I clearly recall the day I first became truly aware of myself, I mean of myself as something that everything else was not. As a boy I liked best those dead intervals of the year when one season had ended and the next had not yet begun, and all was grey and hushed and still, and out of the stillness and the hush something would seem to approach me, some small, soft, tentative thing, and offer itself to my attention. This day of which I speak I was walking along the main street of the town. It was November, or March, not cold, but neutral. From a lowering sky fine rain was falling, so fine as to be hardly felt. It was morning, and the housewives were out, with their shopping bags and headscarves. A questing dog trotted busily past me looking neither to right nor left, following a straight line drawn invisibly on the pavement. There was a smell of smoke and butcher’s meat, and a brackish smell of the sea, and, as always in the town in those days, the faint sweet stench of pig-swill. The open doorway of a hardware shop breathed brownly at me as I went past. Taking in all this, I experienced something to which the only name I could give was happiness, although it was not happiness, it was more and less than happiness. What had occurred? What in that commonplace scene before me, the ordinary sights and sounds and smells of the town, had made this unexpected thing, whatever it was, burgeon suddenly inside me like the possibility of an answer to all the nameless yearnings of my life? Everything was the same now as it had been before, the housewives, that busy dog, the same, and yet in some way transfigured. Along with the happiness went a feeling of anxiety. It was as if I were carrying some frail vessel that it was my task to protect, like the boy in the story told to us in religious class who carried the Host through the licentious streets of ancient Rome hidden inside his tunic; in my case, however, it seemed I was myself the precious vessel. Yes, that was it, it was I that was happening here. I did not know exactly what this meant, but surely, I told myself, surely it must mean something. And so I went on, in happy puzzlement, under the small rain, bearing the mystery of myself in my heart.
Was it that same phial of precious ichor, still inside me, that spilled in the cinema that afternoon, and that I carry in me yet, and that yet will overflow at the slightest movement, the slightest misbeat of my heart?
Jasno se sjećam dana kada sam prvi put postao istinski svjestan sebe, odnosno sebe kao onoga što sve drugo nije. Kao dječak najviše sam volio ona učmala razdoblja u godini kada bi jedno godišnje doba završilo, a drugo tek trebalo otpočeti, pa je sve bilo sivo, prigušeno i spokojno, a iz spokoja i prigušenosti naizgled bi mi se nešto približavalo, nešto sitno, blago i nesigurno ponudilo bi se mojoj pozornosti. Toga dana o kojem govorim koračao sam uz glavnu seosku cestu. Bio je studeni, ili pak ožujak, i nije bilo hladno, tek osrednje. S ovješenog neba sipila je kišica, toliko blaga da se jedva osjećala. Bilo je rano i kućanice su izišle na ulicu, urešene vrećicama za kupovinu i rupcima na glavama. Znatiželjni pas žurno me obišao pogleda uprta ravno preda se, slijedeći nevidljivo narisanu, ravnu crtu na pločniku. U zraku se osjetio miris dima i mesa iz mesnice, slankast zapah mora te, kao i uvijek tih dana u selu, blago slatkasti vonj svinjskog napoja. Otvorena vrata željezarije ispustila su smećkasti dah na mene dok sam prolazio. Upijajući sve to, osjetio sam nešto što sam mogao nazvati jedino srećom, premda u pitanju nije bila sreća; bilo je to nešto više i manje od sreće. Što se bilo zbilo? Što je u toj prepoznatljivoj vizuri preda mnom, uobičajenim prizorima, zvukovima i mirisima sela, nagnalo tu neočekivanu stvar, što god ona bila, da odjednom oživi u meni kao da može dati odgovore na sve bezimene žudnje koje sam u životu osjećao? Sada je sve bilo isto kao i prije; kućanice, onaj užurbani pas, sve isto, a opet nekako preobraženo. Osjećaj sreće pratila je tjeskoba. Imao sam dojam da nosim nekakvo krhko vjedro za čiju sam zaštitu zadužen, poput dječaka iz priče što su nam je pričali na vjeronauku, koji je pronosio hostiju razuzdanim ulicama starog Rima skrivajući je u svojoj tunici; u mom se pak slučaju činilo da sâm predstavljam to dragocjeno vjedro. Da, tako je bilo, ja sam ono što se ondje dogodilo. Nisam znao točno što to znači, ali jamačno, rekao sam samome sebi, jamačno nešto mora značiti. I tako sam nastavio koračati, obuzet sretnom zbunjenošću, na blagoj kišici i noseći vlastiti misterij u svojem srcu.
Je li se baš ta bočica dragocjenog ihora, koja još uvijek prebiva u meni, onog poslijepodneva prolila u kinu, a koju i dalje nosim u sebi, i koja će se nastaviti prolijevati pri najmanjem pokretu, i najmanjem nepravilnom kucaju mojeg srca?
John Banville