The Lover

by Marguerite Duras

It’s not that you have to achieve anything, it’s that you have to get away from where you are.

I see the war as like him, spreading everywhere, breaking in everywhere, stealing, imprisoning, always there, merged and mingled with everything, present in the body, in the mind, awake and asleep, all the time, a prey to the intoxicating passion of occupying that delightful territory, a child’s body, the body of those less strong, of conquered peoples. Because evil is there, at the gates, against the skin.

And the world went on without that visited body, and without its visitation.