The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny by Jostein Gaarder

Author:Jostein Gaarder [Gaarder, Jostein]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 042515999X
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Published: 1997-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

QUEEN OF CLUBS

… could at least have

signed the masterpiece before He

took off …

The first thing Dad did when we drove on land in the Peloponnese was buy an issue of the woman’s magazine his aunt had bought in Crete.

We sat down at an outdoor restaurant in the busy port and ordered breakfast. While we waited for the coffee and juice and the dry bread with a dab of watered-down jam, Dad started to flick through the magazine.

‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ he suddenly exclaimed.

He turned the magazine towards me and showed me a whole page spread of Mama. She was not quite as skimpily dressed as the ladies in the pack of cards Dad had bought in Verona, but she wasn’t far from it. Her flimsy attire could at least be excused here – it was obvious she was advertising swimwear.

‘Maybe we’ll meet her in Athens,’ Dad said. ‘But it won’t be easy to get her home.’

Something was written at the bottom of the page, but it was in Greek, and even Dad had certain language difficulties there. It wasn’t only the meaning of the words which was a problem; Greece still hadn’t bothered to change to the Roman alphabet.

Breakfast was put on the table, but Dad did not even lift his coffee cup. Taking the magazine with him, he started to ask people sitting at nearby tables if they understood English or German. He eventually struck lucky with some teenagers. Dad then unfolded the picture of Mama and asked them to translate what was written in the small print. The teenagers glanced over at me. The whole business was totally embarrassing. I just hoped Dad wouldn’t start arguing about the theft of Norwegian women or anything like that.

When Dad returned, he had written down the name of an advertising agency in Athens.

‘We’re getting warm,’ he said.

Of course, there were pictures of lots of other women in the magazine as well, but Dad was interested only in the picture of Mama. He carefully tore it out and threw the rest of the magazine in a waste paper basket – in much the same way as he would chuck a brand-new pack of cards after nabbing the joker.

The fastest route to Athens went south of the Bay of Corinth and across the famous Corinth Canal. However, Dad had never been one to take the fastest route if there was an interesting detour to be made.

The truth was, he wanted to ask the Delphic Oracle something. That meant we had to cross the Bay of Corinth by ferry and then drive through Delphi on the north side of the bay.

The ferry trip took no longer than half an hour. When we had driven twenty miles or so, we came to a little town called Naupaktos. We stopped there and drank coffee and a fizzy drink in a square with a view over a Venetian fortress.

Of course, I thought about what would happen when we met Mama in Athens, but I was just as interested in everything I had read in the sticky-bun book.

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