To continue:
After I woke up this morning I fell asleep again, and had a short but unusually vivid and realistic dream. I was sitting in my armchair and thought I caught a movement outside the window. I looked up but saw nothing. And then I saw it again. A man was walking from the side of the house towards the path that runs down the garden. He was darkly complexioned and wearing military field dress – a camouflage smock and a German-style field cap. He stopped and looked at me with a serious expression. He nodded and then walked on. I woke up startled.
Later, when I went out to feed the birds, it sounded like a war zone here. The air was rent with rapid gunfire that went on and on. Somebody was obviously holding a shooting party somewhere in the vicinity.
I think I once told the story of how I was taught to shoot when I was twelve or thirteen; how I shot a crow that fell dead at my feet, and how full of self-loathing I was. I never shot anything again, and that’s what I find hard to understand. How does a human being, with all the finer feelings of which we’re capable, kill a second time?
2 comments:
I think some people are lacking in the finer feelings of humanity.
Well, I can't take a high position here, Jean. I've done enough bad things myself. I suppose the trick is to try and learn from them and improve. I've always had a horror of killing anything, though. It's so final. It's the one thing you can't do a damn thing about, even when you've learned the lesson. All you can do is move on.
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