“It’s the same with us, Sophie. Spirit can pass through steel doors. No
tanks or bombers can crush anything that is of spirit.”
“That’s a comfort.”
“We’ll soon be passing Ris0r, and it’s no more than an hour since we left
the major’s cabin. I could really use a cup of coffee.”
When they got to Fiane, just before S0ndeled, they passed a cafeteria
on the lefthand side of the road. It was called Cinderella. Alberto swung the
car around and parked on the grass in front of it.
Inside, Sophie tried to take a bottle of Coke from the cooler, but she
couldn’t lift it. It seemed to be stuck. Further down the counter, Alberto was
trying to tap coffee into a paper cup he had found in the car. He only had to
press a lever, but even by exerting all his strength he could not press it down.
This made him so mad that he turned to the cafeteria guests and asked
for help. When no one reacted, he shouted so loudly that Sophie had to cover
her ears: “I want some coffee!”
His anger soon evaporated, and he doubled up with laughter. They were
about to turn around and leave when an old woman got up from her chair and
came toward them.
She was wearing a garish red skirt, an ice-blue cardigan, and a white
kerchief round her head. She seemed more sharply defined than anything
else in the little cafeteria.
She went up to Alberto and said, “My my, how you do yell, my boy!”
“Excuse me.”
“You want some coffee, you said?”
“Yes, but. . .”
“We have a small establishment close by.”
They followed the old woman out of the cafeteria and down a path
behind it. While they walked, she said, “You are new in these parts?”
“We might as well admit it,” answered Alberto.
“That’s all right. Welcome to eternity then, children.”
“And you?”
“I’m out of one of Grimm’s fairy tales. That was nearly two hundred years
ago. And where are you from?”
“We’re out of a book on philosophy. I am the philosophy teacher and this
is my student, Sophie.”
“Hee hee! That’s a new one!”
They came through the trees to a small clearing where there were
several cozy-looking brown cottages. A large Midsummer bonfire was burning
in a yard between the cottages, and around the bonfire danced a crowd of col-
orful figures. Sophie recognized many of them. There were Snow White and
some of the seven dwarfs, Mary Poppins and Sherlock Holmes, Peter Pan
and Pippi Longstocking, Little Red Ridinghood and Cinderella. A lot of familiar
figures without names had also gathered around the bonfire—there were
gnomes and elves, fauns and witches, angels and imps. Sophie also caught
sight of a real live troll.
“What a lot of noise!” exclaimed Alberto.
“That’s because it’s Midsummer,” said the old woman. “We haven’t had
a gathering like this since Valborg’s Eve. That was when we were in
Germany. I’m only here on a short visit. Was it coffee you wanted?”
“Yes, please.”