People will walk the streets holding forget-me-nots or kill one another on sight
She said to herself: when once the onslaught of ugliness became completely unbearable, she would go to a florist and buy a forget-me-not, a single forget-me-not, a slender stalk with miniature blue flowers. She would go out into the street holding the flower before her eyes, staring at it tenaciously so as to see only that single beautiful blue point, to see it as the last thing she wanted to preserve for herself from a world she had ceased to love. She would walk like that through the streets of Paris, she would soon become a familiar sight, the children would run after her, laugh at her, throw things at her and all Paris would call her: the crazy woman with the forget-me-not...
She continued on her way: her right ear was assaulted by a tide of music, the rhythmic thumping of percussion instruments surging from shops, beauty parlours, restaurants; her left ear picked up the sounds of the road: the composite hum of cars, the grinding rattle of a bus pulling away from a stop. Then the sharp sound of a motorcycle cut through her. She couldn't help but try to find the source of this physical pain: a girl in jeans, with long black hair blowing behind her, sat on a small motorcycle as rigidly as if she were sitting behind a typewriter; the silencer had been removed and the bike made a terrible noise.
Agnes recalled the young woman who had entered the sauna a few hours earlier and, in order to introduce her self, and to force it upon others, had announced the moment she walked through the door that she hated hot showers and modesty. Agnes was certain that it was exactly the same impulse that led the black-haired girl to remove the silencer from her motorcycle. It wasn't the machine that made the noise, it was the self of the black-haired girl; in order to be heard, in order to penetrate the consciousness of others, she attached the noisy exhaust of the engine to her soul. Agnes watched the flowing hair of that blaring soul and she realized that she yearned intensely for the girl's death. If at that moment a bus had run her over, leaving her lying in a bloody pool on the road, Agnes would have felt neither horror or sorrow, but only satisfaction.
Suddenly frightened by her hatred she said to herself: the world is at some sort of border; if it is crossed everything will turn to madness: people will walk the streets holding forget-me-nots or kill one another on sight. And it will take very little for the glass to overflow, perhaps just one drop: perhaps just one car too many, or one person, or one decibel. There is a certain quantitative border that must not be crossed, yet no one stands guard over it and perhaps no one even realizes that it exists.
Milan Kundera - Immortality, 23
She continued on her way: her right ear was assaulted by a tide of music, the rhythmic thumping of percussion instruments surging from shops, beauty parlours, restaurants; her left ear picked up the sounds of the road: the composite hum of cars, the grinding rattle of a bus pulling away from a stop. Then the sharp sound of a motorcycle cut through her. She couldn't help but try to find the source of this physical pain: a girl in jeans, with long black hair blowing behind her, sat on a small motorcycle as rigidly as if she were sitting behind a typewriter; the silencer had been removed and the bike made a terrible noise.
Agnes recalled the young woman who had entered the sauna a few hours earlier and, in order to introduce her self, and to force it upon others, had announced the moment she walked through the door that she hated hot showers and modesty. Agnes was certain that it was exactly the same impulse that led the black-haired girl to remove the silencer from her motorcycle. It wasn't the machine that made the noise, it was the self of the black-haired girl; in order to be heard, in order to penetrate the consciousness of others, she attached the noisy exhaust of the engine to her soul. Agnes watched the flowing hair of that blaring soul and she realized that she yearned intensely for the girl's death. If at that moment a bus had run her over, leaving her lying in a bloody pool on the road, Agnes would have felt neither horror or sorrow, but only satisfaction.
Suddenly frightened by her hatred she said to herself: the world is at some sort of border; if it is crossed everything will turn to madness: people will walk the streets holding forget-me-nots or kill one another on sight. And it will take very little for the glass to overflow, perhaps just one drop: perhaps just one car too many, or one person, or one decibel. There is a certain quantitative border that must not be crossed, yet no one stands guard over it and perhaps no one even realizes that it exists.
Milan Kundera - Immortality, 23
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