Trafika Europe 14 - Italian Piazza

A Perfect Idiot

“ The Central European Bank.” Ciepiela was a poet and didn’ t know i t , Morel thought , what metaphor i s he going to come up wi th next? Why should I care i f he lost hi s l i tt le place among the gamblers and i s no longer al lowed free entry to the cas ino? “Our problem now i s to f ind that box of bananas,” he said. “Bananas?” “Yeah, but I ’m sure that whoever stole i t wi l l have had the sense to put another in i ts place.” (They were wrong) . There had been, between these two strange individual s, an immediate connect ion, perhaps because of thei r shared pass ion for money. The f i rst , an expert swindler, was used to playing wi th large sums as though they had no value, and the second, a kind of trader, operated behind the front of a photography studio. They loved and venerated a s ingle form of wel l -being , speci f ical ly one of a mater ial nature. The thing I asked mysel f, even before I met them, was: how far would they go?, what were they wi l l ing to do in order to recuperate thei r bananas? They were st i l l speaking in the same pos i t ions, one of them seated, the other standing , in front of the window pane that was gray wi th soot .

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