the buzzers, and on it, as if it meant something other than death itself, is the name of the association. She rings, the door immediately unlocks itself with a dull hum.
The elevator is ancient, the suspension cables above the car groan, and as she goes up, she understands that until this moment she’d never believed she would set foot in this house.The car stops, the door glides open, and there appears out of nowhere, as if to prevent her from pushing the button that will take her back down again, a thin man with a center part in his hair. “Good day, my name is Freytag.”
And now?
I know I should tell it all. Rosalie walking through the anteroom to the inner room in which the dying is done. The table; the chair; the bed, I should describe them, I should paint a picture of the battered furniture, the strange layer of dust on the little wall cupboard, the general air of a place that’s both used and uninhabited, as if it were the home of shadows, not people. And of course the camera; I should mention the camera, installed to document that the terminally ill patients drink the poison themselves, that nobody forces them, the association has to cover itself legally. I should recount how Rosalie sits down and props her head on her hands, how she looks out of the window for one last sight of the endless foggy expanse of sky, how fear gives way to exhaustion, how she—here, please, and here, and again here—signs forms, and how the glass of poison is finally set down in front of her. I should describe how she lifts it to her mouth, I should conjure up the mixture of aversion and longing as she looks at the watery liquid, her brief hesitation, because she could still turn back and, even if for a matter of days, choose life with all its pain and all its adversities, but then she decides against this—she’s come too far, she’s too close to the threshold to turn back. I should also describe the last wave of her memories: games at the edge of a peacefullake, the moist kiss of a motherly woman, her father behind the Sunday paper, the little girl who sat next to her at school, and a boy she hasn’t thought about since back then, and the bird in a cage at her grandmother’s that could enunciate several words quite clearly. Nothing, if truth be told, in the intervening seventy-two years, has ever fascinated her as much as that talking creature.
Yes, it could have made a really good story, a little sentimental, granted, but with humor to counterbalance the melancholy, the brutality offset by a touch of philosophy. I had worked the whole thing out. And now?
Now I ruin it. I tear the curtain aside, I become visible, I appear by Freytag’s side at the door to the elevator. For a second he looks at me uncomprehendingly, then he turns pale and vanishes like dust. Rosalie, you’re cured. And while we’re at it, be young again. Start from the beginning again!
Before she can even respond, I’ve disappeared again and she’s standing in the elevator that’s grinding its way back downstairs and cannot grapple with the fact that a twenty-year-old woman is looking back at her out of the mirror. Slightly irregular teeth, hair a little sparse, neck too thin, she never was a beauty, but I can’t give her that as well. Although, on the other hand—why not! It’s not important anymore.
Thank you.
Ah, I say, exhausted, don’t celebrate too fast.
She pulls open the front door and bounds out into the street on legs that no longer hurt. Her clothes look peculiaron her: a young girl dressed like an old woman. Because the taxi driver doesn’t recognize her, he doesn’t stop her, he’s lost his fare and will still be standing here half an hour later, watching the meter keep ticking with rising concern, and finally banging on every door in the building. At the association they tell him that they were indeed expecting an old lady but that she hadn’t bothered to keep her appointment. He will go off cursing and this evening will
The elevator is ancient, the suspension cables above the car groan, and as she goes up, she understands that until this moment she’d never believed she would set foot in this house.The car stops, the door glides open, and there appears out of nowhere, as if to prevent her from pushing the button that will take her back down again, a thin man with a center part in his hair. “Good day, my name is Freytag.”
And now?
I know I should tell it all. Rosalie walking through the anteroom to the inner room in which the dying is done. The table; the chair; the bed, I should describe them, I should paint a picture of the battered furniture, the strange layer of dust on the little wall cupboard, the general air of a place that’s both used and uninhabited, as if it were the home of shadows, not people. And of course the camera; I should mention the camera, installed to document that the terminally ill patients drink the poison themselves, that nobody forces them, the association has to cover itself legally. I should recount how Rosalie sits down and props her head on her hands, how she looks out of the window for one last sight of the endless foggy expanse of sky, how fear gives way to exhaustion, how she—here, please, and here, and again here—signs forms, and how the glass of poison is finally set down in front of her. I should describe how she lifts it to her mouth, I should conjure up the mixture of aversion and longing as she looks at the watery liquid, her brief hesitation, because she could still turn back and, even if for a matter of days, choose life with all its pain and all its adversities, but then she decides against this—she’s come too far, she’s too close to the threshold to turn back. I should also describe the last wave of her memories: games at the edge of a peacefullake, the moist kiss of a motherly woman, her father behind the Sunday paper, the little girl who sat next to her at school, and a boy she hasn’t thought about since back then, and the bird in a cage at her grandmother’s that could enunciate several words quite clearly. Nothing, if truth be told, in the intervening seventy-two years, has ever fascinated her as much as that talking creature.
Yes, it could have made a really good story, a little sentimental, granted, but with humor to counterbalance the melancholy, the brutality offset by a touch of philosophy. I had worked the whole thing out. And now?
Now I ruin it. I tear the curtain aside, I become visible, I appear by Freytag’s side at the door to the elevator. For a second he looks at me uncomprehendingly, then he turns pale and vanishes like dust. Rosalie, you’re cured. And while we’re at it, be young again. Start from the beginning again!
Before she can even respond, I’ve disappeared again and she’s standing in the elevator that’s grinding its way back downstairs and cannot grapple with the fact that a twenty-year-old woman is looking back at her out of the mirror. Slightly irregular teeth, hair a little sparse, neck too thin, she never was a beauty, but I can’t give her that as well. Although, on the other hand—why not! It’s not important anymore.
Thank you.
Ah, I say, exhausted, don’t celebrate too fast.
She pulls open the front door and bounds out into the street on legs that no longer hurt. Her clothes look peculiaron her: a young girl dressed like an old woman. Because the taxi driver doesn’t recognize her, he doesn’t stop her, he’s lost his fare and will still be standing here half an hour later, watching the meter keep ticking with rising concern, and finally banging on every door in the building. At the association they tell him that they were indeed expecting an old lady but that she hadn’t bothered to keep her appointment. He will go off cursing and this evening will
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