The Summer Before the Dark

So very Russian," people around were murmuring. That they did meant this was an audience pretty low down on the scale of sophistication, otherwise they would be saying, "Just like us, isn't it?

Mas como era extraordinária aquela sala cheia de gente — ou melhor, de animais -, a olhar na mesma direcção, para outros animais mascarados e treinados para representar num palco, para animais cobertos de tecido e bocados de peles, ornamentados com pedras e de rostos e garras pintados. Toda a gente acabara de comer um animal de qualquer espécie; as peles que se viam por toda a parte, apesar de a noite estar quente, provinham de animas que tinham vivido, brincado e fornicado em florestas e campos, e os pés de toda a gente estavam cobertos de pele de animais.

For many thousands of years people had looked at expensive heads of hair and thought of how much food and warmth they represented, so obviously it was a thought of no use at all, so why bother to have it? But thoughts of this sort did go ticking on, useless or not.

she had to fight for qualities that had not been even in her vocabulary. Patience. Self-discipline. Self-control. Self-abnegation. Chastity. Adaptability to others - this above all. This always.

All those years were now seeming like a betrayal of what she really was. While her body, her needs, her emotions–all of herself–had been turning like a sunflower after one man, all that time she had been holding in her hands something else, the something precious, offering it in vain to her husband, to her children, to everyone she knew–but it had never been taken, had not been noticed. But this thing she had offered, without knowing she was doing it, which had been ignored by herself and by everyone else, was what was real in her.” (page 140)

I’m not going to be like my mother. You’re maniacs. You’re mad." “Yes,” said Kate. “I know it. And so you won’t be. The best of luck to you. And what are you going to be instead?

Younger woman says, “I’m not going to be like my mother. You’re maniacs. You’re mad.” “Yes,” [older woman responds] “I know it. And so you won’t be. The best of luck to you. And what are you going to be instead?

I’m not going to be like my mother. You’re maniacs. You’re mad. “Yes,” said Kate. “I know it. And so you won’t be. The best of luck to you. And what are you going to be instead?

she was wishing that whatever stage of her life she ws in now could be got through quickly, for it was seeming to her interminable. If life had to be looked at in terms of high moments or peaks, then nothing had "happened" to her for a long time; and she could look forward to nothing but a dwindling away from full household activities and getting old.

Choose? When do I ever choose? Have I ever chosen?

There's something here that I simply will not let myself look at.

Looking back over nearly a quarter of a century, she saw that that had been the characteristic of her life -passivity, adaptability to others.

The truth was, she was becoming more and more uncomfortably conscious not only that the things she said, and a good many of the things she thought, had been taken down off a rack and put on, but that what she really felt was something else again.