[밀리의 서재로 📙 읽기] 31. 사탄탱고

“ Until now she had always believed that it was failure only that was intolerable, but now she understood that victory too was intolerable, because the most shameful element of the desperate struggle was not that she remained on top, but that there was no chance of defeat. 지금까지 소녀는 패배만이 견딜 수 없는 것이라고 생각했지만 이제는 승리도 그렇다는 걸 알게 되었다. 이 잔인한 싸움에서 부끄러운 점은 그녀가 이겼다는 것이 아니라, 질 가능성이 처음부터 없었다는 것이다. ”

“ "무슨 일이 일어나건, 그건 좋은 거야." 소녀는 생각했다. 모든 것이 간단해졌다, 영원히. .... 소녀는 자기가 정말로 옳다고 느꼈다. 지난 며칠 동안 일어난 일들을 돌이켜보면서 일들이 서로 어떻게 엮였는지를 생각하고 그녀는 웃었다. 모든 일이 서로 무관하지 않았고 말할 수 없이 아름다운 의미로 연결돼 있었다. ”

“ "We are born into this sty of a world," he thought, his mind still pounding, "like pigs rolling in our own muck, with no idea what all that jostling at the teats amounts to, why we're engaged in this perpetual hoof-to-hoof combat on the path that leads to the trough, or to our beds at dusk." ”

“ 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." ”