God has not shown me in nightdreams and no sorcerer has divined where my last day will overtake me and how my end will look, that I may know. Whether in my tent, on my couch, I will die with all my cherished close to me, every one of them camped mutely around me, sentries of love and sanctity at my bed, who will count my last breaths in the bosom of my God as one would count coveted attainments. Or, scorned and despised, in the ire of God and man, hated by my fellows and a fugitive from my family, on a pile of straw in a forsaken cell I will emit my vacant and impure soul. Nobody will attend my spirit’s release and no hand will shudder over my snuffed-out eyes. Or perhaps, in my hunger and my thirst for life and its delicacies, with loathing in my soul, in spite of the Creator and his wrath, I will kick away His gift and like hurling a soiled shoe from my foot hurl my soul at His feet. Or maybe my soul will wait long and longer until it rots, from too much expectation and too much silence, and spill upon the earth in my bitterness as I vomit it like blood from my heart. Or it might drop like a pearl with my last teardrop, the light of the world within it, trembling, and shine many generations later for eyes that never beheld me. Or perhaps like a butterfly, dancing and leaping around the flame, my soul will depart. Or like the flame itself, before it consumes the wax, in the throes of its death my soul will flutter and flicker and smoke for many days, an optical illusion, until suddenly it plummets into a dark abyss and is extinguished forever. Or perhaps like the sun before it sets — abruptly all its beams ignite and it disperses its flaming torches across the clouds and its pyres among the mountaintops, and thousands of eyes open wide and gape at the approach of its final radiance. Who knows, my God may be cruel to me and I will die while still I live, and they will bundle my soul in shrouds of paper and bury me in a bookcase, the mold in the house will grate my bones and a rat in a hole will gnaw at me, and I will stand with my own feet in my own grave and recite the kaddish with my own mouth for myself. Or perhaps my death will arrive small and without sense, and not as I had hoped: on a furious winter night, like a starving dog behind one of the fences, I will freeze. The gentle snow will cover the black stain and erase the shame of a man and his life, and the last rattle of my teeth as I curse my death will be scattered by the raging wind. Translated by Leon Wieseltier, in loving memory of A.B. Yehoshua and Meir Shalev
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