Death with Interruptions

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IN THIS COUNTRY IN WHICH NO ONE DIES NOT EVERYTHING was as sordid as we have just described, nor, in this society torn between the hope of living forever and the fear of never dying, did the voracious maphia succeed in getting its talons into every section by corrupting souls, subjugating bodies and besmirching the little that remained of the fine principles of old, when an envelope containing something that smelled of a bribe would have been immediately returned to the sender, bearing a firm and clear response, something along the lines of, Buy some toys for your children with this money, or You must have got the wrong address. Dignity was then a form of pride that was within the grasp of all classes. Despite everything, despite the false suicides and the dirty dealings on the frontier, that spirit continued to hover over the waters, not the waters of the great ocean sea, for that bathed other distant lands, but over lakes and rivers, over streams and brooks, over the puddles left by the rain, over the luminous depths of wells, which is where one can best judge how high the sky is, and, extraordinary though it may seem, over the calm surfaces of aquariums too. It was precisely when he was distractedly watching a goldfish that had just come up to the surface to breathe and when he was wondering, slightly less distractedly, just how long it had been since he changed the water, because he knew what the fish was trying to say when again and again it ruptured the delicate meniscus where water meets air, it was at precisely this revelatory moment that the apprentice philosopher was presented with the clear, stark question that would give rise to the most impassioned and thrilling controversy ever known in the whole history of this country where no one dies. This is what the spirit hovering over the water of the aquarium asked the apprentice philosopher, Have you ever wondered if death is the same for all living beings, be they animals, human beings included, or plants, from the grass you walk on to the hundred-meter-tall sequoiadendron giganteum, will the death that kills a man who knows he's going to die be the same as that of a horse who never will. And, it went on, at what point did the silkworm die after having shut itself up in the cocoon and bolted the door, how was it possible for the life of one to have been born out of the death of the other, the life of the moth out of the death of the worm, and for them to be the same but different, or did the silkworm not die because the moth still lives. The apprentice philosopher replied, The silkworm didn't die, but the moth will die after it has laid its eggs, Well, I knew that before you were born, said the spirit hovering over the waters of the aquarium, the silkworm didn't die, there was no corpse inside the cocoon when the moth had left, but, as you said, one was born out of the death of the other, It's called metamorphosis, everyone knows that, said the apprentice philosopher condescendingly, That's a very fine-sounding word, full of promises and certainties, you say metamorphosis and move on, it seems you don't understand that words are the labels we stick on things, not the things themselves, you'll never know what the things are really like, nor even what their real names are, because the names you gave them are just that, the names you gave them, Which of us is the philosopher, Neither you nor me, you're merely an apprentice philosopher, and I am merely the spirit hovering over the water in the aquarium, We were talking about death, No, not about death, about deaths, what I asked was why is it that human beings aren't dying, but other animals are, why is the non-death of some not also the non-death of others, when the life of this goldfish ends, and, I should warn you, that won't be long in coming if you don't change this water, would you be able to recognize in its death that other death from which at the moment, for reasons you don't know, you appear to be immune, Before, in the days when people died, on the few occasions when I found myself in the presence of people who had passed away, I never imagined that their death would be the same death I would one day die, Because each of you has his or her own death, you carry it with you in a secret place from the moment you're born, it belongs to you and you belong to it, And what about animals and plants, Well, I suppose it's the same with them, Each one with its own death, Exactly, So there are many deaths, as many as all the liv ing beings that have existed, do exist and will exist, In a way, yes, You're contradicting yourself, exclaimed the apprentice philosopher, The deaths that oversee each individual are, so to speak, deaths with a limited life span, subaltern deaths, who die along with the thing they kill, but above them will be a larger death, the one that has been in charge of human beings since the dawn of the species, So there's a hierarchy, Yes, I suppose so, As there is for animals, from the most elementary protozoan to the blue whale, For them too, And for plants, from diatoms to the giant sequoia, which, because it's so big, you mentioned before with its Latin name, As far as I know, the same thing happens with them, So each thing has its own personal, untransmittable death, Yes, And then two more general deaths, one for each of nature's kingdoms, Precisely, And is that where it ends, the hierarchy of responsibilities delegated by thanatos, asked the apprentice philosopher, If I go as far as my imagination can reach, I can see another death, the last, supreme death, What death is that, The one that will destroy the universe, the one that really deserves the name of death, although when that happens, there'll be no one around to pronounce its name, the other things we've been talking about are nothing but tiny, insignificant details, So there isn't just one death, concluded the apprentice philosopher somewhat unnecessarily, That's precisely what I've been saying, So the death that used to be our death has stopped working, but the others, the deaths of animals and plants, continue to operate, so they're independent, each working in their own sector, Now are you convinced, Yes, Right, now go and tell everyone else, said the spirit hovering over the water of the aquarium. And that is how the controversy started.

