A Very Special Year Read Online Free PDF Page A

degrees. But most importantly, she was far from the point of absolute chaos. Of course, Sven would have seen it differently. Which, indeed, he did when that day, or more precisely that evening after work – which for trainee management consultants means some time comfortably after nine o’clock – he knocked on the shop window and waited for Valerie to let him out of the biting cold and into the warmth.
    â€˜Should I be worried?’ Sven asked, taking off hiscoat and throwing it into a corner. ‘You’re working longer hours than me.’
    â€˜No idea. I mean, you should always look at things from the end point. But, to be honest, I can’t see an end,’ Valerie sighed, rubbing her eyes. Had she actually eaten anything today? She couldn’t remember. Probably not since breakfast, and that had been a white coffee and a bowl of muesli. No surprise, then, that she felt giddy.
    â€˜Sit down, I shan’t be much longer.’
    â€˜OK.’ Sven sank into the armchair and leaned his head back. He took out his smartphone to check emails and scroll through the news. ‘Shit,’ he cursed. ‘No juice. Have you…?’ But then he remembered that Valerie had a different phone and he couldn’t charge his with her adaptor. As for the elderly bookseller, it wasn’t even worth asking; she’d been way behind the times. He put his smartphone on the small table where a pile of books stood, and studied the spines of the diverse volumes.
    â€˜The
Kamasutra
?’ he said finally with a mixture of amusement and approval. ‘Don’t tell me your aunt sold erotic literature here too.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜There’s a
Kamasutra
here between Schiller and Schnitzler.’
    â€˜Oh yes, right.’ Valerie looked up from her list. ‘She had a system and I’m in the process of sifting out the most important books from it. That’s my first result.’
    But Sven wasn’t really listening. He’d slid out the book and started studying it. Perhaps Valerie had carried on talking, but if so he wasn’t aware of it. The truth is that literature can grab hold of us and capture our entire attention. It can transport us to other worlds, free us from our everyday cares. We can lose ourselves in literature. Even terribly prosaic individuals are receptive to this, providing it’s the right book. Which was clearly the case with Sven and the
Kamasutra
. Valerie had just switched off the desk lamp and packed up her bag when her boyfriend laughed out loud. ‘You’ve got to see this!’ he giggled.
    Now it was Valerie’s turn to lean her head back. ‘What?’
    â€˜They were quite weird, those ancient Indians.’
    â€˜There are ancient Egyptians and ancient Romans. I’ve also heard of ancient Persians, but ancient Indians? I think they’re still the same people…’
    â€˜So what, look at this!’ he said, resting the book on his lap. The colour in his face indicated that he was nowhere near as exhausted as Valerie. She stood next to him and bent over.
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜That’s impossible in real life,’ Sven laughed. ‘Just a completely weird sex fantasy.’
    â€˜Well, as far as I know this is a scientific book of sorts. I presume that everything in there
is
possible.’ She took a closer look. ‘Having said that…’
    Perhaps it was the slight dizziness that had taken hold of her, perhaps the vague awareness that Sven was breathing more rapidly. Perhaps it was the dim glow from this one reading lamp that bathed the entire shop in a very modest light. Anyway, Valerie perched on the soft arm of the chair, leaned back on her Sven, grabbed the book, leafed through a couple of pages, muttered, ‘We really ought to try that out sometime,’ felt her breathing getting faster too, turned off the light, put the book down and her hand back to where it had just been