GEORG WAS DRIVING HOME. He left the highway by Aix and took a back road. From Marseille to Aix there are no tolls, from Aix to Pertuis there is a charge of five francs: that’s a pack of Gauloises.

Georg lit one. The trip to Marseille hadn’t panned out. The head of the translation agency that sent him jobs now and then had had no work for him this time. “I said I’d give you a call if anything came up. Things are a bit slow right now.” Monsieur Maurin had assumed an anxious expression-what he had said might in fact be true. It was his agency, but he lived off jobs from the aircraft factory in Toulon, the Industries Aéronautiques Mermoz. When the joint European venture for a new fighter-helicopter in which Mermoz was involved stalled, there was nothing for Monsieur Maurin to translate. Or else he had once again tried to get better terms and Mermoz was teaching him a lesson. Or the factory had made good its long-standing threat and hired its own translators.

The road rose steeply beyond Aix, and the engine stuttered. Georg broke out in a sweat. This was all he needed! He had bought the old Peugeot only three weeks ago-his parents had come to visit him from Heidelberg and given him the money. “I think you really need a car for your job,” his father had said, and dropped two thousand marks in the box on the kitchen counter in which Georg kept his money. “You know Mother and I like to help all we can. But now that I’m retired and your sister has a baby…”

Then came the questions Georg had heard a thousand times: Couldn’t he find himself a better job nearer home? Why had he left his job as a lawyer in Karlsruhe? Couldn’t he come back to Germany now that he’d broken up with Hanne? Was he going to abandon his parents in their old age? There was more to life, after all, than finding oneself. “Do you want your mother to die all alone?” Georg was ashamed, because he was happy enough for the two thousand marks, but didn’t care in the least what his father was saying.