Death with Interruptions (3 page)

The directors and administrators of hospitals, both staterun and private, were soon beating on the door of the minister in question, the minister for health, to express, along with the other relevant public services, their worries and anxieties, which, strange though it may seem, always highlighted logistical rather than health matters. They stated that the usual rotational process of patients coming in, getting better or dying had suffered, if we may put it like this, a short-circuit or, if you prefer a less technical term, a bottleneck, the reason being the indefinite stay of an ever larger number of patients who, given the seriousness of their illnesses or of the accidents of which they had been victims, would, in the normal course of events, have passed over into the next life. The situation is extremely grave, they argued, we have already started putting patients out in the corridors, even more frequently than we usually do, and everything indicates that in less than a week's time, it will not only be the lack of beds we have to deal with, for with every corridor and every ward full, and given the lack of space and the difficulties of maneuvering, we will have to face the fact that we have no idea where to put any beds that are available. There is a way of solving the problem, concluded the people in charge of the hospitals, however it does, very slightly, infringe on the hippocratic oath, and the decision, were it to be taken, would have to be neither medical nor administrative, but political. Since a word to the wise is always enough, the minister for health, having consulted the prime minister, sent the following dispatch, With regard to the unavoidable overcrowding which is already beginning to have a seriously prejudicial effect on the hitherto excellent working of our hospital system and which is a direct consequence of the growing number of people being admitted in a state of suspended life and who will remain so indefinitely with no possibility of a cure or even of any improvement, at least not until medical research reaches the new goals it has set itself, the government advises and recommends hospital boards and administrations that, following a rigorous analysis, on a case-by-case basis, of the clinical situation of patients who find themselves in this position, and once the irreversibility of those morbid processes has been confirmed, the patients should be handed over to the care of their families, with hospitals taking full responsibility for ensuring that patients receive all the treatments and examinations their GPs deem to be either necessary or advisable. The government's decision is based on a hypothesis within the grasp of everyone, namely that a patient in such a state, that is, permanently on the brink of a death which is permanently being denied to him, must, even during any brief moments of lucidity, be pretty much indifferent to where he is, whether in the loving bosom of his family or in a crowded hospital ward, given that, in neither place, will he manage to die or be restored to health. The government would like to take this opportunity to inform the population that investigations are continuing apace and these will, as we hope and trust, lead to a satisfactory understanding of the still mysterious causes of the disappearance of death. We would also like to say that a large interdisciplinary commission, including representatives from the various religions and philosophers from a variety of different schools of thought, who always have something to say about such matters, has been charged with the delicate task of reflecting on what a future without death will be like, at the same time trying to make a reasonable forecast of the new problems society will have to face, the principle of which some might summarize with this cruel question, What are we going to do with all the old people if death is not there to cut short any ambitions they may have to live an excessively long life.

Homes for the third and fourth age, those charitable institutions created for the peace of mind of families who have neither the time nor the patience to wipe away snot, tend to weary sphincters and get up at night to bring the bedpan, were not long in coming and beating their heads against the wailing wall, as the hospitals and undertakers had done before them. To give justice where justice is due, we should recognize that the dilemma in which they found themselves, namely, whether or not to continue taking in residents, would challenge the forward-planning skills of any manager of human resources, as well as any desire to be evenhanded. Largely because the final results, and this is what characterizes genuine dilemmas, would always be the same. Accustomed until now, as were their querulous colleagues of the intravenous injection and the floral wreath with the purple ribbon, to the certainty resulting from the continuous and unstoppable rotation of lives and deaths, some coming in and others going out, the homes for the third and fourth ages did not even want to consider a working future in which the objects of their care never changed face or body, except to display them in a still more lamentable state with each day that passed, more decadent and more sadly disheveled, the face growing steadily more shriveled, line by line, like a raisin, limbs tremulous and hesitant, like a ship searching vainly for a compass that had fallen overboard. A new guest had always been a motive for celebration at these eventide homes, it meant a new name that one would have to fix in one's memory, particular habits brought from the outside world, eccentricities peculiar to them alone, like the retired civil servant who had to scrub his toothbrush every day because he couldn't bear seeing bits of toothpaste stuck among the bristles, or the old lady who drew family trees but could never find the right names to hang on the branches. For a few weeks, until routine evened out the amount of attention given to all the inmates, he or she would be the newcomer, the youngster, for the last time in his or her life, even if that life lasted as long as the eternity which, as people say of the sun, had come to shine on all the people of this fortunate land, on all of us who will see the sun set every day and yet remain alive, though no one knows how or why. Now, however, the new guest, unless he or she came to fill some vacancy and round up the institution's income, is someone whose fate is known beforehand, we won't see him leave here to go and die at home or in the hospital as used to happen in the good old days, while the other residents hurriedly locked the door to their rooms so that death wouldn't enter and carry them off too, no, that, we know, is a thing of a past, a past that will never come back, but someone