A Cure for Suicide by Jesse Ball

Author:Jesse Ball [Ball, Jesse]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-07-21T04:00:00+00:00

—HOW IS IT that you know when you have accomplished a conversation with another person in a good manner? asked the examiner slowly. Or, I should say, how do you think other people judge these conversations?

They were eating supper, pea soup with thick, crusty brown bread. The claimant had a piece of bread torn in half on his plate. The brown bread tore well and it felt good to do it.

—I think it is a success if we can both go away feeling that we were right to begin with. That we were right about how it would go when we met and talked, and that it went the way it was supposed to go.

—Who determines how it is supposed to go?

—No one does. But, if it doesn’t go that way, everyone can see it.

—And would that embarrass you?

—No, I don’t think so.

The claimant thought for a minute.

—I don’t think about other people judging it.

—Why?

—Because, you said, you said once, that it is a failure to think of people as being separate from the village. The people are the village. If I speak to them about something, I’m just trying to preserve the sense that already exists in the village. I do that by having a sensible conversation, such a conversation as could happen in the village. That is the whole of it.

The examiner clapped her hands together.

—One more thing, she asked. I want to do an exercise. I want you to tell me what it is like to walk down into the town. Could you do that for me? Imagine the most beautiful day imaginable, a day such as you have longed for. You wake up, and go downstairs. You leave the house. You go out into the street. Take it from there.

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