quite rightly too, that they could make use of that excellent word to express feelings of disgust, repugnance, loathing, which, as anyone will recognize, have nothing to do with the feelings described above. One cannot be too careful with words, they change their minds just as people do. Obviously, the trick wasn't as simple as making sausages, stuff 'em, tie 'em up and stick 'em in the smoke-room, the matter took time, it required emissaries with false moustaches and hats with the brim low over their eyes, telegrams in code, conversations down secret phone lines, on red telephones, midnight meetings at crossroads, notes left under stones, all of which elements we had noted in the earlier negotiations, when, so to speak, they were playing at dice with the lives of the vigilantes. Nor must one think that these transactions were, as in the earlier case, purely bilateral. As well as the maphia in this country where no one dies, the maphias in the neighboring countries also took part in these talks, for that was the only way to protect both the independence of each criminal organization within the national framework in which it worked and the independence of their respective governments. It would be completely unacceptable, absolutely reprehensible for the maphia in one of those countries to negotiate directly with the administration of another. Things, however, did not reach that point, having been prevented from doing so up until now, as if by a last vestige of modesty, by the sacrosanct principle of national sovereignty, a principle as important to maphias as it is to governments, and while this is perfectly understandable in the latter, you might have your doubts when it came to criminal associations, until you remembered with what jealous brutality they defended their territories from the hegemonic ambitions of their professional colleagues. Coordinating all this, bringing together the general and the particular, balancing the interests of some with the interests of others, was not an easy task, which explains why, for two long, boring weeks of waiting, the soldiers had passed the time insulting each other over the loudspeakers, although always taking care not to overstep the mark, not to be too rude, in case the offense should go to the head of some particularly prickly lieutenant-colonel and then all hell would break loose. The biggest contributing factor in complicating and delaying the negotiations was the fact that none of the maphias in the other countries had teams of biddable vigilantes, and they therefore lacked the irresistible means of putting pressure on the government that had produced such excellent results here. Although this darker side of the negotiations has never been revealed, except in the form of the inevitable rumors, there are good reasons for thinking that the middle-ranking commanders of the armies in the neighboring countries, with the indulgent approval of their superior officers, had allowed themselves to be persuaded, god alone knows at what price, by the arguments of the local maphia spokesmen, to close their eyes to the unavoidable comings and goings, advances and retreats, in which the solution to the problem con sisted. A child could have come up with the idea, but to put it into practice, he would, having reached what we call the age of reason, have had to go and knock on the door of the maphia's recruiting section and say, My vocation has brought me here, do with me as you will.
Lovers of concision, laconicism and economy of language will doubtless be asking, if the idea is such a simple one, why did we need all this waffle to arrive, at last, at the critical point. The answer is equally simple, and we will give it using a current and very trendy term, that will, we hope, make up for the archaisms with which, in the likely opinion of some, we have spattered this account as if with mold, and that term is context. Now everyone knows what we mean by context, but there could have been doubts had we rather dully used that dreadful archaism background, which is, moreover, not entirely faithful to the truth, given that the context gives not only the background, but all the innumerable other grounds that exist between the subject observed and the line of the horizon. It would be better then if we called it a framework. Yes, a framework, and now that we finally have it well and truly framed, the moment has come to reveal the nature of the trick that the maphia thought up to avoid any chance of a conflict that might prejudice their interests. As we have said, a child could have come up with the idea. It was this, to take the sufferer across the frontier, and, once he or she had died, to bring him or her back to be buried in the maternal bosom of his country of origin. A perfect checkmate in the most rigorous, exact and precise meaning of the word. As we have seen, the problem was resolved without discredit to any of the parties, and the four armies, who now had no reason to remain at the frontier on a war footing, could withdraw peacefully, since the maphia proposed simply to enter and then leave again, for, as we have said before, the dying expired the moment they were transported to the other side, and now there will be no need for them to linger even for a minute, merely the time it takes to die, and that, which has always been the briefest of moments, just a sigh, that's all, so you can imagine how it would be in this case, a candle that suddenly burns itself out without anyone even having to blow. Not even the gentlest of euthanasias could be as easy or as sweet. The most