Intermezzo

by Sally Rooney

Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die. Everyone in the end of course, even he, Ivan, strange to think. To make meaning of something so fleeting, life. Here and gone. Think of him there inside the closed room tonight with the sound of cheering, people calling his name, feet stamping. That is life as well as loss and pain. This married woman he’s hanging around with, how did that start. Ask them maybe over Christmas dinner. Her horrified laughter. Crossing over now towards the Abbey, brown brickwork, handful of rain he thinks he feels and turns up his collar. Picture them all there together. To imagine also is life: the life that is only imagined. Clatter of saucepans, steam from the kettle. Even to think about it is to live. Hard cold wind blowing in from the sea, blowing his coat back, raising white hackles on the river. Nothing is fixed. She, the other. Ivan, the girlfriend. Christine, their father, from beyond the grave. It doesn’t always work, but I do my best. See what happens. Go on in any case living.