FIVE OF HEARTS

… Now I needed to have
nerves of steel and not to count my chickens before
they hatched …

W hen I woke up the next morning I tried to remember what Baker Hans had said about the shaven girl just before he died. Dad soon started thrashing around in his bed, however, and the new day got the upper hand.

We met Mama in the lobby after breakfast, and now it was Dad’s turn to go on up to the hotel room again. Mama insisted on taking me to the pastry shop alone. We agreed to meet Dad a couple of hours later.

As we were leaving, I gave Dad a private wink as a way of thanking him for the day before. I tried to communicate that I would do my best to bring Mama to her senses.

Once we had ordered at the pastry shop, Mama looked me straight in the eyes and said, ‘I don’t expect you understand why I left you both, Hans Thomas.’

I wasn’t going to be thrown by this opening, so I replied calmly, ‘Do you mean to say you know why?’

‘Well, not exactly …’ she admitted.

But I wasn’t going to let her get away with half an admission. ‘You probably have no idea why you just packed your suitcase and left your husband and son without a trace except for some smeary pictures in a Greek fashion magazine.’

A delicious plate of cakes and some coffee and a fizzy drink were placed on the table, but I wasn’t going to be bribed by this, so I continued: ‘If you are trying to say you don’t understand why you didn’t send so much as a postcard to your own son in eight whole years, then you’ll understand if I say thank you very much and leave you sitting here with your coffee.’

She removed her sunglasses and started to rub her eyes. I didn’t see any tears, but maybe she was trying to squeeze some out.

‘It’s not that simple, Hans Thomas,’ she said, and now her voice sounded as though it was about to break.

‘One year has 365 days,’ I continued. ‘Eight years have 2,920 days, and that’s not including February 29. But on neither of these two leap-year days did I get a peep out of my mother. It’s quite simple, in my opinion. I’m pretty good at mathematics.’

I think the bit about the leap-year days was the coup de grâce. The way I managed to include my birthday made her take both my hands in hers, and now the tears ran down her face in streams, without her rubbing her eyes.

‘Can you forgive me, Hans Thomas?’ she asked.

‘It depends. Have you thought of how many games of solitaire a boy can play in eight years? I’m not quite sure myself, but it’s a lot. In the end, the cards become a kind of replacement for a proper family. But if you think of your mother every time you see the Ace of Hearts, then something is wrong.’

I said this about the Ace of Hearts to see her reaction, but she just sat looking completely baffled.

‘The Ace of Hearts?’ she gasped.

‘Yes, the Ace of Hearts. Didn’t you have a red heart on the dress you were wearing yesterday? The question, though, is who the heart is beating for.’

‘Oh, Hans Thomas!’

She was really confused now. Maybe she thought her son had become mentally disturbed because she had been away for so long.

‘The point is that because the Ace of Hearts has got herself mixed up in trying to find herself, Dad and I have had serious problems resolving the family solitaire game.’

You could have knocked her over with a feather.

I continued: ‘At home on Hisøy Island we have a drawerful of jokers, but they’re no good when we have to roam Europe looking for the Ace of Hearts.’

She smiled warmly when I mentioned the jokers.

‘Does he still collect jokers?’

He’s a joker himself,’ I replied. ‘I don’t think you know the man. He’s a bit of a card, you know, but lately he has had more than enough to do trying to rescue the Ace of Hearts from the fashion fairy tale.’

She leaned over the table and tried to pat me on the cheek, but I just turned away. Now I needed to have nerves of steel and not to count my chickens before they hatched.

‘I think I understand what you’re saying about the Ace of Hearts,’ she said.

‘That’s good,’ I replied. ‘But don’t even think of saying that you know why you left us. The explanation for that mystery is really buried in something which happened with a magical pack of cards a couple of hundred years ago.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that it was in the cards that you should travel to Athens to find yourself. It all has to do with a rare family curse. Clues were left in a Gypsy woman’s fortune-telling and an Alpine baker’s sticky bun.’

‘Now you’re pulling my leg, Hans Thomas.’

I shook my head knowingly. First I glanced round the pastry shop; then I leaned over the table and whispered, ‘The truth is, you’ve got mixed up in something which occurred on a very special island in the Atlantic Ocean long, long before Grandma and Grandpa met each other up at Froland. Moreover, it wasn’t accidental that you travelled to Athens to find yourself. You were drawn here by your own reflection.’

‘Did you say reflection?’

I took out a pen and wrote ANITA on a napkin.

‘Can you read that word backwards?’ I asked.

‘ATINA …’ she read aloud. ‘Ooh, it sounds just like Athinai. I never thought of that.’

‘Of course not,’ I replied patronisingly. ‘There’s probably quite a few things you haven’t thought of. But that’s not important now.’

‘What is important, then, Hans Thomas?’

‘The most important thing now is how quickly you can pack your suitcase,’ I replied. ‘In a way, Dad and I have been waiting for you for more than two hundred years, and now we’re about to lose patience.’

Just as I said this, Dad came sauntering in from the street outside.

Mama looked at him and threw her hands up in despair. ‘What have you done with him?’ she asked. ‘The boy just talks in riddles.’

‘He’s always had a lively imagination,’ Dad said, pulling up an empty chair. ‘Otherwise he’s a good boy.’

I thought this was a pretty good answer. Dad couldn’t have known what kind of confusion tactics I had been using to persuade Mama to return to Arendal with us.

‘I’ve only just begun,’ I said at this point. ‘I still haven’t told you about the mysterious dwarf who has followed us ever since we crossed the Swiss border.’

Mama and Dad exchanged meaningful glances. Then Dad said, ‘And I think you’d better wait with that, Hans Thomas.’

*

By late afternoon we had realised we were one family who couldn’t bear being in different parts of the world any longer. I must have awakened the motherly instinct.

Already when we were in the pastry shop – but particularly later on that day – Mama and Dad started hanging around each other’s neck like young lovers, and before we said good night I noted the start of some serious kissing. I thought I’d better put up with this, considering what they had been missing for more than eight years, but on a couple of occasions I was forced to turn away out of sheer politeness.

It’s not really important to say any more about how we finally managed to pile Mama into the Fiat and head north.

I think Dad wonders a lot about how Mama could be so easily won over, but I had known for a long time that the eight painful years would be behind us if only we found her in Athens. Nevertheless, I did take note of the fact that she had to be the world’s fastest at packing a suitcase. She also had to break a contract, which is one of the worst things you can do south of the Alps. Dad said she would easily get a new contract in Norway.

After a couple of hectic days we were back in the car, taking the quickest route back, through Yugoslavia to the north of Italy. I sat in the back seat as before, but now there were two adults up front. This meant that I had a real problem finishing the sticky-bun book, as Mama had a habit of turning round without warning. I hardly dared think what would happen if she saw the little book I had been given by the baker in Dorf.

When we reached northern Italy late that night, I had my own room and could read the sticky-bun book without disruption. I read well into the early hours of dawn, when I fell asleep at last with the book on my lap.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-28