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
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