Daniel Kehlmann - F

Arthur pointed to a tent. Small, blue, with a red curtain over the entrance, and electric lights blinking over it like stars: Your future , they said, in the cards .

“I’d rather not,” said Marie.

“Come on,” said Arthur, “maybe it’ll be good news.”

“And if it’s bad news?”

“Then you just don’t believe it.”

They went in. A reading lamp threw its yellowish light onto a wooden table with a dirty felt cloth. Behind it sat an old man wearing a pullover. He was bald, except for two tufts of hair over the ears, and he was wearing spectacles. In front of him lay a pack of cards and a magnifying glass.

“Come in, come closer,” he said without looking up. “Come here, take your cards, read your fortune, come right up.”

Marie looked at Arthur, but he was standing there with his arms folded, saying nothing.

“Come closer,” said the soothsayer mechanically, “come here, take three cards, read your fortune.”

Marie went to the table. His glasses were incredibly thick, and his eyes behind them were almost invisible. Blinking, he held up a little pack of cards.

“Choose twelve, and read your fortune.”

Hesitatingly, Marie picked up the deck. The cards were greasy and much handled, and like no cards she was familiar with. There were strange figures on them: a falling star, a hanged man, a knight on a horse holding a lance, a masked figure in a boat.

“Take twelve,” urged the soothsayer. “Take them. Twelve euros for twelve cards. One euro per card.”

Arthur put fifteen euros on the table. “Have you been doing this a long time?”

“Sorry?”

“Have you been doing this a long time?”

“Before this I did other things, and before that still other things, but they didn’t go so well.”

“Hard to believe,” said Arthur.

“I packed entire halls.”

“Big halls?”

“The biggest.”

“So what happened?”

The soothsayer looked up.

“What happened?” Arthur asked again.

The soothsayer blinked, and held his hand up to his forehead. “Nothing,” he said finally. “Bad times happened. Bad luck happened. The years went by, they happened. A man is not who a man was.”

“And yet a man is finally who a man is,” said Arthur.

“Who a man is?”

“Who a man was.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just a joke.”

“What kind of joke?”

Arthur didn’t reply. Marie looked at the cards she was holding and waited.

“We don’t have much time,” said Arthur.

The soothsayer nodded, groped for the money, found it, tucked it away, hunted around in his pocket, and laid three coins ceremoniously out on the table. “Take your cards,” he said to Marie. “From the middle, or the top, or the bottom. Whatever you want. Close your eyes. Listen to your inner self.”

“Twelve?” asked Marie.

“Lay them out here. One next to the other. Right here on the table.”

“I have to take twelve?”

“Right here. One next to the other.”

She gave Arthur another questioning look, but he was staring at the soothsayer in a most peculiar way. How was she supposed to pick the cards? She could choose any single one of them individually, or she could take a whole dozen right out of the middle of the deck. Uncertainly, she twisted the whole packet in her hands.

“Doesn’t matter a damn,” said Arthur.

“Excuse me?” said the soothsayer.

“If it works, it works, no matter how you pick the cards,” said Arthur. “And if it doesn’t work, so what?”

“Your future,” said the soothsayer. “Your fate. Right here on the table, please.”

Marie pulled a card out of the middle of the deck and set it on the table, facedown. And another. And then another. And then, from different parts of the pile, nine more. She waited, but the soothsayer didn’t move.

“Done,” she said.

The soothsayer blinked in her general direction. His mouth gaped open. He pulled a green silk kerchief out of his breast pocket and blotted his brow.

“Done!” she said again.

He nodded, then he counted as he briefly touched each card with his finger. “Twelve,” he said softly, half to her and half to himself, poked at his glasses, and then arranged the cards neatly in a semicircle.

“No matter what it costs,” said Arthur. “It’s just a matter of making the effort. With everything you’ve got.”

“Excuse me?” said the soothsayer.

Arthur didn’t reply.

The soothsayer began to turn over the cards. Something horrifying emanated from the images; they struck Marie as primeval, brutal, indescribably ugly. They seemed to announce sheer power, a world in which no creature ever befriended another creature, in which anyone could do absolutely anything to another person, and in which it was suicidally stupid to believe anything anyone said. There was a figure captured in mid-leap in a dance, and on another card was a great round moon, ringed in clouds. The soothsayer bowed forward, his head almost touching the table, and his bald spot was unmistakable. He picked up the magnifying glass and examined one card after the other.

“The Three of Swords. All standing on their heads.”

“There aren’t three,” said Arthur.

The soothsayer raised his head. His eyes shimmered in a tiny flicker behind his glasses.

“Count them again!” said Arthur.

There were five swords. Marie could see that at a glance. The soothsayer’s index finger wandered from one sword to the next, but his hand was shaking and the swords were so narrow that he kept missing them.

“Seven,” he said. “Standing on their heads.”

“That’s not seven,” said Marie.

The soothsayer looked up.

“Five!” she called out.

“Five swords,” said the soothsayer, and set his finger on the next card. “Five swords, standing on their heads, beside the Sun and the Lover.”

“That’s the Moon!” said Arthur.

The soothsayer took off his glasses and mopped his face with the green handkerchief.

“Sun and Moon must never be mixed up!” said Arthur. “They’re polar opposites.”

“Polar whats?” asked the soothsayer.

“In the Tarot. They’re polar opposites, or so I’m told. It’s really not my thing. Don’t you have a hearing aid?”

“They always make that whistling noise and you can’t understand a thing.”

“A hearing aid that whistles must really mess up hypnosis.”

“No,” said the soothsayer, “if it whistles, you can’t do it.”

“But reading cards goes okay?”

“The prices to rent a stand are too high. Bunch of crooks. Not enough customers. I used to fill entire halls.”

“The biggest?” said Arthur.

“Excuse me?”

“Do please go on!”

The soothsayer lowered his head until his nose was only a fraction of an inch above the cards. He pulled one of them out from the middle of the pack. It displayed a fortress and a bolt of lightning, and there were people frozen in the wildest contortions.

“The Tower,” said Arthur.

“Excuse me?”

“Is that the Tower?”

The soothsayer nodded. “The Tower. In combination with the Five of Swords, standing on their heads. Plus the Moon. It can mean …”

“But it isn’t!” exclaimed Arthur. “That is not the Tower.”

“So what is it?” asked the soothsayer.

“You can’t see a thing,” said Arthur. “Am I right? You don’t hear a thing, and you can’t see a thing anymore.”

The soothsayer stared at the table. Then he slowly set his magnifying glass aside.

“Goodbye!” cried Arthur.

The soothsayer said nothing. They left.

“But you paid him anyway,” said Marie.

“He gave it his best shot!”