“I doubt if a postcard from Lebanon can get to Norway in one day,” said
Joanna.
“Especially not considering the rather unusual address: Hilde Moller Knag, c/o
Sophie Amundsen, Fu-rulia Junior High School...”
“Do you think it could have come by mail? And the teacher just popped it in
your exercise book?”
“No idea. I don’t know whether I dare ask either.”
No more was said about the postcard.
“I’m going to have a garden party on Midsummer Eve,” said Sophie.
“With boys?”
Sophie shrugged her shoulders. “We don’t have to invite the worst idiots.”
“But you are going to invite Jeremy?”
“If you want. By the way, I might invite Alberto Knox.”
“You must be crazy!”
“I know.”
That was as far as the conversation got before their ways parted at the
supermarket.
The first thing Sophie did when she got home was to see if Hermes was in the
garden. Sure enough, there he was, sniffing around the apple trees.
“Hermes!”
The dog stood motionless for a second. Sophie knew exactly what was going on
in that second: the dog heard her call, recognized her voice, and decided to see if she
was there. Then, discovering her, he began to run toward her. Finally all four legs
came pattering like drumsticks.
That was actually quite a lot in the space of one second.
He dashed up to her, wagged his tail wildly, and jumped up to lick her face.
“Hermes, clever boy! Down, down. No, stop slobbering all over me. Heel, boy!
That’s it!”
Sophie let herself into the house. Sherekan came jumping out from the bushes.
He was rather wary of the stranger. Sophie put his cat food out, poured birdseed in the
budgerigars’ cup, got out a salad leaf for the tortoise, and wrote a note to her mother.
She wrote that she was going to take Hermes home and would be back by
seven.
They set off through the town. Sophie had remembered to take some money
with her this time. She wondered whether she ought to take the bus with Hermes, but
decided she had better wait and ask Alberto about it.
While she walked on and on behind Hermes she thought about what an animal
really is.
What was the difference between a dog and a person? She recalled Aristotle’s
words. He said that people and animals are both natural living creatures with a lot of
characteristics in common. But there was one distinct difference between people and
animals, and that was human reasoning.
How could he have been so sure?
Democritus, on the other hand, thought people and animals were really rather
alike because both were made up of atoms. And he didn’t think that either people or
animals had immortal souls. According to him, souls were built up of atoms that are
spread to the winds when people die. He was the one who thought a person’s soul was
inseparably bound to the brain.
But how could the soul be made of atoms? The soul wasn’t anything you could
touch like the rest of the body. It was something “spiritual.”