he could move around in the mountains and find his way back to Thebes. The shepherd did as the King had commanded, but on his way up into the mountains he met a shepherd from Corinth. The King of Corinth also had pastures in these parts. The shepherd from Corinth felt sorry for the little boy, who was going to be left either to starve to death or be eaten alive by wild animals. He asked the shepherd from Thebes if he could take the boy back with him to the King in Corinth. And so it came to be that the boy was raised as a prince in Corinth, since the King and Queen had no other children. They called him Oedipus, which means “swollen foot”, as the little boy’s feet were very badly swollen after the unpleasant treatment he had received in Thebes. Oedipus grew up to be a very handsome man whom everybody liked, but nobody told him that he wasn’t the royal couple’s true son. However, one day at a royal party a guest showed up and started to gossip about Oedipus not being the King and Queen’s real son –’
‘But he wasn’t.’
‘Exactly. But when Oedipus asked the Queen about it, she would
n’t give him a proper answer, so he decided to consult the Delphic Oracle. Oedipus asked Pythia whether he was the rightful heir to the Corinth estate, and she said, ‘Leave your father, because if you meet him again, you will kill him. Afterwards, you will marry your mother and beget children with her.’
I whistled loudly. It was the same prophecy the King of Thebes had received.
‘On hearing this,’ Dad continued, ‘Oedipus didn’t dare return to Corinth, because he still believed the King and Queen there were his real parents. Instead, he took the road to Thebes. When he reached this exact spot, he met a noble gentleman who was being driven in a stately carriage drawn by four horses. He had several guards with him, and one of them struck Oedipus to make him stand aside. Oedipus – who had been brought up as the heir to the throne of Corinth – didn’t care for this treatment, and after a great deal of pushing and shoving, the whole unfortunate meeting ended with Oedipus killing the rich man.’
‘And this really was his true father?’
‘Yes. The guards were also killed, but the coachman finally managed to escape. He drove back to Thebes and told the people that King Laius had been killed by a robber. The Queen and the people of Thebes were overcome with grief, but there was also another thing worrying the city’s inhabitants.’
‘What was that?’
‘There was a Sphinx, a monstrous beast with a lion’s body and a woman’s head. It guarded the road to Thebes and tore apart any passerby who couldn’t solve the riddle it posed. The people of Thebes promised that whoever could solve the Sphinx’s riddle would be able to marry Queen Jocasta and become the King of Thebes after King Laius.’
I whistled again.
‘Oedipus, who quickly forgot that he’d been forced to use his sword on the long journey, soon arrived at the Sphinx’s mountain, and the Sphinx now demanded that he solve the following riddle : what walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in day time, and three legs in the evening?’
The Solitaire Mystery Page 16
