A Very Special Year by Thomas Montasser Read Free Book Online Page A

believe this,’ she said by way of a greeting, handing Valerie the usual bundle of bills, flyers and a trade journal that Valerie had never even glanced at. But right at the top was a postcard. An idyllic scene with a sea view that invited envy. At the top was written ‘Porto’.
    Curious, Valerie turned over the card and read:
    Â 
    Dear Valerie
,
    I hope all’s well with you. Please
    don’t be worried about me! Bye bye!
    Charlotte
    It seemed to Valerie as if she were looking straight through these barren lines at Grisaille’s mysterious little rat smile.
    The card from Portugal remained the only sign of life from the old woman. Days, weeks and months passed, but the postwoman never arrived again with anything similar. Instead Valerie felt herself being dragged more deeply into an existence that was quite alien to her. She wasn’t a bookseller, she wasn’t the old lady from Ringelnatz & Co. She wasn’t even a big reader, not at all. And yet these days she kept catching herself, as if by coincidence, with books in her hands, immersed in stories and poems. She sorted, analysed, did the accounts, she drank the elderly bookseller’s tea, sat in her armchair, pored over her business documents. And she chatted to rats. While Aunt Charlotte was drifting heaven knew where, Valerie was gradually taking her place. And she was alarmed to note that she felt increasingly comfortable doing so.

SEVEN
    A nybody who imagines there are no surprises to be had in a bookshop is quite mistaken. It is true that bookselling might be regarded as predictable and even a little boring from an entrepreneurial perspective. But not everything is foreseeable. No, however rare it is, the unexpected inevitably comes into play: the customer.
    When the bell rang, which had hung over the door from the time the shop was founded, Valerie’s initial reaction was to look at her mobile. Not that her ringtone sounded remotely similar. But if anything happened these days, it usually happened via a digital link to the outside world. She’d just been staring at a list which her aunt had entitled, surprisingly, ‘Outstanding Items’, butwhich contained nothing of the sort that a business graduate might consider to be ‘outstanding items’ – much more a sort of incoherent to-do list, which also included a few details of books still in storage, though Valerie hadn’t looked at it that closely yet.
    The young man stood quite unexpectedly in the doorway, favourably lit by the mild glow of an early summer evening. ‘Are you still open?’ he asked diffidently.
    â€˜Are we still open?’ Valerie repeated, slightly confused. In fact she’d arranged to meet a couple of friends at the cinema and ought to have left long ago. ‘Actually we’re not,’ she said hesitantly. The film was starting in half an hour, and these friends had already been teasing her for never being around any more.
    â€˜Oh, I’m very sorry to have disturbed you then,’ the young man mumbled, turning to go.
    On the other hand, the shop’s sums were not so great that she could afford not to give them a boost using every means at her disposal.
    â€˜But we’ll happily make an exception for you,’ exclaimed Valerie, who really couldn’t justify losing a potential sale. She rushed around the desk and down the steps to the shop floor. Why do I keep saying ‘we’, she wondered? Is there anybody else here responsible for this shop? Thousands of books stared at her andValerie looked at the floor, inwardly ashamed. Outwardly, she smiled at the customer, who was wearing an elegant, if somewhat old-fashioned between-seasons coat, from the pocket of which the headlines of the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
poked out nosily; a rather creased shirt, with spectacles in the breast pocket; and Italian shoes, which may no longer have been brand new, but were well looked after. ‘What are