The first argument against the daring thesis proposed by the spirit hovering over the water of the aquarium was that its spokesperson was not a qualified philosopher, but a mere apprentice who had never gone beyond a few textbook rudiments, almost as elementary as the protozoan, and as if that were not enough, these rudiments had been taken from here, there and everywhere, in stray snippets, with no needle and thread to sew them together even though the colors and shapes clashed horribly, it was, in short, a philosophy that one might describe as being of the harlequin or eclectic school of thought. That wasn't really the problem, though. It's true that the essence of the thesis had been the work of the spirit hovering over the water of the aquarium, however, one need only re-read the dialogue on the two previous pages to recognize that the apprentice philosopher's contribution also had some influence on the gestation of this interesting idea, if only in his role as listener, a dialectical factor which, as everyone knows, has been indispensable ever since the days of socrates. There was one thing, at least, that could not be denied, human beings were not dying, but other animals were. As for the plants, anyone, however ignorant of botany, could easily see that, just as before, they were being born, putting out leaves, then withering and drying up entirely, and if that final phase, with or without putrefaction, could not be described as dying, then perhaps someone could step up and offer a better definition. The fact that the people here were not dying, but all other living things were, said some objectors, could only be seen as proof that normality had not entirely withdrawn from the world, and normality, needless to say, means, purely and simply, dying when our time comes. Dying and not getting caught up in arguments about whether that death was ours from birth, or if it was merely passing by and happened to notice us. In other countries, people continued to die, and the inhabitants didn't seem any unhappier for that. At first, as is only natural, there was envy, there were conspiracies, there was even the odd case of attempted scientific espionage to find out how we had managed it, but, when they saw the problems besetting us, we believe that the feeling among the populations of those countries could best be expressed in these words, We've had a very lucky escape.

The church, of course, galloped into the arena of the debate mounted on its usual war-horse, namely, that god moves, as always, in mysterious ways, which means, in layman's terms somewhat tinged with verbal impiety, that we cannot even peer through the crack in the door of heaven to see what's going on inside. The church also said that the temporary and more or less lasting suspension of natural causes and effects wasn't really a novelty, one had only to recall the infinite miracles that had happened over the last twenty centuries, the only difference, compared with what was happening now, was the sheer scale of the thing, for what was once bestowed as a favor on one individual, by the grace of his or her personal faith, had been replaced by a depersonalized, global gift, a whole country being given, so to speak, the elixir of eternal life, and not only the believers, who, as is only logical, might expect to be singled out, but also atheists, agnostics, heretics, apostates, unbelievers of every kind, devotees of other religions, the good, the bad and the worse, the virtuous and the maphiosi, executioners and victims, cops and robbers, murderers and blood donors, the mad and the sane, all, without exception, were at the same time witnesses and beneficiaries of the greatest marvel ever seen in the whole history of miracles, the eternal life of a body eternally bound to the eternal life of the soul. The catholic hierarchy, from the bishops up, were not amused by these mystical tales issuing from certain members of their middle ranks avid for wonders, and they let it be known in a very firm message to the faithful, in which, after the inevitable reference to god's impenetrably mysterious ways, they repeated the idea which had already been expressed off-the-cuff by the cardinal, during the first few hours of the crisis, in the phone conversation he'd had with the prime minister, when, imagining himself to be the pope and asking god to forgive him for such foolish presumption, he had proposed the immediate publication of a new thesis, that of death postponed, trusting in the oft-praised wisdom of time, which tells us that there will always be a tomorrow in which to resolve the problems that today seem insoluble. In a letter to the editor of his favorite newspaper, a reader declared himself perfectly prepared to accept the idea that death had decided to postpone herself, but asked, with the greatest respect, if he could be told how the church had known about this, and that if they really were so well-informed, then they must also know how long the postponement would last. In an editor's note, the newspaper reminded the reader that it was merely a proposal, and one that had not as yet been put into practice, which must mean, he concluded, that the church knew as much about the matter as we did, that is, nothing. At this point, someone wrote an article demanding that the debate return to the question that had started it in the first place, was death one or several, should we be referring to