in the government will have to consider our fate, us, the owners, managers and employees of these eventide homes, the fate awaiting us is that when the moment comes to down tools, there will be no one to take us in, we are not even masters of the thing which was, in a way, also ours, at least as regards the years of work we put in, and here, it should be pointed out, it was the employees' turn to speak, what we mean is that there will be no room for people like us in the eventide homes, unless we can rid ourselves of some of the residents, an idea that had already occurred to the government following the debate about the plethora of patients in hospitals, the family, they said, should resume its obligations, but for that to happen there would have to be at least one member of the family with sufficient intelligence and enough physical energy, gifts whose sell-by dates, as we know from our own experience and from what the world shows us, last only as long as a sigh when compared with this recently inaugurated eternity, anyway, the remedy, unless someone can come up with a better idea, would be to create more eventide homes, not as has been the case until now, using houses and mansions that have known better days, but building from scratch vast new edifices, in the form of a pentagon, for example, or a tower of Babel or a labyrinth of Knossos, starting out with districts, then cities, then metropoli, or, to put it more crudely, cemeteries of the living where fatal and irrenunciable old age will be cared for as god would have wanted until, since their days will have no end, who knows when, for the crux of the matter, and we feel it our duty to call this to the attention of the relevant authority, is that, with the passing of time, not only will there be more elderly people living in these eventide homes, but more and more people will be needed to care for them, with the result that the rhomboid of the ages will be swiftly turned on its head, with a gigantic, ever-growing mass of old people at the top, swallowing up like a python the new generations, who, transformed for the most part into nursing or administrative staff to work at these eventide homes, after spending the better part of their lives caring for old crocks of all ages, both the normally old and the methuselahs, multitudes of parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, great-great-great-grandparents, and so on, ad infinitum, will, in turn, pile up, one on top of the other, like the leaves that fall from the trees onto the leaves from previous autumns,
mais où sont les neiges d'antan,
the endless throngs of those who, little by little, spent their lives losing teeth and hair, the legions with bad sight and bad hearing, those with hernias, colds, those with hip fractures, the paraplegic, the now immortal geriatrics who can't even stop the drool running down their chin, you, gentlemen of the government, may not want to believe us, but such a future is perhaps the worst nightmare that could ever have assailed a human being, such a thing would never have been seen even in the dark caves, where all was fear and trembling, and it is we who have had experience of the first eventide home who are saying this, and in those days, obviously, everything was very small-scale indeed, but our imaginations must serve for something, and to be perfectly frank, prime minister, hand on heart, rather death than such a destiny.

A terrible threat is endangering the survival of our industry, declared the president of the federation of insurance companies to the media, referring to the many thousands of letters which, all couched in more or less identical terms, as if they had been copied from a single draft, had, in the last few days, been flooding their offices, all calling for the immediate cancellation of the life insurance policies of the undersigned. These letters stated that, given the well-known fact that death had put an end to itself, it would be absurd, not to say downright stupid, to continue paying exorbitant premiums which would only serve to make the companies still richer, with no kind of balancing recompense for them. I'm not pouring money down the drain, said one particularly disgruntled policy-holder in a postscript. Some went further, demanding the return of sums already paid, but in these cases, it was clear that they were just making a stab in the dark, trying their luck. In answer to the inevitable question from journalists about how the insurance companies intended to fend off this sudden salvo of heavy artillery, the president of the federation said that, while their legal advisors were, at that very moment, carefully studying the small print of policies for some kind of interpretative loophole that would allow them, always keeping strictly to the letter of the law, of course, to impose on these heretical policy-holders, even if it were against their wishes, the obligation to continue paying premiums for as long as they remained alive, that is, for all eternity, the more likely option would be to reach some form of consensus, a gentlemen's agreement, which would consist in the addition to policies of a brief addendum, with one eye on rectifying the current situation and with the other on the future, and which would set eighty as the age of obligatory death, in a purely figurative sense of course, the president was quick to add, smiling benevolently. In this way, the companies would receive the premiums, as normal, until the date when the happy policy-holder celebrated his eightieth birthday, at which time, now that he had become someone who was, virtually speaking, dead, he would promptly be paid the full sum stipulated in the policy. He should also add, and this would be of no small interest, that, if they so desired, customers could renew their contract for another eighty years, at the end of which, they would, to all intents and purposes, register a second death, and the earlier procedure would then be repeated, and so on and so forth. Among the journalists who knew their actuarial calculus, there were some admiring murmurs and a brief flutter of applause which the president acknowledged with a brief nod. Strategically and tactically, the move had been perfect, so much so that the following day letters started pouring in again to the insurance companies declaring the previous letters null and void. All the policy-holders declared themselves ready to accept the proposed gentlemen's agreement, and indeed one might say, without exaggeration, that this was one of those very rare occasions when no one lost and everyone gained. Especially the insurance companies, which had been saved from catastrophe by the skin of their teeth. It is assumed that at the next election, the president of the federation will be re-elected to the post he fills so very brilliantly.

