Dictionary of the Khazars - Milorad Pavic

Can you be sure it has understood you completely?.txt

'You see,' [the devil] says to me casually, 'the moth is way up there by the
white wall of the doorway, and it is visible only because it moves. From here it
almost looks like a bird high up in the sky, if you think of the wall as the
sky. That's probably how the moth sees the wall, and only we know it is wrong.
But it doesn't know that we know. It doesn't even know we exist. You try to
communicate with it, if you can. Can you tell it anything in a way it
understands; can you be sure it has understood you completely?'

'I don't know,' I replied. 'Can you?'

'Yes,' the old man said quietly, and with a clap of his hands he killed the
moth, then proffered its crushed body on the palm of his hand.

 -- Milorad Pavic, _Dictionary of the Khazars_