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  “But it’s all contradicting itself, isn’t it?” Marie looked up. “First he says he’s important, then he says—”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Should I keep reading?”

  “It’s enough.”

  “Papa says pictures just can’t bring in the kind of money to make his debts disappear. Papa says art isn’t worth that much. But he says it still keeps the bank away. They take every cent, but they let him live as long as there’s money coming in. That’s why he’s living in the presbytery, but I’m not supposed to say that. Where do you live?”

  “I travel a lot.”

  “Are you still writing?”

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t you come before now?”

  “I have things to do.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You do nothing?”

  “It isn’t that easy.”

  Arthur turned the car and headed for an almost empty parking lot. Big clowns’ faces made of paper and all sorts of artificial stuff grinned above an entryway, and behind them you could see the outlines of a roller coaster.

  “A fair,” said Marie, disappointed. “Wonderful.”

  They got out. A man was leading two boys by the hand, a woman was pushing a baby carriage, some young men were drinking out of beer bottles, and a man and woman were standing arm in arm in front of a shooting gallery.

  “Why did you go away back then?” she asked.

  “People will tell you life is all a matter of obligations. Maybe they’ve already told you. But it’s not always the case.”

  Marie nodded. She had no idea what he meant, but she hoped he wouldn’t look at her and realize this.

  “You can live without ever having a life. Without entanglements. Maybe it doesn’t make for happiness, but it takes the load off.”

  “Why don’t we …?” Marie pointed to the maze. Mazes were never hard. Just keep following the right-hand wall and don’t take your eyes off the ground: provided you don’t get distracted by the mirrors, you’ll be back out in no time.

  She pulled out her phone. Go figure, she typed, I’m at the fair. While Arthur was paying, she headed for the entrance. The door opened with a hum.

  What the hell fair? asked Georg.

  Is there a carousel? wrote Natalie.

  Tell me where to come, wrote Jo.

  She groped her way along the wall. A pane of glass let her see the booths and the semicircle of the Ferris wheel, and the roller coaster. A small boy was licking an ice cream cone and stared right through her as if she were invisible.

  Very funny, she texted.

  Not funny at all, Jo replied. I love fairs. Wish I were there too.

  So where was Arthur? Okay, she’d been in this situation before, this was how it was when her father took her to the zoo. She was doing it for him, he was doing it for her, both of them would much rather have just stayed at home. She kept feeling her way along the wall, then around the corner, then around another corner, then around yet another corner, and then she should have found herself at the exit. But she wasn’t at the exit, she was standing in front of a mirror, and there was no way forward.

  But we were going to go to Matthias’s birthday party, wrote Lena.

  Later, she replied, and tucked the phone away, because she had to concentrate.

  There was a splash of blue on the floor. She went past the mirror and around a corner, and then around yet another corner, and finally she saw the turnstile at the exit, but she was looking at it through glass, because the way was clearly leading in the opposite direction, left, then left again, back toward the entry. There was the blue splash again, and next to it a bent stick of metal, one end rounded like the head of a walking stick, and the other filed to a sharp point. She bent down. No question, the splash was the same splash. But there was no mirror in front of her; could the splash have moved? And where had the metal stick come from? So—right and then right again, and here was the blue splash once more. Something wasn’t adding up. Do it again: right, and then again right, and the blue splash was there, but now the stick of metal had disappeared. She went in the opposite direction. Left, then left again, and she was facing a wall of glass and could go no further. She turned back and reached the entrance. It was locked.

  She touched it, shook it, knocked. Pointless. She knocked harder. Nothing. She banged with her fist. More nothing.

  She stepped in front of the sheet of glass through which she could see the fair, and tried to wave at the man in the booth who was collecting entrance fees. But the angle was impossible—she couldn’t see him and he couldn’t see her. Maybe call Emergency? But she’d paid her entrance fee, she’d just make herself look ridiculous. She went left, then she went right, then left again and right again, then past the glass partition twice, and three times past the wall of mirrors, and then she was back looking at the splash of blue. On the other side of the glass a man went down on his knees and looked right at her. She flinched. Only then did she recognize Arthur.

  She banged on the glass. He laughed and banged back: he obviously thought the whole thing was a joke. She pointed left and then right, and put her hands in the air to tell him she didn’t know how to get out. Arthur stood up and wandered out of her field of vision. Her throat tightened, and in her fury she felt the tears begin to come. Just as she was starting to call Emergency, someone tapped her on the shoulder.

