Intermezzo

by Sally Rooney

Couldn’t go to work in the morning if he didn’t think something meant something meant something else. But what is it all leading up to. An end without an ending.

And what if life is just a collection of essentially unrelated experiences? Why does one thing have to follow meaningfully from another?

It can be exploitative to give money; also to take it. Money overall a very exploitative substance, creating it seems fresh kinds of exploitation in every form of relationality through which it passes.

you could be taking advantage of me the whole time and I wouldn’t even realise. And you wouldn’t realise either, we both wouldn’t, until whatever, years into the future. It doesn’t even make sense, I’m sorry. Taking advantage for what purpose?

When civilisation is fundamentally premised on the exclusivity of such willingness. And why is it?

if it’s not so much the tangled relations, but the desire for some transparency in one’s personal life that is after all perverse.

Make a break for it maybe. Get shot of the whole town, the whole country, go off somewhere new. Attachment, the cause of all suffering, so the Buddhists say. To cling to what you have, what you have had, the life you have known, the handful of people and places you have ever really loved, to cling and not let go. Never relenting, never accepting, becoming all the time more enmeshed, holding harder, loving and hating more.

Life, which is now the most painful ordeal conceivable, was happy then, the same life. A

He didn’t mention you. Okay. Wonder why. Unlikely to be out of loyalty. Ashamed perhaps. Or still frightened. Jesus. Oh well, at least he picked up, at least he sounded alright. Alive and well. Ivan. I’m sorry.

I can get very focused on being in the right. And my brain sort of glosses over anything I’ve done wrong. Because I view him differently. I don’t really think my actions affect him. I see myself very affected by his actions, but not the other way around.

Within its infinite folds it contained the possibility, however remote, that she might still be salvaged, her body, from the wreck of all her wasted years. In his arms, to be given life, yes, and to give life also. Something miraculous, inexpressible, perfect. Impossible of course to think: and yet it happened all the time. May have been happening even then, concealed inaccessibly inside her breathing body. Each generation that had gone before, hundreds, thousands. The only answer to death, she thought: to echo back its name in that way, with all the same intensity and senselessness, on the side of life. Why not allow him, why not allow herself, at least the idea, the image, the future, at once impossible and not, enveloping them both in its mystery in the dark stillness of her quiet bedroom, descending with them both into the depths of sleep.

Maybe. Sense of all the windows and doors of her life flung open. Everything exposed to the light and air. Nothing protected, nothing left to be protected anymore. A wild woman, her mother called her. A shocking piece of work. And so she is. Lord have mercy.

To destroy her. Force himself into her privacy, tear away all her careful pretences, expose her terrified and defenceless like everyone else. Or did he only mean to get close to her, in his lumbering way, knocking over and breaking everything in his path, to feel her nearer and nearer still.

Just a game. Too clever for her own good. Now she’s worse off than when she started,

Making himself small, and smaller, until no longer there. As if it was him, his own fault, taking up too much space. I’m sorry. Everybody I love has to suffer. There’s something wrong with me. I don’t know how, I don’t know how to live.

What do you want me to say, I’m sorry? We were both playing games. And yeah, I wanted to win, and so did you.

Both of them believing themselves so clever, so capable. Always a step ahead, a move ahead, of each other, of everyone else. What a mess they have made, he thinks, yes, both of them. An impossible situation. Which they both have colluded to draw out and prolong over how many years. With what aim, with what end in mind, neither he supposes ever knew. Their love for one another, yes: which has survived its own death.

The touch of her hand at his face, the same and not the same: both the same and not. To reunite him with himself he thinks she means to. To feel himself continuous with his own past, to accept for the rest of his life the permanent encircling shadow of everything he has lost. To stagger on, ashamed, vanquished, demanding nothing, forsaking all his pride and self-conceit. Grateful that his losses have as yet gone only so far and no further. That God in his unknowable wisdom and mercy has left him this much. The cool touch of her hand at his face. The flash of chewing gum, the black tights. His mother, his brother, safe and well. Cold wet windswept streets. Books he hasn’t read yet. Opening theme of the Concerto No. 24. His friends, students, colleagues, their kindly and familiar voices. There he is. Hello stranger. What has not yet been lost, what still at least for this moment remains. To do what little good he can with his life.