[THE HITCHHIKING GAME] -1- He knew that she loved him and that she was jealous. Jealousy isn't a pleasant quality, but if it isn't overdone, apart from its inconvenience there's even something touching about it. At least that's what the young man thought. Because he was only twenty-eight, it seemed to him that he was old and knew everything that a man could know about women. In the girl sitting beside him he valued precisely waht, untill now, he had met with least in women: purity. -2- The girl was grateful to the young man for every bit of flattery; she wanted to linger for a moment in its warmth and so she said, "You're very good at lying." -3- Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event. -4- Childish desires withstand all the snares of the adult mind and often survive into ripe old age. -5- She was an artful seductress, cleverly knowing how to use her charms. The girl slipped into this silly, romantic part with an ease that astonished her and held her spellbound. -6- In fact, she smiled at the thought of how nice it was that today she was this other woman, this irresponsoble, indecent other woman, one of those women of whom she was so jealous. It seemed to her that she was cutting them all out, that she had learned how to use their weapons; how to give the young man what untill now she had not known how to give him: lightheartedness, shamelessness, and dissoluteness. A courious feeling of satisfaction filled her, because she alone had the ability to be all women and in this way (she alone) could completely captivate her lover and hold his interest. -7- ... and the conversation continued in this peculiar, frivolous tone. It irritated the young man more and more how well able the girl was to become the lascivious miss. -8- However, it was not only aversion. -9- "Combien, mademoiselle?" -10- The boundaries of the playing field are fixed. The girl knew that she had accept whatever form the game might take, just because it was a game. -11- She was standing facing him in a defiant pose with insolent sensuality in her eyes. -12- Girls differed only on the surface from other women, but deep down was the same as they: full of all possible thoughts, feelings and vices, which justified all his secret misgivings and fits of jealousy.
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