《Intermezzo》Sally Rooney

不知道還會不會想要再讀 Sally Rooney 的小說。不知道是不是去年的經歷改變了我，許多事情覺得不值得再費心思時間運作。其中有覺得與現在生活接近的橋段。剛失去了父親的兩兄弟嘗試用自己的方法處理傷痛。人權律師哥哥 Peter 身體裡還有一個更大的黑洞，幾年前出意外以致無法做愛的前女友 Sylvia，這一年交的漂亮卻類似性工作者的新女友 Naomi。西洋棋天才弟弟和大他一倍 - 13歲 - 的已婚女友 Margraet。Margraet 有個酒癮的類前夫。除了 Naomi 比較了解自己以外，每個人都很難面對自己一樣不停用各種方法逃避問題，各種猜測，以致誤會和衝突百出。看了是蠻累的大家不能 it is just what it is 嗎。可能要讀 Anais Nin，只有法國女作家的理直氣壯能給人力氣。其它的各種“溫馨”都會把我身體裡難得的氧氣吸走。

Margraret

Margaret is reminded of the way she felt when she first met Ivan: as if life had slipped free of its netting. As if the netting itself had all along been an illusion, nothing real. An idea, which could not contain or describe the border-less all-enveloping reality of life. Now, in her satisfied exhaustion, with her hand resting on the white linen tablecloth, the touch of Ivan's fingertips, the candle dripping a slow thread of wax down its side, the glossy closed lid of the piano, Margaret feels that she can perceive the miraculous beauty of life itself, lived only once and then gone forever, the bloom of a perfect and impermanent flower, never to be retrieved. This is life, the experience, this is all there has ever been. To force this moment into contact with her ordinary existence only seems to reveal how constricting, how misshapen her ideas of life have been before. When the waitress returns to ask if they are enjoying the meal, Margaret does not move her hand, and neither does Ivan. Politely they both answer that the meal is very nice, while on the table the tips of his fingers brush her thumb. 

Ivan to Peter

It's not one hundred percent fair, since it's not as if I made her pregnant, or have ever had the opportunity to do that with literally any woman, but whatever, m not going to make a big point out of it. And on the one occasion during his college years when this hypothetical situation arose in reality, he did give up his seat, but not with any great teeling of camaraderie; rather, with a slight teeling of awkwardness and irritation still. Now, today, or actually no, yesterday afternoon, he smiled at the pregnant woman on the tram with a very genuine smile, and she looked up at him with eyes of gratitude, saying: Thank you. Ivan perceived in himself at that moment a completely different attitude towards the whole situation. He no longer felt annoyed or imposed on; rather he was filled with kindly and even tender feelings towards the woman who was pregnant. These feelings seemed, when he thought about it, to be connected with recent developments in his own life: his new understanding of relations between women and men. How certain things can hap-pen, resulting in such situations, even unintentionally, which is something he has always understood on a literal level, but now understands with personal sympathy and compassion for all involved. This particular weakness of women, in regards to their desire for men, strikes him as beautiful, moving, worthy of deep respect and deference. And these are probably the same feelings, really more sentimental than ideological, that have also motivated Peter through the years to care so much supposedly about the oppression of women: because Peter has always at any given time had at least one girlfriend he could imagine in the role of the oppressed. It's easy, Ivan can readily see, to become upset and angry on behalf of a woman who likes going to bed with you. Such a relationship by its nature excites feelings of protectiveness and even a sort of awed reverence on the part of the man towards the woman. But on a number of other points too, Ivan thinks, his brother has long been a person of good sense. On the subject of how to deal with their mother's boyfriend Frank, for instance. Or how to tell a waiter politely that they've brought the wrong food. Ivan has even observed Peter doing this. Looking down at the plate, he will say in a friendly offhanded kind of voice: Ah, I think it was the tortellini for me. He doesn't hesitate before saying it, he just says it right out, completely normal. This is not a skill Ivan urgently needs to cultivate, considering how seldom he frequents restaurants, considering that he has almost literally no money, but he would still like to have this skill in his pocket for the rare occasions on which a waiter brings him the wrong dish, to be able to say nonchalantly: Ah, I think it was the tortellini. 

The Patheticity of Human Sexuality

The arguments they started to have about politics, about women, excruciating. And now this married woman he was seeing: how had that started? She gave him the story of her life, maybe, poured out her grievances, cried on his shoulder for a bit, and one thing led to another. Having intentionally conceived of this scenario in order to disgust himself, Peter instead felt an unexpected pang of sympathy for the fictitious woman he had just invented. Imagine her crying on Ivan's shoulder, and one thing leading to another. Dear God. If that was all the solace she could gather at her time of life. Pathetic, of course, but hadn't he himself often felt pathetic, typing 'hey, any plans tonight' into an online messaging interface? Didn't human sexuality at its base always involve a pathetic sort of throbbing insecurity, awful to contemplate?