Celebration of divorce
The author writes that when Tomas “had divorced his wife, he celebrated the event the way others celebrate a marriage.” Thus he highlights the heaviness of this marriage for Tomas and his feeling of freedom after he got rid of it.
The aggression of love
Tomas, in order to “ensure that erotic friendship never grew into the aggression of love”, met "each of his long-term mistresses only at intervals." Ironically telling about aggressive love, the author actually shows Tomas’ attitude to it – he is afraid of felling in love, he is afraid of being loved.
Whores’ house in front of cathedral
The author describes a street in Amsterdam: on its one side there are houses for prostitutes, where they sit like “big bored cats”, and “on the other side of the street is a gigantic Gothic cathedral dating from the fourteenth century. Between the prostitutes' world and God's world, like a river dividing two empires, stretches an intense smell of urine.” Here the author shows the absurd irony of society – people mix everything, they mix innocence with dirt, good with evil, etc.
