facts of both and have to accept them. There is no Faustian avoidance on offer. All we can do is attempt to delay or accelerate the approach of death. Men strive to postpone it. They do this instinctively, for life, it seems, is preferable to death.
I admit that I too seek to put off the coming of the dark. I do not know why. There is nothing I can do about it. It will come, and only the manner of its coming can potentially be controlled.
Tomorrow, it is within my power to kill myself. The bottle of codeine is on the bathroom shelf, waiting. There is a through train to the south from Milano every day bar Sunday which does not stop at the station: it would take but a step forward there to end it all. The mountains too have cliffs as high as the sky, and there is always the gun, the clean quick way to die.
I may have the quotation wrong – my classical languages were never good – but I think it was Simonides who wrote, ‘Somebody is happy because I, Theodorus, am dead; and someone else will be glad when that somebody dies as well, for we are, every one of us, in arrears to death.’
Certainly, there will be those who shall celebrate my passing should they get to hear of it, for whom the dictum of Charles IX of France will ring so true: ‘Nothing smells so good as the body of a slain enemy.’ Just as sure is the fact there will be few mourners at my graveside. Perhaps, if I was to die today, Signora Prasca might weep. Clara and Dindina too. Father Benedetto would mutter a few words, be sorrowful he had not heard my last confession. Indeed, if he values my friendship as I think he does, he might pretend he heard a final, faint breath of contrition or caught the merest flicker of an eyelid in response to the last great question. There would be no such thing, of course. Any twitch of the flesh would be caused by the nerves fading, the flesh discharging its electricity, the muscles relaxing and starting their genteel corruption into dust.
What name might be spoken in my eulogy or carved upon my tablet in the cemetery, I cannot say. ‘A.E. Clarke’, perhaps. I should prefer ‘il Signor Farfalla’. I have to accept, when death rears up before me, so too will arise the question of my identity. Whatever happens, the headstone will not bear my true name. I shall forever be an administrative error in the affairs of the graveyard.
I am not afraid of death nor of dying. I do not consider it where I am concerned. I just accept that it will arrive, in its own due time. I am of the opinion of Epicurus. Death, purportedly the most terrifying ill, is nothing to me. So long as I am alive, it does not exist, for it is not here, has not occurred, is neither tangible nor foreseeable. When it arrives, it is nothing. It merely implies I no longer exist. It is of little concern, therefore, for the living have it not and the dead, being no more in existence, similarly know nothing of it. It is no more than a swing door between being and ceasing to be. It is not an event of living. It is not experienced as a part of life. It is an entity of its own. So long as I live, it is non-existent.
As I care little for death, it follows I care not that I create it for others. I am not an assassin. I have never killed a man by pulling a trigger and taking a pay-off. I wonder if you thought I had. If this is so, then you are wrong.
My job is the gift-wrapping of death. I am the salesman of death, the arbiter who can bring death into existence as easily as a fairground magician conjures a dove from a handkerchief. I do not cause it. I merely arrange for its delivery. I am death’s booking clerk, death’s bellhop. I am the guide on the path towards darkness. I am the one with his hand on the switch.
It is the case I support assassination. It is the best of deaths. Death should be noble, clean, final, exact, specific. Its beauty lies in its finality. It is the last brushstroke to the canvas of life, the final daub of colour which completes the
I admit that I too seek to put off the coming of the dark. I do not know why. There is nothing I can do about it. It will come, and only the manner of its coming can potentially be controlled.
Tomorrow, it is within my power to kill myself. The bottle of codeine is on the bathroom shelf, waiting. There is a through train to the south from Milano every day bar Sunday which does not stop at the station: it would take but a step forward there to end it all. The mountains too have cliffs as high as the sky, and there is always the gun, the clean quick way to die.
I may have the quotation wrong – my classical languages were never good – but I think it was Simonides who wrote, ‘Somebody is happy because I, Theodorus, am dead; and someone else will be glad when that somebody dies as well, for we are, every one of us, in arrears to death.’
Certainly, there will be those who shall celebrate my passing should they get to hear of it, for whom the dictum of Charles IX of France will ring so true: ‘Nothing smells so good as the body of a slain enemy.’ Just as sure is the fact there will be few mourners at my graveside. Perhaps, if I was to die today, Signora Prasca might weep. Clara and Dindina too. Father Benedetto would mutter a few words, be sorrowful he had not heard my last confession. Indeed, if he values my friendship as I think he does, he might pretend he heard a final, faint breath of contrition or caught the merest flicker of an eyelid in response to the last great question. There would be no such thing, of course. Any twitch of the flesh would be caused by the nerves fading, the flesh discharging its electricity, the muscles relaxing and starting their genteel corruption into dust.
What name might be spoken in my eulogy or carved upon my tablet in the cemetery, I cannot say. ‘A.E. Clarke’, perhaps. I should prefer ‘il Signor Farfalla’. I have to accept, when death rears up before me, so too will arise the question of my identity. Whatever happens, the headstone will not bear my true name. I shall forever be an administrative error in the affairs of the graveyard.
I am not afraid of death nor of dying. I do not consider it where I am concerned. I just accept that it will arrive, in its own due time. I am of the opinion of Epicurus. Death, purportedly the most terrifying ill, is nothing to me. So long as I am alive, it does not exist, for it is not here, has not occurred, is neither tangible nor foreseeable. When it arrives, it is nothing. It merely implies I no longer exist. It is of little concern, therefore, for the living have it not and the dead, being no more in existence, similarly know nothing of it. It is no more than a swing door between being and ceasing to be. It is not an event of living. It is not experienced as a part of life. It is an entity of its own. So long as I live, it is non-existent.
As I care little for death, it follows I care not that I create it for others. I am not an assassin. I have never killed a man by pulling a trigger and taking a pay-off. I wonder if you thought I had. If this is so, then you are wrong.
My job is the gift-wrapping of death. I am the salesman of death, the arbiter who can bring death into existence as easily as a fairground magician conjures a dove from a handkerchief. I do not cause it. I merely arrange for its delivery. I am death’s booking clerk, death’s bellhop. I am the guide on the path towards darkness. I am the one with his hand on the switch.
It is the case I support assassination. It is the best of deaths. Death should be noble, clean, final, exact, specific. Its beauty lies in its finality. It is the last brushstroke to the canvas of life, the final daub of colour which completes the
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