Pity, she thought, pity like a naked newborn babe, pity like the frog threshing on the fork, the desolate manatee, the melted eyeballs of the people of Hiroshima, the burning martyrs clapping their hands, pity was needed and was not in the world; if it existed, none of this could be. Divine pity. Human pity was not enough. A bleeding heart could only bleed and bleed. It seemed to her then that the nature of Caledonia was a pitiless nature and her own was no better. What use was it to be racked by pain for animals and the general woes of the world when she was unmoved by the sorrows of the
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