More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The music provokes a sharp longing the music soothes. How can such a prig, wonders Jacob, play with such divinity? Night insects trill, tick, bore, ring; drill, prick, saw, sting
‘Does Mr. de Zoet believe in soul?’ ” “To doubt the soul,” says Jacob, “would strike me as peculiar.”
“A tidy metaphor does not make a wrong thing right.”
“What man ain’t the honestest cove in his own eyes?” Grote’s round face is a bronze moon in the dark. “ ’Tain’t good intentions what paves the road to hell: it’s self-justifyin’s.
Jacob voiced to his uncle the thought that just as one man can be Pastor de Zoet of Domburg and “Geertje’s and my uncle” and “Mother’s brother,” so God, His Son, and the Holy Spirit are an indivisible Trinity. His reward was the one kiss his uncle ever gave him: wordless, respectful, and here, on his forehead.
His tired eyes are rested by the living green; rosefinches pluck worms from the ramped-up earth; and a black-masked bunting, whose song sounds like clinking cutlery, watches from the empty cistern.
For a priceless coin of time, their hands are linked by a few inches of fragrant herb, witnessed by a dozen blood-orange sunflowers.
“Dew is water found early in the morning before the sun burns it away.” The midwife understands. “ ‘Dew’ … we say asa-tsuyu.” Jacob knows he shall never forget the word “asa-tsuyu” so long as he lives.
“My pronounce,” Miss Aibagawa asks, “is not very good?” “No no no: you are perfect in every way. Your pronounce is perfect.”
Creation never ceased on the sixth evening, it occurs to the young man. Creation unfolds around us, despite us, and through us, at the speed of days and nights, and we like to call it “love.”
“The soul is a verb.” He impales a lit candle on a spike. “Not a noun.”
