The Whisperer

by Donato Carrisi

Suffering has a task to perform. It rebuilds the bonds between the things of the living and those of the dead. It is a language that stands in for words. That changes the terms of the question.

Death, especially violent death, exerts a strange fascination on the living. Corpses always arouse our curiosity. Death is highly seductive.

Children are always able to draw some kind of happiness from the things that happen to them.

the human eye produces three types of tears. Basal tears, which continuously moisten and feed the eyeball. Reflex tears, which are produced when a foreign body enters the eye. And psychic tears, associated with pain or emotion. These have a different chemical composition. They contain very high percentages of manganese and a hormone, prolactin. In the world of natural phenomena, every single thing can be reduced to a formula, but explaining why tears of pain are physiologically different from the others is practically impossible.

People speaking to one another, unless bound by particular emotional or intimate relations, always tend to respect an invisible boundary. In this case, however, the interrogator was approaching the interrogatee in order to invade his personal space and make him feel uncomfortable.

‘What the media doesn’t know, they make up.’

Once again, Mila reflected, Albert had shone a light on the hypocrisy of that portion of the human race that feels ‘normal’ just because it doesn’t go around killing innocent children by severing one of their arms. But it is capable of an equally serious crime: indifference.

It’s called ‘pareidolia’: it’s the instinctive tendency to find familiar shapes in chaotic images. In the clouds, in constellations or in the flakes of oatmeal floating in a bowl of milk.

‘Evil generates only more evil. That has always been its chief characteristic.’

‘Once I heard someone say that evil can always be demonstrated. Good can’t. Because evil leaves traces of its passing. While you can only bear witness to good.’