Twelve Collections and the Teashop
Page 5
Why would it be my last?
Isn’t it obvious? Because you won’t be writing any more.
This was completely crazy, but since I was already ambushed, I had to continue.
Why wouldn’t I write any more? Who’s going to prevent me?
You’ll prevent yourself. At least I hope you will.
And why on earth would I do such a thing?
Because otherwise you’ll die.
Irritation replaced my confusion. nimble fingers typed angrily.
Listen here! I don’t know how you’re pulling this off and I really don’t care. I’ve had enough. You’ve gone too far. I won’t let anyone taunt me like that.
You haven’t been to the doctor in a while, have you? It might be a good idea to find the time. How long are you going to pretend that the stitch at the base of your chest isn’t getting worse?
I didn’t answer right away. I brought a hand unconsciously to my chest.
How do you know? I haven’t told anyone about it.
Is that important? You just confirmed it yourself.
I hoped it wasn’t anything serious. I guess I’ll have to go to the doctor.
The doctor won’t be able to help you very much unless you help yourself.
By not writing?
That’s right. Your very next story would be fatal. You would die of a heart attack just as you started to write it.
I thought of asking once again how he knew, but gave up. It really wasn’t important.
And if I don’t write anymore?
Then you will live to a rather ripe old age. The pains in your chest will disappear all by themselves. The doctor will give you a clean bill of health.
I thought it over a bit.
The choice, then, is between life without writing and writing that leads to death?
Yes. The choice is yours.
I hesitated briefly once again.
That’s not much of a choice.
It isn’t, but it’s better than not having any choice at all.
Why do I deserve preferential treatment?
as I wrote the last word I knew what the answer would be.
Is it important?
What would happen if later on, when the doctor says I’m healthy, I started writing again?
You wouldn’t get very far. Even the healthiest people can die a sudden death. There’s no cheating with this. You have written your last story.
I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose with thumb and index finger because a dull throb had started there.
Do you have a lot of last stories in your collection?
Yes. A lot.
Were their authors faced with this choice too?
They were.
What did they choose?
Most of them chose life. And longevity. Particularly since there is actually no alternative. There are some, however, who can’t live without writing. They continue, even when they know what awaits them.
I can understand that.
Does that mean you’ll join them?
I don’t know. I have to think it over. It’s not an easy decision to make.
It isn’t, I agree. In any case, whatever you decide, I think you’ll be happy to know that your last story is one of the nicest in my collection. I hope this brings you some consolation.
I laughed bitterly.
I feel better already.
Good. That’s about all. I am honored to have had the chance to talk to a wonderful writer.
I’d already touched the keys, but there was no time to send an appropriate farewell. The text of our dialogue and the story that preceded it were suddenly highlighted in black, as when a block is marked, and then disappeared. The purple film went with it. The whiteness of the empty screen stared at me with blank eloquence.
I stared back at it, stock-still for a time. and then my fingers, already resting on the keyboard, seemed to start typing by themselves:
I typed the last sentence of the story. But there was no time to sink into the unique feeling of relief brought by the completion of writing. Before I had managed to press two keys on the keyboard to save the file, the screen suddenly turned purple.
I didn’t have time to lower the cursor to a new paragraph. a sharp pain forced me to grab desperately at my chest.
8. CLIPPINGS
MR. POSPIHAL COLLECTED NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS. He’d been doing this since the age of sixty-two, when he retired. He’d spent his entire adult life working for the post office, rising from postman to manager. Working in the post office had taught him to respect order above all things. He was an innately orderly man, but the work at the post office had fully impressed on him the importance of averting any kind of disorder. Even deviating quite innocently from the rules or yielding however slightly to confusion could have unforeseeable consequences.Maintaining order took time. Even before he’d become manager, Mr. Pospihal stayed at work longer than regulations required. Thorough preparations were needed before the workday began, and when it was over many things were left that needed attention. if he hadn’t proceeded in such a way he would never have become manager. and promotion to that position didn’t soften him a bit. Quite the contrary. He spent almost every waking hour at the post office, arriving considerably before the other employees and leaving long after them. it couldn’t have been any other way. Before, he’d been responsible solely for himself, while as manager he was responsible for many other people.
Such commitment to his work didn’t leave much time for a private life. Mr. Pospihal had never started a family, although he might have wanted one in his younger days. Later this desire diminished, and he even saw the merits of not being married and having children. He’d sacrificed himself for the greater good. it would have been hard to be a successful postal employee, let alone manager, if he’d been hampered by family obligations. The example of many of his colleagues confirmed this. Chiefly because they were family oriented, they did not do their jobs anywhere near as reliably and conscientiously as he did his.