ONE CAN SAY ALMOST ANYTHING ABOUT THE FIRST MEETING
of the interdisciplinary commission except that it went well. The blame, if such a weighty term can be applied here, rests on the dramatic memorandum sent to the government by the eventide homes, especially those final ominous words, Rather death, prime minister, than such a destiny. The philosophers, divided as always between frowning pessimists and smiling optimists, readied themselves to recommence for the thousandth time the ancient dispute over whether the glass was half full or half empty, a dispute which, when transferred to the matter they had been summoned there to discuss, would probably come down to a mere inventory of the advantages and disadvantages of being dead or of living forever, while the religious delegates, from the outset, presented a united front, hoping to set the debate on the only dialectical terrain that interested them, that is, the explicit acceptance that death was fundamental to the existence of the kingdom of god and that, therefore, any discussion about a future without death would be not only blasphemous but absurd, since it would, inevitably, presuppose an absent or, rather, vanished god. This was not a new attitude, the cardinal himself had already put his finger on the implications of this theological version of squaring the circle, when, in his phone conversation with the prime minister, he admitted, although not in so many words, that if there was no death, there could be no resurrection, and if there was no resurrection, then there would be no point in having a church. Now, since this was clearly the only agricultural implement god possessed with which to plough the roads that would lead to his kingdom, the obvious, irrefutable conclusion is that the entire holy story ends, inevitably, in a cul-de-sac. This bitter argument came from the mouth of the oldest of the pessimistic philosophers, who did not stop there, but went on, Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat. The religious delegates did not bother to protest. On the contrary, one of them, a highly regarded member of the catholic sector, said, You're absolutely right, my dear philosopher, that, of course, is why we exist, so that people will spend their entire life with fear hanging round their neck, and when their time comes, they will then welcome death as a liberation, You mean paradise, Paradise or hell, or nothing at all, what happens after death matters to us far less than is generally believed, religion, sir, is an earthly matter, and has nothing to do with heaven, That isn't what we're usually told, We had to say something to make the merchandise attractive, So does that mean you don't believe in eternal life, We pretend we do. For a minute no one spoke. The oldest of the pessimists allowed a wry smile to spread across his face and he adopted the air of someone who has just seen a particularly difficult laboratory experiment crowned with success. In that case, said a philosopher from the optimistic wing, why are you so alarmed by the fact that death has ended, We don't know that it has, we know only that it has ceased to kill, which is not the same thing, Agreed, but given that this doubt remains unresolved, I repeat my question, Because if human beings do not die then everything will be permissible, And would that be a bad thing, asked the old philosopher, As bad as nothing being permissible. There was another silence. The eight men seated round the table had been asked to reflect upon the consequences of a future without death and to construct from the present information a plausible forecast of what new problems a society would have to confront, quite apart, of course, from an inevitable exacerbation of the old problems. The trouble is that the future is already here, said one of the pessimists, before us we have, among others, statements drawn up by the so-called eventide homes, by hospitals, by funeral directors, by insurance companies, and apart from the latter, who will always find a way of profiting from any situation, one must admit that the prospects are not just gloomy, they're terrible, catastrophic, more dangerous by far than anything even the wildest imagination could dream up, Without wishing to be ironic, which, in the current circumstances, would be in appalling taste, remarked an equally highly regarded member of the protestant sector, it seems to me that this commission is dead before it's been born, The eventide homes are right, rather death than such a destiny, said the catholic spokesman, What do you propose we do then, asked the oldest of the pessimists, apart from the immediate dissolution of this commission, which is what you appear to want, We, the catholic apostolic roman church, will organize a national campaign of prayer, asking god to bring about the return of death as quickly as possible so as to save poor humanity from the worst horrors, Does god have authority over death, asked one of the optimists, They're two sides of the same coin, on one side the king and on the other the crown, In that case perhaps it was god who ordered death to withdraw, One day we will know why he set us this test, meanwhile we will put our rosaries to work, We will do the same, by which I mean that we, too, will pray, no rosaries for us, of course, smiled the protestant, And we will arrange processions throughout the country calling on death to return, just as we used to do
ad petendam pluviam,
to ask for rain, translated the catholic, We won't go that far, such processions have never been part of our customs, said the protestant, smiling again, And what about us, asked one of the optimistic philosophers in a tone that seemed to announce his imminent enlistment in the ranks of the opposition, what are we going to do now, when it seems that all doors are closed to us, To start with, replied the oldest philosopher, let's adjourn this session, And then what, We will continue to philosophize since that is what we were born to do, even if all we have to philosophize about is the void, What for, I don't know what for, All right, then, why, Because philosophy needs death as much as religions do, if we philosophize it's in order to know that we will die, as monsieur de montaigne said, to philosophize is to learn how to die.