After Sofia

Excerpts:

For a man in his fifties who had been sacked from his job as editor-in-chief two years earlier, he was pleased with the way he had coped with the changes: What surprised him most was the feeling of light heartedness, that and an emptiness reminiscent of regret, but this troubled him less than expected.
He missed the newspaper building, the sounds, the hectic mornings, the certainty of doing a job he was good at, the morning meetings and a couple
of colleagues. Other than that, his circumstances were tolerable. Naturally he had been surprised the first time his dismissal was mentioned.
It had to some extent been expected, but he was surprised nonetheless. In his role as the paper’s modern oracle he was disliked, but his colleagues
needed him. Whenever they were in doubt, they would drop by his office. The young journalists in particular would ask him to read what they were working on. Most of them wrote abominably. He would point out the mix of suppositions and facts, tell them they ought to scrap half of it. He was merciless in pinpointing the lack of detail. This made for daily discussions which could be wearing, but were usually fun. It could have complicated his own work, but he wrote so much, and so quickly, that it was no trouble to him. The responsibilities of the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, which he had not taken too seriously, had actually been covered by Bird. Now Bird had moved to Minneapolis. He had at long last become a trainer for talented young sprinters. He was working at a university, hired as an assistant trainer after a lecture he’d given, and finally had things the way he wanted them.

Translated by Barbara Haveland