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I HAVE A BIG FAVOR TO ASK OF YOU, SAID DEATH. AS USUAL, the scythe did not respond, the only sign that it had heard was a barely perceptible shudder, a generalized expression of physical dismay, for such words, asking a favor, and a big favor to boot, had never emerged from death's mouth before. I'm going to be away for a week, death went on, and during that time, I need you to take over from me as regards dispatching the letters, obviously I'm not asking you to write them, you only have to send them, all you've got to do is give out a kind of mental command and create an inner vibration in your blade, a feeling, an emotion, anything to show you're alive, that will be enough to ensure that the letters set off for their destination. The scythe remained silent, but that silence was the equivalent of a question. It's just that I can't keep coming and going to deal with the mail, said death, I must concentrate entirely on solving this problem with the cellist and finding a way of giving him that wretched letter. The scythe was waiting. Death went on, This is what I plan to do, I'll write all the letters for the week I'll be away, something which, given the exceptional nature of the situation, I can allow myself to do, and, as I said, you only have to send them, you won't even have to move from that spot, leaning against the wall, and I'm being very nice about it, you know, I'm asking you to do this as a favor to me as a friend, when, of course, I could dispense with the niceties and simply issue an order, because the fact that I haven't made much use of you in recent years doesn't mean that you're not still at my service. The scythe's resigned silence confirmed that this was true. So we agree then, concluded death, I'll spend the rest of the day writing letters, there should, I reckon, be about two thousand and fifty, imagine that, it'll mean working my fingers to the bone, I'll leave them for you on the desk, in separate groups, from left to right, don't forget, from left to right, got that, from here to here, I'll be in another fine mess if people start receiving their notifications at the wrong time, either early or late. They say that silence gives consent. The scythe remained silent, and therefore gave its consent. Wrapped in her sheet, with the hood thrown back so as not to hamper her vision, death sat down to work. She wrote and wrote, the hours passed and still she wrote, there were the letters, there were the envelopes, and then she had to fold the letters and seal the envelopes, some will ask how she could manage this if she has no tongue nor any source of saliva, that, my friends, was in the good old days of make do and mend, when we were still living in the stone age of a modernity that had barely begun to dawn, nowadays envelopes are self-seal, just peel off the little strip of paper and presto, in fact, you might say that of all the many uses to which the tongue has been put, this one is now a thing of the past. Death did indeed work her fingers to the bone, because, of course, she is all bone. This is typical of phrases that become fixed in language, and which we continue to use long after they've deviated from their original sense, forgetting that death, for example, who is, of course, a skeleton, is nothing but bone anyway, you need only look at an x-ray. The usual dismissive gesture sent today's two hundred and eighty or so envelopes off into hyperspace, which means that only from tomorrow will the scythe take up the functions of official sender with which it has just been entrusted. Without a word, without so much as a goodbye or a see you later, death got up from her chair, went over to the only door in the room, that narrow little door to which we have often referred, although we haven't the slightest idea where it might lead, opened it, passed through and closed it after her. The thrill of this made the scythe tremble from the very tip of its blade to the base. Never in the scythe's memory had that door been used.
