Your Perfect Year(20)
“Oh yes?” His father looked at him expectantly, apparently roused from his lethargy for a moment. Like a light being switched on in a darkened room, his eyes showed genuine awareness.
Jonathan nodded, still delighted that he had come up with a truly interesting story that would allow him a few minutes’ stress-free conversation with his old man.
“So,” he said, “I went on my usual run along the Alster, and when I finished and came back to my bicycle, I found a stranger’s bag hanging on my handlebars.” He paused for effect, blissfully ignorant of the fact that his father was completely unmoved by such dramatic flourishes.
“What was in it?” Wolfgang Grief asked, fidgeting impatiently in his seat like a child in the front row of a Punch-and-Judy show waiting for the puppets to appear.
“A diary,” Jonathan said, dropping his bombshell with relish.
“A diary?” His father looked disappointed; he had clearly anticipated something more exciting. A briefcase full of money, perhaps, or the Golden Fleece. Or a suspiciously ticking package. But Jonathan was nowhere near the conclusion of his story.
“Yes,” he continued undeterred, “a Filofax, already full of entries! Something there for every day of the coming year!”
“Hmm.” Wolfgang Grief hardly seemed on the edge of his seat. “An old Filofax?”
“No,” Jonathan corrected him. “Not an old one from last year, but a new one for this year!”
“So?”
“But, Papa, don’t you find it strange? Someone’s made plans for the whole year, written them down in a diary—and hung it on my handlebars?”
“Someone or other probably lost the bag and a passerby picked it up and thought it belonged on your bike.”
“It’s possible,” Jonathan conceded. “But the burning question is: Who lost the bag containing the Filofax?”
His father shrugged, his face showing exaggerated boredom. “It’s nothing to do with you. Hand it in at the lost-and-found and let that be an end to it. I’m sure you have better things to do than worry about such trivia.” His eyes were now fully clear. Fully clear—and disapproving.
“There was an envelope containing five hundred euros tucked inside the back cover,” Jonathan protested.
“You don’t really need the money.”
“That’s not what I’m saying!” He fought against the growing disappointment, the helpless feeling of being casually dismissed like a silly little boy. He tried telling himself he was only here to exchange a few coherent words with his father, regardless of the subject matter.
But the disappointment was still there. So he continued his efforts to convince Wolfgang Grief of the extraordinariness of the incident. “You see, it’s not as if the bag was simply lying around on the path—it had been hung on my bike. As though someone had put it there on purpose.”
“As I said, it was probably a passerby.”
“But it might not have been.” Jonathan was not going to be brushed aside so easily. “And in any case . . .” He hesitated for a brief moment, uncertain whether it was right to tell his father exactly why the diary had cast such a spell over him. But ultimately, it was the only detail that truly mattered. “In any case, the handwriting looked almost as though Mamma had written it.” He would have preferred to leave out the “almost,” but as he spoke he thought it was probably for the best.
Wolfgang Grief said nothing more. He merely looked at his son, eyebrows raised, face frozen in a grimace of surprise as though he had just suffered a shock. A moment later, he turned his head and resumed staring mutely through the window, gnawing his lower lip as before.
“Papa?”
No reaction.
“Are you listening to me?” He put a hand on his father’s shoulder.
Nothing.
They didn’t talk about Jonathan’s mother. Never had, not for decades. After she left him, Wolfgang Grief had made it abundantly clear by dogged silence that as far as he was concerned, the subject was closed. And after Jonathan’s postcard and the total silence that followed, her name had not passed either man’s lips.
“It’s more than strange,” Jonathan continued helplessly. “I mean, I’m well aware, of course, that it’s only a coincidence, simply someone who happens to have identical handwriting to Mamma’s—but for that to end up on my bike, of all places . . .”
“Sofia.”
Jonathan shuddered as his father softly murmured the forbidden name, still staring expressionlessly out of the window. “Really,” he replied uncertainly. “I was puzzled at first, as you can imagine.”
“Sofia,” Wolfgang Grief repeated. He closed his eyes, sighed deeply, and nibbled more urgently at his lower lip.
“Well, yes. I’ve been wondering whether I should try to find out who the diary belongs to,” Jonathan went on, somewhat confused.
Silence.
“You mentioned the lost-and-found . . . I don’t know; somehow it doesn’t seem right. It’s likely to simply get buried, or the owner won’t think of asking there.”
No reaction.
“I know I’d be delighted if I lost something like that and the finder made the effort to trace me and give it back.”
Silence.
“That’s why I think I should try to find the owner.” Jonathan noted that he was speaking ever more rapidly—a useless monologue that no one was listening to. “I even wrote to the Hamburg News yesterday, to ask whether they could publish a notice, but the ignoramuses there refused point-blank and suggested I could pay for a small ad—can you believe it?” He gave a forced laugh. “‘By Hamburg people for Hamburg people’ indeed! You go to them with a real need and they simply brush you aside. Maybe I’ll contact them again, but this time send my email directly to the editor in ch—”