birthday amusement. But he’d better watch out, Sophie. So had Hilde!”
“How do you mean?”
“Are you sitting tight?”
“As long as there are no more genies from a lamp.”
“Try to imagine that everything that happens to us goes on in someone
else’s mind. We are that mind. That means we have no soul, we are someone
else’s soul. So far we are on familiar philosophical ground. Both Berkeley and
Schelling would prick up their ears.”
“And?”
“Now it is possible that this soul is Hilde M0ller Knag’s father. He is over
there in Lebanon writing a book on philosophy for his daughter’s fifteenth
birthday. When Hilde wakes up on June 15, she finds the book on her bedside
table, and now she—and anyone else—can read about us. It has long been
suggested that this ‘present’ could be shared with others.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“What I am saying to you now will be read by Hilde after her father in
Lebanon once imagined that I was telling you he was in Lebanon ... imagining
me telling you that he was in Lebanon.”
Sophie’s head was swimming. She tried to remember what she had
heard about Berkeley and the Romantics. Alberto Knox continued: “But they
shouldn’t feel so cocky because of that. They are the last people who should
laugh, because laughter can easily get stuck in their throat.”
“Who are we talking about?”
“Hilde and her father. Weren’t we talking about them?”
“But why shouldn’t they feel so cocky?”
“Because it is feasible that they, too, are nothing but mind.”
“How could they be?”
“If it was possible for Berkeley and the Romantics, it must be possible for
them. Maybe the major is also a shadow in a book about him and Hilde, which
is also about us, since we are a part of their lives.”
“That would be even worse. That makes us only shadows of shadows.”
“But it is possible that a completely different author is somewhere writing
a book about a UN Major Albert Knag, who is writing a book for his daughter
Hilde. This book is about a certain Alberto Knox who suddenly begins to send
humble philosophical lectures to Sophie Amundsen, 3 Clover Close.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I’m just saying it’s possible. To us, that author would be a ‘hidden God.’
Although everything we are and everything we say and do proceeds from him,
because we are him we will never be able to know anything about him. We
are in the innermost box.”
Alberto and Sophie now sat for a long time without saying anything. It
was Sophie who finally broke the silence: “But if there really is an author who
is writing a story about Hilde’s father in Lebanon, just like he is writing a story
about us . . .”
“Yes?”
“... then it’s possible that author shouldn’t be cocky either.”
“What do you mean?”
“He is sitting somewhere, hiding both Hilde and me deep inside his
head. Isn’t it just possible that he, too, is part of a higher mind?”
Atberto nodded.