Death At Intervals is a real little charmer of a book, and in its light, gracefully ironic way, it's rather brilliant. 'The following day, no one died', it begins, and the rest of its first half or so is given over to telling the story (I use the phrase deliberately) of the ramifications of that phenomenon in the unknown country with which the novel is (in)nominally concerned (the travails of the state, the church, the funeral industry, life insurance companies, etc; the development of a semi officially-sanctioned people smuggling operation to move the suspendedly-alive across the country's border, where they can expire; and so on); then, death herself takes centre stage, announcing her presence with a letter to the Director-General of Television which is then read on live television by the Director-General himself after a very amusing consultation between him and the Prime Minister (who is one of my favourite characters, insofar as any of the figures in this book apart from death herself and perhaps the cellist with whom she later becomes preoccupied can be described as characters, that is). Actually, that passage gives a good sense of the flavour of the whole of this book (it also caused me to go a few stops past my own while reading it on the tram the other night), so here it is:
... The moment that the newsreader finished reading the government communiqué, camera two brought the director-general up on screen. He was clearly nervous, his mouth dry. He briefly cleared his throat and began to read, dear sir, I wish to inform you and all those concerned that as from midnight tonight people will start to die again, as had always happened, with little protest, from the beginning of time until the thirty-first day of december last year, I should explain that the reason that led me to interrupt my activities, to stop killing and put away the emblematic scythe that imaginative painters and engravers of yore always placed in my hand, was to give those human beings who so loathe me just a taste of what it would mean to live for ever, eternally, although, between you and me, sir, I must confess that I have no idea whether those two expressions, for ever and eternally, are as synonymous as is generally believed, anyway, after this period of a few months of what we might call an endurance test or merely extra time and bearing in mind the deplorable results of the experiment, both from the moral, that is, philosophical point of view, and from the pragmatic, that is, social point of view, I felt that it would be best for families and for society as a whole, both vertically and horizontaly, if I acknowledged my mistake publicly and announced an immediate return to normality, which will mean that all those people who should be dead, but who, with health or without it, nevertheless remain in the world, will have the candle of their life snuffed out as the last stroke of midnight fades on the air, and please note that the reference to the last stroke is merely symbolic, just in case someone gets the stupid idea of stopping the clocks in all the belltowers or of removing the clappers from the bells themselves, imagining that this will stop time and contradict my irrevocable decision, that of restoring the supreme fear to the hearts of men most of the people in the studio had by now disappeared, and those who remained were whispering to each other, the buzz of their murmurings failing to provoke the producer, who was himself standing slack-jawed with amazement, into silencing them with the furious gesture he normally deployed, albeit in far less dramatic circumstances therefore, resign yourselves and die without protest because it will get you nowhere, however, there is one point on which I feel it my duty to admit that I was wrong, and that has to do with the cruel and unjust way in which I used to proceed, taking people's lives by stealth, with no prior warning, without so much as a by-your-leave, and I recognise that this was downright brutal, often I didn't even allow them time to draw up a will, although it's true that in most cases I did send them an illness to pave the way, but the strange thing about illnesses is that human beings always hope to shake them off, and so only when it's too late do they realise that it will be their final illness, anyway, from now on everyone will receive due warning and be given a week to put what remains of their life in order, to make a will and say goodbye to their family, asking forgiveness for any wrongs done and making peace with the cousin they haven't spoken to for twenty years, and that said, director-general, all I would ask is that you make sure that, today without fail, every home in the land receives this message, which I sign by the name I am usually known by, death. When he saw that his image had gone from the screen, the director-general got up from his chair, folded the letter and put it in one of his inside jacket pockets. He saw the producer coming towards him, looking pale and distraught, So that's what it was, he said in a barely audible murmur, so that's what it was. The director-general nodded silently and headed for the exit. ...
Needless to say, things don't go quite as death (who insists on being referred to in the lowercase) anticipates...
