...of politesse

(A man at the next table interrupted us, thinking himself authorised to join in the conversation. Either he made out a word or sentence and tried to continue in the same vein, or else he brazenly broke in to talk to us of other things. Either way, his intervention was not welcome. Yes, we were sitting on the same terrace, but that didn’t make us a group, or a club, or a family! Who could still believe in such things? Who couldn’t feel the invisible walls separating us one from the next, so firm you might almost have knocked on them? We repelled the invader with our resolute silence, our unsociable air. His face fell. Society was a mercantile setup. Everyone could easily supply himself with bread, soap, and aspirin, without having to walk too far. We wanted nothing more from it than that.)

The jacket disappeared.
I later found it hanging in the closet.

(Nevertheless, the cafe had its regulars. They nodded on spotting each other. Some swapped banalities and information on the meteorological conditions. About as useful as reminding each other what they were wearing that day. Empty words, more an avoidance strategy than anything else. Thus did the regulars keep each other at a distance. The clouds served as a buffer.) 12



12 This is also the reason for the screen of politesse that the author unfolds between himself and others. He even adds a certain unctuousness, to prevent any friction. Can harmony exist without distance? Obeying any impersonal code, we efface anything that makes us stand out. We become any man in the street. In the end, it’s as if we weren’t there at all - and such is indeed the authors most constant desire: to be somewhere else, far from here. What to do with the hyper-presence of those boors who refuse to fade into the background, or at least  suck in their stomachs a little? Civility is a game of capes and passes by which we dodge the bull, which is more often a talkative neighbor than a savage beast blowing steam from its nostrils.


[The Author and Me, Chevillard, É]