Eso es lo malo. Que no hay forma de dar con un sitio bonito y tranquilo porque no existe. Puedes creer que existe, pero una vez que llegas allí, cuando no estás mirando, alguien se cuela y escribe «Que te jodan» delante de tus narices. Prueben y verán. Creo que si algún día me muero y me meten en un cementerio y me ponen encima una lápida que diga Holden Caulfield y el año en que nací y el año de mi muerte, debajo alguien escribirá «Que te jodan». De hecho estoy convencido.
But if you happen to be a man, sometime in the future, and you've made it this far, please remember: you will never be subject to the temptation or feeling you must forgive, a man, as a woman. It's difficult to resist, believe me. But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest. Maybe
Boy, did he depress me! I don't mean he was a bad guy- he wasn't. But you don't have to be a bad guy to depress somebody- you can be a good guy and do it. All you have to do to depress somebody is give them a lot of phony advice while you're looking for your initials in some can door- that's all you have to do. I don't know. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't been all out of breath.
I consider these things idly. Each one of them seems the same size as all the others. Not one seems preferable. Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a word, embroidered. I look out at the dusk and think about its being winter. The snow falling, gently, effortlessly, covering everything in soft crystal, the mist of moonlight before a rain, blurring the outlines, obliterating color. Freezing to death is painless, they say, after the first chill. You lie back in the snow like an angel made by children and go to sleep. Behind me I feel her presence, my ancestress, my double, turning in midair under the chandelier, in her costume of stars and feathers, a bird stopped in flight, a woman made into an angel, waiting to be found. By me this time. How could I have believed I was alone in here? There were always two of us. Get it over, she says. I'm tired of this melodrama, I'm tired of keeping silent. There's no one you can protect, your life has value to no one. I want it finished. As I'm standing up I hear the black van. I hear it before I see it; blended with the twilight, it appears out of its own sound like a solidification, a clotting of the night. It turns into the driveway, stops. I can just make out the white eye, the two wings. The paint must be phosphorescent. Two men detach themselves from the shape of it, come up the front steps, ring the bell. I hear the bell toll, ding-dong, like the ghost of a cosmetics woman, down in the hall. Worse is coming, then. I've