Intermezzo

I suppose I got attached to being in the right all the time. Which in a way I was. But maybe it’s not good to be too attached to that.

As if Ivan feels inside himself a moving force, coming from inside himself but directed outward, wanting to find a home for itself elsewhere.

It’s like he tried to tell Margaret in the car, beauty belongs to God, and ugliness to human beings, although he couldn’t explain himself very well.

Now, from behind a curtain near the restaurant entrance, Peter appears i

I think he’s kind of autistic,

Something sensual in her carelessness.

I think he’s kind of autistic, although I guess you can’t say that now.

For a moment he considers this question: whether it is a good idea for them to see each other again. Is it different, to want something, and to think the wanted thing is a good idea? Yes, it could be different, he thinks, if the long-term consequences of the event were foreseeably worse than the short-term gratification involved.

Dinner together in the evening, maybe watch a film afterwards, his arm around her shoulders. All the unhappiness that life has visited on them both: dissolved however briefly in that feeling, shared image of that quiet contentment.

Yes, I was looking for you, but I only wanted to see and be near you, and actually it wasn’t going to matter what either of us said as long as we could be in physical proximity to one another, making eye contact, breathing each other’s breath for a while, how does that sound.