Arnon Grunberg

Slowly

Servant

After a reading in a library in the IJburg neighborhood in Amsterdam a middle-aged woman approached me.
“I’m Arthur’s mother,” she said.
“Arthur?”
“Arthur C,” she said.
“Of course,” I answered.
When I was 18 I started a foundation in the hope of producing plays and promoting other cultural activities. Arthur C. became the managing director of that foundation. Slowly he disappeared out of my life. And so did the foundation by the way.
“How is Arthur?” I asked her.
“Well,” she said, “he became a civil servant like his father and he got divorced like his father. He is now together with a woman who’s 15 years older than he is.”

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