““I was suddenly sickened by the idea of that unknown presence beside me, demanding warmth and care. I would be required to take an interest in another life and all its petty doings, to feign concern for a person who was nothing to me, to share my anxieties with someone else and agree to lower my gaze to meet their own. Above all I would have to listen – listen to someone else’s story, sympathize, mull over their feelings, be dragged into sufferings not my own, though I would have to serve as comforter; have that face before me each day, pleading for understanding, pity, help; promising me joys I do not seek, affection I do not want to give. (...)
The idea was abhorrent to me. I was repelled by the way all those around me clung so doggedly to life, the way they were born again beneath the ruins, instantly rebuilding what the bombs had flattened, in the grip of that unquenchable desire to be brought back to life which is the scourge of the human race. My own instinctive desire was to get through such life as remained to me without sullying myself, with the least possible damage and the least involvement. Because mine was no longer a life, but a leftover, some leavings I had picked up along the way. To rediscover my true past was an impossibility; to seek out a future, a huge effort. Doctor Friari was right: language is our mother, and it is through language that we come into this world. But I had lost both, forever; to me, rebirth was denied.”
