WE WHO WERE NOT SLAPPED. We of course felt sympathy for those who had been slapped. It was impossible not to imagine the moment: the stranger emerging from nowhere, the flare of danger, the hand raised to strike a blow. We wondered how they must have felt, those unlucky ones, as the sound rang out, as the stranger walked away. We wondered what we ourselves would have done, as he stepped up to us with his angry eyes. We understood that our compassion for the victims had in it a touch of superiority, of condescension, which the fortunate are bound to feel for the less fortunate, and we tried not to feel too great a pleasure in having escaped their fate. We understood one other thing. Even though we were pleased to have been spared, even though we were the ones to whom nothing ugly had happened, still we wondered, at times, whether they were more fortunate than we. After all, their ordeal was over, they had been tested, they had nothing more to fear, whereas we, the innocent ones, we, the unsnapped, walked in a world crackling with danger. It was as if they knew something that we didn’t know. At times we even envied them a little.

26

  

Copyright 2008 Disclaimer