Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

Not One Day

a fuck. That way of attacking and savaging opposing positions. Things which you recognize all too willingly, but which you don’t apologize for. Your attitude shocks her. She’ll tell you later that she envies your carefree attitude. She tells you about her husband, her lover, her children, her writings. You listen to her, thinking of the reasons she might have for confiding in you what she really wants. Since she must know she won’t convert you to good manners, nor to her piety. You no longer know whether she irritates you or if she moves you in her honest efforts to define and, perhaps without realizing it, justify herself, her life. What kind of recognition is she seeking from you, and why from you? You drink cognac and, sinking in the light numbness it brings on, you feel something like remorse at having treated this woman in such a cavalier manner. You lack, it seems, you have lacked, sensitivity. Her aggression toward you could be merely an (ineffective) form of defense. But against what? She asks you questions, you don’t remember what about, and you respond with all possible cordiality. You start suspecting that, if nothing else, she is trying to seduce you. That desire would be the ultimate or in extremis form of recognition that she probably feels you have refused her. The idea must havemade you smile, because she remarks upon this smile and tells you that she prefers you like

21