Tonight there is a silent meeting. He knows that he'll meet someone with more conviction. She'll be a woman; she'll be one that despises the silence of complacence. They needed to talk.
He never liked to be convinced, but she didn't come to sell anyone her wares — least of all to him. Her impatience was flagrant; he felt it as it grew. Was he also like this? Could a man be? Then it was clear. By breaking everyone's silence, they could forge something anew. The past was recounted by others, but those others were still like sitting ducks. They had to progress. By surpassing everyone's silence, they gained a motion in their own lives. It's what they both wanted. It allowed them to arrive.
She had delivered a courageous speech. He found her voice immense and earnest. Her voice was conviction. Later, she told him about her actual hesitations and about her distrust in history. She confessed her point of view; he listened carefully. He offered to her a question he had been long waiting to ask, "between us, who possesses the impulse to document, or to express?" She laughed. She knew this curiosity well and that they could now communicate. She revealed to him that the first handprints were made by women — a woman's hand as the advent of conviction.
He asked, "but could conviction be distinguished by hands that were
once so alike?"
She replied, "our evolution increased our differences. Conviction's
the way to meet again."