The Screen

Then they raised a diaphanous screen in front of the dying man, separating him from the others. While he still could see through the film, they were only moving shadows: figures trudging along in broken, abrupt gait — as one who walks by tending a colic-screaming baby. When they touched his skin, their hands were tight in transparent gloves to ward off the germs of his impending death.

Yet he was glad to be there. A condemned man is also a living man. But the exhaustion — God! Pain arrived as long pikes. Like a stubborn child refusing sleep, he kept himself alive by a thinning thread. As for the relatives, they were at their wit’s end: fed, cleaned, and watched over the man, but they also wanted him to go — as only the living can: fussing over and wasting him at the same time.