card over. It had a Norwegian stamp on it and was postmarked “UN Battalion.” Could
it be from Dad? But wasn’t he in a completely different place? It wasn’t his
handwriting either.
Sophie felt her pulse quicken a little as she saw who the postcard was addressed
to: “Hilde Moller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen, 3 Clover Close ...” The rest of the
address was correct. The card read:
Dear Hilde, Happy 15th birthday! As I’m sure you’ll understand, I want to give
you a present that will help you grow. Forgive me for sending the card c/o Sophie. It
was the easiest way. Love from Dad.
Sophie raced back to the house and into the kitchen. Her mind was in a turmoil.
Who was this “Hilde,” whose fifteenth birthday was just a month before her own?
Sophie got out the telephone book. There were a lot of people called Moller,
and quite a few called Knag. But there was nobody in the entire directory called
Moller Knag.
She examined the mysterious card again. It certainly seemed genuine enough; it
had a stamp and a postmark.
Why would a father send a birthday card to Sophie’s address when it was quite
obviously intended to go somewhere else? What kind of father would cheat his own
daughter of a birthday card by purposely sending it astray? How could it be “the
easiest way”? And above all, how was she supposed to trace this Hilde person?
So now Sophie had another problem to worry about. She tried to get her
thoughts in order:
This afternoon, in the space of two short hours, she had been presented with
three problems. The first problem was who had put the two white envelopes in her
mailbox. The second was the difficult questions these letters contained. The third
problem was who Hilde Moller Knag could be, and why Sophie had been sent her
birthday card. She was sure that the three problems were interconnected in some way.
They had to be, because until today she had lived a perfectly ordinary life.
The Top Hat
… the only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder...
Sophie was sure she would hear from the anonymous letter writer again. She
decided not to tell anyone about the letters for the time being.
At school she had trouble concentrating on what the teachers said. They seemed
to talk only about unimportant things. Why couldn’t they talk about what a human
being is—or about what the world is and how it came into being?
For the first time she began to feel that at school as well as everywhere else
people were only concerned with trivialities. There were major problems that needed
to be solved.
Did anybody have answers to these questions? Sophie felt that thinking about
them was more important than memorizing irregular verbs.
When the bell rang after the last class, she left the school so fast that Joanna had
to run to catch up with her.
After a while Joanna said, “Do you want to play cards this evening?”
Sophie shrugged her shoulders.
“I’m not that interested in card games any more.”
Joanna looked surprised.
“You’re not? Let’s play badminton then.”
Sophie stared down at the pavement—then up at her friend.