Arnon Grunberg - Tirza

There is a certain amount of school pride in the man who did everything which is not of frenzied afbeet itself. The pride of someone who would be extremely quiet and continue as if nothing has happened.

'We are not forget what you have done for this company,' said the director. 'It is a hope and it was not always easy, we know that. In short, we of course take another official farewell of you. In due time, you must let us know but how you propose that something perhaps intiems. A candlelight dinner? Or a discount voucher? For now I would just like to say that it was a pleasure to work with you and you go well, Jörgen. Enjoy it! You know…'

He brought his head even closer to that of a ship's steward, as if there is now a secret that came already have a time on his tongue had lit. 'It is perhaps strange to hear from someone who throughout his life has worked with books. But the most beautiful in the world are not the books, the most beautiful in this world are the children. Go to your daughter in France. It will be the small children. Also delicious. Go with them rowing, go with them sailing, go with them water cycling. Children love water.'

In his mouth felt ship's steward a small pit, a grape seed probably. He had at the lunch a container fruit salad eaten. He had to take the pit by.

The director was pronounced.

In Mind recessed door to the ship's steward ran. Since he just turned around and asked: 'De-business, I still transfer to someone?'

The Director made a gesture with his hand. Good temper and boys-like. He went to sit on his desk. 'Forget it," he said, 'rgeet the. Fiction from the east, since we only on. We are going to do things differently here. The time that a book only in the book trade was available is behind us. The petrol station, supermarket, bank, yes even the bank, pharmacy, the waiting room of the doctor, the coffee shop, everywhere we will offer book them on every street corner we will book them utopianism. We must not allow ourselves to be marginalized. That is dangerous for a society, as the vanguard withdraws, if the elite is satisfied with a marginal position. True culture, real culture is the power of the number, nothing else, Jörgen. The power of numbers.' The director lost some saliva, saw a ship's steward, and that was a sign that he was enthusiastic. He was rarely enthusiastic, but if the at high exception occurred, than he lost when the talk of saliva Ship's steward had no choice, he had to remain at the door, because there was still what an encore, on his resignation that no dismissal should be mentioned, a swan song on his disappearance, an improvised farewell song for the writer translated fiction.

'Groups which is said: "Who read never", Jörgen,' said the director, 'we will get them to read. Low educated men. You will see: in a year or five have that the road to the book is found, perhaps not through the book shop, perhaps via the fuel pump, or the video store, or the liquor store or the peep show for my part, but the road to the book will also have their way. Muslims, forget it, everyone says. That is not read. The illiterate are the. Nonsense, I say, but you need to know to reach you, you must deepen in their needs. Orthodox Jews. The same is true. Jehovah's Witnesses who people watch ever wanted tv, Underhill, and if they secretly watching tv, they can also sometimes secretly read a book. Sales is demography. And we are going to give the customer edit demographic, we are going to examine him, we are going to examine it, and then we are going to operate it on size. Public friendly. And size. Also the long-term unemployed, the hooligans. What for the mass media, applies for the publishers. We can only survive if we the customer as an equal partner. If we stop talking about the heads of the customers to regulate forcibly what is good or bad. Everyone can today. Let the customer and the writer each other but complementary. The people also have no more time. Not for the newspaper, not for the book, not for the tv. We have to take that into account. We need to make books for people who do not have time to read. Yes, Jörgen, what awaits us is nothing less than a revolution. Digital of nature, without ideology, or rather an ideology, the only ideology which all of us will survive: The customer is king. The customer is king, Jörgen. Have we forgotten that, because we have isolated, because we have to dismiss this where we were in. You will all agree to follow, I assume, remotely. Disconnect your desk empty and immerse yourself in the Freedom. You are a brave soldier. Others take you now. With new weapons.'

'I have never just rowed across,' said ship's steward still. When closed the door and ran quickly, as he had to the toilet urgently, to his own room. He heard the Director before the laugh at the revolution that all and everything would come, whether or not digital of nature.

He went behind his desk. In addition to the computer was a cup of cold tea. That he drank slowly. He answered a few e-mails, in none of the e-mails he made mention of his departure or of the imminent revolution and when he waited.

He waited until everyone had left the building. He waited motionless, sitting on the chair on which he had been thirty-three years. There was very little has changed in this property. The changes would now. After him.

Ship's steward thought, not to nowhere are future, not at the time that he had spent here, not to his wife, not to his children, just as he thought to Tirza. This is not that they should come to know that nobody should come to know this. This was a shame. And it came to him for that his entire life to this disgrace had redoubled. He heard again the director questions: 'What important author have you discovered really is for us, all the years that you worked here?' He had no answer to that question. He had talents farmed which were died for they had been able to come to fruition, but was that his debt?

When he certainly knew that everyone had left the building, that only the cleaners were still, he stood up and went for the window. He looked at the garden, where he in the summer with a group of veterans are bread and fruit salad opat, and where since short, now the smoking ban also to this company was realized a few employees their cigarette smoke. He stared sensitive to the garden and his look had nothing sentiment eels, he was most surprised that he would never again see garden. That the farewell as quickly and as casually, especially the last. The farewell was ended up in a rush job.

He thought the departure of his wife, that he had not expected. Not the departure itself, since he had taken into account, but that they no longer had come back, that amazed him. If Ibi enTirza went to bed he had minutes long, sometimes up to an hour to sit next to the phone, waiting and hesitant at the same time, predominantly what he would say if they would call. The awareness that they can contact him if she had wanted, that was the violation. Who was it that was remember him clear for the spirit, which he would never forget.

After a few minutes to have been so, he looked at his watch and said soft against himself: 'I need my stuff I must get started.'

Many personal possessions he had not taken to his work. Other than colleagues who did their best to set up the office as a living room, he had his for contemporary concepts generous workspace as sober as possible.

Especially photos of his children he had hung, in all ages. Toddler, infant, a teenager. Some of these pictures were with adhesive tape on the monitor of his computer confirmed. He made them carefully, so as not to damage them. Then he did it in its agenda, so that they would not be creases. On the wall was a postcard which had sent Tirza him when they with school of Rome was traveling. He had let them hang him, although Rome Travel now for a year and a half ago it was because the words ontroerden him. So once a week he turned the card and gently weld the short text which began with the words: "Dear papa'.