White Violin

4. Nausea

My room was lit when I entered. Almost everything, from the bed to the wallpaper was dyed in a violet blue. A change of clothes have been folded and laid on the bed. It was laced in black and white, the set of castle clothes the maid told Marie and me to change into. 

I put down my luggage and violin and started changing in front of the large mirror. I looked at myself in the mirror: I was still sweating and I could not tell whether it was the heat, my uniform, or my own anxiety. 

There were more clothing and accessories to put on than I thought. Even though the main dress was rather thin and airy, there was also a and a hat. I let down my braces because they looked terrible with the hat. I straightened myself and looked at my weary form in the mirror. Quite a lot of people believe that merely changing clothes can change the entire appearance and attractiveness of the wearer. This didn't seem, however, to be the case for me. I still had the weary and tense look on my face with the clothes on. 

I felt another pan of dizziness. This nausea wasn't like the waves I had earlier when I got off the cart. If the ones I had earlier were like tides of pain, the ones I was experiencing now were spears impaling my cranial nerves. Probably it wasn't the act of momentum any longer. It came from the discomfort of seeing my own inhumanity in the mirror. Why did I come to this castle? Why had I been so docile? Why did I change into these clothes? The simple answer I had always given myself was to perfect my craft violin-playing. I was out of ideas for other excuses. I shouldn't need an excuse anyway. This was not an answer I consciously gave myself. It was only a simple verbal justification should such an absurd, vulgar question be directed at me. I had almost done everything so far mechanically—habitually, you might say—and rendered this inhumanity in me more and more revolting. I couldn't find the right question to ask myself. Why should I live? No, let me correct myself: why should I not suicide? I read that if you could answer the question as to why you should not suicide, you would be able to solve all other problems. I looked at the reflection of my body state, searching the reason not to erase this existence. There was some psychological source of nausea swirling in my mind. Whenever I grasped any of its smallest identifiable fragment, it slipped away from my hands like cold, tap water.