interesting aspect of the new situation is that the justice system of the country in which people do not die finds itself without any legal basis on which to take action against the buriers, always supposing they really wanted to, and not just because of the gentlemen's agreement that the government was forced to make with the maphia. It can't accuse them of homicide because, technically speaking, no homicide takes place, and also because the reprehensible act, and if anyone can find a better way of describing it, then please do, takes place abroad, and they can't even accuse them of burying the dead, since that is the natural fate of the dead, and they should be grateful that there is someone prepared to take on a task which, however you look at it, is a painful one, both from the physical and the psychological viewpoint. They could, at most, allege that no doctor was present to record the death, that the burial did not fulfill the regulations set down for a correct interment and that, as if such a thing were quite unheard of, the grave is not only unmarked, but will certainly be lost from view once the first heavy rains come and the plants push up, tender and joyful, through the fertile soil. Having considered all the difficulties, and concerned that it might be plunged into the swamp of appeals in which, the maphia's clever lawyers, inveterate intriguers, would mercilessly drown them, the law decided to wait patiently to see how things turned out. This was, without a shadow of a doubt, the most prudent attitude to take. The country is in an unparalleled state of unrest, the powers-that-be are confused, authority undermined, moral values are rapidly being turned on their head, and a loss of any sense of civic respect is sweeping all sectors of society, probably even god has no idea where he's taking us. There is a rumor that the maphia is negotiating another gentlemen's agreement with the funeral industry in the hope of rationalizing their efforts and spreading the workload, which means, in ordinary, everyday language, that they will supply the dead, and the undertakers will contribute the means and the technical expertise for burying them. It is also said that the maphia's proposal was welcomed with open arms by the undertakers, weary of wasting their millennia of knowledge, their experience, their know-how, and their choirs of professional mourners, on arranging funerals for dogs, cats and canaries, as well as the occasional cockatoo, a catatonic tortoise, a tame squirrel and a pet lizard whose owner used to carry it around on his shoulder. We have never sunk so low, they said. Now the future looked bright and cheerful, hopes bloomed like flowerbeds, indeed, one might even say, at the risk of the obvious paradox, that the funeral industry was reborn. And all thanks to the good offices and inexhaustible money vaults of the maphia. It provided subsidies to businesses in the capital and in other cities round the country for them to set up new branches, and the maphia was, of course, duly recompensed, in localities near the frontiers, it made arrangements for a doctor to be present when the dead person was brought back across the border and someone was required to declare them dead, and agreements were reached with local councils that the burials in the maphia's charge should have absolute priority, regardless of the hour of day or night when it chose to carry these out. Naturally, all of this cost a lot of money, but now that the extras and the supplementary services accounted for most of the bill, the business continued to be profitable. Then, without warning, the tap from which had flowed a constant, generous supply of the terminally dying was turned off. It seemed that families, suffering an attack of conscience, had passed the word from one to the other that they were no longer going to send their loved ones far away to die, that if, in the figurative sense, we had eaten of their flesh, then now we would have to gnaw on their bones as well, that we are not here just for the good times, when our loved ones had strength and health intact, we are here, too, for the bad times and the worst, when they have become little more than a stinking rag that there is no point in washing. The undertakers went from euphoria to despair, were thrown back into ruin and the humiliation of burying canaries and cats, dogs and the rest of the menagerie, the turtle, the cockatoo, the squirrel, but not the lizard because that had been the only one that let its owner carry it about on his shoulder. The maphia remained calm, kept their nerve, and immediately set out to investigate what was going on. It was quite simple. The families told them, although not always in so many words, that acting in secret had been one thing, with their loved ones carried off at dead of night, and when there was no way the neighbors could know if they were still lying racked on their bed of pain or had simply evaporated. It was easy to lie, to say sadly, Still here, poor thing, when you met your next-door neighbor on the landing and she asked, So how's grandpa these days. Now everything would be different, there would be a death certificate, there would be plaques in the cemeteries engraved with names and surnames, in a matter of hours the whole envious, slanderous neighborhood would know that grandpa had died in the only way he could die, which meant, quite simply, that his own cruel, ungrateful family had dispatched him to the frontier. It makes us feel ashamed, they confessed. The maphia listened and listened and said they would think about it. This
