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305 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
Why don’t they go to Norway?
“Fjords, the water’s so still, so smooth…” He strokes the piano. Maybe a white one would have been nicer. White, like Lora’s skin. Or maybe red, like her hair? He strokes the piano, strokes Lora. He loves smooth surfaces.
It’s a fine piano, says Lora, a very fine piano. The creative type is forced to settle for a less luxurious instrument. What’s there to say? All he can do is shrug. Lora, apparently, considers it unfair that the creative type lacks something he possesses. The piano is just an object – one shouldn’t personify objects. Fortunately, she needs no instrument. She herself is a marvelous instrument.
Everyone fears death, just as they fear misfortune, yet death is inescapable, which means it is real. And that we did not invent it. At this very moment Ruhshona begins to see death as the most important thing that can exist within a person. She views those who don’t carry death within themselves – who don’t live by it – as empty, like wrapping paper, like candy wrappers. Hollow, soulless people. She can pick them out at a glance.
The short-lived enthusiasm brought on by the changes passes Ruhshona by: she can see that these changes are spiritually unsustainable, and that everyone is now ruled by hollow men, by candy wrappers. A giant chocolate bar has appeared on the facade of the capital’s most important library: a sweet treat a day helps you work, rest, and play. These chocolate bars and their giant posters are the main byproduct of these hollow men and the way they run the country.
But then day will come, and the birds will still be there – fowls of the air, fowls domestic, wild, all of them. The world doesn’t break, no matter what you throw at it. That’s just how it’s built.