If the talk at mealtime isn't about politics or good food,
then Mother or Mrs. van D. trot out stories about their childhood that we've heard a thousand times before,
or Dussel goes on and on about beautiful racehorses, his Charlotte's extensive wardrobe, leaky rowboats,
boys who can swim at the age of four, aching muscles and frightened patients.
It all boils down to this: whenever one of the eight of us opens his mouth, the other seven can finish the story for him.
We know the punch line of every joke before it gets told, so that whoever's telling it is left to laugh alone.
The various milkmen, grocers and butchers of the two former housewives have been praised to the skies
or run into the ground so many times that in our imaginations they've grown as old as Methuselah;
there's absolutely no chance of anything new or fresh being brought up for discussion in the Annex.
Still, all this might be bearable if only the grown-ups weren't in the habit of repeating the stories we hear
from Mr. Kleiman, Jan or Miep, each time embellishing them with a few details of their own,
so that I often have to pinch my arm under the table to keep myself from setting the enthusiastic storyteller on the right track.
전체재생
다음페이지
문장검색