Death with Interruptions

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ACCORDING TO THE WISDOM OF THE NATIONS, THERE IS AN exception to every rule, even rules that would normally be considered utterly inviolable, as for example, those regarding the sovereignty of death, to which, by definition, there never could be an exception, however absurd, and yet it really must be true because, as it happened, one violet-colored letter was returned to sender. Some will object that such a thing is impossible, that death, being ubiquitous, cannot therefore be in any one particular place, from which one can deduce the impossibility, both material and metaphysical, of locating and defining what we normally understand by the word sender, or, in the meaning intended here, the place from which the letter came. Others will also object, albeit less speculatively, that, since a thousand policemen have been looking for death for weeks on end, scouring the entire country, house by house, with a fine-tooth comb, as if in search of an elusive louse highly skilled in evasive tactics, and have still found neither hide nor hair of her, it is as clear as day that if no explanation has yet been given as to how death's letters reach the mail, we are certainly not going to be told by what mysterious channels the returned letter has managed to reach her hands. We humbly recognize that our explanations about this and much more have been sadly lacking, we confess that we are unable to provide explanations that will satisfy those demanding them, unless, taking advantage of the reader's credulity and leaping over the respect owed to the logic of events, we were to add further unrealities to the congenital unreality of this fable, now we realize that such faults seriously undermine our story's credibility, however, none of this, we repeat, none of this means that the violet-colored letter to which we referred was not returned to its sender. Facts are facts, and this fact, whether you like it or not, is of the irrefutable kind. There can be no better proof of this than the image of death before us now, sitting on a chair while wrapped in her sheet, and with a look of blank amazement on the orography of her bony face. She eyes the violet envelope suspiciously, studies it to see if it bears any of the comments postmen usually write on envelopes in such cases, for example, returned, not known at this address, addressee gone away leaving no forwarding address or date of return, or simply, dead, How stupid of me, she muttered, how could he have died if the letter that should have killed him came back unopened. She had thought these last words without giving them much importance, but she immediately summoned them up again and repeated them out loud, in a dreamy tone of voice, Came back unopened. You don't need to be a postman to know that coming back is not the same thing as being sent back, that coming back could merely mean that the violet-colored letter failed to reach its destination, that at some point along the way something happened to make it retrace its steps and return whence it had come. Letters can only go where they're taken, they don't have legs or wings, and, as far as we know, they're not endowed with their own initiative, if they were, we're sure that they would refuse to carry the terrible news of which they're so often the bearers. Like this news of mine, thought death impartially, telling someone that they're going to die on a particular date is the worst possible news, it's like spending long years on death row and then having the jailer come up to you and say, Here's the letter, prepare yourself. The odd thing is that all the other letters from the last batch were safely delivered to their addressees, and if this one wasn't, it can only have been because of some chance event, for just as there have been cases of a love letter, god alone knows with what consequences, taking five years to reach an addressee who lived only two blocks and less than a quarter of an hour's walk away, it could be that this letter passed from one conveyor belt to another without anyone noticing and then returned to its point of departure like someone who, lost in the desert, has nothing more to go on than the trail he left behind him. The solution would be to send it again, said death to the scythe that was next to her, leaning against the white wall. One wouldn't expect a scythe to respond, and this one proved no exception. Death went on, If I'd sent you, with your taste for expeditious methods, the matter would have been resolved, but times have changed a lot lately, and one has to update the means and the systems one uses, to keep up with the new technologies, by using e-mail, for example, I've heard tell that it's the most hygienic way, one that does away with inkblots and fingerprints, besides which it's fast, you just open up outlook express on microsoft and it's gone, the difficulty would be having to work with two separate archives, one for those who use computers and another for those who don't, anyway, we've got plenty of time to think about it, they're always coming out with new models and new designs, with new improved technologies, perhaps I'll try it some day, but until then, I'll continue to write with pen, paper and ink, it has the charm of tradition, and tradition counts for a lot when it comes to dying. Death stared hard at the violet-colored envelope, made a gesture with her right hand, and the letter vanished. So now we know that, contrary to what so many thought, death does not take her letters to the post office.

