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Death is an immigrant with a light overnight bag, a little red leather suitcase containing not a sickle but a clepsydra or an hourglass. Death is a stranger everywhere, yet you cannot banish it beyond the country’s borders. Death is understood by all: it speaks the language of deeds belonging to the same linguistic group as earthquakes and thunderclaps. Death knows no doubt, and in this alone it differs from people, for in all other aspects it has fully humanised itself – or rather, it likes to think it has humanised itself. At the same time, its humanity is but an empty human shell, and the inner emptiness of death inexorably sucks in all and everyone. Listen – you, too, hear that seltzer sound in the night; it is the voice of Death.
Tired of the sounds of non-existence, N. pulled th
