The Museum of Broken Promises

by Elizabeth Buchan

Paranoia is promiscuous. It doesn’t mind which philosophy it feeds on.

Waiting is an art form. Those who live in eastern Europe know its intimacies.

This was a day in the life of the Museum of Broken Promises.

Knowing oneself was such a huge task, mostly uphill. Never finished.

‘Because you’re so sad you will be receptive to the experience in a way that’s different to when you’re happy.’

Personally, Laure echoed her father’s robust political views: it never did to put one’s trust in princes.

It didn’t take her more than a few minutes to deduce that some communists were more equal than others.

To hold someone, or to be held, was proof of being alive. For too long she had felt herself to be a mute, cold thing.

‘Music is the best kind of warrior and will have to do the fighting.’

Looking back, it was the moment when she pivoted away from pessimism towards the self with whom she liked to live.

‘Being spied on is like having your skin peeled away,’

These objects invite you to the edge of an abyss and urge you to look over.’

It was a lesson to her how one’s physical appearance could convey quite different impressions just by being up on a stage.

‘Sadly, the tide went out and never turned.’

‘If you give up on the freedom to think, then your being will dissolve drop by drop.

‘If we sacrifice everything we care about for a political system and expect others to do so too,’ she warned him, ‘then we will become like the Nazis.’

the world is a terrible place because you have to choose between the homeland that promises suffering and the suffering that afflicts those who choose to renounce their homeland.’

‘We are in the forest, a place of magic and new discoveries. You’ve been sleeping and I have come to wake you up.’ ‘You make it sound as if we are stories.’ ‘We are. Lovely and exciting ones.’

Falling in ever deeper love, which she knew she was doing, was to be set free from oneself. It was the freedom to blend into someone else and take on their world.

She squinted up at the tree canopy and thought: please don’t let me get old.

How puzzling life could be – and how she loved it.

there’s no logical reason while you shouldn’t like fine things and still be a communist.’

‘Like everything in this world, hatred ages. It begins hot, strong and sometimes violent. It ends up musty and brittle.

She conveyed the sense that she was poised on the edge of discovery.

‘People don’t die until you forget them. Even if you are looking at a heap of their bones.’

Paris is in my blood, she decided and it was a supremely satisfactory thought. I will grow old here.

‘I’ve learnt that every moment like this has to be felt. It vanishes, of course. But, also, it can be taken away before it vanishes.’

he has loved me without a cloud.

She had a terrible intimation that he was half in love with martyrdom. Or that it beckoned from a flower-strewn field. She reached down and cupped his head between her hands. ‘But your duty, your absolute duty, is to survive.’

‘When a country reaches a certain maturity, it is prepared to tolerate some dissent. Rock concerts being among them.