Chapter 14
315 Words
11
Night. A white cloud on a dark background. A speaking cloud.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Ask me,” sighs the cloud.
“Why can I find no peace on this earth?”
“Hmm, good question… Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Because you are unlucky: you landed in the wrong country, the wrong century and, worst of all, you are not who you seem to be...”
“Maybe…”
“To put it very briefly, you cannot find peace because there is no place for you.”
“Why is there no place for me?”
“Because you want to be something other than was intended.”
“Something other?”
“Yes. You want to be better, cleverer. And that does not go unpunished.”
Black steam came out of the white cloud’s mouth, or at any rate, from where the mouth should be, from where the cloud spoke. Or was it laughing?
In his next dream he saw a man with a mirror for a face. N.’s own face was reflected in it, except that his eyes were closed and his cheeks were pallid.
“You don’t know how to die,” said the man with the mirror-face. “I will teach you. You have to have the knack, you see. You have to learn death, gain experience…”
The visitor began to teach him how to die, showing him an endless kaleidoscope with images of all sorts of death. That night N. died over and over – he drowned in the ocean, fell off the roof, choked on smoke and toxic fumes, perished at the hands of murderers and hangmen, committed suicide and quietly faded away in a geriatric ward. He understood that death could be boring, like any other ordinary activity, and he also understood that there can be no prior experience: each time you die anew. And in the morning, if you are lucky, you wake anew…
He did indeed wake up: someone was tickling his cheeks. The round face of the dressing table mirror searchingly trained the sun’s rays right into his eyes.
- Writer
