“Is that right? I never thought of that.”
“Then you have a big problem, because a human is a thinking animal. If you don’t think, you’re not really a human.”
“Sophie!”
“Imagine if there were only vegetables and animals. Then there wouldn’t have been anybody to tell the difference between ‘cat’ and ‘dog,’ or ‘lily’ and ‘gooseberry.’ Vegetables and animals are living too, but we are the only creatures that can categorize nature into different groups and classes.”
“You really are the most peculiar girl I have ever had,” said her mother.
“I should hope so,” said Sophie. “Everybody is more or less peculiar. I am a person, so I am more or less peculiar. You have only one girl, so I am the most peculiar.”
“What I meant was that you scare the living daylights out of me with all that new talk.”
“You are easily scared, then.”
Later that afternoon Sophie went back to the den. She managed to smuggle the big cookie tin up to her room without her mother noticing.
First she put all the pages in the right order. Then she punched holes in them and put them in the ring binder, before the chapter on Aristotle. Finally she numbered each page in the top right-hand corner. There were in all over fifty pages. Sophie was in the process of compiling her own book on philosophy. It was not by her, but written especially for her.
She had no time to do her homework for Monday. They were probably going to have a test in Religious Knowledge, but the teacher always said he valued personal commitment and value judgments. Sophie felt she was beginning to have a certain basis for both.
Hellenism
... a spark from the fire…
Although the philosophy teacher had begun sending his letters directly to the old hedge, Sophie nevertheless looked in the mailbox on Monday morning, more out of habit than anything else.
It was empty, not surprisingly. She began to walk down Clover Close.
Suddenly she noticed a photograph lying on the sidewalk. It was a picture of a white jeep and a blue flag with the letters UN on it. Wasn’t that the United Nations flag?
Sophie turned the picture over and saw that it was a regular postcard. To “Hilde Moller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen ...” It had a Norwegian stamp and was postmarked “UN Battalion” Friday June 15, 1990.
June 15! That was Sofie’s birthday!
The card read:
Dear Hilde, I assume you are still celebrating your 15th birthday. Or is this the morning after? Anyway, it makes no difference to your present. In a sense, that will last a lifetime. But I’d like to wish you a happy birthday one more time. Perhaps you understand now why I send the cards to Sophie. I am sure she will pass them on to you.
P.S. Mom said you had lost your wallet. I hereby promise to reimburse you the 150 crowns. You will probably be able to get another school I.D. before they close for the summer vacation. Love from Dad.
Sophie stood glued to the spot. When was the previous card postmarked? She seemed to recall that the postcard of the beach was also postmarked June—even though it was a whole month off. She simply hadn’t looked properly.
She glanced at her watch and then ran back to the house. She would just have to be late for school today!
Sophie let herself in and leaped upstairs to her room. She found the first postcard to Hilde under the red silk scarf. Yes! It was also postmarked June 15! Sophie’s birthday and the day before the summer vacation.
Her mind was racing as she ran over to the supermarket to meet Joanna.
Who was Hilde? How could her father as good as take it for granted that Sophie would find her? In any case, it was senseless of him to send Sophie the cards instead of sending them directly to his daughter. It could not possibly be because he didn’t know his own daughter’s address. Was it a practical joke? Was he trying to surprise his daughter on her birthday by getting a perfect stranger to play detective and mailman? Was that why she was being given a month’s headstart? And was using her as the go-between a way of giving his daughter a new girlfriend as a birthday present? Could she be the present that would “last a lifetime”?
If this joker really was in Lebanon, how had he gotten hold of Sophie’s address? Also, Sophie and Hilde had at least two things in common. If Hilde’s birthday was June 15, they were both born on the same day. And they both had fathers who were on the other side of the globe.
Sophie felt she was being drawn into an unnatural world. Maybe it was not so dumb after all to believe in fate. Still—she shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions; it could all have a perfectly natural explanation. But how had Alberto Knox found Hilde’s wallet when Hilde lived in Lillesand? Lillesand was hundreds of miles away. And why had Sophie found this postcard on her sidewalk? Did it fall out of the mailman’s bag just as he got to Sophie’s mailbox? If so, why should he drop this particular card?
“Are you completely insane?” Joanna burst out when Sophie finally made it to the supermarket.
“Sorry!”
Joanna frowned at her severely, like a schoolteacher.
“You’d better have a good explanation.”
“It has to do with the UN,” said Sophie. “I was detained by hostile troops in Lebanon.”
“Sure ... You’re just in love!”
They ran to school as fast as their legs could carry them.
The Religious Knowledge test that Sophie had not had time to prepare for was given out in the third period. The sheet read:
PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE AND TOLERANCE
1. Make a list of things we can know. Then make a list of things we can only believe.
2. Indicate some of the factors contributing to a person’s philosophy of life.
3. What is meant by conscience? Do you think conscience is the same for everyone?
4. What is meant by priority of values?
Sophie sat thinking for a long time before she started to write. Could she use any of the ideas she had learned from Alberto Knox? She was going to have to, because she had not opened her Religious Knowledge book for days. Once she began to write, the words simply flowed from her pen.
She wrote that we know the moon is not made of green cheese and that there are also craters on the dark side of the moon, that both Socrates and Jesus were sentenced to death, that everybody has to die sooner or later, that the great temples on the Acropolis were built after the Persian wars in the fifth century B.C. and that the most important oracle in ancient Greece was the oracle at Delphi. As examples of what we can only believe, Sophie mentioned the questions of whether or not there is life on other planets, whether God exists or not, whether there is life after death, and whether Jesus was the son of God or merely a wise man. “We can certainly not know where the world came from,” she wrote, completing her list. “The universe can be compared to a large rabbit pulled out of a top hat. Philosophers try to climb up one of the fine hairs of the rabbit’s fur and stare straight into the eyes of the Great Magician. Whether they will ever succeed is an open question. But if each philosopher climbed onto another one’s back, they would get even higher up in the rabbit’s fur, and then, in my opinion, there would be some chance they would make it some day. P.S. In the Bible there is something that could have been one of the fine hairs of the rabbit’s fur. The hair was called the Tower of Babel, and it was destroyed because the Magician didn’t want the tiny human insects to crawl up that high out of the white rabbit he had just created.”
Then there was the next question: “Indicate some of the factors contributing to a person’s philosophy of life.” Upbringing and environment were important here. People living at the time of Plato had a different philosophy of life than many people have today because they lived in a different age and a different environment. Another factor was the kind of experience people chose to get themselves. Common sense was not determined by environment. Everybody had that. Maybe one could compare environment and social situation with the conditions that existed deep down in Plato’s cave. By using their intelligence individuals can start to drag themselves up from the darkness. But a journey like that requires personal courage. Socrates is a good example of a person who managed to free
