“I’ve always liked stairways, with their people who go dragging their breath up them and fall dully down them in a shapeless mass. Maybe that’s why I chose the stairs to suffer on.”
A man sits on the steps and practices suffering. He exercises his pains – moving from the 4th degree to the 9th of suffering, gaining mastery over remorse and jealousy. It’s a perfect portrayal of the paradox of the martyr – and of the artist. The hubris of trying to be in control of pain, thinking that if you just dwell on it enough, it won’t overwhelm you in the end. As long as you’re in love with suffering, you can never really suffer. Of course, ultimately, it’s love that gives the lie to this – because the most unbearable pain of all is the one that’s poisoned by the hope that things might stop hurting quite so much.
English translation published in The Houseguest and Other Stories, New Directions, 2018
A Personal Anthology 