Globetrotter

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Everything in this book is imaginary, only Banff is real.

Cities are like women, I said to Daniel Atijas when we met at the Centre in Banff on June 11, 1998. You like the way some look, I said, and others you like for what they are on the inside. Some cities are neither, I said, and you are indifferent when you find yourself there, just as you are indifferent, I said, by the side of certain women. They are colorless, I said, like air. I thought he’d say air is not colorless — he struck me as that type of person, the kind who always, without being overbearing, states things as they are — but he only sipped his soup and glanced out the window from time to time. Banff, I continued, is something else again, though this is not obvious at first, especially if you spend only a day or two here the way most people do, but if you stick around longer, I said, for a week, say, you will see what has intrigued me here for years: the special knack Banff has of appearing in two forms at once, as two extremes, one of which, if I dare pursue my parallel with women, I said, expresses the eternal virgin; the other, the lusty strumpet. Here I stopped. I had expected him to blink when he heard that last word — he struck me as the type who would be ready to blink, who’d feel no compulsion to hide honest embarrassment — but he merely set down his spoon and reached for the salad.

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