Орикс и Коростель

Разумеется, еще он был несчастлив. Это само собой. Он столько сил на это потратил.

Все бывшие привычки живут где то в теле, дремлют, как цветы в пустыне. В подходящих условиях расцветут пышным цветом.

He needed to forget the past – the distant past, the immediate past, the past in any form. He needed to exist only in the present, without guilt, without expectation.

If only haunts him. But if only what? What could he have said or done differently? What change would have altered the course of events? In the big picture, nothing. In the small picture, so much.

“So I learned about life,” said Oryx.

“Learned what?” said Jimmy. He shouldn’t have had the pizza, and the weed they’d smoked on top of that. He was feeling a little sick.

“That everything has a price.”

“Not everything. That can’t be true. You can’t buy time. You can’t buy . . .” He wanted to say love , but hesitated. It was too soppy.

“You can’t buy it, but it has a price,” said Oryx. “Everything has a price.”

“Not me,” said Jimmy, trying to joke. “I don’t have a price.”

Wrong, as usual.

Also he’s hungry. There’s something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you’re still alive.

“Oh, never mind,” said his mother. She often tried to explain things to him; then she got discouraged. These were the worst moments, for both of them. He resisted her, he pretended he didn’t understand even when he did, he acted stupid, but he didn’t want her to give up on him. He wanted her to be brave, to try her best with him, to hammer away at the wall he’d put up against her, to keep on going.

There are a lot of blank spaces in his stub of a brain, where memory used to be.

“It is the strict adherence to daily routine that tends towards the maintenance of good morale and the preservation of sanity,” he says out loud.

Одна из его слабостей - вечно он переживал, что о нем думают другие.