Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

Anne F. Garréta

this, that she’s happy she had the idea of inviting you for a drink. Otherwise, she would never have seen your other side. The one that smiles. This makes you smile even more. Here we go. We’re floating together in the warm bath of self revelations and secrets disclosed in the fiction of hidden faces. A good medium for the quickening of desire. While finishing your cognac, while the liquid burns dimly in your mouth and throat, you wonder if you could want her. You probe your soul in search of desire. It suffices— you have often noticed—to look in order to find. And can we, in good conscience, refuse to recognize the consciousness of another? That or insomnia. Another cognac should be enough to render you positively charming. Attentive. A touching gentleness contrasting with your former fierceness. When you two get up and leave the bar, the cordiality between you has reached an improbable peak. Your duplicity is perfect: if you plumb your soul, and you don’t stop doing so, you perceive two currents crossing your consciousness (as grotesque German metaphysics would have it). One, pleasant and gentle, has all the warmth instilled by alcohol and the comfort of the bar: a pretty trickle of sincere and ironic benevolence. The other, icy, considers the situation with a merciless eye: here you are in a new episode of the eternal struggle of consciousnesses for recognition, and the battlefield,

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