Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

Louis Armand

archway that opened onto the street. The whole epi- sode struck me as slightly unreal. Whatever misgivings I might’ve had, I put from my mind, and late that same af- ternoon I moved my few belongings into Hájek’s apart- ment. I thought of the two women who’d committed suicide there. And what the caretaker had said about Hájek, that he was a lonely man . I wondered what ex- actly she meant by that, or if it wasn’t just the doting of an old disappointed woman. I sat in the apartment with the lights out, hunched in the gloom, not really knowing what I was doing there. The apartment, with its queerly vaulted ceilings, possessed a definite eeri- ness—had I been more prone to romantic imaginings, I might’ve said it possessed the air of a parlour after a séance—the uneven yellowed plaster on walls marked from where the bookshelves had been removed—the exposed wiring where light fixtures had been tak- en down—the parquet, scratched and stained. Unan- swered questions hung in the air like spirits, hesitant, unable yet to depart, wishing only to materialise. What my reasons were for being there, I couldn’t say. Those spirits seemed to be asking me: Who is it that questions us? What really is it that wants the truth? Which of us is Oedipus? Which the Sphinx? After I’d gone through the place, putting my own things in order and sweeping up, I sat down on a packing crate that’d been left behind and pondered what I pro- posed to do. Try as I might, the aura of unanswered

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