During the meal, there was no discussion, or very little, about the parents of the mine searcher. There was probably several reasons for this silence. People at the hotel and in the whole neighborhood knew that Gina, Ludi, Jacques, Sara, and Diana went up the mountain to see them every day, and that Gina, all by herself, took care of feeding them. For this reason, the others felt they could not take initiative in the matter. They felt that any other effort would be superfluous, since these people, with Gina taking the lead, had concerned themselves with the parents of the mine searcher from the very beginning. Everyone disapproved of these daily visits, some because they simply found them out of place, others because they regarded them as evidence of an unwholesome curiosity about miserable spectacles, and still others because they were annoyed at so much initiative. But there was also undoubtedly another cause for this silence about the event - the fact that it had happened three days ago, and already seemed to be lacking in current interest. The fire on the mountainside had already replaced it.
Since the man had just become acquainted with everyone, and had only arrived at the time of the catastrophe, there was no reason for him to hesitate to talk about it,. Nevertheless he didn’t talk about it any more than the others did. He must have suspected, especially since the talk on the beach, that it wasn’t an easy thing to talk about.
[The Little Horses of Tarquinia, Duras, M.]
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