The Bomber

DEATH

The school I attended was a wooden building with three floors. As we got older, we moved higher up. Once every year, in the spring, the entire school had a fire drill. In those days, old school buildings were dry as dust and burned down in minutes- there was no room for either negligence or anyone crying off.

There was a boy in my class who suffered from epilepsy. I forget his name. For some reason he couldn't hold his hands above his head. Nevertheless, he took part in the fire drill the year after the end of the war. I remember the day clearly. The sun was shining, a cold and pale light, and there was a hard and gusting wind. I hate heights- I always have- and was numb with fear as I stepped out on the fire escape. The world over by the river looked like it was about to keel over, and I gripped the railings. Infinitely slowly, I turned around and stared into the red wooden wall of the school building. I held on to each rung of the fire escape with the same desperate grip. When I finally reached the ground, I was completely exhausted. My legs were shaking, and I just stood there trying to compose myself while my classmates started walking back toward our classroom. That's when I raised my eyes and saw the epileptic boy slowly climbing down the ladder. He had just reached the last landing when I heard him say: "I can't go on any further." He lay down, turning his face against the wall, and died, right before our eyes.

The ambulance came and picked him up. I had never seen one before. I stood next to the back doors when they lifted him inside on a stretcher. He looked as he usually did, only a bit paler, his eyes were closed, and his lips blue. His arms shook a bit when the stretcher was put in its place inside the large car, and a last breeze ruffled his blond curls before the door shut.

I can still recall my wonder at the fact that I felt no dread. I had seen a dead person, no older than myself, and I wasn't affected by it. He was neither repugnant nor tragic, only still.

Afterwards, I have often wondered what makes a person alive. Our minds are really nothing but a neurotransmitter and some electricity. The fact that I to this day still think about the epileptic boy actually lends him continued existence. He's present here in this dimension that we call reality, not by virtue of his own neurotransmitter, but because of mine.

The question is whether there aren't worse ways of harming people than killing them. Sometimes I suspect that I myself have crushed people, much as the teacher had by forcing that boy out onto the fire escape.

So the ultimate question in that case is whether I need absolution and, if so, from whom?