that the number of prisoners is so enormous and the legal authorities so overloaded that it will take several centuries to handle all the cases.”
“Yes,” she answered, feigning the same neutrality as if she’d been told the score of the cricket world cup.
“It’s really incredible, all the same, that such a situation can exist. It gives you a terrifying idea of the violence in that country but also of the indifference that obscures it all. It’s as if a crime were committed in France resulting in the imprisonment of the entire population of Lyon and no one would care.”
“It’s terrible, but what can you do . . .” she uttered, to see his reaction.
For a moment he held the glass he’d just picked up to his lips, put it back down, and yelled at her, “You’re appalling!” She smiled at him, and then he understood she wasn’t speaking seriously.
What he said was exactly right: what she’d just expressed, which is what she’d heard that morning from the mouth of a classmate, was appalling. That’s what had shocked her in the sentence: the world’s obscenity, not in the display of horror and injustice but in the attitude of those who could find nothing else to say in reaction but “It’s terrible, but what can you do . . . ,” who could do nothing about it except allude to it between a sip of coffee and a little joke, as they’d invariably become indignant over it before moving on to something else, to normal life. That’s what she could no longer deal with, that way of being resigned to every upheaval, of not letting themselves be shattered at the risk, they thought, of adding their own misery to the already-crushing wretchedness of the world. Suddenly, the attitude she had been so lovingly taught and in which she had wallowed so comfortably for years made her sick. But could it be any other way?
Perhaps, she thought as she came back to Victor who was still dwelling on how unacceptable he found the situation, that was why she’d always had a special feeling for him. He was always moved, even if it was just limited to words, and he’d always react while drawing the attention of the indifferent to the issue. That’s already something.
She can’t understand why she’d managed to be insensitive to the world for so long. How many times before today, when her normal routine had fallen apart, had saying “It’s terrible, but what can you do . . .” been enough for her as well? How many people have, and will always have, no other reaction but that? Would she still be among them if the volume on the radio hadn’t shattered her routine?
She sighs and goes back to her memories.
The interminable discussion and her walk back brought her home at the break of dawn. But instead of sleeping she began to write. That day had just made her decide to embark on a crucial project. Writing the summary of this undertaking couldn’t wait. She concentrated first on writing the title in calligraphy on a separate sheet of paper: In Memory of . . . It took her a solid hour before she was satisfied with the result. At the time she thought she was following her usual meticulous ways. Today she knows she was mostly taking the opportunity to reflect again, to pay attention to the detail of her idea at the same time that she was paying attention to the curves of the ten letters. Beyond the project itself, she was preoccupied with other things.
In particular, she became aware that the primary result was that she’d need to abandon her studies, which had now become inconsequential. The interest of market finance, logistics, and other management controls was dissolved in the idea whose title she was carefully composing.
The next thing was that her parents were not to know. An obvious necessity.
They’d taken her in as an orphan of the tragedy when she seemed doomed. She knew how different her lot would have been without their inexplicable generosity. She would have never known any tenderness; she would have never had the benefit of all the attentions she’d been given until this moment; she wouldn’t have studied with the brilliant results for which everyone gave her credit. They had been considerate enough to let her keep her name, Isaro, and, together with her color, that was the only sign preventing her from assimilating into their family. She never took the trouble of explaining that they were her adoptive parents. Better than a family, she often told herself, they were angels. Rescuers and providential protectors whose wings had allowed the little pearl that she was that had been cast out of the water to continue to grow.
Nevertheless, at a given moment that she has trouble identifying, their relationship came undone, thread by thread, until it was no more than an abstraction, just enough to keep the illusion going of a reality that had actually disappeared. For a while, the photographs they’d look at and would take endlessly formed the one and only pillar of their vanished family. The day she decided to leave and study in Paris, neutrality collapsed. Her parents were merely disciplinarians who flung stifling pieces of advice at her, by telephone and every day. She eventually screened their calls and then changed her number. From then on their sole connection consisted of the automatic monthly deposit from their bank account to hers. Because of it she was able to keep living in the capital city and soon, she hoped, to buy her plane ticket.
Now she tells herself that having behaved towards them in that manner had been foolish. She regrets it, even without thinking she could have acted differently. She believes that the alienation and then the rupture were born from an inevitable misunderstanding: everything her parents would do to anchor her in life removed her further from the only thing essential in her eyes. The more she realized what seemed for them to be the ultimate objectives or guarantees, the more she suffered from wasting her energy on running after titles that, no matter what, were unjustified. She wrongly confused them with the malaise that they made her suffer. They never stopped loving her, even in the silence she had imposed on them, which they never violated although they could so easily have done just that, by stopping the monthly deposits, for instance.
Would she be capable of loving someone in spite of herself? Would she be able to resist the desire to treat the person for whom she’d done everything, and who in the end would prove to be as insolent as she was toward her parents, as an ingrate and punish her? Was that wholehearted, unconditional love a characteristic of guardian angels?
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