“I know a precedent,” said Tereza. “When I was fourteen, I kept a secret diary. I was terrified that someone might read it, so I kept it hidden in the attic. Mother sniffed it out. One day at dinner, while we were all hunched over our soup, she took it out of her pocket and said, ‘Listen carefully now, everybody!’ And after every sentence, she burst out laughing. They all laughed so hard they couldn’t eat.”
“Human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion”
