I'm not going to do this justice. Not that justice seems to matter much.
"Forgive me if the question seems impudent, but I would like to ask: How do you find it possible to eat afterwards, after you have been . . . working with people?
"That is a question I have always asked myself about executioners and other such people . . . . I would imagine that one would want to wash one's hands. But no ordinary washing would be enough, one would require priestly intervention, a ceremonial cleansing, don't you think? Some kind of purging of one's soul too--that is how I have imagined it.
"Otherwise how would it be possible to return to everyday life--to sit down at table . . . to break bread with one's family or one's comrades?"
--J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, p. 145
