- “No, that’s not really a problem. A heart has no shape, no limits. That’s why you can put almost any kind of thing in it, why it can hold so much. It’s much like your memory, in that sense.”
- “I sometimes wonder what I’d see if I could hold your heart in my hands,” I told him. “I imagine it fitting perfectly in my palms, soft and slippery, like gelatin that hasn’t quite set. It might wobble at the slightest touch, but I sense I’d need to hold it carefully, so it wouldn’t slip through my fingers. I also imagine the warmth of the thing. It’s usually hidden deep inside, so it’s much warmer than the rest of me. I close my eyes and sink into that warmth, and when I do, the sensations of all the things that have disappeared come back to me. I can feel all the things you remember, there in my hands. Doesn’t that sound marvelous?”
- I was particularly susceptible to that distinct variety of calm that comes before the start of a test. Those few seconds when everyone held his or her breath, when the sounds of prayers and organ music from the church had died away and our senses were concentrated in our fingers—those seconds completely unnerved me.
- “They may be nothing more than scraps of paper, but they capture something profound. Light and wind and air, the tenderness or joy of the photographer, the bashfulness or pleasure of the subject. You have to guard these things forever in your heart. That’s why photographs are taken in the first place.”
- In recompense for a mind that was able to retain everything, every memory, perhaps it was necessary that the body gradually fade away.
- “Not strange at all. The box exists without any doubt and it’s right in front of us. The music continues to play, before the disappearance and after. It plays on faithfully, as long as the key is wound. That’s its role, now and forever. The only thing that’s different is the hearts of those who once heard it.”
- There’s no need to look for an explanation for something that has none.
- There, behind your heartbeat, have you stored up all my lost memories?
- I was sure that any memories that remained inside him would be very much alive, so different from my own, which were few in number and very pale—sodden flower petals sinking into the waves or the ashes at the bottom of the incinerator.
- “Stay a bit longer, like that,” I told him. Though the feeling was empty, I wanted to watch him holding on to that void.
- “But I won’t let you go.” “And I don’t want to go. I want to stay with you, but that won’t be possible. Your heart and mine are being pulled apart to such different, distant places. Yours is overflowing with warmth and life and sounds and smells, but mine is growing cold and hard at a terrifying pace. At some point it will break into a thousand pieces, shards of ice that will dissolve.”
- But no matter how tightly we held each other on the bed, we could not escape the fact that the distance between us continued to grow. No part of our two bodies—his so perfectly symmetrical, strong, and alive and mine so sickly thin and lifeless—seemed in accord. Yet he never stopped trying to draw me as close to him as possible. It made me terribly sad to see how eagerly he held out his arms and drew them back, and often I found tears coming to my eyes.
mar 15 2024 ∞
apr 11 2024 +