  “Right here,” said Arthur.

  “Sorry?”

  “The way out. It’s right here. In front of you. What’s wrong, why are you crying?”

  It was true, the exit was just a few feet away. One turn to the left, then another to the right, and the turnstile was smack in front of her. Why hadn’t she been able to see it? She whispered that of course she hadn’t been crying at all, wiped away her tears, and ran out into the open air.

  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!”

  “What was it all about? The Tower, the Five of Swords, and was that really the Moon or was it actually the Sun? And what did it mean, anyway?”

  “That he couldn’t read a thing.”

  “But my future!”

  “Seek it out yourself. Seek out the one you want.”

  She wondered why Arthur seemed so relieved. She would have liked to take a trip on the ghost train, but he suddenly seemed to be in a hurry. They walked to the parking lot. He hummed to himself quietly all along the way, and was still smiling as he unlocked the car.

  “I have a house,” he said as they drove off. “It’s by a little lake, and there isn’t another house to be seen in any direction. When I’m there, I can work all day. It rains a lot. I thought nature would do me good, but that was before I knew that nature mostly consists of rain. Sometimes I take a trip somewhere, and then I come back again. For a long time my work was a cut above average, then it wasn’t anymore, and now all I do is read other people’s books. Books that are so good, I could never have written them myself. You asked what I do—well, that’s what I do.”

  “That’s how you spent all your time?”

  “It went quickly.”

  “Where are we off to now?”

  Arthur didn’t answer. For a time they drove in silence.

  Then he braked and parked the car. Marie looked around. She’d been here with her class before, and not too long ago, on a school outing.

  “Are we going to the museum?”

  “Yes.”

  Marie sighed.

  They got out and went up a marble staircase and then down a long corridor.

  “I’ve got to get back soon,” she said. “Homework.”

  “Do you get a large amount of it?”

  She nodded. It was Saturday, and luckily they never got assignments over the weekend. “Yes, a very large amount.”

  What gives with Matthias’s birthday party??? wrote Lena.

  Yeah yeah yeah later,
wrote Marie.

  Pictures hung one smack against the next, some of them just had lines, others had blotches, and on some of them you could see actual stuff: landscapes, buildings, even faces. There were whirling things and whizbangs and torrents and explosions of color. Anyone who was interested in this sort of thing, she thought, would certainly be interested here. But she wasn’t that person.

  “I really have to get home.”

  Arthur stopped in front of a picture. “Look at this.”

  She nodded. It had a gold frame and it featured the sea. There was also a ship.

  “No,” said Arthur. “Look at it.”

  The sea was blue the way all seas are blue, under a cloudless sky and a big sun. The ship was being followed by a whole swarm of seagulls.

  “No,” said Arthur. “Really look!”

  In fact, the sea wasn’t all blue. There was foam on the waves, and the water had darker and lighter areas. And the sky had lots of colors in it too. Right on the horizon there was a sort of misty transitional space, and around the sun everything dissolved into a thick impasto of white. When you looked at it, it was like being dazzled. And yet it was all just bits of color.

  “Yes,” said Arthur. “That’s it!”

  The ship had a long keel, five smokestacks, and portholes that sparkled. Little lines of flags fluttered in the wind, people were crowded onto the decks, and the stern sported an anchor on its own substructure.

  Out in front, in the bow, was a piece of sculpture: one of those over-sized bent watches, like the ones Marie had seen on slides in school, some very famous artist had made them but she couldn’t remember his name. She looked at the little plaque on the wall: Sea Voyage with Expensive Sculpture. H. Eulenboeck, 1989.

  She stepped even closer, and immediately everything dissolved. There were no more people anymore, no more little flags, no anchor, no bent watch. There were just some tiny bright patches of color above the main deck. The white of the naked canvas shone through in several places, and even the ship was a mere assemblage of lines and dots. Where had it all gone?

  She stepped back and it all came together again: the ship, the portholes, the people, even though she’d just seen that none of it was even there. She took another step back, and now it seemed as if the picture were telling her that whatever it was communicating to her had nothing to do with what it was actually portraying. It was some kind of a diplomatic message that seemed to be contained within the brilliance of the light, the vast expanse of the water, or the distant trajectory of the ship itself.