I would be guilty only if I were innocent of working to destroy racism in my country. - Nadine Gordimer

Pero las cuestiones humanas no conducían a conclusiones tajantes, al trazado de una línea ni a una suma total. Parecían resolverse, disolverse, cuando sólo se estaban formando de nuevo, reuniéndose en otra combinación. Incluso cuando estamos muertos, lo que hicimos continúa tramando estas nuevas combinaciones.

The zoo lions do no utter during the day. They yawn; wait for their ready-slaughtered kill to be tossed at them; keep their unused claws sheathed in huge harmless pads on which top-heavy, untidy heads rest,... gazing through lid-slats with what zoo visitors think of in sentimental prurience as yearning.Or once we were near the Baltic and the leviathan hooted from the night fog at sea. But would I dare to open my mouth now? Could I trust my breath to be sweet, these stale nights?

She did have one book — a thick paperback snatched up in passing, until that moment something bought years ago and never read, perhaps it was meant for this kind of situation: Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi, in translation as The Betrothed. She did not want to begin it because what would happen when she had read it? There was no other. Then she overcame the taboo (if she did not read, they would find a solution soon; if she did read the book, they would still be here when it was finished).