What kind of being is an old person?

"He got out of the bus and held on to the handle until his foot carefully touched the asphalt." Since he can no longer rely on his motor skills, a few steps become expeditions.

His vision also changes: "For some time now he has felt that he could not focus his gaze on a single object, but could see beyond things as if they were transparent and lose himself in a colorless distance with his short-sighted eyes." But above all, this creature is socially wary.

Because what it shares with others becomes less and less important.

Now is not his time.

The now is just a layer of time

Or better: the now is not his only time.

It is just a layer, next to and above other sediments of the present once experienced.

Waves of memories come that wash over the acute moment.

This sometimes leads to omissions, digressions, escapades, which this being with world experience is perhaps better not communicating, but treating rather discreetly.

"Moreover, old age was all about advancing and then retreating: venturing into uncharted territory to escape from reality that beset you from all sides, relentlessly and obtrusively."

Claudio Magris is 83 years old, and the heroes of his five stories are around this age.

They mix everyday moments with the omnipresence of personal and collective history.

The focal point is Trieste, the former port city of Austria-Hungary, where Magris was born and where he taught as a professor of German at the university until his retirement.

The Caffè San Marco was his office.

Here he read, wrote, translated, received.

And you can still meet him today in the Viennese Art Nouveau ambience and maybe ask him to sign his big book "Danube", in which he follows the Danube from its source in the Black Forest to the Black Sea.

Claudio Magris discovered an exciting Central Europe along the course of the river and created a region of longing with “Danube – Biography of a River”.

In his new stories, the past that shapes his heroes lies between the First World War, i.e. the collapsing Habsburg Empire, and the Holocaust, which put an end to Jewish life in Europe.

In this historical echo chamber, we encounter biographies from different milieus.

"Who knows where and when the first crack occurred?"

There is the former day laborer from Moravia, son of a blacksmith, who speculated on the stock exchange in Trieste, gradually founded companies and who, after a good life (“presiding over two or three companies and of course marriage with the children and grandchildren belonging to them”) ) sold almost all of his companies in old age.

He was allowed to give up the commands he had to learn in order to be successful, and the obligatory social interaction with boring people has also become increasingly alien to him.

Instead, he goes every morning (incognito) to the porter's lodge in a five-story apartment building that he probably still owns, to have some peace and quiet there.

In his cubbyhole he watches the sun moving over the geraniums, enjoys the ritual greetings of the residents and chats with the postman.