The Friend

by Sigrid Nunez

One day, in a hotel bathroom, you receive a jolt. A full-length mirror positioned directly across from the shower door. Nothing too hideous for a middle-aged man. But, in the glare of the vanity lights, truth won’t be denied. That is not a body to turn any woman on. A power has been taken away, it can never be given back again. It felt, you said, like a kind of castration.

Innocence is something we humans pass through and leave behind, unable to return. But animals live and die in that state, and seeing innocence violated in the form of cruelty to a mere duck can seem like the most barbaric act in the world.

Like other writers, you now found yourself regularly damned or praised for things that had never occurred to you, things you had never expressed and never would express, things that represented pretty much the opposite of what you actually believed.

What do dogs think when they see someone cry? Bred to be comforters, they comfort us. But how puzzling human unhappiness must be to them. We who can fill our dishes any time and with as much food as we like,

Once again I come upon his famous definition of love: two solitudes that protect and border and greet each other.