Reunion

J'avais commencé ce roman de Fred Uhlman il y a plus de deux semaines mais mon déménagement m'a beaucoup occupé et j'ai très peu lu pendant ce laps de temps. Je viens de profiter d'une journée de repos pour terminer ce court roman de moins de cent-vingt pages.

Le résumé m'avait tout de suite séduit et en temps normal j'aurais certainement dévoré ce roman en moins de deux jours :

On a grey afternoon in 1932, a Stuttgart classroom is stirred by the arrival of a newcomer. Middle-class Hans is intrigued by the aristocratic new boy, Konradin, and before long they become best friends. It's a friendship of the greatest kind, of shared interests and long conversations, of hikes in the German hills and growing up together. But the boys live in a changing Germany. Powerful, delicate and daring, Reunion is a story of the fragility, and strength, of the bonds between friends.

I can't remember exactly when I decided that Konradin had to be my friend, but that one day he would be my friend I didn't doubt. Until his arrival I had been without a friend. There wasn't one boy in my class who I believed could live up to my romantic ideal of friendship, not one whom I really admired, for whom I would have been willing to die and who could have understood my demand for complete trust, loyalty and self- sacrifice.

From outside our magic circle came rumours of political unrest, but the storm-centre was far away – in Berlin, whence clashes were reported between Nazis and Communists. Stuttgart seemed to be as quiet and reasonable as ever. It is true that there were occasional minor incidents – swastikas appeared on walls, a Jewish citizen was molested, a few Communists were beaten up – but life in general went on as usual.

There seemed to be nothing to worry about. Politics were the business of grown-up people; we had our own problems to solve. And of these we thought the most urgent was to learn how to make the best use of life, quite apart from discovering what purpose, if any, life had and what the human condition would be in this frightening and immeasurable cosmos. These were questions of real and eternal significance, far more important to us than the existence of such ephemeral and ridiculous figures as Hitler and Mussolini.