NOTHING COULD BE SIMPLER. Apparently they can be conjured out of thin air. And for what? To delight the eye with their shimmer as they ascend toward the light, trembling like soap bubbles. Then they’re swallowed up by darkness. When they rise, it’s as if they were already falling. But are they not splendid? They’re casually called into being and thrown carelessly into the void; there is no one to save them. The narrator, a rather secondary figure, knows nothing more about it; he acknowledges this with regret. Alone and faced with accomplished facts, he is concerned about one thing only: that he should avoid descending into banality from the very first sentence. If he could, he’d prefer to walk away with his hands in his pockets, leaving everything to the mercy of fate, which he has not been permitted to influence; or at the very least to abide stubbornly in an eloquent, arrogant silence. But the narrator realizes he has nowhere to go. The privilege of arrogance is also denied him.
