Chapter 48 5 of Hearts...Now I have to harden my heart and push until I get the overall victory...
Waking up the next morning, I tried to recall Hans the baker's dying words.It involves a girl whose hair has been shaved.I was thinking about it, but I saw my father rolling on the bed.I know he's ready to get up.
After breakfast, my father took me to meet my mother in the lobby of the hotel.Then Dad would have to go back to the hotel room alone, because Mom insisted on taking me alone to the dim sum shop.We agreed with Dad to meet again in two hours.
As I left the hotel, I gave Dad a small wink, thanking him for finding Mom yesterday.I told him through my eyes that I would try to get Mom to come to her senses and come back to him.
After I sat down at the pastry shop, my mother ordered some food and drink for me, then looked straight at me and said, "Hans Thomas, you are too young to understand the reason why I left you and my son."
I didn't want such an opening statement to disrupt my original plan, so I asked her calmly: "You mean, you know the reason?"
"Well, I don't know exactly..." She was quite frank.
I will not be satisfied with this kind of hesitant answer: "You have no idea why you suddenly packed your bags, left your husband and son, and disappeared without a trace, so that we can't see you except in Greece. A few flirtatious photos that appeared in fashion magazines."
The waiter brought a plate of delicious-looking pastries, a cup of coffee and a bottle of soda, and put them on the table.Mom tried to bribe me with these things, and I wasn't going to be fooled, so I continued, "You mother hasn't even sent a postcard to your son for eight years, and you dare say you don't know why. Then I Now if I say thank you and then walk away, leaving you alone here in a daze, how would you feel?"
Mom took off her sunglasses and started rubbing her eyes.I can't see a single tear.Maybe she's trying to squeeze out a drop or two.
"Hans Thomas, it's not that simple!" Her voice began to tremble, and tears would burst into her eyes at any moment.
"There are three hundred and sixty-five days in a year," I continued. "Eight years are two thousand and nine hundred and twenty days, not counting the 29th day of the second month in the leap year. There are two leap years in these eight years, and two days on the 29th day of the second month. I don't even see my mother." Less than one side. It's as simple as that! I'm pretty good at math."
I made a special mention of the leap year, which was a fatal blow to my mother, because it was my birthday.She couldn't bear it anymore, two lines of tears rolled down her cheeks.
She reached out her hands and held mine tightly.
"Hans Thomas, can you forgive mother?" she asked.
"It depends," I said. "Have you ever wondered how many games of solitaire a boy can play in eight years? I haven't counted, but I imagine it must be a lot. In the end, playing cards became a household substitute. But, Every time I see the card of Hearts, it reminds me of my mother. Isn’t that weird?”
I mentioned the red heart on purpose to see my mother's reaction, but she looked very confused and looked blank. "Heart?" she asked with a trembling voice.
"Yes, red heart. Didn't the dress you wore yesterday have a red heart embroidered on it? What I want to know is, who is this heart beating for?"
"Oh, Hans Thomas!"
Mom was really panicking now.Maybe she thought that she had been away from home for so many years and left her son at home, but the son was crazy about his mother and became incoherent.
"The crux of the matter," I continued, "was that, because the single of the heart was obsessed with ghosts for a while, he ran away from home to find himself, and as a result, we, father and son, were unable to complete this family card game and solve the mystery of it."
The current mother looks pitiful and fragile.
I just went on. "We have a drawer full of jester cards at our house on Hisoy Island. But what's the use? We have to go all over Europe, father and son, looking for a heart."
As soon as I mentioned the clown cards, my mother immediately smiled: "Is your father still collecting clown cards?"
"Hey, he's a buffoon himself," I replied. "I don't think you know this guy. He's a card himself, but he's been too busy lately, trying to save Hearts from a fashion fairytale."
Mom leaned forward and tried to pat my cheek, but I turned away immediately.Now I have to harden my heart and press every step of the way until I have total victory.
"I think I understand what you said about the Red Hearts," Mom said.
"Excellent," I said. "But, don't tell me, you really understand the reason why you ran away from home! The answer to this mystery is in a magical deck of cards two hundred years ago."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"I mean, the deck of cards has long predicted that you will run to Athens to find yourself. All this has something to do with a rare family curse. In the prophecy of the gypsy woman and a bun in the Alpine village, you can Find clues to this matter."
"Hans Thomas, you are fooling me," said the mother.
I pretended to shake my head, turned my neck, looked at the other customers in the pastry shop, then leaned forward and whispered in a low voice: "The truth is, long before my grandfather and grandmother met in Florin, in the Atlantic— On this very special island, a strange thing happened, and you have nothing to do with it. It is not an accident that you went to Athens to find yourself. You were caught by your own reflection attracted there."
"You said, my reflection?"
I took out my pen and wrote my mother's name, Anita, on the napkin.
"Can you pronounce this name backwards?" I asked my mother.
"Atina..." she read aloud. "Oh! Sounds like Athens (Athiarial) in Greek! I never thought of that."
"Of course you wouldn't think of that," I said airily. "There are a lot of things you didn't expect, but those things don't matter now."
"Hans Thomas, what is the most important thing now?"
"The most important thing now is that you pack your bags and go home with us immediately." I replied. "Father and I have been waiting for you to come home. It can be said that we have been waiting for more than two hundred years. Our father and son are beginning to lose patience now."
Just then, Dad walked in from the street outside.
Mom glanced at him, shook her hands, with a very helpless expression on her face.
"How do you discipline this child?" she demanded of her father. "He was full of nonsense, he didn't speak well, and he was playing charades."
"His imagination is too rich." Dad reached for an empty chair and couldn't sit in it.
"Everything else is fine."
Dad's answer is quite appropriate.Dad didn't know which coaxing tactic I used to get Mom to come back to the Arendall house with us.
"I'm not done yet," I said. "I haven't told you yet, after we crossed the border into Switzerland, a mysterious dwarf followed us all the way."
Mom and Dad glanced at each other meaningfully.Pa said, "Let's talk about this later, Hans Thomas."
We got together that day, and in the evening, the husband, wife, mother and son finally realized that our family should never be separated.As a son, I finally awakened my mother's natural motherhood.
When they were in the dim sum shop, mother and father were already hugging each other, and they were as intimate as a couple in first love; after leaving the dim sum shop, the intimacy of the couple was not to mention.Before breaking up at night, the two of them actually kissed passionately in front of my face.I can sympathize with their behavior. After all, the couple has been separated for more than eight years, but occasionally I will turn my face away for politeness.
Long story short, father and son finally got Mom into the little Fiat sedan and drove north, straight home.
Dad might have wondered how Mom could change her mind so easily, but somehow I expected that once we found Mom in Athens, eight years of painful separation would end.However, even I didn't expect that my mother would pack her bags so quickly.Without further ado, she broke up a modeling contract; a serious crime south of the Alps.Dad said, on mother's terms, we were busy in Norway for a few days, and we set off on our way home, driving all the way across the border of Yugoslavia to northern Italy.I sat in the back seat of the car just like when I came from the south, but this time when I was returning north, there were two adults sitting in front.This made it difficult for me to find a chance to finish reading the Bun book, because my mother would pop by from time to time to see what I was doing in the backseat.If I let her see this little book given to me by the baker in the village of Dulf, I really can't imagine how she will react.
We arrived in northern Italy late that night and checked into a hotel.My parents let me live in a room alone.This way I can read to my heart's content without any interruptions.I read until dawn, put the bun book on my lap, and fell asleep.