When he retired, Mr. Pospihal had to face a double blow. First of all, he wasn’t at all certain he’d left the post office in good hands. His opinion of the manager who succeeded him was far from good. no sooner had he taken up his position than he dropped the strict rules on employee behavior that Mr. Pospihal had unofficially introduced that dealt, for example, with how long the employees’ hair and moustaches could be, and prohibited them from wearing short-sleeved shirts regardless of the temperature. He’d written the new manager a detailed letter, polite but severe, expressing his reasonable grounds for concern with regard to such indulgence, indicating the far-reaching consequences it might have. The lack of a reply even after a reasonable time had passed gave him great cause for concern and vexation.
The second blow fell even more heavily on Mr. Pospihal. now retired, he had an abundance of the free time he’d consistently avoided while he was working. Since he didn’t know how to fill his days, they were unbearably long in the beginning. and then he hit upon the best way to kill time. He would read the newspaper.
Mr. Pospihal used to read the newspaper before he retired, when he got home from work, but in a cursory fashion. He’d been reading the same serious daily newspaper from the capital ever since he was a young man, opening it after dinner before he went to bed. Fatigue, however, didn’t allow him to get very engrossed. He’d leaf through the first section just enough to see the main headlines and might read an article from the front page if it seemed particularly important. Then sleep would steal over him. after all, he had to get up early in the morning.
Now he was finally able to read the newspaper at his leisure and when he wasn’t sleepy. right after breakfast he would settle into the only armchair in his small living room and stay there all the way till lunchtime, reading the paper from cover to cover. He didn’t omit a thing, since he’d realized the meaning of being systematic long ago. Furthermore, the classified ads and obituaries were sometimes more interesting than front-page news.
He didn’t understand very much about science, although he certainly held it in great esteem. He’d been turned off science by complicated words he didn’t know and even more complicated ideas he couldn’t grasp. The author of this article, however, had taken great pains to write in simple language, and the idea itself, although unusual in every respect, could be understood with a certain amount of effort. in brief, it said just one place in the cosmos is the origin of almost all the atoms that make up living beings. That place is the core of very large suns. Humans, therefore, come from the stars.
Mr. Pospihal’s previous opinion of himself, which was already good, was further reinforced by the knowledge of his cosmic origin. He cut the article out of the newspaper to keep it as a sort of genealogy and briefly toyed with the idea of framing it, then thought this would be going too far. He was content to put it in a transparent purple folder like those used in the post office to hold especially important documents. That way he could reread it whenever he wanted without damaging it by his touch or in any other way.
He waited impatiently for the following Friday to see whether the science section would repeat the same topic and was a bit disappointed when it was about something else. The new text attracted his attention nonetheless. after the very first reading he felt that he’d penetrated deep into the heart of the mysterious black holes. Everything was explained coherently, there was no confusion or ambiguity. He found a transparent purple folder for the second article too.
When Mr. Pospihal’s collection had grown a bit, he finally realized what he liked so much about science. order reigned. Unlike mankind’s activities, where the inclination towards chaos was so evident, the world of science was perfectly ordered. Had he known this before he would have surely become a scientist and not a postal employee. Given his propensity for order, he would have gone quite far.
Who knows how long Mr. Pospihal would have enjoyed his collection and new focus in life, if it hadn’t been for the one hundred and thirty-seventh article. What he read gave him such a shock that it shook the very foundations of his world. His heart started to pound and for a moment he was short of breath. Before mustering the courage to reread this text about the end of the universe he had to take a sedative.
The very author of the articles he’d been collecting so diligently and placing in transparent purple folders, the scientific commentator whose expertise and competence he trusted so much, had now put forward something altogether shocking and impossible. The universe, he claimed, would meet a terrible end. in one hundred twenty-five and a half billion years there would be no more galaxies or stars or planets. or even people. There would be nothing but elementary particles wandering aimlessly and even they would finally disappear.
Once he’d calmed down a little, Mr. Pospihal wrote an angry letter to the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, directly accusing him of irresponsibly publishing positively incorrect and highly disturbing information. Was that a way for the universe to end? How could such magnificent order end in supreme disorder? This was betraying the very essence of science!
Was the author of the article conscious of what he’d said? if what he said were true, what would be the point of making any effort, since everything was doomed from the outset? This, of course, could not and must not happen. Had he made a supreme effort his whole life through to keep the post office in impeccable shape just to have it finally turn into scattered atoms, and maybe not even that, regardless of how far in the future?
He expected an immediate reply from the editor-in-chief with the apology he was due. The immediate dismissal of the science commentator was taken for granted. Partial amends might be possible if they proposed that Mr. Pospihal write for the science section in the future. He already had the expertise and an oversight such as this would never afflict him. He knew all too well the meaning of order.