On the table is a list of two hundred and ninety-eight names, rather fewer than usual, one hundred and fifty-two men and one hundred and forty-six women, and the same number of violet-colored envelopes and sheets of paper are ready for the next mailing, or death-by-post. Death added to the list the name on the letter that had been returned to sender, underlined it and replaced her pen in the pen holder. If she had any nerves at all, we could say that she felt slightly excited, and with good reason. She had lived for far too long to consider the return of the letter unimportant. It's easy enough to understand, it takes very little imagination to see why death's workplace is probably the dullest of all those created since cain killed abel, an incident for which god bears all the blame. Since that first deplorable incident, which, from the moment the world began, demonstrated the difficulties of family life, and right up until the present day, the process has remained unchanged for centuries and centuries and more centuries, repetitive, unceasing, uninterrupted, unbroken, varying only in the many ways of passing from life to non-life, but basically always the same because the result was always the same. The fact is that whoever was meant to die died. And now, remarkably, a letter signed by death, written in her own hand, a letter warning of someone's irrevocable and un-postponable end, had been returned to sender, to this cold room where the author and signatory of the letter sits, wrapped in the melancholy shroud that is her historic uniform, the hood over her head, as she ponders what has happened, meanwhile drumming on the desk with the bones of her fingers, or the fingers of her bones. She's slightly surprised to find herself hoping that the letter will be returned again, that the envelope will carry, for example, a message denying all knowledge of the addressee's whereabouts, because that really would be a new experience for someone who has always managed to find us wherever we were hidden, if, in that childish way, we thought we might escape her. However, she doesn't really believe that the supposed absence will be marked on the back of the envelope, here the archives are updated automatically with every gesture or movement we make, with every step we take, every change of house, status, profession, habit or custom, if we smoke or don't smoke, if we eat a lot or a little or nothing, if we're active or indolent, if we have a headache or indigestion, if we suffer from constipation or diarrhea, if our hair falls out or we get cancer, if it's a yes, a no or a maybe, all she will have to do is open the drawer of the alphabetical file, look for the corresponding folder, and there it will all be. And it shouldn't astonish us in the least if, at the very moment we were reading our own personal file, we saw instantaneously recorded there the sudden pang of anxiety that froze us. Death knows everything about us, and that perhaps is why she's sad. If it's true that she doesn't smile, this is only because she has no lips, and this anatomical lesson tells us that, contrary to what the living may believe, a smile is not a matter of teeth. There are those who say, with a sense of humor that owes more to a lack of taste than it does to the macabre, that she wears a kind of permanent, fixed grin, but that isn't true, what she wears is a grimace of pain, because she's constantly pursued by the memory of the time when she had a mouth, and her mouth a tongue, and her tongue saliva. With a brief sigh, she took up a sheet of paper and began writing the first letter of the day, Dear madam, I regret to inform you that in a week your life will end, irrevocably and irremissibly. Please make the best use you can of the time remaining to you, yours faithfully, death. Two hundred and ninety-eight sheets of paper, two hundred and ninety-eight envelopes, two hundred and ninety-eight names removed from the list, this is not exactly a killingly hard job, but the fact is that when she reaches the end, death is exhausted. Making that gesture with her right hand with which we're already fa miliar, she dispatched the two hundred and ninety-eight letters, then, folding her bony arms on the desk, she rested her head on them, not in order to sleep, because death doesn't sleep, but in order to rest. When, half an hour later, once recovered from her tiredness, she raised her head, the letter that had been returned to sender and sent again was back, right there before her empty, astonished eye sockets.

If death had dreamed hopefully of some surprise to distract her from the boredom of routine, she was well served. Here was that surprise, and it could hardly be bettered. The first time the letter was returned could have been put down to a mere accident along the way, a castor come off its axle, a lubrication problem, a sky-blue letter in a hurry to arrive that had pushed its way to the front, in short, one of those unexpected things that happen inside machines, or, indeed, inside the human body, and which can throw off even the most exact calculations. The fact that it had been returned twice was quite different, it clearly showed that there was an obstacle at some point along the road that should have taken it straight to the home of the addressee, an obstacle that sent the letter rebounding back to where it had come from. In the first instance, given that the return had taken place on the day after it had been sent, it was still possible that the postman, having failed to find the person to whom the letter should have been delivered, instead of putting the letter through the mailbox or under the door, had returned it to the sender, but omitted to give a reason. All this was pure supposition, of course, but it could explain what had happened. Now, however, things were different. Between coming and going, the letter had taken less than half an hour, probably much less, for it was there on the desk when death raised her head from the rather hard resting-place of her forearms, that is from the cubit and the radius, which are intertwined for that very purpose. A strange, mysterious, incomprehensible force appeared to be resisting the death of that person, even though the date of his demise had been fixed, as it had for everyone, from the day of his birth. It's impossible, said death to the silent scythe, no one in this world or beyond has ever had more power than I have, I'm death, all else is nothing. She got up from her chair and went over to the filing cabinet, from which she returned with the suspect file. There was no doubt about it, the name agreed with that on the envelope, so did the address, the person's profession was given as cellist and the space for civil status