Guys Like Me Read online

  “Shit,” Benjamin said, “you certainly wouldn’t win any races!”

  I handed him his bag. He put it down on the sidewalk. I had my camera in my jacket pocket and he was standing in front of a large, more or less green willow, I felt like taking a photo. Really, he said, you want a picture of me? A guy was coming toward us. A tall black guy with headphones over his ears and huge sneakers.

  “Excuse me,” my son said, “could you take a photo of us?”

  The guy shrugged and made a face like an actor when he heard what Ben was saying, without the headphones. We both struck a pose in front of the big willow on that little street in Les Lilas next to the water tower and he said are you ready, is your Dad going to smile? Good, how about another one? He seemed to be having a good time, taking our photo. We said thanks, no worries, he said, and he patted his chest next to his heart, the way people used to do, forty years ago, but it had gone out of fashion in the suburbs and then a few years ago it came back, so there you are. He strode off. We looked at the three photos he’d taken, they aren’t bad, are they, I’ll send them to you.

  “When are you back again?”

  “Next month, Anaïs and I are coming for a few days.”

  “We’ll meet, right?”

  “Can we crash at your place for one night?”

  “Of course you can.”

  I put my camera back in my jacket pocket and he handed me the helmet. I put it away in the little compartment where I also keep a map of the suburbs of Paris. Sometimes, in the evening, I take it up with me and decide on the places I could go and revisit, places I used to go with my mother, with friends, because of girls, and sometimes for no reason at all.

  “I guess she’s waiting for you?”

  He nodded. “Yes, it’s number twenty-three.”

  He pointed to the little building where she lived. It was quite nice, I thought. Well, it wouldn’t be long.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  He seemed to find it hard to leave this time. Earlier, in the café, he’d told me a bit about his life in Zurich. But that wasn’t really it. He put on that look I knew so well and asked me just after we hugged: by the way, how’s Marie? Marie’s a lot better, I told Ben, she’s coming out tomorrow. He gave me a big smile.

  “Say hello to her from us, we’ll see her next month, OK?”

  “Yes.”

  At the intersection by the water tower I turned back towards him and he was still looking at me, he raised his hand. So did I. See you soon! He picked up his bag and turned right onto the little street where his mother lived. It wasn’t bad around here, quiet, very green, just above the Bagnolet basin. I set off again, aiming for the Mercuriale towers at the junction of the A3 in order to get back on the Maréchaux. I’m going to print the photos. I have to call Marco later. I have a lot of things to do. Sometimes life rides along all by itself, there are several million of us like this, I’m riding, Marie’s coming out tomorrow, I could ride for hours. I’m waiting for tomorrow. Well, there it is.

  I CALLED HIM NECKTIE BY MILENA MICHIKO FLAŠAR

  Twenty-year-old Taguchi Hiro has spent the last two years of his life living as a hikikomori—a shut-in who never leaves his room and has no human interaction—in his parents’ home in Tokyo. As Hiro tentatively decides to reenter the world, he spends his days observing life from a park bench. Gradually he makes friends with Ohara Tetsu, a salaryman who has lost his job. The two discover in their sadness a common bond. This beautiful novel is moving, unforgettable, and full of surprises.

  http://newvesselpress.com/books/called-necktie/

  WHO IS MARTHA? BY MARJANA GAPONENKO

  In this rollicking novel, 96-year-old ornithologist Luka Levadski foregoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and savoring music in a gilded concert hall. Levadski was born in 1914, the same year that Martha—the last of the now-extinct passenger pigeons—died. Levadski himself has an acute sense of being the last of a species. This gloriously written tale mixes piquant wit with lofty musings about life, friendship, aging and death.

  http://newvesselpress.com/books/martha/

  ALL BACKS WERE TURNED BY MAREK HLASKO

  Two desperate friends—on the edge of the law—travel to the southern Israeli city of Eilat to find work. There, Dov Ben Dov, the hand-some native Israeli with a reputation for causing trouble, and Israel, his sidekick, stay with Ben Dov’s younger brother, Little Dov, who has enough trouble of his own. Local toughs are encroaching on Little Dov’s business, and he enlists his older brother to drive them away. It doesn’t help that a beautiful German widow is rooming next door. A story of passion, deception, violence, and betrayal, conveyed in hardboiled prose reminiscent of Hammett and Chandler.

