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David has always remained unmarried. We never talk about it. He never asked about my marriage and afterward never about my divorce; I don’t pester him with questions about his bachelor status. We have enough other things to talk about. He is a reader who single-handedly keeps the bookshop of Zutphen in business, and his tastes are diverse. He praises the débuts of writers I have never heard of, and he also recommends obscure Icelanders and biographies of American generals—the Civil War is one of his specialties. He is constantly begging me to read and reread Turgenev. ‘Turgenev is the greatest. Certainly Chekhov comes close, he can also make you smell the steppes. But Turgenev is the only one with whom you can hear the people talking. It’s almost creepy.’

He is a fervent film buff, and in this area, too, he provides me with valuable tips. How he finds the time to read his way through those piles of books, and meanwhile see all those films, is a mystery to me. He says that he reads a lot when there are no customers. ‘Which happens more and more often because of that bloody Internet.’