La Superba by Ilja Pfeijffer

Author:Ilja Pfeijffer [Pfeijffer, Ilja]
Language: swe
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Mystery & Detective, International Mystery & Crime, Biographical
ISBN: 9781941920220
Google: hLrwrQEACAAJ
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
Published: 2016-03-15T04:18:38+00:00

10.

One of my favorite television programs back in my home country used to be called, if I remember correctly, A Place in the Sun. Do you know it? I think what I saw was a Dutch version of a BBC show of which they’d made several foreign rip-offs. It was a simple formula. Over the course of a number of weekly episodes, you followed a number of northern Europeans, usually couples, who had one dream in their life, and that dream was to start over in the balmy south. What they all had in common was that they’d had enough of the mist and drizzle and all that other dreariness and they were actually going to do something about it. They decided to up and set off in search of a house in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, or some other Mediterranean paradise with palm trees and perma-blue skies. A discreet camera crew would be set up there and do nothing other than regularly turn up for months on end to cold-bloodedly register how their quest for light and warmth was coming along and how they slowly but surely were getting lost in their fantasy of a new and better life in the sun.

Naturally it was nearly always about people of a certain age, who after a long and difficult but relatively successful life as company advisor, interior designer, or environmentalist had saved up enough to seriously think about a modest, dilapidated, but oh-so-idyllic farm in the Algarve, on Mykonos, or in Tuscany.

The camera crew was there when, after having driven around the region they wanted to rediscover their lost youth in, they were introduced to a reliable local real estate agent, a respectable man who, unlike all the other men in the area, had the decency to dress in a suit and tie despite the heat, and who, thank God, also appeared to speak reasonably good English. He had, as he said himself, a reputation to maintain, particularly among foreigners, whom he’d always been able to accommodate perfectly because he understood the way they thought and what they wanted. And he told a couple of horror stories about the malpractices of the men who, to his embarrassment, shared the same profession and who, ultimately, were only in it for financial gain, although he was sorry he had to say that. Unfortunately, that was how things worked in Italy, Spain, Portugal, or wherever they were. But at the same time it was such a beautiful country, he stressed. And he congratulated the northern Europeans for having found him. Because he was different. He loved his country. And as they whizzed along in his four-wheel drive to the first idyllic heap of rubble that he’d selected for them to visit with all his knowledge of human nature, they were already sold. In the back seat of the car they congratulated each other in their mother tongue for having had so much luck and having found the right real estate agent. Someone they could trust at least.

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