“I think, therefore I am?”
“With regard to our own methodical doubt, we are right now starting from scratch. We don’t even know whether we think. It may turn out that we are thoughts, and that is quite different from thinking. We have good reason to believe that we have merely been invented by Hilde’s father as a kind of birthday diversion for the major’s daughter from Lillesand. Do you see?”
“Yes . . .”
“But therein also lies a built-in contradiction. If we are fictive, we have no right to ‘believe’ anything at all. In which case this whole telephone conversation is purely imaginary.”
“And we haven’t the tiniest bit of free will because it’s the major who plans everything we say and do. So we can just as well hang up now.”
“No, now you’re oversimplifying things.”
“Explain it, then.”
“Would you claim that people plan everything they dream? It may be that Hilde’s father knows everything we do. It may be just as difficult to escape his omniscience as it is to run away from your own shadow. However— and this is where I have begun to devise a plan—it is not certain that the major has already decided on everything that is to happen. He may not decide before the very last minute—that is to say, in the moment of creation. Precisely at such moments we may possibly have an initiative of our own which guides what we say and do. Such an initiative would naturally constitute extremely weak impulses compared to the major’s heavy artillery. We are very likely defenseless against intrusive external forces such as talking dogs, messages in bananas, and thunderstorms booked in advance. But we cannot rule out our stubbornness, however weak it may be.”
“How could that be possible?”
“The major naturally knows everything about our little world, but that doesn’t mean he is all powerful. At any rate we must try to live as if he is not.”
“I think I see where you’re going with this.”
“The trick would be if we could manage to do something all on our own—something the major would not be able to discover.”
“How can we do that if we don’t even exist?”
“Who said we don’t exist? The question is not whether we are, but what we are and who we are. Even if it turns out that we are merely impulses in the major’s dual personality, that need not take our little bit of existence away from us.”
“Or our free will?”
“I’m working on it, Sophie.”
“But Hilde’s father must be fully aware that you are working on it.”
“Decidedly so. But he doesn’t know what the actual plan is. I am attempting to find an Archimedian point.”
“An Archimedian point?”
“Archimedes was a Greek scientist who said ‘Give me a firm point on which to stand and I will move the earth.’ That’s the kind of point we must find to move ourselves out of the major’s inner universe.”
“That would be quite a feat.”
“But we won’t manage to slip away before we have finished the philosophy course. While that lasts he has much too firm a grip on us. He has clearly decided that I am to guide you through the centuries right up to our own time. But we only have a few days left before he boards a plane somewhere down in the Middle East. If we haven’t succeeded in detaching ourselves from his gluey imagination before he arrives at Bjerkely, we are done for.”
“You’re frightening me!”
“First of all I shall give you the most important facts about the French Enlightenment. Then we shall take the main outline of Kant’s philosophy so that we can get to Romanticism. Hegel will also be a significant part of the picture for us. And in talking about him we will unavoidably touch on Kierkegaard’s indignant clash with Hegelian philosophy. We shall briefly talk about Marx, Darwin, and Freud. And if we can manage a few closing comments on Sartre and Existentialism, our plan can be put into operation.”
“That’s an awful lot for one week.”
“That’s why we must begin at once. Can you come over right away?”
“I have to go to school. We are having a class get-together and then we get our grades.”
“Drop it. If we are only fictive, it’s pure imagination that candy and soda have any taste.”
“But my grades ...”
“Sophie, either you are living in a wondrous universe on a tiny planet in one of many hundred billion galaxies— or else you are the result of a few electromagnetic impulses in the major’s mind. And you are talking about grades! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
“I’m sorry.”
“But you’d better go to school before we meet. It might have a bad influence on Hilde if you cut your last school-day. She probably goes to school even on her birthday. She is an angel, you know.”
“So I’ll come straight from school.”
“We can meet at the major’s cabin.”
“The major’s cabin?”
... Click!
Hilde let the ring binder slide into her lap. Her father had given her conscience a dig there—she did cut her last day at school. How sneaky of him!
She sat for a while wondering what the plan was that Alberto was devising. Should she sneak a look at the last page? No, that would be cheating. She’d better hurry up and read it to the end.
But she was convinced Alberto was right on one important point. One thing was that her father had an overview of what was going to happen to Sophie and Alberto. But while he was writing, he probably didn’t know everything that would happen. He might dash off something in a great hurry, something he might not notice till long after he had written it. In a situation like that Sophie and Alberto would have a certain amount of leeway.
Once again Hilde had an almost transfiguring conviction that Sophie and Alberto really existed. Still waters run deep, she thought to herself.
Why did that idea come to her?
It was certainly not a thought that rippled the surface.
At school, Sophie received lots of attention because it was her birthday. Her classmates were already keyed up by thoughts of summer vacation, and grades, and the sodas on the last day of school. The minute the teacher dismissed the class with her best wishes for the vacation, Sophie ran home. Joanna tried to slow her down but Sophie called over her shoulder that there was something she just had to do.
In the mailbox she found two cards from Lebanon. They were both birthday cards: HAPPY BIRTHDAY—15 YEARS. One of them was to “Hilde M0ller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen . . .” But the other one was to Sophie herself. Both cards were stamped “UN Battalion—June 15.”
Sophie read her own card first:
Dear Sophie Amundsen, Today you are getting a card as well. Happy birthday, Sophie, and many thanks for everything you have done for Hilde. Best regards, Major Albert Knag.
Sophie was not sure how to react, now that Hilde’s father had finally written to her too. Hilde’s card read:
Dear Hilde, I have no idea what day or time it is in Lillesand. But, as I said, it doesn’t make much difference. If I know you, I am not too late for a last, or next to last, greeting from down here. But don’t stay up too late! Alberto will soon be telling you about the French Enlightenment. He will concentrate on seven points. They are:
1. Opposition to authority
2. Rationalism
3. The enlightenment movement
4. Cultural optimism
5. The return to nature
