Now that I know that the quotation comes from Macbeth, I can’t help but realize (or perhaps remember) that also behind us, at our backs, is the person urging us on, the person who whispers in our ear, perhaps without our even seeing him … like the drop of rain that falls from the eaves after the storm, always on to the same spot so that the earth becomes softer and softer until the drop penetrates and makes a hole, perhaps a channel.
Javier Marías, A Heart So White [1992], trans. Margaret Jull Costa (New York: Vintage International, 2013), 68.