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The Cards

Sinking down on her bed, Cissy started to pry open the knots of the strings.
Eagerly she ripped open the paper -- and a small red box fell into her lap.
Taken aback, she turned it around. This was certainly too small to hold a book!
No, it held -- eagerly, she opened the lid -- a stack of cards.
Cissy blinked several times, dumbfounded.
Very, very carefully as if it might bite off her finger, she lifted the topmost card.
Strong, ivory-colored paper.
She turned it around.
The Ace of Hearts.
How fitting.
 
picture of card Queen of Spades

Copyright
Faber & Faber Verlag Leizpig

Click on the image to see
the Queen's nighttime face!

Have you wondered whether I invented the deck of very special cards Mrs. Chisholm sends to Cissy? Indeed, I did not! It is based on a real deck of cards that was printed some time between 1830 and 1850, probably in Frankfurt on the Main. As you can see I took some poetic license in regard to the date of printing: CASTLE OF THE WOLF is, after all, set in 1827. Still, that seemed close enough for my purposes.

The deck of cards I used is a reprint from Faber & Faber. Interestingly enough, some of the hidden images that were used for this deck are modelled on illustrations of popular erotic literature. Even given the fact that there are only so many ways a man and a woman can have sex and thus certain positions appear again and again and yet again in erotica, I've found two very distinct scenes incoporated in that deck of cards: the Five of Clubs shows two couples making love in a gondola in Venice -- exactly the same (down to the red cap of one of the men) scene can be found in a series of illustrations by an anonymous artist, where it is called Une nuit ŕ Venise. The Five of Hearts -- a turbaned man looking on as two women are enjoying themselves -- is an illustration from Thousand and One Nights; a similar (but not the same) scene was done by Achille Devéria for the 1850-edition of Les mille et une nuits.

The Eight of Hearts is another rather interesting card: the hidden image shows a man and a woman together in bed; she is sitting astride him -- and is blowing up a condom!

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