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murdered had always seemed immensely preferable to the ordeal of capital punishment. Death; until now it had always been something to do with other, far-away people, but now it was all too intimate. Although I tried to tell myself that it was something I just had to accept, that after all this was only a dream, it was all too evident that I was suffocating. Confusion slowly changed into humiliation as I realized that I was going to experience both a basic agony and an inexhaustible humiliation.
    To M as much as to me, it simply wasn’t possible that I would die first of the two of us. Such thoughts had even escaped her lips, and on more than one occasion. This assumption was hardly unreasonable considering the parade of illnesses, both major and minor, that had been M’s adolescence, the three operations she’d had so far, and the hereditary allergy which threatened to flare up whenever she strayed too far from her familiar environment. It was so much a part of her life that she barely even noticed it any more, living hemmed in by the many medicines which she had to take, the doctors’ addresses, the phone calls to book appointments. M’sallergy caused her unimaginable suffering, so much so that, she told me, she’d once decided to kill herself rather than bear it any longer. The doctors were all of the opinion that M’s other disorders of the nervous system were triggered by this allergy. Even though these weren’t life-threatening, whenever I thought of death it had become a habit to think of it connection with M. M knew this perfectly well. But how foolish I’d been to think that way—now M would have no reason to hate or envy me any more, as she was going to outlive me. But there was no way she’d ever be able to learn the details of my death. She would never know about the humiliation, and this was all that was needed to set my mind at ease.
    Death, being unaware that one is no longer living. Strangely enough, after that thought surfaced in my mind, the pain seemed gradually to lessen in intensity. Like so many other things that get forgotten in this world, the feeling as though my lungs were bursting slowly lost its original character, becoming “pain” only in name, a pain that was “mine” yet felt strangely disconnected. I was lying on the water. I wasn’t floating perfectly, though; I was lying on my side facing the riverbank, repeatedly sinking beneath the surface only to float up again a few moments later. I could gulp down a quick breath if I twisted my head when I floated up, but this was getting progressively more difficult. I knew I had to tilt my head up so I could breathe, but I was so weak that I frequently just sank straight back down again. My legs were starting to weigh me down, dragging me back under. The pain in my side remained constant all the while, but it now felt less like pain and more like evidence of some irreversible severing or fatal decision in the midst of this slow death. I was conscious of the sensation that we call “pain,” but it wasn’t the least bit painful any more. Eventually, like my inability to breathe, it became both the sole thing left todefine me and my final farewell to this world, the total sum of my existence.
    3) We’d arranged to go to Joachim’s house on Christmas Eve. His mother’s house, to be precise. I was also planning to attend a midnight church service, though for architectural rather than religious reasons. The area where his mother lived was nothing special but, according to Joachim, it had a particularly beautiful church. His family was Protestant, but Joachim hadn’t been to church for a very long time. It wasn’t snowing on the morning of Christmas Eve, but the snow that had fallen the night before hadn’t completely melted, leaving the roads churned with dirty slush and snow still piled up on the pavements. The wind was so strong it swept up snow from the