Seven of Hearts

… The sticky-bun man shouts
down a magic funnel …

O nly when I awoke late the next morning did it really dawn on me that the old baker I had met in Dorf had been my own grandfather. The shaven girl could be none other than Grandma back home in Norway.

I couldn’t be more convinced. The Joker Game hadn’t said in exact words that the shaven girl was Grandma or that the baker in Dorf was my own grandpa. But there couldn’t have been that many girls in Norway called Line with German boyfriends.

The whole truth still wasn’t known, however. There were a lot of sentences from the Joker Game which Baker Hans had never remembered and had therefore never been told to Albert or anyone else. Would these sentences ever be found so the whole game of solitaire could be completed?

All traces had been lost when the magic island had sunk into the ocean, and it hadn’t been possible to learn any more before Baker Hans had died. It would also be impossible to try to blow life into Frode’s playing cards again to see whether the dwarfs could remember what they had said 150 years ago.

There was only one possibility left; if the Joker was still on earth – then maybe he could still remember the Joker Game.

I knew that I had to get the grown-ups to make a detour through Dorf, even if it was out of the way and Dad’s holiday would soon be over. And it had to be done without showing them the sticky-bun book.

I really just wanted to walk into the little bakery and say to the old baker, ‘I’m back – I’ve returned from the land in the south, and I’ve got my Dad with me. He’s your own son.’

Grandpa was soon the main topic of conversation at breakfast. I decided to wait with my dramatic revelation until towards the end of the meal. I was aware that my credibility was wearing a bit thin after all the things I had let slip from the sticky-bun book already. Well, I’d allow them at least to eat their breakfast in peace.

When Mama went to get her second cup of coffee, I looked deep into Dad’s eyes and said rather emphatically, ‘It was good that we found Mama in Athens, but one card is still missing from the solitaire before it can be resolved completely, and I have found that card.’

Dad glanced worriedly over at Mama; then he looked at me and said, ‘What is the matter now, Hans Thomas?’

I continued to stare into his eyes. ‘Do you remember the baker in Dorf who gave me a fizzy drink and four sticky buns while you sat in the Schöner Waldemar getting drunk on Alpine brandy with the locals?’

He nodded.

‘That baker is your own true father,’ I said.

‘Nonsense!’

He snorted like a tired horse, but I knew he couldn’t just shy away from this.

‘We don’t have to discuss it here and now,’ I said, ‘but you should know that I am one hundred per cent sure.’

Mama returned to the table and sighed in despair when she realised what we were talking about. Dad had reacted in much the same way, but we knew each other a lot better. He must have understood he couldn’t dismiss what I had said until he had investigated the case further. He knew that I was also a joker who could discover things of great significance now and then.

‘And what makes you think that was my father?’ he asked.

I couldn’t tell him it was something I had read in black and white in the sticky-bun book. Instead, I said something I had thought of the night before.

‘Well, first of all, his name was Ludwig,’ I began.

‘That’s a very common name in Switzerland and Germany,’ said Dad.

‘Maybe, but the baker told me he had been in Grimstad during the war.’

‘Is that what he said?’

‘Well, not in Norwegian exactly, but when I told him I came from Arendal, he exclaimed that he had also been in der grimme Stadt. I presumed that he meant Grimstad.’

Dad shook his head.

‘Grimme Stadt? That means ‘that awful town’, or something. He could well have meant Arendal … but there were a lot of German soldiers in the south of Norway, Hans Thomas.’

‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘But only one of them was my grandpa, and that was the baker in Dorf. You know these things.’

In the end Dad phoned Grandma at home in Norway. I don’t know whether this was because of what I had said or simply because he owed his mother a phone call to tell her we had found Mama in Athens. When Grandma didn’t answer, herang Aunt Ingrid, and she told him that Grandma had suddenly taken off on a trip to the Alps.

When I heard this I whistled.

‘The sticky-bun man shouts down a magic funnel, so his voice carried hundreds of miles,’ I said.

The look of astonishment on Dad’s face was so great that it could have held all the mysteries of the world at once.

‘Haven’t you said that before?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘It’s not impossible that the old baker finally realised that he had met his own grandson. Besides, he saw you, too, and blood is thicker than water, Dad. Or possibly he thought, after all these years, that he might try to make a little telephone call to Norway – seeing as he had just had a boy from Arendal in his shop. And if he did that, then it’s not inconceivable that old romance flares up in Dorf just as strongly as in Athens.’

So it came to be that we sped north in the direction of Dorf. Neither Mama nor Dad believed that the old baker was Grandpa, but they knew they would never get any peace if they didn’t go and check it out for themselves.

When we reached Como, we spent the night at the Mini Hotel Baradello like before. The fair had gone – with the fortune-teller and all – but I comforted myself with the fact that I had a room to myself again. Although I was exhausted after all the driving, I decided to read the rest of the sticky-bun book before I fell asleep.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-28