FOUR OF CLUBS

… one huge lottery where
only the winning tickets are visible …

I put the sticky-bun book down and stared out across the Adriatic Sea.

What I had just read raised so many questions I didn’t quite know where to begin.

The dwarfs on the magic island seemed more and more mysterious the more I read about them. Baker Hans had now met the club dwarfs and the diamond dwarfs. He’d also met the Ace of Hearts but she’d suddenly disappeared.

Who were all these dwarfs? How had they come to be – and where did they come from?

I was sure the sticky-bun book would eventually answer all my questions. But there was something else: the diamond dwarfs had been blowing glass in a glass workshop. This was even more bizarre, considering I had just visited a glass workshop myself.

I was pretty sure there must be some kind of relationship between my own journey through Europe and what was in the sticky-bun book. But what I read in the sticky-bun book was something Baker Hans had told Albert many many years ago. Could there be a mysterious relationship between my life on earth and the big secret which Baker Hans, Albert, and Ludwig had shared?

Who was the old baker I met in Dorf? Who was the little man who gave me the magnifying glass – and, moreover, who kept popping up on our journey through Europe? I was convinced there must be a connection between the baker and the dwarf – even if they weren’t aware of it themselves.

I couldn’t tell Dad about the sticky-bun book – or at least not until I had finished reading it. Nevertheless, it was good to have a philosopher in the car.

We had just passed Ravenna when I asked, ‘Do you believe in coincidences, Dad?’

He looked at me in the mirror. ‘Do I believe in coincidences?’

‘Yeah!’

‘But a coincidence is something which happens totally coincidentally. When I won ten thousand crowns in the lottery, my ticket was pulled out of thousands of other tickets. Of course I was happy with the result, but it was sheer luck that I won.’

‘Are you sure about that? Have you forgotten we found a four-leaf clover that morning? And if you hadn’t won the money, we might not have been able to afford the trip to Athens.’

He just grunted, but I continued. ‘Was it just as coincidental that your aunt travelled to Crete and suddenly discovered Mama in the fashion magazine? Or was that intended?’

‘You’re asking me whether I believe in fate,’ he said. I think he was pleased his son was interested in philosophical questions. ‘The answer is no.’

I thought about the girl glassblowers – and the fact that I had visited a glass workshop just before I read about the glass workshop in the sticky-bun book. Moreover, I thought about the dwarf who’d given me a magnifying glass just before I got a book with tiny writing, and about what happened when Grandma’s bike got a flat tyre at Froland – and everything that followed.

‘I don’t think you can call it a coincidence that I was born,’ I said.

‘Cigarette stop!’ Dad announced. I must have said something which made one of his mini-lectures shoot out from the filing cabinet.

He parked on a hill with a splendid view over the Adriatic.

‘Sit down!’ he ordered when we were out of the car, and pointed to a large stone.

‘Thirteen forty-nine,’ was the first thing he said.

‘The Black Death,’ I replied. I had a pretty good knowledge of history, but I had no idea what the Black Death had to do with coincidences.

‘Okay,’ he said, and off he went. ‘You probably know that half Norway’s population was wiped out during the great plague. But there’s a connection here I haven’t told you about.’

When he began like this, I knew it was going to be a long lecture.

‘Did you know that you had thousands of ancestors at that time?’ he continued.

I shook my head in despair. How could that possibly be?

‘You have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents – and so on. If you work it out, right back to 1349 – there are quite a lot.’

I nodded.

‘Then came the bubonic plague. Death spread from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, and the children were hit worst. Whole families died, sometimes one or two family members survived. A lot of your ancestors were children at this time, Hans Thomas. But none of them kicked the bucket.’

‘How can you be so sure about that?’ I asked in amazement.

He took a drag on his cigarette and said, ‘Because you’re sitting here looking out over the Adriatic’

Once again he had made such an astounding point I didn’t really know how to respond. But I knew he was right, because if just one of my ancestors had died as a child, then he wouldn’t have been my ancestor.

