You Should Have Left

by Daniel Kehlmann

This is how it is: You have to be completely unimaginative to sit down without fear in a fuel-filled capsule. One second you’re firmly ensconced in everyday life and thinking about dinner and your tax return, the next you’re wedged in deformed metal while the flames devour you, and all that lies between the one state and the other is a clumsy turn of the steering wheel, half a second of inattention. But I didn’t want to be someone who can’t cope with everyday life. People have simply agreed that driving a car is something harmless.

In a movie it’s funny when a life falls apart, because the people say clever things while it’s happening, but in reality it’s only dismal and repugnant.

Now imagine there was a mountain on the paper. If the creature made a circle around the mountain and measured the enclosed area, this wouldn’t help it understand what it had in front of it. There would be much more paper than, according to its reason, could fit in the circle. For this creature it would be a miracle.

As we walked, I was seized by the image of a woman who would stand at the window in several years or had perhaps stood at a window a long time ago and watched paralyzed with terror as two specters, a man and a child, receded hand in hand into the night.

I know now why they all have faces like that. Why they look the way they look. It’s because of the things they have seen.

To the others who are here forever too? They’ve known it for a long time, they already know far more.