Impermanence

Impermanence, expressed at Tranquillum House through Masha’s recurring reminder that nothing lasts forever, is at once a Buddhist teaching about change and a phrase used to rationalize coercion. Masha urges the guests not to cling to either happiness or suffering, even as she subjects them to a frightening exercise in which they must argue for their own survival. Later, trapped together, Frances and Lars repeat her words back into the crisis, and the principle shifts from Masha’s instrument of control to a source of perspective and possible action.

The teaching and Masha’s use of it

Masha presents impermanence as a reason to release attachment to both pleasurable and painful states. When Carmel asks whether the guests will be allowed out after defending their “clients,” Masha answers that Carmel is asking the wrong question: only Carmel can set herself free. She recalls having spoken with Carmel about impermanence a few days earlier and instructs her not to cling to happiness or suffering. The formulation turns an inward spiritual idea into an answer to an immediate, concrete plea to go home.

That exchange exposes the tension between the teaching and the circumstances in which Masha applies it. Carmel is asking about physical confinement, but Masha recasts the problem as spiritual dependence on freedom from suffering. She calls spiritual awakenings difficult rather than directly addressing Carmel’s request. Impermanence thus serves not only as advice but as a way of interpreting the guests’ distress on Masha’s terms: fear and discomfort become part of an awakening, while the question of whether they consent to the exercise is left aside.

Masha reinforces this frame as she prepares to leave the guests alone until dawn. She tells them to focus their thoughts, ask the right questions of their “clients,” listen with their hearts, and convince her why each deserves to live. Before departing, she quotes the Buddha: “Ardently do today what must be done. Who knows? Tomorrow death comes.” The line makes mortality the exercise’s explicit horizon. Her farewell combines prayerful gestures with a demand that the guests perform under the threat of death, placing spiritual language alongside coercive stakes.

Fear, breath, and the lesson’s practical turn

The idea acquires a different, more immediate use when Ben admits to Napoleon that public speaking terrifies him so much he feels unable to breathe. Napoleon explains that fear and excitement differ by the exhalation: fear holds air high in the lungs, so Ben needs to breathe out. He demonstrates with a long, slow “Ahhhhh,” and Ben follows him. In this moment, the response to fear is not an abstract claim that suffering passes; it is a physical action Ben can take in the present.

Napoleon then volunteers to go first, saying he will defend Tony by boring Masha with a rundown of Tony’s football career and every game he played. The contrast matters: the exercise has been framed as a life-or-death spiritual ordeal, but Napoleon meets it with deliberate humor and a practical commitment to speak. His reassurance to Ben also translates change into something bodily and manageable—a held breath can become an exhalation—rather than asking Ben simply to accept fear as meaningful.

Repetition inside the confinement

As the crisis continues, the guests’ confinement makes the phrase “nothing lasts forever” newly charged. Lars stands before the screen and tells Masha that she has frightened them nearly to death and that they will never be the same. He asks to return to their rooms, receives no answer, and then invokes Masha’s own mantra: she cannot keep them there forever. He acknowledges that they feel as if they have been trapped forever, while pushing his damp hair back from his forehead.

Frances silently repeats the words, recognizing how often Masha has used them. The repetition is not a simple acceptance of Masha’s teaching. It makes the language conspicuous as a refrain, testing what it means when spoken by those subjected to the ordeal rather than by the person directing it. Lars’s appeal applies the principle to the limits of Masha’s power; Frances’s inward echo turns the familiar phrase into a clue for thinking through their predicament.

From spiritual maxim to a question of agency

Frances connects the refrain to an earlier exchange with Masha about the Russian doll. Frances had told Masha that there was no code in it, and Masha had replied, “Exactly.” Recalling that answer alongside the repeated claim that nothing lasts forever, Frances asks when anyone last tried the door. The sequence moves from remembered words to a concrete question about the room and the possibility of escape. The guests are no longer only being asked to interpret suffering; Frances redirects attention toward what they can test.

Across these moments, impermanence remains open to competing uses. Masha employs it to recast imposed distress as a spiritual challenge, and her invocation of death intensifies that challenge. Yet the same insistence that no condition lasts forever can undermine the apparent permanence of confinement. Napoleon’s breathing exercise, Lars’s challenge, and Frances’s question each convert a general idea into an action or reconsideration grounded in the present. The maxim does not itself resolve the guests’ danger; its significance lies in who speaks it, what situation it is made to explain, and whether it narrows the guests’ choices or helps them recover a sense of agency.