‘The chances of one single ancestor of yours not dying while growing up is one in several billion,’ he went on, and now the words flowed out of him like a waterfall. ‘Because it isn’t just about the Black Death, you know. Actually all your ancestors have grown up and had children – even during the worst natural disasters, even when the child mortality rate was enormous. Of course, a lot of them have suffered from illness, but they’ve always pulled through. In a way, you have been a millimetre from death billions of times, Hans Thomas. Your life on this planet has been threatened by insects, wild animals, meteorites, lightning, sickness, war, floods, fires, poisoning, and attempted murders. In the battle of Stiklestad alone you were injured hundreds of times. Because you must have had ancestors on both sides – yes, really you were fighting against yourself and your chances of being born a thousand years later. You know, the same goes for the last world war. If Grandpa had been shot by good Norwegians during the occupation, then neither you nor I would have been born. The point is, this has happened billions of times through history. Each time an arrow has rained through the air, your chances of being born have been reduced to the minimum. But here you are, sitting talking to me, Hans Thomas! Do you see?’

‘I think so,’ I said. At least I think I understood how important it was that Grandma got a flat tyre at Froland.

‘I am talking about one long chain of coincidences,’ Dad continued. ‘In fact, that chain goes right back to the first living cell, which divided in two, and from there gave birth to everything growing and sprouting on this planet today. The chance of my chain not being broken at one time or another during three or four billion years is so little it is almost inconceivable. But I have pulled through, you know. Damn right, I have. In return, I appreciate how fantastically lucky I am to be able to experience this planet together with you. I realise how lucky every single little crawling insect on this planet is.’

‘What about the unlucky ones?’ I asked at this point.

‘They don’t exist!’ he almost roared. ‘They were never born. Life is one huge lottery where only the winning tickets are visible.’

He sat for a long time looking out across the sea.

‘Should we get going?’ I asked after a couple of minutes.

‘Nope! Now just sit still, Hans Thomas, because there’s more.’

He said it as though it were not really him speaking. Maybe he saw himself as a radio receiver simply catching the radiowaves coming to the set. That’s probably what people call inspiration.

While he waited for the inspiration, I fished out the magnifying glass from my jeans pocket and put it over a red bug which was scurrying back and forth on a rock. Under the magnifying glass it turned into a monster.

‘It’s the same with all coincidences,’ Dad piped up again. I stopped playing with the magnifying glass and looked up at him. When he sat for a while gathering his thoughts like this before he began to talk, I knew something important was on its way.

‘Let’s take a simple example: I think about a friend just before he calls me on the telephone or arrives on the doorstep. Many people think a coincidence like this is due to something supernatural. But I think about this friend even if he doesn’t ring the doorbell. Moreover, he calls me quite often, without me having thought about him at all. Comprendo?’

I nodded.

‘The thing is, people collect those instances when both things happen at the same time. If they find some money just when they need it badly, they believe it is due to something “supernatural”. They do that even when they constantly go around broke. In this way, a mass of wild rumours begins to buzz about various “supernatural” experiences which aunts and uncles all over the world have had. People are so interested in this sort of thing, there are soon a lot of stories. But only the winning tickets are visible here, too. It’s not that strange that I have a drawerful of jokers when I collect them!’

He let out a sigh of exhaustion.

‘Have you ever tried sending in an application?’ I asked at this point.

‘What on earth are you babbling about?’ he barked.

‘To be a government philosopher.’

He laughed out loud, but then he said in a slightly more subdued tone, ‘When people are interested in the “supernatural”, they suffer from a remarkable blindness. They don’t see the most mysterious thing of all – that the world exists. They are more interested in Martians and flying saucers than in the whole of this puzzling creation which is unfolding at our feet. I don’t think the world is a coincidence, Hans Thomas.’

He finally leaned over me and whispered, ‘I think the whole universe is intended. You’ll see there is some kind of purpose or other behind all the myriads of stars and galaxies.’

I thought this was yet another informative cigarette stop, but I still wasn’t convinced that everything to do with the sticky-bun book was coincidental. Perhaps it was just coincidence that Dad and I had been on Murano just before I read about the diamond dwarfs. It might also be sheer coincidence that a magnifying glass was put in my hand just before I received a sticky-bun book with microscopic writing. But the fact that I was the one to get the sticky-bun book – that was something which must be intentional.

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Дата добавления: 2015-10-28