At home, when we spoke to one another, it was always in a querulous tone of voice. Only strangers were entitled to polite behaviour...... For a long time, courtesy between parents and children remained a mystery to me. Also, it took me years to 'understand' the kindliness with which well-mannered people greet each other. At first, I felt ashamed, I didn't deserve such consideration. Sometimes I thought they had conceived a particular liking for me. Later I realized that their smiling faces and kind, earnest questions meat nothing more to them than eating with their mouths shut or blowing their noses discreetly.
Now it is imperative that I unravel these memories, all the more so since I have long suppressed them, believing them to be of no consequence. Only a humiliated memory had enabled me to preserve them. I surrendered to the will of the world in which I live, where memories of a lowly existence are seen as a sign of bad taste.
His greatest satisfaction, possibly even the raison d'etre of his existence, was the fact that I belonged to the world which had scorned him.
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