One day Jack is out in front of the store after school when a boy of around twelve comes along, carrying a large bouquet of flowers. He suddenly turns, and goes in. Jack is curious about this, and follows him.
Marie sees the lad, and smiling, says "Hallo Geis."
The boy smiles, but doesn't say anything. He goes over to Siem and, pushing the flowers forward, says "Thank you." and then he walks out again!
Now Jack is really curious.
"Mom, what's that all about?"
"Oh, that's really nice. A couple of years ago that little boy was skating on the canal, and the ice gave way and he fell through. He disappeared underneath the ice and the current was taking him away. But then Dad dove in through the hole and pulled him out.
And every year on that same day he brings us flowers."
Wow. Dad's a hero!
Jack has tried to get Geerhard to join with him in the sugar beet caper again, but Geerhard won't have any part of it. So Jack takes a few on his own, hiding them in the bushes as before. But without anyone to share in this, and not having any use for them, he starts to lose interest. So, reluctantly he stops. Too bad. It was such wicked fun!
Schoolwork per Winnie has proved less than satisfactory, and as the hoped for approval to go to Canada has not come, Jack has been registered at school, as a visitor from Bhutan, since there is no question of passing him off as Victor, here. So he soon goes regularly, and is pleased and surprised that he enjoys the classroom situation, and has little trouble with the work, with the language, or with the teachers.
He finds it unexpectedly gratifying that teachers regard him as a bright student. But his success is credited mostly to the good foundation he got with the monks.
There's a long wide hallway down one side of the school building, with big windows on one side, and classrooms on the other. Between the doors, all along the wall, are large pictures of prehistoric animals. They are arranged in order of development, from the earliest and simplest types, like the Silurian trilobites, to the more advanced, like the modern horse.
Jack studies these very lifelike and detailed pictures for long periods of time, and he gets to know the names of the more interesting ones. Like the brutish Pithecanthropus, an advanced ape or early man.
He feels drawn to them; they seem hauntingly familiar, as if he had seen them before.
And he can't help wondering. If true man came so much later, how do people know? How do we know how hairy they were, and what color? Who was there to see what these beings looked like? Are fossils so detailed and so well preserved?
