TEN OF HEARTS

… there is a fool walking the
earth who is never ravaged by time …

I t 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.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-28