death in the singular or death in the plural, and now that I have my pen in my hand, I would just like to say that the church, in adopting such an ambiguous stance, is merely trying to gain time and avoiding having to commit itself, which is why, as usual, it's busily trying to put a splint on a frog's leg, meanwhile running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. The first of these popular expressions caused some perplexity among journalists, who had never heard or read it in their lives before. So, faced by this enigma, and driven on by a healthy dose of professional competitiveness, they hauled down from the shelves the dictionaries they occasionally consulted when writing their articles and news items and set about discovering what that batrachian was doing there. They found nothing, or, rather, they found the frog, they found the leg, they found the splint, but what they didn't manage to do was to get at the meaning those three words clearly had when put together. Then it occurred to one of them to summon an old porter who had arrived from the provinces many years before and whom everyone laughed at because, despite all that time spent living in the city, he still spoke as if he were sitting by the fireside telling stories to his grandchildren. They asked him if he knew the expression and he said, yes, he did, they asked if he knew what it meant and he said, yes, he did. Explain it then, said the editor-in-chief, A splint, gentlemen, is a piece of wood used to hold a broken bone in place, That much we know, but what has it got to do with the frog, It has everything to do with the frog, because no one could ever put a splint on a frog's leg, Why not, Because a frog never keeps its legs still for long enough, So what does the expression mean then, It means that there's no point in trying, because the frog won't let you, But that can't be what the reader meant to say, Well, it's also used when someone is clearly just playing for time, that's when we say they're trying to put a splint on a frog's leg, And that's what the church is doing, Yes, sir, So the reader who wrote this is entirely right, Yes, I believe so, although, of course, my job is keeping an eye on who comes in and out of that door, You've been very helpful, Don't you want me to explain the other expression, Which one, The one about the hare and the hounds, No, we know that one, we practice it every day.

The polemic about death singular or deaths plural, which was started by the spirit hovering over the water in the aquarium and by the apprentice philosopher, would have ended either in comedy or in farce had the article by the economist not appeared. Although, as he himself acknowledged, actuarial calculus was not his specialty, he considered himself sufficiently knowledgeable about the subject to go public and to ask just how, in about twenty years' time, give or take a year, the coun try thought it would be able to pay the millions of people who would find themselves on permanent disability pensions and would continue like that for all eternity and would, implacably, be joined by further millions, now regardless of whether you used an arithmetic or a geometric progression, disaster was assured, it would mean chaos, disorder, state bankruptcy, a case of sauve qui peut, except that no one would be saved. Confronted by this terrifying vision, the metaphysicians had no option but to button their lip, the church had no option but to return to their weary telling of beads and to waiting for the end of time, which, according to their eschatological visions, would resolve everything once and for all. In fact, going back to the economist's worrying arguments, the calculations were very easy to make, if a certain proportion of the active population are paying their national insurance, and a certain proportion of the inactive population are retired, either for reasons of old age or disability, and therefore drawing on the active population for their pensions, and the active population is constantly on the decrease with respect to the inactive population, and the inactive population is constantly on the increase, it's hard to understand why no one saw at once that the disappearance of death, apparently the peak, the pinnacle, the supreme happiness, was not, after all, a good thing. The philosophers and other abstractionists had first to get lost in the forest of their own lucubrations about the almost and the zero, which is the plebeian way of saying being and nothingness, before common sense could arrive prosaically, with pen and paper in hand, to demonstrate by a + b + c that there were certain far more urgent matters to consider. As was foreseeable, knowing as one does the darker side of human nature, when the economist's alarming article was published, the attitude of the healthy section of the population toward the terminally dying began to change for the worse. Up until then, even though everyone was agreed that the old and the sick caused considerable upsets and problems, it was nevertheless felt that treating them with respect was one of the essential duties of any civilized society, and consequently, although it did occasionally take some effort, the care they needed was never denied to them and, in a few rare cases, this care was even sweetened with a spoonful of compassion and love before the light was turned out. It's also true, as we well know, that there were