Intermezzo

by Sally Rooney

For this and other reasons, Ivan considers the body a fundamentally primitive object, a vestige of evolutionary processes superseded by the development of the brain.

He’s watching her, she thinks, but how does she know without looking? And she doesn’t look, she just knows, as if his eyes are sending out little needles in her direction and she can feel the needles pricking painlessly on her skin.

because mutual attraction—which even makes sense from the evolutionary perspective—is simply the strongest reason to do anything, overriding all the contrary principles and making them fall away into nothing.

And yet, accepting the premise, allowing life to mean nothing for a moment, doesn’t it simply feel good to be in the arms of this person?

Who can explain such a thing, and why even try to explain: an understanding shared between two people.

Why doesn’t he, that is, if the idea is so consoling. Oh, for other people, of course: to protect them. Other people prefer you to suffer.

And for this he feels a tender wounding gratitude, a sense of blessing, that he exists simply in this body, in this mind, that he is himself, this one person, rich in priceless resources which to his conscious mind remain almost infinitely unknown.

If anyone ever said anything to hurt her, he knew that he would be capable of wreaking extreme violence on that person, although it was obvious she wouldn’t want him to do that, but he knew the capability was there inside him, to protect her at all costs.