A draught of water
Meanwhile, I was dying. Death was not unexpected for me, I sorrowfully remembered everything I had read and heard about it, about the ascension of the soul to Heaven in the hour of decease. Of one thing I can accurately say: the desperation, intensified hundreds, thousands of times by the thought of the inevitability of departure from the terrestrial world, ascends high above one's own ‘I’ of sacrifice. To live, just live, to take one more little look at this life and achieve if only a thousandth part of what was achieved before and never will be anymore... Poised between life and death, I saw my own nothingness reflected in the distended pupils of the doctor who had been sewing up my pericardium.
Later, coming to the Institute for check-ups, I would kneel before the m
