Fools, dogs, and poets are generally the ones who best intuit other worlds beyond. The first do so with slaver, the second with howls, and the third in verse. The fact that my son broke his word fast in such an explosive way put me in a sad mood for the rest of that day. Then the appearance of the specter of Faith Oxen sewed the last stitches in the shroud of my anxiety. At the time, I didn’t altogether understand what it said, but I gradually teased out the meaning of its sentences, until I grasped that scarecrow had learned all it uttered in the completed novel of my life, the seemingly trivial object your hands are holding at this very minute.
Disquiet unnerves me, predictions turn out to be true, and grief shoots through me like an electric shock, more and more by the day. Previously, I’ve never confronted the certainty of nonexistence, and yet the inevitable inspires no fear in me. I foresaw it simply looking you in the eye. I know your intentions aren’t entirely to blame, that perhaps you don’t even enjoy the irrelevant act of my disappearance, but I can do nothing to forestall what’s written. I’d been advised previously about what was coming, but I didn’t think it would be like this. It’s hard having you here, intrigued by the last flourishes of my life, meanly longing to reach the moment of the finale that’s now very near. However, it’s Providence, not you, that decided the outcome in advance; you will merely acknowledge it when my words lurch to a final full stop. The imminence of the disaster gives me the strength I need to keep talking without cursing you. I need one last gasp of breath to distil in your face the few tremors of consciousness I have left, and to clear away, as that poet pointed out, circumstances referring to yesterday, to past time, which complete the scenario by relating things that might be of use to you in the struggle humans wage against destiny, a struggle they are fated to lose.
Listen to my death rattle, as you read, if it gives you pleasure. Birth comes on a warm, tender breeze that carries in its folds a completely enigmatic scent of a genome. Then the furious winds of life gust away and snatch whatever they can from each of us — a heart, or a soul. Poets, like fools and dogs, are privileged with a vision of the death agony of the time that belongs to humanity, its fleeting eras and futile endeavors. Doesn’t death alone drive consciousness? Today, mine comes led by your hand, but it will be your turn one day, and you, too, will be forced to confront the murderer’s ghastly silence.
I’d have preferred not to know that nothing is as fake as our own memories, that all is premeditated sarcasm, and that what we think are our experiences, hopes, or innermost fears are only the paltry manifestations of the uncertainty spawned by our attempts to believe we are alive. You, at least, exist for me at this very second. You are the only certainty left to me, and I know it will be in your hands that I must commend myself to my destiny at the turn of the page. Cocks’ combs fall apart in the mouth like communion wafers, and as they slip down, they release an early morning cock-a-doodle-doo flavor. There is always a last supper. Sometimes one is aware of it, sometimes not. That’s the only variation. I should have ignored Providence’s orders and turned down the invitation it issued. Right now I’d be flying to London to spend the New Year with my son, and my life would follow its orderly path, but fate decided everything should take this ridiculous path — you waiting on tenterhooks, and me, sentenced to make my exit, still expecting to see Commissioner Dixon, panting to see the exceptional results produced by her pomade.
Dirt only anticipates the end that awaits us, in a trial run of the final shakedown that precedes the grave. Gurruchaga liked to contemplate the steaming excrement of the wild animals; he said it smelled of life, and he celebrated the stink. Conversely, Mandarino was happy with much less; lust ruled him, it was written in his nature. I had no news of him for a long time afterward, until on one of those restless nights when nervousness disrupted my sleep and television supplied company in the early hours and I saw him performing in a pornographic film. He was shown between two women whose nakedness was so much plastic. Mandarino sniffed their hidden corners with his grand schnozzle, whimpering from deep in his throat like a grateful dog. Their hands, meanwhile, toyed with his cock, using their hands, mouths, and sexes in an extraordinary outburst of animal activity, until he finally came in an avalanche of liquid snow that spoke of progeny.
It’s strange to see how each individual incorporates their own behavior into the general unfurling of events to the point of self-redemption or self-annihilation. My brother Tranquilino failed early on because he crossed a railway track. He never kissed a woman or tried a slice of pizza, nor did he have time to meditate on his impending doom, and that was his stroke of good fortune. Without your mediation, I might have kept treading the illusory furrow of wealth, or become more renowned, if that were possible, in the choppy waters of the times, but a flash of intuition sufficed for me to understand the end was nigh, that my days would peter out in your hands. Hours, like pages, follow each other apace in a helter-skelter maelstrom. My hours were your pages, my pages your hours, and that’s why I’m exhausted. You are my executioner, my hangman, the garrotter by appointment to Providence. Be aware of that. Finish my words, read the void on my face, for the last time close the book you are holding, then the consummation will be complete.
There’s a knock at the door. Commissioner Belinda Dixon assured me she would come tonight to satisfy her most out-of-the-ordinary appetites, though I rather fear she won’t arrive in time to save me from the end. A pity. I’d have liked to enjoy the electric thrills of the flesh for one last time. After all, the moment of desire is when a human being simmers most intensely, to the point of feeling immortal, but that’s impossible now, all that’s possible is a return to the inhospitable chaos of our departure point, which is where we come back to in the end.
In my lifetime I have known many bastards and wished a bad end on none, but perhaps you are one of the few I feel heartfelt gratitude toward; you’ve whiled away your time nosing around in my existence, recreating my world in your fantasy, gleaning from my sentences touches of reality not too distant from your own, even possessing the integrity to reach this crossroads in the fable where, by dint of peculiar arrangements you and I can’t fathom, everything will now be consummated.
There’s a knock at the door. Leave before it opens. Nobody’s keeping you here, and I’ve no more spiel to spin to detain you any longer. The end moment is often much less horrific than people think, and you’ve had enough of the spectacle by now. The second you leave, my life will have attained its full meaning; what will linger on will be the frugal eternity of words and the curious way feelings are perpetuated across generations.
Nonetheless, two things will remain on my wish list: first, my inability to give little Margarita the bad end a bastard merits, and the knowledge that she’s still dancing around out there somewhere, pickling in her own putrefaction; and secondly, dying without discovering what the hell the tomato masher looks like that Gurruchaga ordered me to fetch the day they took him prisoner on the merciless path to an execution squad. All down to Providence and its guiltily swishing tail.