Our real capital is pain. Not oil. Not the gas. Pain. It is the only thing we constantly produce. But why doesn’t so much pain turn into freedom? I’m still looking for an answer. Is it really vain pain? “
Svetlana Aleksievic asks herself in a very intense little book just published by Adelphi, “A lost battle”. On another page she writes: “Women speak above all of what disappears, they say that in war everything is done nothing in an instant”.
As I look at the photo of Olga and Lidya, her sister-in-law, who meet to eat together in the liberated village of Troistke, I question their smile. Shy, almost restrained. They have a table set in front of them, almost festive. But they know about everything that’s gone. They know that an immense capital of pain weighs on their shoulders, and on the future time.