A final interruption

"For long hours he had walked through the General Cemetery, he had passed through epochs, eras, dynasties, through kingdoms, empires and republics, through wars and epidemics, through infinite numbers of disparate deaths, beginning with the first sorrow felt by humanity and ending with this woman who had committed suicide only a few days ago, Senhor Jose, therefore, knows all too well that there is nothing anyone can do about death. On that walk made up of so many dead, not one of them got up when they heard him pass, not one begged him to help them reunite the scattered dust of their flesh with the bones fallen from their sockets, not one asked him, Come and breathe into my eyes the breath of life, they know all too well that there is nothing anyone can do about death, they know it, we all know it, but, in that case, where does it come from, this feeling of angst that grips Senhor Jose's throat, this unease of mind, as if he had cravenly abandoned a half-completed task and now did not know how to return to it with any dignity."

Jose Saramago wrote that in his novel All the Names, in which the cemetery becomes an invisible labyrinth where the greatest love anyone can show is to mourn for a stranger. Today the Portugese author is dead. His most recent novel, Death with Interruptions, portrays Death as a character who falls in love with a living person, but the book leaves readers wanting to know Death more thoroughly. Now, after this final interruption, those of us who love his books without knowing the author can show no better love than to mourn for this intimate stranger.