Read Online When I Was Old by Georges Simenon - Free Book Online Page A

husband and wife. Perhaps that will give me an answer.
Sunday, 31 July
    Four journalists, on the day of our arrival here. This comes back to my mind because I am thinking of the news (still the Congo, American elections, de Gaulle–Adenauer, etc.) and of public opinion, of the way it is formed. Or the reverse. I mean that political personalities one speaks of are perhaps locked into their legend, and because of that, obliged to … but that’s too long a story.
    The first journalist was a good all-round reporter (hotels, stations, airports, police stations, clinics, hospitals) with his photographer.
    Two or three questions, the most commonplace. Maigret on vacation. A child? Two here? Names. Ages. Thank you. And the others? Names. Ages. Thank you.
    He will get the names and ages mixed up. Not that it matters. He will caption it ‘Maigret in Venice’.
    ‘Are you writing at the moment?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Do you expect to write a novel about Venice?’
    ‘No.’
    That socks them, in whatever country, in whatever city. So, in order not to hurt their feelings, I explain that I can only use settings where I’ve lived a long time. Several years as a resident, not as a tourist, which is true.
    As my daughter comes in at this moment, the reporter has her pose with me and the photographer asks her to hug me. Very natural!
    Second journalist. Important Milan paper. Fifty to sixty years old. Sophisticated man-of-the-world type. He asked me for an evening meeting. At the appointed hour, he takes a paper from his pocket with typed questions and blanks for answers, like the questionnaires papers send out at vacation time.
    This is no simple reporter. He observes me, with a malicious glint in his eyes.
    ‘Have you been in swimming?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘For how long?’
    ‘A half hour.’
    ‘Do you always go swimming for half an hour?’
    What to say? I say Yes, and he writes Yes, gravely.
    He pauses a moment, slyer than ever.
    ‘Meat or fish?’
    This must mean: ‘Are you a fish or a meat eater?
    ‘Fish.’
    He gloats:
    ‘I was sure of it!’
    And to him it really seems important.
    ‘Work in the morning? At night?’
    ‘Morning.’
    ‘Blood pressure?’
    ‘Medium. 12½–7½.’
    He notes it down, delighted with himself and with me.
    Two or three questions of the same kind which I’ve forgotten and he thanks me and leaves, his duty done.
    The third is from a big Rome daily where, he tells me at once, he only writes for the literary page. An intellectual. A real one. He speaks only Italian and is accompanied by a blonde Viennese of twenty, a painter, who is to act as interpreter. She repeats the question to me in French first, but since I feel that this French is very laboured and approximate, she moves to English.
    I understand enough Italian to realize that she translates only a third of the questions and a quarter of the answers and we, the journalist and I, end by speaking to each other directly in a mixture of three languages.
    He isn’t interested in Maigret. Durrell, Faulkner, Hemingway, Sartre, the younger generation …
    Above all this younger generation which worries him, they suddenly are arriving too fast, like a train that is going to knock down the station.
    He tells me about his concern. He hasn’t come to listen to me, but to have his worries confirmed.
    ‘You are a pessimist, aren’t you?’
    ‘Not at all. I’m a born optimist.’
    ‘Even with things going the way they are?’
    ‘How are they going?’
    ‘Atomic war, crime, population explosion, girls …’
    I play at being contrary, to prove to him that juvenile crime has not increased in the last hundred years, that at fifteen, his ancestors, if they were nobles (they must have been), already had at least one death on their record, since a young man had to prove himself by fighting in a duel.
    He held that the world was in turmoil; he desperately wanted me to paint it black and my optimism only reinforced his feelings, of course.
    ‘But you’re