a few cruel families who allowed themselves to be carried away by their own incurable inhumanity and went so far as to employ the services of the maphia to get rid of the miserable human remains that lay dying interminably between sheets drenched in sweat and stained by natural excretions, but they deserve our disapprobation, as does the family described in the oft-told tale of the wooden bowl, although, fortunately, as you will see, they were saved at the last moment from the final execration thanks to the kind heart of a child of eight. It is a tale quickly told, and we will leave it here for the illumination of new generations who do not know it, in the hope that they do not mock it for being ingenuous or sentimental. Listen, then, to this moral lesson. Once upon a time, in the ancient land of fables, there was a family consisting of a father, a mother, a grandfather who was the father's father, and the aforementioned child of eight, a little boy. Now the grandfather was very old and because of that his hands shook and when he was at table he sometimes dropped his food, to the great irritation of his son and his daughter-in-law, who were always telling him to eat more carefully, but the poor old man, however hard he tried, could not stop his shaking, which only got worse when they told him off, and so he was always staining the tablecloth or dropping food on the floor, not to mention on the napkin they tied around his neck and which they had to change three times a day, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This was how things stood, with no hope of improvement, when the son decided to put a stop to the unpleasant situation. He arrived home with a wooden bowl and said to his father, From now on, you'll eat here, sitting on the doorstep, because that's easier to clean, and your daughter-in-law won't have to deal with all those dirty tablecloths and napkins. And so it was. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the old man sat alone on the doorstep, raising the food to his mouth as best he could, losing half on the way, while part of the other half dribbled onto his chin, with very little actually making it down what common folk would call his gullet. The grandson seemed entirely unmoved by the cruel treatment being meted out to his grandfather, he would look at him, then look at his mother and father, and continue to eat as if it were none of his business. Then one afternoon, when the father came home from work, he saw his son carving a piece of wood and assumed he was making himself a toy, as was normal in those distant days. The following day, however, he realized that the boy wasn't making a toy car, or at least if he was, he couldn't see where the wheels would go, and so he asked, What are you making. The boy pretended he hadn't heard and continued whittling away at the wood with the point of his knife, this happened in the days when parents were less fearful and wouldn't immediately snatch from their children's hands such a useful tool for making toys. Didn't you hear me, I asked what you're making with that piece of wood, the father asked again, and his son, without glancing up from what he was doing, replied, I'm making a bowl for when you're old and your hands shake and you're sent to sit on the front step to eat your meals, like you did with grandpa. These words had a magical effect. The scales fell from the father's eyes, he saw the truth and its light, and went at once to ask his own father's forgiveness, and when supper-time arrived, he helped him sit down in the chair, fed him with a spoon and gently wiped his chin, because he could still do that, and his dear father could not. History fails to recount what happened afterward, but we know for certain that the boy's carving was interrupted and the piece of wood is still there. No one wanted to throw it away, perhaps because they didn't want the lesson to be forgotten or because they thought that someone might one day decide to finish the job, which was all too possible when one bears in mind the enormous capacity for survival of the aforesaid darker side of human nature. As someone once said, Everything that can happen will happen, it's only a matter of time, and if we don't get to see it while we're around, it will be be cause we didn't live long enough. Anyway, just so that we're not accused of painting everything with colors drawn only from the left-hand side of the palette, some believe that an adaptation of this gentle story for television, some newspaper having first rescued it from the dusty shelves of the collective memory and brushed off the cobwebs, might help to restore to the shattered consciences of families the cult or cultivation of the incorporeal values of spirituality once nurtured by society, before the base materialism that currently prevails took possession of wills we imagined to be strong, but which were, in fact, the very image of a dreadful and incurable moral weakness. Let us not, however, give up hope. We are convinced that the moment the boy appears on the screen, half the country's population will race off in search of a handkerchief to dry their tears and the other half, being perhaps of a more stoical temperament, will allow the tears to roll down their face in silence, the better to show that remorse for some evil done or condoned is not necessarily an empty word. Let us hope we are still in time to save the grandparents.

