Intermezzo

by Sally Rooney

Incumbent on him now to enjoy such fleeting pleasures. Next minute might die. Happens every day to someone.

The will to live so much stronger than anyone imagines.

But to accept that because the body dies, at any point in time, the mind must die also, just literally whenever?

Peter is the kind of person who goes along the surface of life very smoothly.

The human mind, for all the credit he was just giving it a minute ago, is often repetitive, often trapped in a familiar cycle of unproductive thoughts, which in Ivan’s case are usually regretful in nature.

Maybe, yes. A word with blood running through it, a red word. In casual conversation it’s better to use words that are grey or beige.

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

Not too late, he thinks, is it. To try after all. Life they could live together. Not the one they wanted, but the one they have.

To tell the truth, I sometimes find myself pretty funny, but no one else ever says that about me.

I don’t want you to be grateful, he says. I just want you to be happy. At first she gives no answer. Rests still against him, the weight of her, fragrance of her dark hair. Then she says: Wow, I think that might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.

and Ivan said that to fear judgement was not the same thing as believing that the judgement was valid.

it has occurred to him that perhaps the mind and body are after all one, together, a single being. And that he should be humbled not only by his brain, but by his body also, a complex and beautiful system for the sustenance of life itself.

And why not after all. Why not accept wholeheartedly life’s offerings.

A mother is not an endless thing. She has done what she could.