Not bad! That made her 150 crowns richer. He probably thought a homemade
present alone wasn’t enough.
So it appeared that June 15 was Sophie’s birthday, too. But Sophie’s calendar
had only gotten as far as the middle of May. That must have been when her father had
written this chapter, and he had postdated the “birthday card” to Hilde. But poor
Sophie, running down to the supermarket to meet Joanna.
Who was Hilde? How could her father as good as take it for granted that
Sophie would find her? In any case, it was senseless of him to send Sophie
the cards instead of sending them directly to his daughter.
Hilde, like Sophie, was elevated to the celestial spheres as she read about
Plotinus.
I believe there is something of the divine mystery in everything that
exists. We can see it sparkle in a sunflower or a poppy. We sense more of the
unfathomable mystery in a butterfly that flutters from a twig— or in a goldfish
swimming in a bowl. But we are closest to God in our own soul. Only there
can we become one with the greatest mystery of life. In truth, at very rare
moments we can experience that we ourselves are that divine mystery.
This was the most giddying passage Hilde had read up to now. But it was
nevertheless the simplest. Everything is one, and this “one” is a divine mystery that
everyone shares.
This was not really something you needed to believe. It is so, thought Hilde. So
everyone can read what they like into the word “divine.”
She turned quickly to the next chapter. Sophie and Joanna go camping the night
before the national holiday on May 17. They make their way to the major’s cabin...
Hilde had not read many pages before she flung the bedclothes angrily aside,
got up, and began to walk up and down, clutching the ring binder in her hands.
This was just about the most impudent trick she had ever heard of. In that little
hut in the woods, her father lets these two girls find copies of all the cards he had sent
Hilde in the first two weeks of May. And the copies were real enough. Hilde had read
the very same words over and over. She recognized every single word.
Dear Hilde, I am now so bursting with all these secrets for your birthday
that I have to stop myself several times a day from calling home and blowing
the whole thing. It is something that simply grows and grows. And as you
know, when a thing gets bigger and bigger it’s more difficult to keep it to
yourself. . .
Sophie gets a new lesson from Alberto. It’s all about Jews and Greeks and the
two great cultures. Hilde liked getting this wide bird’s-eye view of history. She had
never learned anything like it at school. They only gave you details and more details.
She now saw Jesus and Christianity in a completely new light.
She liked the quote from Goethe: “He who cannot draw on three thousand years
is living from hand to mouth.”
The next chapter began with a piece of card which sticks to Sophie’s kitchen
window. It is a new birthday card for Hilde, of course.
Dear Hilde, I don’t know whether it will still be your birthday when you
read this card. I hope so, in a way; or at least that not too many days have
gone by. A week or two for Sophie does not have to mean just as long for us.
I shall be coming home for Midsummer Eve, so we can sit together for hours
in the glider, looking out over the sea, Hilde. We have so much to talk about. .
.
Then Alberto calls Sophie, and this is the first time she hears his voice.