[밀리의 서재로 📙 읽기] 31. 사탄탱고

“ And so it was understandable that they could breathe freely only once Irimias had gone, for he embodied not only the promise of a bright future, but also the fear of disaster. ”

“ ... he longed to be free of the obstinate, ever-recurring desire to know at last, now that he was near the end, the answer to the question: "What is the point of Futaki?" Because it would be best to resign himself now, to resign himself to that last moment when his body dropped into the last ditch, to drop into it with the same enthusiastic thud you expect from a baby saying hello to the world for the first time; and then he thought again of the sty and of the pigs because he felt ... that no one ever suspected that the reassuring self-evident providence that took care of us all on a daily basis would be simply the light flashing off the butcher's knife, and that that would be at the time when we least expected it, a time when we wouldn't even know why we should be facing tat incomprehensible and terrifying last goodbye. ”

“ the scariest thing was that he never once saw an actual spider though at that time he'd stay awake all night behind the counter, but it was as if they sensed his presence watching them, and they simply wouldn't appear. ”

“ The table and chair legs were woven into a cocoon and then - with the aid of one or another secret narrow strand - they were all connected up, as if it were a matter of some importance that the spiders, flattened in their secret, remote corners, should be properly advised of every slight tremor, each microscopic shift, and would be so as long as this strange, all-but-invisible network remained intact. ”

“ The grave words rang mournfully through the bar: it was like the continuous tolling of furiously beaten bells, the sound of which served less to direct them to the source of their problems than simple to terrify them. ”

“ Doing so, he understood why he had, time and time again, put off the idea of making the decision to leave: he had rid himself of the one single security in his life and now he had nothing left; and as before he hadn't had the guts to stay, so now he lacked the guts to leave, because having packed up for good, it was as if he had denied himself even greater possibilities, and had simply exchanged one trap for another. If up until now, he had been a prisoner of the engine house and the estate, now he was subject to-in fact being exploited by - mere chance; ... now he had sentenced himself to be the prisoner of some eternal momentum, a momentum he might equally well lose. ”

“ "God was a mistake. I've long understood there is zero difference between me and a bug, or a bug and a river, or a river and voice shouting above it. There's no sense or meaning in everything. It's nothing but a network of dependency under enormous fluctuating pressures. It's only our imaginations, not our senses, that continually confront us with failure and the false belief that we can raise ourselves by our own bootstraps from the miserable pulp of decay. There's no escaping that, stupid." ”

“ they quickly realized that the thing they had secretly most feared had actually happened: that the dreams that had driven them forward the previous day were over, and it was time for the bitter awakening... ”

“ "...the only possible way forward, is for us to disperse into various parts of the country until these gentlemen entirely lose track of us, ... " They acknowledged their particular importance in the scheme of things" with a growing sense of pride, especially prizing their privilege in being considered "the chosen few" while appreciating the recognition of their qualities of steadfastness, industry and increasing vigilance that were considered, apparently, quite indispensable. ”

“ this strange dash along a deserted highway, was not for Futaki any kind of proof that the rush was to some specific place; it seemed to him more like a kind of stampede, a "blind and uncertain rush into the unknown" that was somehow pointless. ”

“ Futaki now understood that the speech at the bar with its clumsy rhetorical tricks was simply a way of concealing from those who still believd in Irimias the truth that he was as helpless as they were, ”