Unexpectedly, and revealing a deplorably poor sense of timing, the republicans decided to choose this delicate occasion to make their voices heard. There were not many of them, they did not even have any representation in parliament, despite forming a political party and regularly standing for election. Nevertheless, they bragged about having a certain amount of social influence, especially in artistic and literary circles, whence came occasional manifestos which while, on the whole, well-written, were invariably bland and anodyne. They had shown no sign of life since the disappearance of death, not even, as one might expect from a supposedly radical opposition, in order to demand an explanation for the maphia's rumored participation in the ignoble traffic in the terminally dying. Now, taking advantage of the anxiety sweeping the country, torn as it was between the vanity of knowing itself to be unique on the whole planet and a feeling of deep disquiet because it was not like anywhere else, there they were bringing into question neither more nor less than the matter of the regime. Being, by definition, opponents of the monarchy and enemies of the throne, they thought they had discovered a new argument in favor of the necessary and urgent establishment of the republic. They said that it went against common logic for a country to have a king who would never die and who, even if he were to decide to abdicate tomorrow for reasons of age or declining mental health, would continue to be king, the first in an endless succession of enthronements and abdications, an endless sequence of kings lying in their beds awaiting a death that would never arrive, a stream of half-alive, half-dead kings who, unless they were kept in the corridors of the palace, would end up filling and finally overflowing the pantheon where their mortal ancestors had been received and who would now be nothing but bones detached from their hinges or musty, mummified remains. How much more logical it would be to have a president of the republic with a fixed term of office, a single mandate, at most two, and then he could go his own sweet way, live his own life, give lectures, write books, take part in congresses, colloquia and symposia, argue his point at roundtables, go around the world in eighty receptions, opine upon the length of skirts when they come back into fashion and on the reduction of ozone in the atmosphere if there is an atmosphere, he could, in short, do as he pleased. Better that than having to read every day in the newspapers and hear on television and radio the unalterable medical bulletin, still no change, about the patients in the royal infirmaries, which, it should be noted, having already been extended twice, would be about to be extended again. The plural of infirmaries is there to indicate that, as always happens with hospitals and the like, the men were kept separate from the women, that is, kings and princes on one side, queens and princesses on the other. The republicans were now challenging the people to assume their rightful responsibilities, to take destiny in their hands in order to inaugurate a new life and forge a new, flower-strewn path toward future dawns. This time their manifesto touched not only artists and writers, other social strata proved equally receptive to the happy image of the flower-strewn path and to those invocations of future dawns, and the result was an absolutely extraordinary flood of support from new militants ready to set off on a crusade which, just as a fish is a fish before and after it has been fished, had passed into history even before anyone knew it would turn out to be an historic event. Unfortunately, in the days that followed, the verbal manifestations of civic enthusiasm from the new supporters of this forward-looking, prophetic republicanism were not always as respectful as good manners and healthy democratic coexistence demand. Some even crossed the line of the most offensive vulgarity, saying, for example, when speaking of their royal highnesses, that they were not prepared to keep donkeys or dumb beasts with rings through their noses supplied with sponge cake. All people of good taste agreed that such words were not just inadmissible, they were unforgivable. It would have sufficed to say that the state coffers would be unable to continue to support the continual increase in expenditure of the royal household and its adjuncts, and everyone would have understood. It was true, but it did not offend.