  http://newvesselpress.com/books/backs-turned/

  KILLING AUNTIE BY ANDRZEJ BURSA

  A university student named Jurek finds himself with nothing to do. After his doting aunt asks the young man to perform a small chore, he decides to kill her for no good reason. This short comedic masterpiece combines elements of Dostoevsky, Sartre, Kafka and Heller to produce an unforgettable tale of murder and—just maybe—redemption.

  http://newvesselpress.com/books/killing-auntie/

  ALEXANDRIAN SUMMER BY YITZHAK GORMEZANO GOREN

  This is the story of two Jewish families living their frenzied last days in the doomed cosmo-politan social whirl of Alexandria just before fleeing Egypt for Israel in 1951. The conventions of the Egyptian upper-middle class are laid bare in this dazzling novel, which exposes sexual hypocrisies and portrays a vanished polyglot world of horse-racing, seaside promenades and nightclubs.

  http://newvesselpress.com/books/alexandrian-summer/

  COCAINE BY PITIGRILLI

  Paris in the 1920s – dizzy and decadent. Where a young man can make a fortune with his wits … unless he is led into temptation. Cocaine’s dandified hero Tito Arnaudi invents lurid scandals and gruesome deaths, and sells these stories to the newspapers. But his own life becomes even more outrageous when he acquires three demanding mistresses. Elegant, witty and wicked, Pitigrilli’s classic novel was first published in Italian in 1921 and retains its venom even today.

  http://newvesselpress.com/books/cocaine/

  SOME DAY BY SHEMI ZARHIN

  On the shores of Israel’s Sea of Galilee lies the city of Tiberias, a place bursting with sexuality and longing for love. The air is saturated with smells of cooking and passion. Some Day is a gripping family saga, a sensual and emotional feast that plays out over decades. This is an enchanting tale about tragic fates that disrupt families and break our hearts. Zarhin’s hypnotic writing renders a painfully delicious vision of individual lives behind Israel’s larger national story.

  http://newvesselpress.com/books/some-day/

  THE MISSING YEAR OF JUAN SALVATIERRA BY PEDRO MAIRAL

  At the age of nine, Juan Salvatierra became mute following a horse riding accident. At twenty, he began secretly painting a series of canvases on which he detailed six decades of life in his village on Argentina’s frontier with Uruguay. After his death, his sons return to deal with their inheritance: a shed packed with rolls over two miles long. But an essential roll is missing. A search ensues that illuminates links between art and life, with past family secrets casting their shadows on the present.

  http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-missing-year-of-juan-salvatierra/

  THE GOOD LIFE ELSEWHERE BY VLADIMIR LORCHENKOV

  The very funny - and very sad - story of a group of villagers and their tragicomic efforts to emigrate from Europe’s most impoverished nation to Italy for work. An Orthodox priest is deserted by his wife for an art-dealing atheist; a mechanic redesigns his tractor for travel by air and sea; and thousands of villagers take to the road on a modern-day religious crusade to make it to the Italian Promised Land. A country where 25 percent of its population works abroad, remit
tances make up nearly 40 percent of GDP, and alcohol consumption per capita is the world’s highest - Moldova surely has its problems. But, as Lorchenkov vividly shows, it’s also a country whose residents don’t give up easily.

  http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-good-life-elsewhere/

  KILLING THE SECOND DOG BY MAREK HLASKO

  Two down-and-out Polish con men living in Israel in the 1950s scam an American widow visiting the country. Robert, who masterminds the scheme, and Jacob, who acts it out, are tough, desperate men, exiled from their native land and adrift in the hot, nasty underworld of Tel Aviv. Robert arranges for Jacob to run into the widow who has enough trouble with her young son to keep her occupied all day. What follows is a story of romance, deception, cruelty and shame. Hlasko’s writing combines brutal realism with smoky, hardboiled dialogue, in a bleak world where violence is the norm and love is often only an act.

  http://newvesselpress.com/books/killing-the-second-dog/

  FANNY VON ARNSTEIN: DAUGHTER OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT BY HILDE SPIEL

  In 1776 Fanny von Arnstein, the daughter of the Jewish master of the royal mint in Berlin, came to Vienna as an 18-year-old bride. She married a financier to the Austro-Hungarian imperial court, and hosted an ever more splendid salon which attracted luminaries of the day. Spiel’s elegantly written and carefully researched biography provides a vivid portrait of a passionate woman who advocated for the rights of Jews, and illuminates a central era in European cultural and social history.

  http://newvesselpress.com/books/fanny-von-arnstein-daughter-of-the-enlightenment/

  New Vessel Press

  To purchase these titles and for more information please visit newvesselpress.com.