Lapvona

by Ottessa Moshfegh

Jude didn’t understand forgiveness. He was incapable of forgiveness because he was so addled by his own grief and grudges. This bad blood was what kept Jude’s heart pumping.

He didn’t trust men so clean. They only understood the surfaces of things, which was why they appeared so perfect.

The difference was that Jude had known Agata. And he knew the truth about her absence. All Marek knew was that she had given her life for his own, like any good mother would do.

Pain was good, Marek felt. It brought him closer to his father’s love and pity.

I deserve this hardship. He lived for hardship. It gave him cause to prove himself superior to his mortal suffering.

When she asked the birds what to do, they answered that they didn’t know anything about love, that love was a distinctly human defect which God had created to counterbalance the power of human greed.

‘What about heaven, Ina? Don’t you want to go?’ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I won’t know anyone.’