“If you only knew how much he orders people around,” said Hilde
enigmatically, “and you can’t imagine how much he enjoys it.”
She returned to her room and went on reading.
Suddenly Sophie heard a knock on the door. Alberto looked at her
severely.
“We don’t wish to be disturbed.”
The knocking became louder.
“I am going to tell you about a Danish philosopher who was infuriated by
Hegel’s philosophy,” said Alberto.
The knocking on the door grew so violent that the whole door shook.
“It’s the major, of course, sending some phantasm to see whether we
swallow the bait,” said Alberto. “It costs him no effort at all.”
“But if we don’t open the door and see who it is, it won’t cost him any
effort to tear the whole place down either.”
“You might have a point there. We’d better open the door then.”
They went to the door. Since the knocking had been so forceful, Sophie
expected to see a very large person. But standing on the front step was a little
girl with long fair hair, wearing a blue dress. She had a small bottle in each
hand. One bottle was red, the other blue.
“Hi,” said Sophie. “Who are you?”
“My name is Alice,” said the girl, curtseying shyly.
“I thought so,” said Alberto, nodding. “It’s Alice in Wonderland.”
“How did she find her way to us?”
Alice explained: “Wonderland is a completely borderless country. That
means that Wonderland is everywhere—rather like the UN. It should be an
honorary member of the UN. We should have representatives on all
committees, because the UN also arose out of people’s wonder.”
“Hm ... that major!” muttered Alberto.
“And what brings you here?” asked Sophie.
“I am to give Sophie these little philosophy bottles.”
She handed the bottles to Sophie. There was red liquid in one and blue
in the other. The label on the red bottle read DRINK ME, and on the blue one
the label read DRINK ME too.
The next second a white rabbit came hurrying past the cabin. It walked
upright on two legs and was dressed in a waistcoat and jacket. Just in front of
the cabin it took a pocket watch out of its waistcoat pocket and said:
“Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!”
Then it ran on. Alice began to run after it. Just before she ran into the
woods, she curtsied and said, “Now it’s starting again.”
“Say hello to Dinah and the Queen,” Sophie called after her.
Alberto and Sophie remained standing on the front step, examining the
bottles.
“DRINK ME and DRINK ME too,” read Sophie. “I don’t know if I dare.
They might be poisonous.”
Alberto merely shrugged his shoulders.
“They come from the major, and everything that comes from the major is
purely in the mind. So it’s only pretend-juice.”
Sophie took the cap off the red bottle and put it cautiously to her lips.
The juice had a strangely sweet taste, but that wasn’t all. As she drank,
something started to happen to her surroundings.