Читать книгу The Genius in my Basement - Alexander Masters, Alexander Masters - Страница 16

12

I had a camera once. When I found it wasn’t working, I had a sigh of relief.

Simon

The name ‘Norton’ is a fake. Simon’s paternal grandparents, from Germany, died before he was born – ‘No Nazis involved.’ His paternal grandfather anglicised the name from Neuhofer – i.e. New Towner, usually turned into Newton – then fiddled the result to sound less desperate. The only thing we can say for certain about these people, Simon pronounces sententiously, ‘is that when the surname was being used in Germany, the one place the Neuhofers did not live was in any village called Neuhof’. Then he sits back and stares at me happily, waiting for understanding to dawn.