In the following days, the first thing Mr. Pospihal did was to check the newspaper’s editorial page. Since the editor-in-chief ‘s reply and apology were not forthcoming, he concluded that the editorial board was trying to hush up the scandal. instead of making the whole affair public, they would send him a discreet letter and try to keep him quiet. First they would try persuasion, and if that didn’t work they’d use bribery or even threats. But he wouldn’t give in. Had it been something less important he might have turned a blind eye, but this was of the broadest cosmic proportions. He didn’t have the right to retreat.
After several weeks had passed with still no letter, Mr. Pospihal concluded dejectedly that a great conspiracy was at work and, alas, he alone could do nothing against it. Disorder had triumphed over order, and all he could do was stand by helplessly and watch.
Overcome by frustration, the first thing he did was destroy his collection. as with everything else in his life, he did it systematically. He took a large pair of scissors, sharpened them a bit and then cut all the articles together with their purple folders into small pieces of the same size. and then, for the first time in his life, he did something unreasonable. He ate this plastic-coated confetti slowly and determinedly, even though the taste was quite abominable.
Then he sat in the armchair, prepared for what would follow. He was not surprised when he began soon to disintegrate. With perverse curiosity, as though this were happening to someone else and not himself, he watched himself dissolve. The connections that kept the atoms of his body together, what used to be cosmic matter, slowly started to break, and particles scattered chaotically about the living room. Soon, in one hundred billion years or so, they too would disappear forever.
9. DEATH
I WAS JUST ABOUT TO FALL ASLEEP when a knock roused me. I opened my eyes and looked angrily towards the hospital room door. Who could that be now? Hadn’t we agreed they wouldn’t come until morning? A man has the right to die in peace, doesn’t he? They were well aware of the fact that nothing more could be done, and as an experienced doctor, so was I. I had taken a strong sedative to fall asleep as soon as possible. Dying in my sleep was the very last favor I could do myself. Why were they taking it away from me now? “Come in!” I said, as sharply as my general condition allowed.
The man who came in was tall and slender. He was wearing a long purple coat, its cheerfulness somewhat incongruous with his late middle age. A gray or olive-green shade would have been more suited to his thinning, salt-and-pepper hair and softly wrinkled face. But that, of course, was hardly important now.
“Good evening,” he said and, without waiting for a reply, headed for the chair next to my pillow. He sat down, folded his hands in his lap and stared at me in silence. We stayed like that for a few moments, looking at each other.
I was the first to break the silence. “Don’t you think it’s rather late to visit a sick man?” “It would indeed be late in just a few minutes. As it is, until you fall asleep, there’s still time.”
“Time for what? Who are you? How did you get into the hospital at this hour?”
“In what order would you like the answers? Let’s start from the last question. It’s the easiest. I was able to enter the hospital because no one stopped me.”
“Wasn’t the security officer on duty?”
“He was, but he didn’t see me.”
“How’s that? Were you invisible or something?”
“You might say so.”
I sighed. “Well, you don’t look that way to me. What do you want?” The visitor did not answer immediately. He again threw me a brief and silent look.
“Your death,” he said at last in an even tone.
Now it was my turn to stare at him.<
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“Listen, I don’t know who you are or how you got here. It makes no difference anyway. But unless you leave here at once, I’ll call and have them throw you out.”
“I suggest you do exactly that.”
I hesitated a minute, then stretched out my hand and felt for the buzzer on the night table. I pushed it longer than was necessary. The nurse’s rapid footsteps were heard coming down the hall.
I didn’t say a word when she came in. It was enough to look at the chair next to the bed to understand why I’d called. But she came up to me as though we were alone in the room.
“How are you?” she asked gently.
I stared at her in confusion, not knowing what to say.
“I can’t sleep,” were the words that finally came out. She patted the back of my hand.
“You’ll fall asleep soon enough. Don’t worry. You were given a strong dose.”
Quite an effort was needed for me to give a fleeting smile.
“Thank you.”
“I’m here if you need anything. All you have to do is ring.”
“Thank you.”
She returned my smile, straightened my covers a bit and then headed for the door. she stopped at it as though about to turn around, but didn’t.
I waited for the nurse’s footsteps to fade down the hall before I looked at the visitor again.
“Who are you?” I asked in a low voice.
“A death collector.” His voice was still detached, as though saying something quite commonplace.
“Death collector?” I repeated rather foolishly.
“Yes. I collect deaths. It’s not as unusual a hobby as it might seem. There are stranger ones. If you give me your death you will get something truly priceless in return.”
“How can I give you my death?”
“It’s easy. All you have to do is give your consent.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“And then I won’t die anymore?”
“You won’t die.”
“And I’ll get something in return too?”