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

you looking for?’
    â€˜Do you mind if I have a quick look around?’
    Valerie was not sure, but she thought she heard a faint accent in his voice, a tone which sounded foreign and charming. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Please feel at home.’
    â€˜That’s an invitation I don’t have to be offered twice in a bookshop, especially not in one arranged so marvellously as this!’ The young man had the eye of a connoisseur, which ploughed along the rows of shelves, glinting each time it stopped at a particular volume. From time to time his gaze slipped and brushed the young bookseller as if by chance. Valerie pretended unsuccessfully to look as if she had urgent things to do behind his back. There was something about him, something you rarely saw – he radiated a distinguished sophistication. Sven could have taken a leaf out of his book.
    Where are you from? Valerie wondered, with a furtive smile at the strange contradiction of his completely untamed hair and carefully picked elegant wardrobe. His shoes gleamed, his snow-white cuffs protruded exactly a finger’s width from his sleeves, as if he were applying to be a concierge at a grand hotel or accepted in an English club, and yet with his shock of hair, beard and melancholy eyes he looked like a communist revolutionary. Valerie couldn’t help finding him exceedingly interesting. Maybe even more than interesting… To still be standing after the looks she’d been firing at him he must be made of wood or stone.
    It had been the elderly lady’s great talent, which she’d honed and perfected over all the years she’d spent as a bookseller, that she’d possessed an almost magical sense for finding and stocking the right books. The ‘right books’ always meant those that the customers entering her shop really wanted to read. Although it wasn’t always the case that these customers knew this beforehand. On the contrary, they’d often come in just ‘to have a look around’. But then they’d go away with one or several books that would often change their lives.
    Anybody entering Ringelnatz & Co. was subjected to a rigorous examination by the elderly bookseller’s dependable eye. Sometimes a short conversationhelped, sometimes watching how potential customers went along the shelves showed her what would be suited to them. Often a customer would pick the wrong book, upon which the elderly lady would find ways and words to dissuade them, for nothing is more dangerous for people’s reading pleasure and thus for booksellers than the wrong book at the wrong time. With a sure hand she would take out another tome, open it as if at random, appear to read a short passage or two, then look up in astonishment and say, ‘You really ought to see this.’ Or she would assume her legendary mischievous smile and raise a finger, as if urgently needing to disclose a secret, before saying, ‘An excellent choice. But I’m sure you don’t know this book yet!’ And as if by magic she’d whip out a volume tailor-made for the customer, and which would bring them inspiration, insight or simply a great deal of pleasure.
    Valerie, of course, possessed no such bookselling magic. She wouldn’t have known what advice to give – negative or positive – if a customer had asked her. But the young man didn’t ask. Rather he kept browsing the stock in a knowledgeable yet modest way, regularly plucking a book from the shelves, opening it, stroking the pages with his slender fingers(instinctively Valerie checked to see whether he wore a ring, which he didn’t), while a delicate smile appeared on his lips. At one point Valerie glimpsed a critical frown on his brow.
    â€˜Have you been here before?’ she heard herself ask.
    â€˜In your bookshop you mean? No, I’m afraid not. But I could spend my life here.’
    With an embarrassed smile Valerie withdrew. ‘If