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

and she marvelled she had ever taken all the nonsense from her course so seriously. ‘Or…’ she said, getting up. ‘Or the secret of a bookshop is something quite different.’ She shoved Sven off the desk and herded him to the back door.
    â€˜Right,’ Sven said laconically. ‘I can see that.’
    â€˜Listen, I know myself that the shop wasn’t working. But believe me, if it were as simple as you say and that all you had to do to get the cash rolling in was a target group analysis, process optimization and tralala, then any moron with a bookshop would soon be minted.’
    â€˜Thanks for calling me a moron,’ Sven grumbled, half-heartedly resisting being shoved out of the door. ‘Hey, what are you doing?’
    â€˜Go home, Sven. I could be here a while yet. I need more time to work my alchemy. You’ll get out via the backyard.’
    â€˜Alchemy?’ Sven spluttered, aghast. ‘Are you mixing with poets now or…?’
    Valerie was very pleased when the door closed and shut out the noises coming from outside. Thrusting his hands into his coat pockets, Sven trudged off. And Valerie could have sworn that behind her an armadaof books were chuckling softly.
    But she wasn’t happy. Somehow her relationship with Sven was not going in the right direction. Ringelnatz & Co. was to blame, quite clearly. Last year, in February, they’d considered renting a flat together instead of living separately in overpriced apartments. But no more had been said on the matter since Charlotte vanished. And while she watched Sven turn the corner and disappear from view, the image of that mysterious young man came into her head again. How differently he had left the shop. In fact, as Valerie had to admit to herself, he’d never really left it – all too often she thought she could feel his presence, all too often she could hear his voice: ‘I could spend my life here.’
    The lump had returned to her throat and the only way she could be rid of it was to wash it back down with a flood of tears. Valerie looked reproachfully at the books, which maintained an embarrassed silence. Finally she blew her nose, packed one of the folders with letters into the large bag she always carried around with her these days, so she could take a few books to and from home, and left the shop too. As she walked out she glimpsed Grisaille’s nose poking out from behind a ledge on the wall.
    â€˜Oh, it’s you,’ she said, stopping. ‘I didn’t give youanything today… I’m very sorry.’ The rat gave her a curious look. ‘Wait.’ Valerie quickly opened the shop, took a saucer from the cupboard, poured a little milk and placed it on the window sill before locking up again and standing a short distance from the window. Grisaille was not at all afraid of her; the young woman had long been a familiar face and the two of them occasionally talked to each other. Valerie noticed that the creature had become a little rounder. Was that the milk? But surely the rat’s belly was growing a bit too quickly for that.
    â€˜You’re pregnant!’ Valerie exclaimed quietly, observing her little friend with fascination. ‘Of course, it all happens rather quickly with you lot. That’s why you’ve got so round.’
    This sparked a thought in her. She picked a little red book from her bag, a collection of Robert Louis Stevenson’s poems. ‘Do you know this one?’ she asked Grisaille. ‘It’s called
From a Railway Carriage
. Listen!
    Â 
    Faster than fairies, faster than witches
,
    Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
    And charging along like troops in a battle
,
    All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
    All of the sights of the hill and the plain
    Fly as thick as driving rain;
    And ever again, in the wink of an eye
,
    Painted stations whistle by
.
    Â 
    Here is a child who clambers and scrambles
,
    All by himself