Chapter 8 Five of Spades...I hear the old man pacing in the attic...

Dear Child: Allow me to call you that.Now, as I sit here writing my biography, I know that someday you will come to this village.Maybe you'll walk up to the bakery on Waldemar Street and stop for a moment at the door to look at the goldfish bowl in the window.You don't know the purpose of your coming here, but I know that you came to Dulf Village to continue the legend of "Rainbow Soda and Magic Island". This biography was written in January 1946.I was a young man then.When you met me thirty or forty years later, I was already a gray-haired old man.This biography is written for the day when you and I meet.

Let me tell you, child of whom I have never met: the paper on which I write my biography is like a lifeboat.A lifeboat is always drifting with the wind, and then heading for the distant ocean.However, some lifeboats are just the opposite.It sailed to a land full of hope and representative of the future, and never looked back. How do I know that you are the one who continues this story? Child, when you appear in front of my eyes, I will naturally know.There will be signs on you. I wrote the biography in Norwegian, firstly, so that you can understand it, and secondly, so that the residents of the village of Dürf can't steal the story of the dwarf.Once they know the story, the secret of Magic Island will become a sensational news, and the life of news is very short.News grabs people's attention, but the next day it's forgotten.Shorty's story must not be lost in the fleeting light of the news.Rather than letting everyone forget it, let only one person know the dwarf's secret.

After the tragic end of World War II, many people fled in search of a new home where they could settle down.I am one of them.At that time, most of Europe became a refugee camp.People all over the world have been displaced and moved from place to place.We are not just political refugees; we are lost souls looking for themselves. I too was forced to leave Germany and build a new life elsewhere, but fleeing was no easy task for a soldier in the Third Reich. After the war, with a broken heart, I returned from a country in the north to my broken motherland.The world around me collapsed. I can no longer stay in Germany, but I can't go back to Norway either.As a result, I traveled over mountains and mountains to Switzerland.

Adrift in a state of bewilderment and helplessness, it was several weeks before I met the old baker Albert Klares in the village of Dürf. At that time, I had wandered for many days, was hungry and tired, and was walking down the mountain when I suddenly saw a small village.Driven by hunger: I ran through the dense woods like an animal being pursued by a hunter; finally I couldn't hold on anymore, and I collapsed in front of an old cabin.In a trance, I vaguely heard the buzzing of bees and smelled the sweet fragrance of milk and honey. In retrospect, it must have been the old baker who helped me into the cabin.When I awoke, I found myself lying on a cot against the wall.I opened my eyelids and saw an old man with white hair sitting on a rocking chair and smoking a pipe.When he saw me open my eyes, he hurried over and sat beside me.

"You're home, son." The old man comforted me. "I have known for a long time that one day you will appear at my door and claim the treasure from me." Then I fell asleep again.When I woke up, I found myself lying alone in the cabin.I climbed out of bed and walked to the steps in front of the house, where I saw the old man sitting with his upper body bent over a stone table.There is a beautiful glass jar on the heavy table top.A colorful goldfish swims among them. I was stunned and wondered: a small goldfish from far away could survive on a high mountain in central Europe.Watch it swim around in its glass tank with ease. The life of the sea is brought to the Swiss Alps.

"Praise God!" I greeted the old man. He turned his head and looked at me kindly. "My name is Ludwig." "I am Albert Craggs," replied the old man. He got up and went into the house, and after a while, with bread, cheese, milk and honey in his hand, he walked out into the bright sunlight again. He stretched out his arm, pointed to the village down the mountain and told me that the name of that village was Dulf, where he opened a small bakery. ·I lived in the elderly's home for several weeks.Soon, I was working as a bakery assistant.Albert taught me to bake all kinds of breads, pastries and cakes.I have long heard that Swiss artisans make the best breads and pastries.

What makes Albert the happiest is that now someone has finally come to help him carry and stack the sacks of flour. , I wanted to get to know other residents of the village, so after work, I would sometimes go to the tavern of the Huadema Inn for a drink or two. I can feel that the locals have a good impression of me.Although they knew that I was a German soldier, they never asked me about my past. One night someone in the tavern started talking about Albert, the old baker. "The old man is very queer," said Farmer Andre. "The baker used to be weird too," said Albrechts, the owner of a shop in the village.

I asked them what they said, and at first they all evasively talked about him.I've downed several glasses of wine and I'm starting to get angry. "If you dare not answer truthfully, please take back the bad words just now] How can you slander the person who made the bread for you to eat?" I couldn't help scolding them. No one talked about Albert that night, but a few weeks later, André was talking about the old baker again: "Do you know where he got those goldfish?" he asked the group.I found that the locals in the village were particularly interested in me because I lived with the old baker.

"All I know is he has a goldfish," and I'm telling the truth. "Probably bought it from a pet shop in Zurich." Hearing what I said, the farmer and the shopkeeper laughed out loud. "He has more than one goldfish, there are many!" said the farmer. "Once my father went hunting in the mountains, and on the way home, he saw Albert take all the goldfish out of the house; and put them in the sun to let them air. Believe me, boy from the bakery, his goldfish Definitely more than one." "He never left the village of Dulph in his life," interjected the shopkeeper. "I'm about his age, and as far as I know, he's never set foot outside the village of Durf."

"Some say he's a wizard," whispered the farmer in a low voice. "They say he can make not only bread and cakes, but also goldfish. Those goldfish in his family are definitely not caught in Huadema." Even I couldn't help but start to wonder if Albert was really hiding a big secret? The words he said to me when I first met him kept ringing in my ears: "You're home, son. I have known for a long time that one day you will appear at my door and claim the treasure from me. " I didn't want to tell the old baker the gossip of the villagers, lest he be sad.If he really hides a secret, he will naturally tell me when the time is right.

At first I thought that the reason why the villagers liked to gossip about the old baker behind his back was simply because he was lonely and lived alone in a house on the mountain, far away from the village.But, gradually, I found that this room itself also has intriguing places. As soon as you enter the house, you are greeted by a large living room with a fireplace and a kitchen in the corner.Two side doors opened from the living room, one leading to Albert's bedroom, and the other to the smaller guest room which Albert had let me live in when I came to the village of Dürf.None of these rooms had particularly high ceilings, but when I viewed the whole house from the outside, it was obvious that there was a large attic on the roof.Standing on the top of the hill behind the house and looking down, I saw more clearly a small window on the roof made of stone tiles. Oddly enough, Albert never mentioned the attic to me, nor does he seem to have ever been there himself.Therefore, whenever the villagers talk about Albert, I can't help thinking of this attic. One evening, returning from the village of Dulf, I heard the old baker pacing up and down the attic, going up and down.I was taken aback, and I was really a little scared, so I ran outside the house to drink some water from the water machine.When I walked back into the house, I saw Albert sitting in the rocking chair, smoking a pipe leisurely. "You're late today," he said.But I can feel things. "What are you doing in the attic?" I blurted out, and asked him as he was thinking of leaving him alone, and he seemed to sink into the rocking chair.After a while, he looked up at me.His face was still very kind.Many months ago, when I collapsed exhausted in front of his house, I saw this kind face. "Ludwig, are you tired?" I shake my head.Today is Saturday and tomorrow morning we can sleep until the sun is high before getting up. He stood up and threw some logs into the fire. "Tonight, let's sit down and talk!" he said.