JACK OF DIAMONDS

… any vanity Dad had
was associated with being a joker …

W hen we got back to the hotel room, I asked Dad if he had come any closer to finding Mama.

‘I visited an agent who makes a living by running some kind of liaison business for models. He insisted that there was no model working in Athens called Anita Tørå. He was quite sure and claimed that he knew all the models here – at any rate, all the foreign ones.’

I must have looked like a grey winter’s afternoon, and on this particular day it was raining. I felt the tears press against my eyelids. Dad quickly added, ‘I showed him the picture from the fashion magazine, and suddenly there was a lot more life in the Greek. He told me she was called Sunny Beach, and no doubt this was her modelling name. He said she has been one of the most-sought-after models in Athens for several years.’

‘So?’ I said, staring searchingly into Dad’s eyes.

He threw his hands in the air and said, ‘I have to call tomorrow after lunch.’

‘And that was all?’

‘Yes! We’ll just have to wait and see, Hans Thomas. We’ll go up to the roof terrace this evening, and tomorrow we’ll drive to Piraeus. There’s bound to be a telephone there as well.’

When he mentioned the roof terrace, I remembered something. I gathered my courage and said, ‘There’s just one more thing.’

Dad looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face, but maybe he already knew what I was going to say.

‘There was something you were going to think about, and we agreed that you should think about it quickly.’

He tried a manly laugh, but it didn’t quite work.

‘Oh that!’ he said. ‘Like I said, Hans Thomas – I’ll think about it, but today there have just been so many other things to think about.’

I had a good idea – I dashed over to his travel bag and dug out a half bottle of whisky that was stuffed between his socks and T-shirts. Within a couple of seconds I was in the bathroom pouring it down the toilet.

When Dad followed me into the bathroom and realised what I had done, he stood staring into the toilet bowl. Maybe he was debating whether he could bend down and lap up the remains before I flushed the toilet. But he hadn’t sunk that low. He turned towards me again, and couldn’t decide whether he should rage like a tiger or wag his tail like a puppy dog.

‘Okay, Hans Thomas. You win!’ he said in the end.

We went back into the bedroom and sat down on a couple of chairs by the window. I looked at Dad, who was staring at the Acropolis.

‘Sparkling drink paralyses Joker’s senses,’ I muttered.

Dad looked at me in astonishment.

‘What are you babbling about, Hans Thomas? Is it the Martini Rosso from yesterday?’

‘Nope! I Just meant that a true joker doesn’t drink alcohol, because he thinks better without it’

‘You really are crazy, but it’s probably hereditary.’

I knew that I had attacked his weakest point, because any vanity Dad had was associated with being a joker.

However, when I thought he might still be thinking about what was down the toilet, I said, ‘Now let’s go up to the roof terrace and sample every kind of soft drink that they have on the menu. You can have cola or Seven-Up, orange juice, tomato juice, or a fizzy drink with a pear flavour – or maybe you’d like to try all these at once? You can fill your glass with freezing ice cubes and stir them with a long spoon –’

‘Okay, thank you, that’ll do,’ he interrupted.

‘But we have a deal?’

‘Yes, sir, and an old sailor always keeps his word.’

‘Great! In return I’ll tell you a wild story.’

We hurried up to the roof and sat at the same table as the night before; it wasn’t long before the same waiter appeared.

In English I asked what kind of soft drinks he had. We ended up ordering two glasses and four different bottles. The waiter shook his head and mumbled something about father and son wanting wine one day and then drinking themselves silly on fizzy drinks the next. Dad replied that it kept the balance and there was justice in everything.

When the waiter had disappeared, Dad turned to me and said, ‘It’s quite incredible, Hans Thomas. We’re sitting in a city with millions of people, and there’s just one ant we want to find in this enormous anthill.’

‘And it is the queen herself.’

I thought this was a pretty smart comment, and Dad obviously did too; he unleashed a wide grin.

‘But this anthill is so well organised you really can find ant number 3,238,905,’ he said. He sat philosophising for a moment before he continued: ‘Athens is really just a smaller chamber in a much bigger anthill which is home to over five billion ants. Yet you can nearly always contact one particular ant among those five billion. You just have to plug a telephone into a wall and dial a number, and you know this planet has billions of telephones, Hans Thomas. You find them high up in the Alps, in the deepest African jungle, in Alaska and Tibet – and you can reach all of them from the telephone in your front room.’

Something suddenly made me jump in my seat.

‘The sticky-bun man shouts down a magic funnel, so his voice carries hundreds of miles,’ I whispered excitedly, and in a flash I understood what the sentence from the Joker Game meant.

Dad sighed wearily. ‘What is it now?’ he asked.

I didn’t know how to explain, but I had to say something.

‘When you mentioned the Alps, I was reminded of the baker who gave me the sticky buns and the fizzy drink in the little village we visited. I remember he had a telephone, too, and with that he can contact people all over the world. He just needs to ring the operator and he can get the number for anybody on the whole planet.’

He clearly wasn’t satisfied with my answer, and sat for a long time staring at the Acropolis.

‘So it’s not that you can’t tolerate philosophising, then?’

I shook my head. The truth was, I was bursting with everything I had read in the sticky-bun book and was having difficulty keeping it to myself.

As darkness started to creep over the town and the floodlights on the Acropolis were switched on, I said, ‘I promised to tell you a story.’

‘Go on, then,’ said Dad.

So I began. I retold a great deal of what I had read in the sticky-bun book – all about Albert, Baker Hans, Frode, and the magic island. I didn’t think I was breaking my promise to the old baker in Dorf, because I presented the whole thing as though I had just made it up on the spot. I did have to make a bit up myself, and I tried not to mention the sticky-bun book.

Dad was clearly impressed.

‘You have a damn good imagination, Hans Thomas,’ he said. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t be a philosopher after all, maybe you should try your hand at being a writer first.’

Once again I was being praised for something I didn’t really have anything to do with.

When we went to bed later that evening, I was the first to fall asleep. I lay awake for quite a while before I dozed off, but Dad stayed awake for even longer. The last thing I remember was him getting out of bed and standing by the window.

When I woke up the next morning, Dad was still fast asleep. I thought he looked like a bear who had just begun his long winter hibernation.

I found the magnifying glass and the sticky-bun book and read more about what happened on the magic island after the great Joker Banquet.

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Дата добавления: 2015-10-28