Learning How to Die
It was a hot summer night, and even close to midnight the heat still seeped from the walls of the club where a middle-aged man was dancing among a crowd of other people.
His name was Alejandro, or at least that was what he called himself at the time. He did not remember his birth name, and used that one because he felt a certain fascination with Alexandre Dumas; for the same reason, he sometimes also called himself Edmond, after the character from The Count of Monte Cristo.
Alejandro was dancing without any particular purpose, beyond feeling, for as long as the party lasted, a little less alone. He did not especially enjoy dancing, nor was he seeking company beyond what he already had at that moment, surrounded by strangers.
What he did enjoy was observing the people around him. He found a quiet satisfaction in watching their gestures and behavior. Some were looking for a partner to share a bed with that night; others perhaps only for company to pass the time; others simply wanted to dance and have a good time. In the end, all of them were looking for something.
He smiled as he watched a group of young men approach a cluster of women with laughter, only to be ejected just as quickly as they had arrived, still laughing. Many of the people around him were under the influence of some drug, legal or not—alcohol, pills. Eager to feel, and to feel intensely.
He remembered how, some time earlier, his arrogance had led him to believe that he was somehow better than many of those people, who intoxicated themselves and sought frantic contact with others, sometimes in rather animal ways, in order not to feel the sting of loneliness.
He quickly abandoned that illusion. After spending some time looking down on them, he realized that he was there for the same reasons. His loneliness drew him to those anonymous places, where he could feel the force of life rising from the shouting, the dancing, the general excitement.
As animal and primitive as it might be, it was still a celebration of life. And sex—which was practiced quite often in the darker, more private spaces of the club—was nothing other than another triumph of life.
He no longer looked at those people with arrogance. No—he was simply one of them. Although there was, of course, something different about him. It had begun so long ago that it felt like an eternity.
For many years, Alejandro had subjected himself to a strict discipline. Meditation was only one part of it. He followed a controlled diet, exercised daily, practiced yoga, regulated his breathing.
His days were organized around the body and its limits, as if by mastering its rhythms he might reach something that lay beyond them.
Meditation occupied the center of that effort. He sat for long periods in silence, observing his breath, suspending movement, allowing thoughts to arise and dissolve. This was not a casual practice, nor something he did in search of comfort. It was work. And like all work, it demanded persistence, fatigue, and time.
For a long while, nothing seemed to come of it. Then, one day, during a particularly long session, something shifted. His body grew light, distant. A sudden dizziness overcame him, and for a moment he lost awareness.
He then experienced some rapid flashes of images in his mind, that felt were both familiar and unfamiliar. He then intuitively grasped they were from previous lives. Then he went pitch black, and fainted.
When he came back to himself, it was late. Very late. His legs ached from remaining still for so long, and his head throbbed faintly. He stood up with some effort, and went directly to bed.
That night, he slept poorly. His dreams were restless and confused, filled with sensations rather than images. He woke up several times, drenched in sweat, his body heavy, his thoughts disordered.
The next morning, exhausted, he stood in front of the bathroom mirror. Sunlight filtered through the window as he ran the razor slowly across his face.
The cut came without warning. Still half asleep, Alejandro moved the razor across his cheek with habitual care when he felt a brief, sharp sting. He lowered the blade and looked at the mirror. A thin line of blood appeared, precise and unmistakable.
He frowned, more irritated than alarmed. He rinsed the razor, pressed his fingers lightly against the cut, and waited. Almost immediately, the bleeding stopped.
He leaned closer. The skin was intact. Smooth. There was no mark, no redness, nothing to suggest that the cut had ever been there.
He stood in front of the mirror for a few seconds, studying his reflection. He touched his cheek again, this time more deliberately. Nothing. His face looked exactly as it had moments before.
He raised the razor toward his cheek again, almost making contact. Then he stopped. He exhaled sharply, dropped the razor into the sink, and left the bathroom.
In the kitchen, he prepared breakfast. The movements were automatic: coffee, bread, fruit. He sat at the table and ate slowly, without appetite, his gaze drifting toward the vegetation outside the window. The apartment was quiet. Morning light filled the room.
He finished eating, washed the dishes, and put on his coat. With his hand on the doorknob, he paused. He stood there for a long moment, motionless. Finally, he let go, laid the coat on the sofa, and turned back toward the bathroom.
The razor blade was still waiting for him. Like a battered old friend who, without any intention of defending himself from the attacks of his angry companion, simply waits — waits for the moment of fury to pass, and for the friend to return. And the friend did return.
