Andreu Jose Miguel - Love and Death in saving Europe

A novel

Rita Dulci Rahman & Jose Miguel Andreu

LM Essential Publishers

To our grandchildren: Kaj, Leonardo, Fae, and Federico.

With all our love and hope for their good future.

No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission from the authors and publisher.

Contact: info@leonon.nl

Book can be purchased as a printed book, eBook and streaming book in all (Web)Bookshops, Amazon.com, Bol.com, Yindo and KOBO

This novel was born out of our concern over the future of Europe. It is a fictitious and humorous love-and-life story with a perspective of solving the current European crisis.

Needless to say that none of the characters, or the circumstances or events in the book have anything to do with reality or with current politicians and governing functionaries in Europe.

Any conceived resemblance by readers is based on coincidence. The book is meant to entertain while it may contribute to fresh thinking on long-term success for the European project, creating a better future for current youngsters and generations to come.

I have told you a thousand times that when someone calls and Im in the bathroom, you have to say that Im in a top meeting and cannot be disturbed.

Jacques Perrier, President of France, upset for the disturbance and nervous from having to rush out of the bathroom, was hardly in control of the telephone through which he screamed at his middle-aged secretary on the other end of the line. Meanwhile his eyes caught the digital clock at his desk showing 11.06 hours.

It happened on a chilly morning in October, and none of the involved could have then imagined that this telephone call would be the beginning of the end of the career of the President, and of his, in those days, rather frequent happiness.

But sir, the Chancellor of Germany is on the line and it is very urgent. She needs to speak to you now. Please, may I put you through?

Ok, go ahead, but from now on, be attentive.

So, to put things in the right order, before the call from Berlin came in turning Jacques Perriers life upside down, the man had first been observing from the windows of his office, that in only minutes, everything around the Palace LElysee was disappearing under a white blanket while he could hear frosty drops falling softly from the roofs. What struck him most about the scenery was the deep silence of the normally bustling streets, as if Paris itself had stopped breathing. With the image of his city wrapped in silence, he had gone to the bathroom for even more mindful reflections, when suddenly the phone rang.

He sharply remembered his first encounter with Marlein Ditch, the German Chancellor. Although the persistent rumours about her moodiness and sudden, angry outbursts facing aides and colleagues alike, had reached him long before his election as President de la Republique, at their first meeting her looklips pressed together, no lipstick, grey suit, no jewellery other than a tiny golden cross on a fine chain, and a somewhat manly handshakehad confirmed his provisional reference to her: a German spinster coming in from the cold.

Dear friend, my dearest Jacques, sorry for disturbing you, but I had to, it is urgent. Things are really running out of control. You will not believe what I am going to tell you now. I have just been informed by my Ambassador in Rome that the PIGS have initiated a move to create a political federation of four countries inside the Euro zone. It is our friend from Spain, who, unable to run his own ransacked federated country, has convinced our Italian colleague, another dud, to jointly create a new state of 120-million people, just transforming themselves and the other two neighbouring losers into the biggest country of the EU. Unbelievable! I am furious with this Mafiosi way to put pressure on us. We need to stop this immediately.

Holy Christ, Marlein, first the EU generously helped the Spaniards to develop their country over the past twenty years, and now, out of thanks, our foolish colleague is taking advantage by pulling failing powers to his side. It is a bitter joke that those with todays weakest economies, those who perhaps should not have been admitted to enter in the Euro zone, want to steal us the show and put us in minority. Frankly speaking, I am fed up with this Machiavelli believing he could force us to either abandon the Euro or to fall in his presumed leading strings. What a group of crippled countries! We should have ignored them from the very beginning. You can never trust beggars.

By now also Jacques Perrier was furious and, without in any way wishing to be diplomatic, both leaders used strong language to clear their minds bogs, but to be fair to the reader one has to know that the thinking of Perrier in the bathroom, just before the phone rang, although similarly upsetting, had little to do with the Euro crisis and attempted economic shortcuts.

No, until the call from Berlin came in, the thoughts of Perrier in the intimacy of the small room with its colourful tiles and the unmistaken scent of bitter almonds had been of a totally different nature. Lingering on a breathless, quiet Paris, Perrier moved his reflections to the death of his father four months ago and the deep sorrow and emptiness it had left inside him.

As Jacques Perrier had always been a very nervous man, these were feelings he was unable to cope with, but slowly he was learning to control them during the day, sometimes even in the bathroom.

Gone was the man whom he had been meeting so discreetly when both knew that the end was near. In those days, the palliative treatment for lung cancer had made his father serene in facing his last curtain. It was of no use to challenge old Perrier with anything other than fate since he used to refer to almost all subjects as for God to decide. This caused Jacques to become overwhelmed by the burden of disillusion, as he could no longer demonstrate his extended knowledge of modern political life or on the economic future of Europe in the wake of emerging Asia, issues that for years had been the flavour in routine, catch-up meetings between Jacques Perrier and his father, the late Perrier Sr. from Bayonne.

After the funeral Jacques deeply suffered from sombre moods and many nights he left his tears run freely in his pillow while feeling regretful, also for the fact that not even his extraordinary electoral victory for the presidency of France made it possible to prolong the passing away of his father.

Jacques Perrier Jr. admired his father most for having worked his entire life to maintain and upgrade his family despite his little education. So much so, that by the time Jacques Jr. was a teenager, the family no longer suffered from the stigma of refugee carried by Perrier Sr. from the moment he had fled the Franco regime in Spain at the age of twenty. Thereafter, Perrier Sr. had managed, with little more than the clothes he was wearing, to illegally cross the border and in few weeks to start a Brazilian coffee grinding and retail company in Bayonne.