On closer examination, we are simply a banal tragedy spread over two generations.
I stand there for a moment, looking at him. Like so many times before, ever since my childhood, I marvel at the chaste vulnerability of human beings in sleep. I could bend over him. I could kiss him. I could feel his heartbeat.
I could slit his throat.
The boy on the stairs looks right at me with a gaze that cuts straight through to what he and I have in common. It’s the kind of look you see in newborns. Later it vanishes, sometimes reappearing in extremely old people. This could be the one reason I’ve never burdened my life with children - I’ve thought too much about why people lose the courage to look each other in the eye.
You think that the despair will stop you cold, but it doesn’t: it wraps itself up in a dark corner somewhere inside and forces the rest of your system to function, to take care of practical matters, which may not be important but which keep you going, which guarantee that you are still, somehow, alive.
The knives in my apartment are only sharp enough to open envelopes with. Cutting a slice of coarse bread is on the borderline of their ability. I don’t need anything sharper. Otherwise, on bad days, it might easily occur to me that I could always go stand in the bathroom in front of the mirror and slit my throat. On such occasions it’s nice to have the added security of needing to go downstairs and borrow a decent knife from a neighbor.
Falling in love has been greatly overrated. Falling in love consists of 45 percent fear of not being accepted, 45 percent manic hope that this time the fear will be put to shame and a modest 10 percent frail awareness of the possibility of love.
I don't fall in love any more. Just like I don't get the mumps.