Occupied as we were with explaining what happened after the fateful stroke of midnight to the sixty-two thousand five hundred and eighty people left in a state of suspended life, we put off for a more opportune moment, which happens to be this one, our indispensable reflections on the way in which the changed situation affected the eventide homes, the hospitals, the insurance companies, the maphia and the church, especially the catholic church, which was the country’s majority religion, so much so that it was commonly believed that our lord jesus christ would not have wanted to be born anywhere else if he had had to repeat, from a to z, his first and, as far as we know, only earthly existence. To begin with the eventide homes, feelings were much as you would expect. If you bear in mind, as we explained at the very start of these surprising events, that the continuous rotation of inmates was a necessary condition for the economic prosperity of these enterprises, the return of death was bound to be, and indeed was, a reason for joy and renewed hope for the respective managements. After the initial shock provoked by the reading out on television of the famous letter from death, the managers immediately began to do their sums and they all came out right. Not a few bottles of champagne were drunk at midnight to celebrate this unexpected return to normality, and while such behaviour may appear to show a gross indifference to and scorn for other people’s lives, what it really showed was the perfectly natural sense of relief, the need to give vent to pent-up emotions, of someone who, standing outside a locked door to which he has lost the key, suddenly sees it swing open and the sun come pouring in. More scrupulous people will say that they should at least have avoided the noisy, frivolous ostentation of champagne, with corks popping and glasses overflowing, and that a discreet glass of port or madeira, a drop of cognac, a touch of brandy in one’s coffee would have been celebration enough, but we know how easily the spirit lets slip the reins of the body when happiness takes over, and know, too, that even though one shouldn’t condone it, one can always forgive. The following morning, the managers summoned the families to fetch their dead, then they had the rooms aired and the sheets changed, and, having gathered all the staff together to tell them that life goes on despite all, they sat down to examine the list of potential customers and to choose from amongst the applicants those who seemed most promising. For reasons not entirely identical in every aspect, but which, nevertheless, merit equal consideration, the mood amongst hospital administrators and the medical classes had also improved overnight. However, as we said before, although a large number of patients who were beyond cure or whose illness had reached its end or its final stage, if one can apply such terms to a nosological state deemed to be eternal, had been moved back to their homes and their families, What better hands could the poor wretches find themselves in, they asked hypocritically, the truth is that many of them, with no known relatives and no money to pay the rates demanded by the eventide homes, were crammed in wherever there was space, not in corridors, as has long been the custom in these worthy establishments yesterday, today and always, but in lumber rooms and attics, where they would often be left for days at a time, without anyone taking the slightest notice of them, for, as the doctors and nurses said, regardless of how ill they might be, they couldn’t die. Now they were dead, and had been taken away and buried, and the air in the hospitals, with its unmistakable aroma of ether, iodine and disinfectant, had become as pure and crystalline as mountain air. They didn’t crack open any bottles of champagne, but the happy smiles of administrators and clinical directors were a salve to the soul, and as for the male doctors, suffice it to say that they had recovered their traditionally predatory gaze when they gave the female nursing staff the eye. Normality, in every sense of the word, had been restored. As for the insurance companies, third on the list, there is not as yet much to say, because they haven’t quite figured out whether the present situation, in the light of the changes introduced into life insurance policies and which we described in detail earlier, will be to their advantage or disadvantage. They will not take a step without being quite sure they are walking on firm ground, but when they finally do, they will put down new roots under whatever form of contract they draw up to suit their own best interests. Meanwhile, since the future belongs to god and because no one knows what tomorrow will bring, they will continue to consider as dead any insured person who has reached the age of eighty, that bird at least they have firmly grasped in their hand, and it only remains to be seen if tomorrow they can get two more to fall into the net. Some, however, propose that they should make the most of the current confusion in society, which stands more than ever between the devil and the deep blue sea, between scylla and charybdis, between a rock and a hard place, and that it might not be a bad idea to increase the age of actuarial death to eighty-five or even ninety. The reasoning of those who defend this change is as clear as water, they say that, by the time people reach such an age, not only do they have no relatives to look after them in time of need, indeed, any such relatives might be so old that it makes no odds anyway, they also suffer a real reduction in the value of their retirement pensions because of inflation and the rising cost of living, which means that they are often forced to interrupt payment of their premiums, thus giving insurance companies the best of motives to consider the respective contract null and void. That’s inhuman, object some. Business is business, say the others. We will see how it all ends.