Paris Is Always a Good Idea Read Online Free PDF Page B

with a book on one of the two sofas in the adjoining library with its big fireplace, where thousands of books in the ceiling-high shelving contributed to the homey atmosphere.
    As he grew older, his interest in contemporary literature had declined. He preferred reading the classics that had captured his imagination as a young man and, if you looked closely, were beyond comparison with what were hyped up as “literary sensations” by today’s publishing houses. Who nowadays could write like a Hemingway, a Victor Hugo, a García Márquez, Sartre, Camus, or Elsa Morante? Who nowadays had anything really important to say? Something of lasting value? Life was becoming ever more space consuming, faster and shallower—and books seemed to be doing the same. It was worst of all in the case of novels. For his taste there were too many of them anyway. The market was congested with banalities. Nowadays anyone who had any kind of knowledge of the French language felt they had to write, he thought grumpily. It was too much and at the same time not enough. The eternal return of the same old thing.
    Max stared tetchily at the phone on his desk, which was still ringing shrilly. “Oh, shut up, Montsignac,” he said with a growl.
    Perhaps it was also something about him. Perhaps he had simply gotten tired of continually experiencing the new, and therefore he returned to what was tried and trusted. Perhaps he really was on the way to becoming a grumpy old man, as his housekeeper, Marie-Hélène Bonnier, had accused him of being the previous week after he first complained about the weather, then about a neighbor’s garrulousness, and then about the food.
    So what!
    His back had been causing him trouble again recently. That didn’t help his mood much, either. Max sighed as he tried to find as comfortable a position as possible in his writing chair. He shouldn’t have tried to move that heavy beech-wood tub in the garden—a fatal error! It was enough to make you sick. You had to watch out all the time that you didn’t get a chill or pull some muscle or other. Your old friends and acquaintances all had their little quirks, which got ever more difficult to put up with. Or they simply died, and the loneliness and the feeling that someday you’d be the last to survive grew ever greater.
    It was really boring. Whoever invented the idea of a golden old age must have been a complete idiot or a cynic. It just wasn’t easy to get old and remain likeable. Especially on bad days.
    The telephone went quiet, and Max twisted his face into a triumphant grin. I’ve won!
    He looked out, his gaze resting for a moment on the hydrangea bushes that stood in front of an old stone wall in the rear part of the garden. A squirrel emerged from hiding, scuttled over the lawn and disappeared between the rosebushes. Hydrangeas and roses had been his wife’s favorite flowers; she herself had the name of a flower. Marguerite had been a passionate gardener.
    He examined the photograph on his desk: it showed a woman with bright, friendly eyes and a delicate smile.
    He missed her. Still. They had met quite late in life, and the calm, level-headed cheerfulness with which Marguerite dealt with things in life—and that had lasted until the very end—had been good for him, restless spirit that he was.
    He bent over his handwritten notes once more and then banged out a few sentences on the keyboard of his computer. Now that was a fabulous invention. Not everything that was new was bad, not at all. How simple writing had become these days. How easily you could alter things without leaving any trace. In the newspaper office in the old days they had all written on rattling typewriters whose letters kept getting hooked up on each other. With carbon paper. It hadn’t been possible to print things out as often as you wanted and there was no simple way of copying them. And if you’d made a mistake, correcting it