Hilde let the large ring binder slide down onto her lap.
Her mother stood leaning over the bed with the tray. On it were lighted candles,
buttered rolls with shrimp salad, and a soda. There was also a small package. Her
mother stood awkwardly holding the tray with both hands, with a flag under one arm.
“Oh, thanks a lot, Mom. It’s sweet of you, but I’m really busy.”
“You don’t have to go to school till one o’clock.”
Not until now did Hilde remember where she was, and her mother put the tray
down on the bedside table.
“Sorry, Mom. I was completely absorbed in this.”
“What is it he has written, Hilde? I’ve been just as mystified as you. It’s been
impossible to get a sensible word out of him for months.”
For some reason Hilde felt embarrassed. “Oh, it’s just a story.”
“A story?”
“Yes, a story. And a history of philosophy. Or something like that.”
“Aren’t you going to open the package from me?”
Hilde didn’t want to be unfair, so she opened her mother’s present right away. It
was a gold bracelet.
“It’s lovely, Mom! Thank you very much!”
Hilde got out of bed and gave her mother a hug.
They sat talking for a while.
Then Hilde said, “I have to get back to the book, Mom. Right now he’s standing
on top of the Acropolis.”
“Who is?”
“I’ve no idea. Neither has Sophie. That’s the whole point.”
“Well, I have to get to work. Don’t forget to eat something. Your dress is on a
hanger downstairs.”
Finally her mother disappeared down the stairs. So did Sophie’s philosophy
teacher; he walked down the steps from the Acropolis and stood on the Areopagos
rock before appearing a little later in the old square of Athens.
Hilde shivered when the old buildings suddenly rose from the ruins. One of her
father’s pet ideas had been to let all the United Nations countries collaborate in re-
constructing an exact copy of the Athenian square. It would be the forum for
philosophical discussion and also for disarmament talks. He felt that a giant project
like that would forge world unity. “We have, after all, succeeded in building oil rigs
and moon rockets.”
Then she read about Plato. “The soul yearns to fly home on the wings of love to
the world of ideas. It longs to be freed from the chains of the body ...”
Sophie had crawled through the hedge and followed Hermes, but the dog had
escaped her. After having read about Plato, she had gone farther into the woods and
come upon the red cabin by the little lake. Inside hung a painting of Bjerkely. From
the description it was clearly meant to be Hilde’s Bjerkely. But there was also a
portrait of a man named Berkeley. “How odd!”
Hilde laid the heavy ring binder aside on the bed and went over to her bookshelf
and looked him up in the three-volume encyclopedia she had been given on her
fourteenth birthday. Here he was—Berkeley!
Berkeley, George, 1685-1753, Eng. Philos., Bishop of Cloyne. Denied existence
of a material world beyond the human mind. Our sense perceptions proceed from
God. Main work: A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710).
Yes, it was decidedly odd. Hilde stood thinking for a few seconds before going
back to bed and the ring binder.