Primeval and Other Times

THE TIME FOR THE DEAD

When old Boski died, he found himself in the Time of the Dead. In some way this time belonged to the cemetery in Jeszkotle. On the cemetery wall there was a plaque on which was clumsily engraved:

When Boski died, he immediately realised he had made a mistake; he had died badly, carelessly, that he had made a mistake in dying and that he would have to go through the whole thing again. He also realised that his death was a dream, just like life.

The Time of the Dead imprisoned those who naively reckoned you don’t have to learn death, those who had failed death like an exam. And the more the world moved forwards, the more it extolled life, the more firmly attached to life it was, the larger a crowd prevailed in the Time of the Dead and the noisier the cemeteries became. For only here did the dead gradually gain consciousness after life and find they had lost the time granted to them. Only after death did they discover the secret of life, and it was a futile discovery.