Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

The Combinations

have no control over how the game is played out. You struggle, but the struggle exhausts you. Like a game of chess which goes on to the bitter end, long after the outcome has lost its meaning. Each remaining move a dumb mechanical persistence, shifting the pieces back and forth, black square, white square, in mindless at- trition. A game which ends only to begin again and go on the same way.’ He paused. The scenery outside was dull and uninteresting. Everything seemed to’ve wilt- ed in the heat and turned grey. I turned back to Volta, halfexpectantly. ‘Have I understood your predicament correctly?’ ‘More or less,’ I replied, focusing past his face at the books on the bookshelf behind him. ‘Malraux once said—Être homme, c’est réduire au min- imum, pour chacun, sa part de comédie. ’ I must’ve looked at him stupidly because he said it again, as if I hadn’t heard properly the first time. ‘Who’s Malraux?’ ‘ Was ,’ Volta corrected. ‘He’s been dead for some time. He believed, or so he said, that in our age of cynical reason, the art of secrets belongs to those who recog- nise the world’s irrationality and know, in truth, that science—which we have been taught to believe knows better than we do—is merely an alibi to comfort us in our disillusionment.’ I said nothing. ‘Perhaps what

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