Jostein Gaarder - Sophie's World - A Novel About the History of Philosophy

She was asleep.

When the raucous scream of a seagull woke her, Hilde got out of bed. As usual, she crossed the room to the window and stood looking out across the bay. It had gotten to be a habit, summer and winter.

As she stood there, she suddenly felt a myriad of colors exploding in her head. She remembered what she had dreamt. But it felt like more than an ordinary dream, with its vivid colors and shapes ...

She had dreamt that her father came home from Lebanon, and the whole dream was an extension of Sophie’s dream when she found the gold crucifix on the dock.

Hilde was sitting on the edge of the dock—exactly as in Sophie’s dream. Then she heard a very soft voice whispering, “My name is Sophie!” Hilde had stayed where she was, sitting very still, trying to hear where the voice was coming from. It continued, an almost inaudible rustling, as if an insect were speaking to her: “You must be both deaf and blind!” Just then her father had come into the garden in his UN uniform. “Hilde!” he shouted. Hilde ran up to him and threw her arms around his neck. That’s where the dream ended.

She remembered some lines of a poem by Arnulf 0verland:

Wakened one night by a curious dream

and a voice that seemed to be speaking to me

like a far-off subterranean stream,

I rose and asked: What do you want of me?

She was still standing at the window when her mother came in.

“Hi there! Are you already awake?”

“I’m not sure...”

“I’ll be home around four, as usual.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“Have a nice vacation day, Hilde!”

“You have a good day too.”

When she heard her mother slam the front door, she slipped back into bed with the ring binder.

“I’m going to dive down into the major’s unconscious. That’s where I’ll be until we meet again.”

There, yes. Hilde started reading again. She could feel under her right index finger that there were only a few pages left.

When Sophie left the major’s cabin, she could still see some of the Disney figures at the water’s edge, but they seemed to dissolve as she approached them. By the time she reached the boat they had all disappeared.

While she was rowing she made faces, and after she had pulled the boat up into the reeds on the other side she waved her arms about. She was working desperately to hold the major’s attention so that Alberto could sit undisturbed in the cabin.

She danced along the path, hopping and skipping. Then she tried walking like a mechanical doll. To keep the major interested she began to sing as well. At one point she stood still, pondering what Alberta’s plan could be. Catching herself, she got such a bad conscience that she started to climb a tree.

Sophie climbed as high as she could. When she was nearly at the top, she realized she could not get down. She decided to wait a little before trying again. But meanwhile she could not just stay quietly where she was. Then the major would get tired of watching her and would begin to interest himself in what Alberto was doing.

Sophie waved her arms, tried to crow like a rooster a couple of times, and finally began to yodel. It was the first time in her fifteen-year-old life that Sophie had yodeled.

All things considered, she was quite pleased with the result.

She tried once more to climb down but she was truly stuck. Suddenly a huge goose landed on one of the branches Sophie was clinging to. Having recently seen a whole swarm of Disney figures, Sophie was not in the least surprised when the goose began to speak.

“My name is Morten,” said the goose. “Actually, I’m a tame goose, but on this special occasion I have flown up from Lebanon with the wild geese. You look as if you could use some help getting down from this tree.”

“You are much too small to help me,” said Sophie.

“You are jumping to conclusions, young lady. It is you who are too big.”

“It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

“I would have you know I carried a peasant boy exactly your age all over Sweden. His name was Nils Hol-gersson.”

“I am fifteen.”

“And Nils was fourteen. A year one way or the other makes no difference to the freight.”

“How did you manage to lift him?”

“I gave him a little slap and he passed out. When he woke up, he was no bigger than a thumb.”

“Perhaps you could give me a little slap too, because I can’t sit up here forever. And I’m giving a philosophical garden party on Saturday.”

“That’s interesting. I presume this is a philosophy book, then. When I was flying over Sweden with Nils Holgers-son, we touched down on Marbacka in Varmland, where Nils met an old woman who was planning to write a book about Sweden for schoolchildren. It was to be both instructive and true, she said. When she heard about Nils’s adventures, she decided to write a book about all the things he had seen on gooseback.”

“That was very strange.”

“To tell you the truth it was rather ironic, because we were already in that book.”

Suddenly Sophie felt something slap her cheek and the next minute she had become no bigger than a thumb. The tree was like a whole forest and the goose was as big as a horse.

“Come on, then,” said the goose.

Sophie walked along the branch and climbed up on the goose’s back. Its feathers were soft, but now that she was so small, they pricked her more than they tickled.

As soon as she had settled comfortably the goose took off. They flew high above the treetops. Sophie looked down at the lake and the major’s cabin. Inside sat Al-berto, laying his devious plans.

“A short sightseeing tour will have to be sufficient today,” said the goose, flapping its wings again and again.

With that, it flew in to land at the foot of the tree which Sophie had so recently begun to climb. As the goose touched down Sophie tumbled onto the ground. After rolling around in the heather a few times, she sat up. She realized with amazement that she was her full size again.

The goose waddled around her a few times.

“Thanks a lot for your help,” said Sophie.

“It was a mere bagatelle. Did you say this was a philosophy book?”

“No, that’s what you said.”

“Oh well, it’s all the same. If it had been up to me, I would have liked to fly you through the whole history of philosophy just as I flew Nils Holgersson through Sweden. We could have circled over Miletus and Athens, Jerusalem and Alexandria, Rome and Florence, London and Paris, Jena and Heidelberg, Berlin and Copenhagen . . .”

“Thanks, that’s enough.”

“But flying across the centuries would have been a hefty job even for a very ironic goose. Crossing the Swedish provinces is far easier.”

So saying, the goose ran a few steps and flapped itself into the air.

Sophie was exhausted, but when she crawled out of the den into the garden a little later she thought Alberto would have been well pleased with her diversionary maneuvers. The major could not have thought much about Alberto during the past hour. If he did, he had to have a severe case of split personality.

Sophie had just walked in the front door when her mother came home from work. That saved her having to describe her rescue from a tall tree by a tame goose.

After dinner they began to get everything ready for the garden party. They brought a four-meter-long table top and trestles from the attic and carried it into the garden.

They had planned to set out the long table under the fruit trees. The last time they had used the trestle table had been on Sophie’s parents’ tenth anniversary. Sophie was only eight years old at the time, but she clearly remembered the big outdoor party with all their friends and relatives.

The weather report was as good as it could be. There had not been as much as a drop of rain since that horrid thunderstorm the day before Sophie’s birthday. Nevertheless they decided to leave the actual table setting and decorating until Saturday morning.