Page 416 - Christian Maas Full Book

the train at once to Paris to meet him. Upon arrival, Christian would announce he just wanted to see

him... Nevertheless, as if they truly were under a spell, his friends did not hold any grudge against him;

wasn’t Christian spicing up their lives after all? Thanks to him, they made themselves some memories
worth remembering.

In his favour, we must point out that Christian had to cope with everything by himself. His mother

worked hard to provide for their needs, his father’s debt had been paid, but a worker’s wage in Peugeot
Factories is quite thin. He had to find money, at the age others only had the next party in mind. The way,
for him, wasn’t sprinkled with roses and only his will would allow him to force destiny. His first holidays,

he would finance them with small trades. During summer, he would work to earn money. Moreover, his

mother let him a good measure of freedom quite early in his life, a freedom that his schoolmates would
envy.

At sixteen years old, he was a notable figure in the fashionable cafés of Saint-Etienne. He had a small

circle of friends around him, and all listened with envy his latest adventures. He had plenty of time, his schol-
arship going on without any problems. His high school certificate pocketed, he signed up for university, but
he had his mind elsewhere: England, a country he had known very early, fascinated him. Everything there

was to his liking, the music, the cars, and the girls. His taste for travels brought him to discover the world, but

his denial of all conventions would lead him to do so in an anti-conformist way. In 1968, barely seven-
teen years old, he would go to the North Cape, hitchhiking; he was to cross the entire Europe and then
the United states by the same means at the beginning of the seventies.

However, above all, it would be the discovery of England that would delight and inspire him,

with its share of excess and its nocturnal life. This encounter with England would occur through his
studies; as a student in modern literature and English, he would become teacher assistant in the United
Kingdom.. It wasn’t his first experience of teaching, he had already done substitutions as a French teacher in France.

In 1972, he would even become a foreign resident; year during which he would discover the Bahamas,

Canada, Iceland and the United-States. He would finance his airplanes travels with his small jobs. As
early as 1970, he started to sell jewellery, which he crafted himself and sold on the sidewalks in England
and in Amsterdam. Then he sold abstract paintings, door-to-door, in Sweden.

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