Mary

Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.

He was powerless because he had no precise desire, and this tortured him because he was vainly seeking something to desire. He could not even make himself stretch out his hand to switch on the light. The simple transition from intention to action seemed an unimaginable miracle.

...memory can restore to life everything except smells, although nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.

The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.

Where is the happiness, the sunshine, where are those thick skittles of wood which crashed and bounced so nicely, where is my bicycle with the low handlebars and the big gear? It seems there's a law which says that nothing ever vanishes, that matter is indestructible; therefore the chips from my skittles and the spokes of my bicycle still exist somewhere to this day. The pity of it is that I'll never find them again - never.

emotions of that kind ought to be more restrained, without violet irises and crying violins.

And when he went to bed and listened to the trains passing through that cheerless house in which lived several Russian lost shades, the whole of life seemed like a piece of film-making where heedless extras knew nothing of the picture in which they were taking part.

It had lasted no more than four days—four days which were perhaps the happiest days of his life. But now he had exhausted his memories, was sated by them, and the image of Mary, together with that of the old dying poet, now remained in the house of ghosts, which itself was already a memory. Other than that image no Mary existed, nor could exist.

I put everything into my poetry that I should have put into my life, and now it's too late for me to start all over again. The only thought that occurs to me at the moment is that in the final reckoning it's better to have been sanguine by temperament, a man of action, and if you must get drunk do it properly and smash the place up.

every love demands privacy, shelter, refuge━ and they had no such refuge.

Really, what a strange man he is,” thought Klara, with that aching feeling of loneliness which always overcomes us when someone dear to us surrenders to а daydream in which we have no place.

El delicioso hecho íntimo ocurrido anoche había sido la causa de que todo el caleidoscopio de su vida variara, y había evocado el pasado de un modo avasallador.

... o bien ocurría algo en que las gentes que caminan por la ciudad nunca se fijan: una estrella, más rápida que el pensamiento y más silenciosa que una lágrima, caía del firmamento,

-No me acuerdo, ¿Cómo cabe recordar lo que uno ha sido en el pasado? Quizá fuera una ostra, o un pájaro, o quizá profesor de matemáticas... De todos modos nuestra anterior vida en Rusia parece algo que hubiera ocurrido antes del principio de los tiempos, algo metafísico, o como quiera usted llamarlo. No, metafísico no es la palabra adecuada... Sí, ahora sé de qué se trata. Es como una metempsicosis.

It is at moments like this that everything grows fabulous, unfathomably profound, when life seems terrifying and death even worse. And then, as one swiftly strides through the nighttime city, looking at the lights through one’s tears and searching in them for a glorious, dazzling recollection of past happiness—a woman’s face, resurgent after many years of humdrum oblivion—all of a sudden, in one’s mad progress, one is politely stopped by a foot passenger and asked how to get to such and such a street; asked in an ordinary voice, but a voice which one will never hear again.

That night, in the strange stealthily deepening darkness, under the lindens of that spacious public park, on a stone slab sunk deep in moss, Ganin in the course of one brief tryst grew to love her more poignantly than before and fell out of love with her, as it seemed then, forever.