was blank, a sign that he was neither married, widowed nor divorced, because in death's files the status of bachelor is never recorded, well, you can imagine how silly it would be for a child to be born, an index card filled out, and to note down, not his profession, because he wouldn't yet know what his vocation would be, but that the newborn's civil status was bachelor. As for the age given on the card that death is holding in her hand, we can see that the cellist is forty-nine years old. Now, if we needed proof of the impeccable workings of death's archives, we will have it now, when, in a tenth of a second, or even less, before our own incredulous eyes, the number forty-nine is replaced by fifty. Today is the birthday of the cellist whose name is on the card, he should be receiving flowers not a warning that in a week's time he'll be dead. Death got up again, walked around the room a few times, stopped twice as she passed the scythe, opened her mouth as if to speak or ask an opinion or issue an order, or simply to say that she felt confused, upset, which, we must say, is hardly surprising when we think how long she has done this job without, until now, ever having been shown any disrespect from the human flock of which she is the sovereign shepherdess. It was then that death had the grim presentiment that the incident might be even more serious than had at first seemed. She sat down at her desk and started to leaf back through last week's list of the dead. On the first list of names from yesterday, and contrary to what she had expected, she saw that the cellist's name was missing. She continued to turn the pages, one, then another, then another and another, one more, and only on the eighth list did she find his name. She had erroneously thought that the name would be on yesterday's list, but now she found herself before an unprecedented scandal: someone who should have been dead two days ago was still alive. And that wasn't the worst of it. The wretched cellist, who, ever since his birth, had been marked out to die a young man of only forty-nine summers, had just brazenly entered his fiftieth year, thus bringing into disrepute destiny, fate, fortune, the horoscope, luck and all the other powers that devote themselves by every possible means, worthy and unworthy, to thwarting our very human desire to live. They were all utterly discredited. And how am I going to put right a mistake that could never have happened, when a case like this has no precedents, when nothing like it was foreseen in the regulations, thought death, especially when the man was supposed to have died at forty-nine and not at fifty, which is the age he is now. Poor death was clearly beside herself, distraught, and would soon start beating her head against the wall out of sheer distress. In all these thousands of centuries of continuous activity, there had never been a single operational failure, and now, just when she had introduced something new into the classic relationship between mortals and their one and only causa mortis, her hard-won reputation had been dealt the severest of blows. What should I do, she asked, what if the fact that he didn't die when he should have has placed him beyond my jurisdiction, how on earth am I going to get out of this fix. She looked at the scythe, her companion in so many adventures and massacres, but the scythe ignored her, it never responded, and now, oblivious to everything, as if weary of the world, it was resting its worn, rusty blade against the white wall. That was when death came up with her great idea, People say that there's never a one without a two, never a two without a three, and that three is lucky because it's the number god chose, but let's see if it's true. She waved her right hand, and the letter that had been returned twice vanished again. Within two minutes it was back. There it was, in the same place as before. The postman hadn't put it under the door, he hadn't rung the bell, and there it was.

Obviously, we have no reason to feel sorry for death. Our complaints have been far too numerous and far too justified for us to express for her a pity which at no moment in the past did she have the delicacy to show to us, even though she knew better than anyone how we loathed the obstinacy with which she always, whatever the cost, got her own way. And yet, for a brief moment, what we have before us is more like an image of desolation than the sinister figure who, according to a few unusually perspicacious individuals lying on their deathbed, appears at the foot of the bed at our final hour to make a gesture similar to the one she makes when she dispatches the letters, except that the gesture means come here, not go away. Due to some strange optical phenomenon, real or virtual, death seems much smaller now, as if her bones had shrunk, or perhaps she was always like that, and it's our eyes, wide with fear, that make her look like a giant. Poor death. It makes us feel like going over and putting a hand on her hard shoulder and whispering a few words of sympathy in her ear, or, rather, in the place where her ear once was, underneath the parietal. Don't get upset, madam death, such things are always happening, we human beings, for example, have long experience of disappointments, failures and frustrations, and yet we don't give up, remember the old days when you used to snatch us away in the flower of our youth without a flicker of sadness or compassion, think of today when, with equal hardness of heart, you continue to do the same to people who lack all the necessities of life, we've probably been waiting to see who would tire first, you or us, I understand your distress, the first defeat is the hardest, then you get used to it, but please don't take it the wrong way when I say that I hope it won't be the last, I say this not out of any spirit of revenge, well, it would be a pretty poor revenge, wouldn't it, rather like sticking my tongue out at the executioner who's about to chop off my head, although, to be honest, we human beings can't do much more than stick out our tongue at the executioner about to chop off our head, that must be why I can't wait to see how you're going to get out of the mess you're in, with this letter that keeps coming and going and that cellist who can't die at forty-nine because he's just turned fifty. Death made an impatient gesture, roughly shrugged off the fraternal hand we had placed on her shoulder and got up from her chair. She seemed taller now, larger, a proper dame death, capable of making the earth tremble beneath her feet, with her shroud dragging behind her, throwing up clouds of smoke with each step she takes. Death is angry. It's high time we stuck out our tongues at her.