Sophie sat down between them.
Two of the boys had managed to climb onto the roof. One of the girls went around pricking holes in all the balloons with a hairpin. Then an uninvited guest arrived on a motorcycle with a crate of beer and bottles of aquavit strapped to the carrier. A few helpful souls welcomed him in.
At that, the financial adviser rose from the table. He clapped his hands and said:
“Do you want to play a game?”
He grabbed a bottle of beer, drank it down, and set the empty bottle in the middle of the lawn. Then he went to the table and fetched the last five rings of the birthday cake. He showed the other guests how to throw the rings so they landed over the neck of the bottle.
“The death throes,” said Alberto. “We’d better get away before the major ends it all and Hilde closes the ring binder.”
“You’ll have to clear up alone, Mom.”
“It doesn’t matter, child. This was no life for you. If Alberto can give you a better one, nobody will be happier than I. Didn’t you tell me he had a white horse?”
Sophie looked out across the garden. It was unrecognizable. Bottles, chicken bones, buns, and balloons were trampled into the grass.
“This was once my little Garden of Eden,” she said.
“And now you’re being driven out of it,” said Alberto.
One of the boys was sitting in the white Mercedes. He revved the engine and the car smashed through the garden gate, up the gravel path, and down into the garden.
Sophie felt a hard grip on her arm as she was dragged into the den. Then she heard Alberto’s voice:
“Now!”
At the same moment the white Mercedes crashed into an apple tree. Unripe fruit showered down onto the hood.
“That’s going too far!” shouted the financial adviser. “I demand substantial compensation!”
His wife gave him her full support.
“It’s that damned scoundrel’s fault! Where is he?”
“They have vanished into thin air,” said Helene Amundsen, not without a touch of pride.
She drew herself up to her full height, walked toward the long table and began to clear up after the philosophical garden party.
“More coffee, anyone?”
Counterpoint
…two or more melodies sounding together…
Hilde sat up in bed. That was the end of the story of Sophie and Alberto. But what had actually happened?
Why had her father written that last chapter? Was it just to demonstrate his power over Sophie’s world?
Deep in thought, she took a shower and got dressed. She ate a quick breakfast and then wandered down the garden and sat in the glider.
She agreed with Alberto that the only sensible thing that had happened at the garden party was his speech. Surely her father didn’t think Hilde’s world was as chaotic as Sophie’s garden party? Or that her world would also dissolve eventually?
Then there was the matter of Sophie and Alberto. What had happened to the secret plan?
Was it up to Hilde herself to continue the story? Or had they really managed to sneak out of it?
And where were they now?
A thought suddenly struck her. If Alberto and Sophie really had managed to sneak out of the story, there wouldn’t be anything about it in the ring binder. Everything that was there, unfortunately, was clear to her father.
Could there be anything written between the lines? There was more than a mere suggestion of it. Hilde realized that she would have to read the whole story again one or two more times.
* * *
As the white Mercedes drove into the garden, Alberto dragged Sophie with him into the den. Then they ran into the woods in the direction of the major’s cabin.
“Quickly!” cried Alberto. “It’s got to happen before he starts looking for us.”
“Are we beyond the major’s reach now?”
“We are in the borderland.”
They rowed across the water and ran into the cabin. Alberto opened a trapdoor in the floor. He pushed Sophie down into the cellar. Then everything went black.
In the days that followed, Hilde worked on her plan. She sent several letters to Anne Kvamsdal in Copenhagen, and a couple of times she called her. She also enlisted the aid of friends and acquaintances, and recruited almost half of her class at school.
In between, she read Sophie’s World. It was not a story one could be done with after a single reading. New thoughts about what could have happened to Sophie and Alberto when they left the garden party were constantly occurring to her.
On Saturday, June 23, she awoke with a start around nine o’clock. She knew her father had already left the camp in Lebanon. Now it was just a question of waiting. The last part of his day was planned down to the smallest detail.
Later in the morning she began the preparations for Midsummer Eve with her mother. Hilde could not help thinking of how Sophie and her mother had arranged their Midsummer Eve party. But that was something they had done. It was over, finished. Or was it? Were they going around right now, decorating everywhere?
Sophie and Alberto seated themselves on a lawn in front of two large buildings with ugly air vents and ventilation canals on the outside. A young couple came walking out of one of the buildings. He was carrying a brown briefcase and she had a red handbag slung over one shoulder. A car drove along a narrow road in the background.
“What happened?” asked Sophie.
“We made it!”
“But where are we?”
“This is Oslo.”
“Are you quite sure?”
“Quite sure. One of these buildings is called Chateau Neuf, which means ‘the new palace.’ People study music there. The other is the Congregation Faculty. It’s a school of theology. Further up the hill they study science and up at the top they study literature and philosophy.”
“Are we out of Hilde’s book and beyond the major’s control?”
“Yes, both. He’ll never find us here.”
“But where were we when we ran through the woods?”
“While the major was busy crashing the financial adviser’s car into an apple tree, we seized the chance to hide in the den. We were then at the embryo stage. We were of the old as well as of the new world. But concealing ourselves there was something the major cannot possibly have envisaged.”
“Why not?”
“He would never have let us go so easily. As it was, it went like a dream. Of course, there’s always the chance that he was in on it himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was he who started the white Mercedes. He may have exerted himself to the utmost to lose sight of us. He was probably utterly exhausted after everything that had been going on . . .”
By now the young couple were only a few yards away. Sophie felt a bit awkward, sitting on the grass with a man so much older than herself. Besides, she wanted someone to confirm what Alberto had said.
She got up and went over to them
