Intermezzo: A Novel

Even to think about it is to live.

It doesn’t always work, but I do my best. See what happens. Go on in any case living.

to accept for the rest of his life the permanent encircling shadow of everything he has lost.

That feeling, he thinks: all he has wanted, all his life. To walk towards her, to reach her, to accept from her extended hand the warm paper cup of coffee.

Everybody I love has to suffer. There’s something wrong with me. I don’t know how, I don’t know how to live.

To lose now this new capacity, this new body she inhabited in his arms, unthinkable.

She wanted him, yes, with a terrible desire that threatened to destroy everything it touched. Their friendships, families, both their lives.

complained to her about their own sorrows and received her sympathy in return, her family, her friends, who among them now would come to her defence? What loyalty had she purchased with her lifetime of good behaviour and self-sacrifice? None, nothing.

The name has become so precious to him, his own name, from the way it sounds in her mouth.