House of Spirits

Isabel Allende

And now I seek my hatred and cannot seem to find it. I feel its flame going out as I come to understand the existence of Colonel Garcia and the others like him, as I understand my grandfather and piece things together from Clara’s notebooks, my mother’s letters, the ledgers of Tres Marias, and the many other documents spread before me on the table. It would be very difficult for me to avenge all those who should be avenged, because my revenge would be just another part of the same inexorable rite. I have to break that terrible chain. I want to think that my task is life and that my mission is not to prolong hatred but simply fill these pages while I wait for Miguel, while I bury my grandfather, whose body lies beside me in this room, while I wait for better times to come, while I carry this child in my womb, the daughter of so many rapes or perhaps of Miguel, but above all, my own daughter.

The best thing to say is what another has already said, be it echo or bridge:

Every brave man will think so, he told me. He will not want to live by passing on the wrath. A hit B? B hit C?--we have not enough alphabet to cover the condition. A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him. He shall keep the blow. No man shall get it from him, and that is a sublime ambition. So, a fellow throws himself in the sea of blows saying he do not believe it is infinite. In this way many courageous people have died. --Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow

This is power. Look at it.
This is the great domino strain of pain and hurt. It's coming towards you. Towering ivory block after towering ivory block slams another and then the ground making the one that looms over you tremble. They are engraved with the images of people screaming. Some are silent, some are loud, some are tortured, and all are miserable. Who stands strong enough not to fall?

You have a lot to do, so stop feeling sorry for yourself, drink some water, and start writing, Clara told her granddaughter before disappearing the same way she had come.