Context
from Chinese Letter
Svetislav Basara
There
is no use beating around the bush. I have to face an unpleasant fact. I
will soon die. I don’t know exactly when. Perhaps in an hour, perhaps
in a day, a month, a year, or thirty years. In any case, it all comes
down to the adverb “soon.” If that’s an adverb. Death is standing next
to me, always ready, and I’m afraid. My life is nothing but a fear of
death and finding the ways of making this fear less unbearable. And one
more thing: my life is a constant digression from the subject. My job
is not to die but to write. All right! I am writing! Actually I don’t
have a life. I pretend that I live. I’m putting lots of effort and time
into this pretending, and it—sucking up my strength—is speeding up my
already ever-closer end, but more or less I’m satisfied with the fruits
of my effort, since the result of it is a solid illusion of life, so
solid that I’m almost palpable. But here lies one contradiction: Life
is quite simple, but also horrible, and it all comes down to the
pumping of the heart, kidneys, liver, breathing and incessant
repetition of unpleasant questions: how’s all this possible? How did I
come to be on this earth? What happens after death? I realize that I’m
here only as a result of the function of the above-mentioned organs and
to my asking the three questions, but I find it unbearable to always
question myself about where I come from and to where I will disappear,
because before and after death there is a great infinite unknown where
there’s not even the slightest trace of my I. I simply dare not think
about the function of vital organs in order to avoid ruining
everything. All around me there are cancers, cirrhosis, tuberculosis,
bacteria. Billions of bacteria. It’s all a conspiracy to stop
the functioning of my organs, to bring havoc into strained harmony. And
then—goodbye my fragile I, my inflated greatness, my unproven
existence. From time to time I have a feeling that the whole universe
is very fragile, and it takes so little for everything to turn into
nothing. I took refuge in my room, inside my five or six walls. It’s
not much shelter. I built a fence around my hundred cubic meters of
emptiness with thin walls made of even denser emptiness and this
shelter of mine is actually my prison. Prison of my body that is a
prison of my I. I can’t move out of either cell. Nor do I dare. I’m
fooling myself with some unfounded hopes. Actually, I’m making plans
for some vague future. But I repeat: I will die sooner or later and
there is nothing I can do to prevent this. Except hang myself. ____________________ Translation by Ana Lucic
____________________
