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I stared at thenightof the city
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my other half. Like any
handsome youth, he was
arrogant and without
mercy. He said: ‘I am your
other half, the half you
have incarcerated inside
a dark and dangerous
cellar. I am your stifled
and unfortunate half.’ And
I believed him.
I don’t know how to open
up my heart to you. We
are created in such a
way that the moment we
come close to love we
shatter something. Do not
be shocked, therefore,
or taken aback, if as the
moment for the final
handover draws near,
my shaking hands and
defeated soul succumb
and shatter other things.
My son, for eighteen years
I have kept the secrets I am
telling you now at the back
of a shelf, as if inside a glass
container full of them,
placed behind other glass
containers. Do not blame
me, or criticise me, saying,
‘What a shameless, sad old
man.’ It is my conviction
that it is a coward who
tells the truth only on his
deathbed, yet that coward
is still braver than one
who takes his secrets to
the grave. Doddery old
man that I am, I must now
climb a broken ladder, the
ladder of my hesitations
and cowardice, and from
the top-most rung, the
rung of the fears and
apprehensions
of
my
seventy wasted years, with
my wrinkled fingers, I must
throw the glass containers
in the air one by one, and
shatter things – break and
shatter them.
At the moment of death,
man should open up his
box of secrets so that
later he may have a
proper understanding of
the divine verdict. As he