He wasn't debauched. During the act his thoughts were always preoccupied with his revulsion at what he was doing and his fear of possible consequences. It was just that his imagination had been sent in an unhealthy direction. When the leaden weekdays came down over him, one after the other, these corrosive attractions started to lure him. His memories of his visits to her turned into something incredibly seductive. Božena seemed to him an immensely base creature and his relationship with her, the emotions he had to go through, a cruel ritual of self-sacrifice. He was attracted by the idea of having to leave behind him everything in which up until now he had been enclosed: his privileged position, the thoughts and feelings that had been dinned into him, all the things that did nothing for him and oppressed him. He was attracted by the idea of running off, naked, stripped of everything, in wild, headlong flight to this woman.
© OUP
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