Standing once again in front of the mirror, he firmly grasped the blade, placed it against one side of his chin, and pressed slightly, just enough to make a cut similar to the previous one, only on the opposite side.
Once again he felt the sharp pain of metal tearing into flesh, and he briefly closed his eyes. Remembering how quickly everything had happened before, he opened them again and, in his haste, struck his head against the mirror as he leaned in too fast to see what he had done.
A thin thread of blood ran down his chin. Then, just as before, the wound disappeared.
Driven by what he had just witnessed, and despite the growing pain, he continued with a few more tests, making somewhat deeper cuts, until, frightened by what he was doing, he threw the razor blade into the trash and went out for a walk through the park. Not a single cut had remained on his body.
A cool, spring wind was blowing through the park. He slipped his hands into the pockets of his jacket and, lifting his shoulders slightly toward his neck, walked slowly. “I’m going crazy.”
He was lost in these thoughts, walking near the lake at the center of the park, when a young man approached him. He looked disheveled, his expression vacant, as if he were under the influence of drugs. Nervous, the young man lunged at him and violently demanded money, showing off a gun.
Alejandro, startled and afraid, took a few seconds to free his wallet, caught in the pocket of his pants.
That was enough. The assailant, anxious and perhaps as frightened as Alejandro himself, was betrayed by his nerves and fired. The shot hit Alejandro directly in the chest. Then another. And yet another one.
Like a dead weight, his body ceased to respond, and he felt himself sliding uncontrollably toward the ground, his gaze fixed straight ahead, unblinking. And the fire — the fire! As if molten magma had been poured into his chest, the pain was unbearable.
In disbelief at what he had done, the young man dragged the body to the edge of the lake, clumsily stuffed stones into all of its pockets, finally took the wallet, and threw him into the water.
Alejandro watched all of this happen, unable to do anything to stop it. He was in a kind of stupor, his consciousness drifting in and out, yet even so he managed to see, as his body began to sink, how the young man hurriedly rummaging through the wallet before walking away along the shore.
Dimness. The lake was not very deep, and some light reached him as he was carried by the faint currents of that artificial body of water. Alejandro was at the very edge of madness. At times he lost himself in the horrific sensations he was experiencing, only to return again.
What he never lost was consciousness. He saw and felt everything. The water in his lungs burned — burned, burned everything inside him. An endless searing.
After what felt like an eternity — and in fact were several hours, for when he became aware again the afternoon sun was already high — ready hands pulled him from the water. He felt warm air on his face. Pressure on his chest forced a large amount of water from his lungs, and he continued retching for some time, while someone draped a blanket over his shoulders.
A little later, when he had calmed somewhat, they gave him something warm to drink, since he was shaking, and asked him what had happened.
Choosing his words carefully, he limited his account to what he believed would be plausible. He said he had been robbed, beaten, and thrown into the lake. He said nothing about the bullets, and kept the blanket wrapped tightly around his torso to prevent the holes in his clothes from prompting difficult questions.
Once that initial questioning was over, when the police officer assisting him left to find a patrol car to take him to the station, he slipped away and fled as quickly as he could. There were too many questions he did not know how — or did not want — to answer.
Far from the lake and from the police, he finally stopped. He was dazed. He could not remember where he lived, and had no idea where to go.
He eventually abandoned what had once been his city and traveled the world in search of answers. Along the way, he found the pleasures the world had to offer, and for a time, he lost himself in them.
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
In the same way in which people sometimes postpone things by telling themselves they will “do them tomorrow,” and in doing so let weeks pass — sometimes even months — he let the years slip by, his sense of time thoroughly distorted.
And so time passed, in a mad hedonistic race, driven by the need to forget the traumatic moments of his non-deaths. He was apparently immortal, yes, but that did nothing to eliminate pain. Pain chased him in his nightly nightmares. And it was an infinite pain, one that could not be brought to an end by the natural death with which the rest of humanity was blessed.
For others, there was a limit to the pain they had to endure. For him, there was none.
Until that summer night when, while dancing, he began to mentally revisit those years of travel and desperation. And suddenly, shaken, he realized that almost fifty years had passed since the events in that park. He had to lean against a wall, feeling dizzy at the recognition of that number. A long agony, a mixture of pleasure and terror; an escape that lasted so many time, even too many.
Ironically, as he watched everyone around him that summer night struggling to cling to life, he was desperately searching for his own death. For him, the greatest mystery was no longer Life, with a capital L. His mystery — the one he felt an urgent need to uncover — was its opposite.
He had to learn how to die.
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