Gesprek in een parkje

Marguerite Duras novella, The Square, takes place in an un-named Paris park. It's probably one of the many small parks we found in every part of the city we walked through from Place d'Italie to St. Denis. But it can be the Luxembourg Gardens if I choose.
In The Square a young woman and an older man

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share a bench in the park one afternoon. A maid for a weathly family, she watches the child she is in charge of and dreams of the marriage she hopes Saturday evenings at the local dance hall will someday lead to. A travelling salesman, he has never been more than an observer, immersed in his newspapers and watching the people who pass by. He does not make enough money to settle down or support a wife.

The two discuss their lives, share the views, in what should produce an adolescent piece of writing full of forced attempts at the profound. Instead, I found two lonely people sharing an afternoon. People I believed in and who had something to say about life.

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