The hours passed, the hours necessary for the sun to come up outside, not here in this cold, white room, where the pale bulbs, which are always lit, seem to have been placed to fend off the shadows from a corpse who is afraid of the dark. It is still too early for the scythe to give the order that will make the second pile of letters vanish from the room, and so it can sleep a little more. This is what insomniacs say when they have not slept a wink all night, thinking, poor things, that they can fool sleep by asking for a little more, just a little more, when they have not yet been granted one minute of repose. Alone for all those hours, the scythe tried to find an explanation for the remarkable fact that death had made her exit through a sealed door, one that had been eternally condemned, certainly for as long as the scythe has been here. In the end, it gave up any attempt to understand, sooner or later, it will find out what's going on behind that door, for it's almost impossible for there to be secrets between death and the scythe, just as there are no secrets between the sickle and the hand that wields it. The scythe did not have to wait long. Only half an hour of clock time could have passed when the door opened and a woman appeared. The scythe had heard that such a thing was possible, that death could transform herself into a human being, preferably female, this being her normal gender, but had always thought it a mere tale, a myth, a legend like so many others, for example, the phoenix reborn from its own ashes, the man in the moon carrying a bundle of firewood on his back because he had worked on the sabbath, baron munchausen saving himself and his horse from drowning in a swamp by pulling on his own hair, the dracula of transylvania who cannot die, however many times he is killed, unless a stake is driven through his heart, and some people even doubt he'll die then, the famous stone in old Ireland that cried out when the true king touched it, the fountain of epyrus that could douse lit torches and light unlit ones, women who anointed the fields with their menstrual blood to increase the fertility of the sown seeds, ants the size of dogs, dogs the size of ants, the resurrection on the third day because it couldn't have been on the second. You look very pretty, said the scythe, and it was true, death did look very pretty and she was young, about thirty-six or thirty-seven just as the anthropologists had calculated, You spoke, exclaimed death, There seemed to me to be a good reason, it isn't every day one sees death transformed into the species of which she is the enemy, So it wasn't because you thought I looked pretty, Oh, that too, that too, but I would have spoken even if you'd emerged in the guise of a fat woman in black like the one who appeared to monsieur marcel proust, Well, I'm not fat and I'm not dressed in black, and you have no idea who marcel proust was, For obvious reasons, we scythes, both those who cut down people and those who cut down grass, have never been taught how to read, but we have good memories, mine of blood and theirs of sap, and I've heard proust's name several times and put together the facts, he was a great writer, one of the greatest who ever lived, and his file must be somewhere in the old archives, Yes, but not in mine, I wasn't the death who killed him, So this monsieur marcel proust wasn't from here, then, asked the scythe, No, he was from another country, a place called france, replied death, and there was a touch of sadness in her words, Don't worry, you can console yourself for the fact that it wasn't you who killed proust by how pretty you look today, said the scythe helpfully, As you know, I've always considered you to be a friend, but my sadness has nothing to do with not having been the one to kill proust, What then, Well, I'm not sure I can explain. The scythe gave death a bemused look and thought it best to change the subject, Where did you find the clothes you're wearing, it asked, There are plenty to choose from behind that door, it's like a warehouse, like a vast theater wardrobe, there are literally hundreds of wardrobes, hundreds of mannequins, thousands of hangers, Take me there, pleaded the scythe, What's the point, you know nothing about fashions or style, Well, one look at you tells me that you don't know much more than I do, the clothes you're wearing don't seem to go together at all, Since you never leave this room, you have no idea what people are wearing these days, That blouse looks very like others I can remember from when I led an active life, fashions go in cycles, they come and go, they go and come, if I were to tell you what I see out in those streets, No need to tell me, I believe you, Don't you think this blouse goes well with the color of the trousers and the shoes, Yes, agreed the scythe, And with this cap I'm wearing, Yes, that too, And with this fur coat, Yes, And with this shoulder bag, Yes, you're quite right, And with these earrings, Oh, I give up, Go on, admit it, I'm irresistible, That depends on the kind of man you hope to seduce, But you think I look pretty, That's what I said to begin with, In that case, goodbye, I'll be back on sunday, or monday at the latest, don't forget to send off the mail each day, that shouldn't be too hard a task for someone who spends all his time leaning against the wall, You've got the letter, asked the scythe, deciding not to rise to such sarcasm, Yes, it's in here, said death, tapping her bag with the tips of slender, well-manicured fingers, which anyone would be pleased to kiss.
Death appeared in daylight in a narrow street, with walls on both sides, almost on the outskirts of the city. There is no door or gate through which she could have emerged, nor is there any clue that would allow us to reconstruct the path that led her from the cold subterranean room to here. The sun doesn't trouble her empty eye sockets, that's why the skulls found in archeological digs have no need to lower their eyelids when the light suddenly strikes their face and the happy anthropologist announces that his bony find shows every sign of being a neanderthal, even though a subsequent examination reveals it to be merely a vulgar homo sapiens. Death, however, this death who has become a woman, takes a pair of dark glasses out of her bag and uses them to protect her now human eyes from the risk of catching a nasty case of conjunctivitis, which is more than likely in
