The Noise of Time

by Julian Barnes

It had all begun, very precisely, he told his mind, on the morning of the 28th of January 1936, at Arkhangelsk railway station. No, his mind responded, nothing begins just like that, on a certain date at a certain place. It all began in many places, and at many times, some even before you were born, in foreign countries, and in the minds of others.

Destiny. It was just a grand term for something you could do nothing about.

A glass of water did not engage the heart.

Let Power have the words, because words cannot stain music. Music escapes from words: that is its purpose, and its majesty.

Fear normally drives out all other emotions as well; but not shame. Fear and shame swilled happily together in his stomach.

If you saved yourself, you might also save those around you, those you loved. And since you would do anything in the world to save those you loved, you did anything in the world to save yourself. And because there was no choice, equally there was no possibility of avoiding moral corruption.

But that was too simple: the idea of a man split into two by a dividing axe. Better: a man crushed into a hundred pieces of rubble, vainly trying to remember how they—he—had once fitted together.

For instance, he had been afraid of Stalin’s power, but not of Stalin himself: neither on the telephone, nor in person. For instance, he was capable of interceding for others where he would never dare intercede for himself. He surprised himself at times. So perhaps he was not entirely hopeless.

He had betrayed himself, and he had betrayed the good opinion others still held of him. He had lived too long.

If you turned your back on irony, it curdled into sarcasm. And what good was it then? Sarcasm was irony which had lost its soul.