It was this violent attack by the republicans, but, more important, the article's worrying prediction that, very soon, the aforementioned state coffers would be unable, with no end in sight, to continue paying old age and disability pensions, that prompted the king to let the prime minister know that they needed to have a frank conversation, alone, without tape recorders or witnesses of any kind. The prime minister duly arrived, inquired after the royal health, in particular after that of the queen mother, who, at new year, had been on the point of dying, but who nonetheless, like so very many others, still continued to breathe thirteen times a minute, even though her prostrate body beneath the canopy covering her bed showed few other signs of life. His majesty thanked him and said that the queen mother was bearing her sufferings with the dignity proper to the blood that still ran in her veins, and then turned to the matters on the agenda, the first of which was the republicans' declaration of war. I just don't understand what these people can be thinking of, he said, here's the country plunged in the worst crisis of its entire history, and there they are talking about regime change, Oh, I wouldn't worry, sir, all they're doing is taking advantage of the situation to spread what they call their plans for government, deep down, they're nothing but poor anglers fishing in some very murky waters, And, let it be said, showing a lamentable lack of patriotism. Indeed, sir, the republicans have ideas about the nation that only they can understand, if, that is, they do understand them, Their ideas don't interest me in the least, what I want to hear from you is if there's any chance they might force a change of regime, They don't even have any representation in parliament, sir, What I'm referring to is a coup d'etat, a revolution, Absolutely not, sir, the people are solidly behind their king, and the armed forces are loyal to the legitimate government, So I can rest easy, Completely, sir. The king made a cross in his diary next to the word republicans, and said, Good, then he asked, And what's all this about pensions not being paid, We are paying them, sir, but prospects do look pretty bleak, So I must have misread it, I thought there had been, shall we say, a suspension of payments, No, sir, but, as I say, the future is very worrying indeed, Worrying in what respect, In every respect, sir, the state could simply collapse like a house of cards, Are we the only country that finds itself in this situation, asked the king, No, sir, in the long term, the problem will affect everyone, but what counts is the difference between dying and not dying, a fundamental difference, if you'll forgive me stating the obvious, Sorry, but I don't quite understand, In other countries, it's normal for people to die, but here, sir, in our country, no one dies, think only of the queen mother, it seemed certain she was dying, but, no, she's still here, happily for us, of course, but really, I'm not exaggerating, the noose is well and truly around our necks, And yet I've heard rumors that some people are dying, That's true, sir, but it's merely a drop in the ocean, not all families can bring themselves to take that step, What step, Handing over their dying to the organization in charge of the suicides, But I don't understand, what's the point of them committing suicide if they can't die, Oh, they can, sir, And how do they manage it, It's a complicated story, sir, Well, tell it to me, we're alone, On the other side of the frontier, sir, people are still dying, You mean that this organization takes them there, Exactly, Is it a charitable organization, It helps us a little to slow down the mounting numbers of the terminally dying, but, as I said before, it's a drop in the ocean, And what is this organization. The prime minister took a deep breath and said, The maphia, sir, The maphia, Yes, sir, the maphia, sometimes the state has no alternative but to find someone else to do its dirty work, You've never said anything to me about this before, No, sir, I wanted to keep you out of a situation for which I take full responsibility, And the troops who were on the frontier, They had a job to do, What job was that, Of appearing to be an obstacle to the transportation of suicides, but not, in fact, being an obstacle at all, But I thought they were there to prevent an invasion, There never was such a danger, and, besides, we've made agreements with the governments of those other countries, and everything's under control, Apart from the matter of pensions, Apart from the matter of death, sir, if we don't start dying again, we have no future. The king made a cross beside the word pensions and said, Something needs to happen, Indeed, sir, something needs to happen.