A Very Bold Leap Read Online Free PDF

feeling somewhat apprehensive. “What does he want to say to me?” he wondered. “I’ll bet he’s going to put me to sleep with a sermon about Céline, about the difference between sex and love.”
    After a long preamble about traffic holdups, delivered in a distracted, preoccupied way that reinforced Charles’s fears, Fernand emptied his glass inone swallow, struggled with an irruption of gas for a few seconds (a brief skirmish that was settled in the hollow of his fist), smiled at Charles, stretched his legs, leaned back slightly in his chair, folded his massive hands on the table, and sighed.
    “I owe you an apology, my boy.”
    “An apology?” said Charles, surprised.
    “Yes, an apology. I misjudged you.”
    “In what way?”
    “About your… choice of work. I mean… this idea of yours to write books.”
    Charles gave a small, ironic smile.
    “The other night,” Fernand continued, “I got a phone call from Parfait. We talked for about an hour. I think it was the longest phone call I’ve ever had in my life. You know how much I hate talking on the telephone. Anyway, he told me a few things I didn’t know.”
    “Like what?”
    “Well, you’re going to laugh at me because you probably know them already. But I always thought that books were written by people who were starving to death, you know, the kind of people who lived on welfare and wrote books as a pastime so they didn’t have to go looking for real jobs. In other words, it was a shameful occupation for a man who had any self-respect. But Parfait showed me that the very opposite was the case.”
    “How did he do that?”
    “Well, it was easy, really. He gave me the names of people who had made a lot of money, who even became very rich, by writing novels. There’s this Michenon guy, for example …”
    “Michenon?”
    “Yes, Michenon. You’ve never heard of him?” Fernand asked dubiously.
    Charles thought for a moment. “I wonder if he meant Simenon.”
    “Simenon, that was it! I was getting his name mixed up with another writer, an American — Michener, that’s who it was, James Michener, the guy who cranks out books as thick as Kleenex boxes that everyone snaps up and they make films out of…”
    “Yes, that’s the one,” said Charles, “although I’ve never read him myself.”
    “And then there’s that other American, I think his name is King or something …”
    “Stephen King, probably.”
    “That’s it. And there were others, French, English, even German, but I can’t remember all their names. As you know, literature has never been my strong point. I’m not proud of it, but what can we do, we all come into the world with the brains the Good Lord gave us, and we do the best we can with what we’ve got. I’ve never seen much point in reading novels and that kind of thing. But that has nothing to do with what I wanted to tell you. What I want to say is …”
    He hesitated, looking for the right words.
    “What I want to say, Charles, is that I used to think that your idea of writing books was a bit like — and I don’t mean to upset you here, the last thing I want is to cause you any sorrow — but I thought it was a bit like your idea of selling drugs. But I’ve changed my mind on that,” he added quickly, seeing that Charles’s face was turning red with indignation. “I mean a complete hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. I don’t think anything like that anymore, I give you my word of honour. And it’s all because of Parfait. He opened my eyes, made me less stupid, if you like, or in any case gave me a new perspective, as they say at those fancy meetings.”
    The smile on Charles’s face had turned slightly sour.
    “Surely Parfait must have gone on to tell you that you can count on the fingers of one hand the people who make a lot of money from writing books. They’re the exceptions, practically miracles. Did he not?”
    Fernand looked at Charles for several seconds, at a loss for words, his conviction visibly