Death With Interruptions

by José Saramago

One cannot be too careful with words, they change their minds just as people do.

Death’s perplexity is perfectly understandable. She was placed in this world so long ago that she can no longer remember from whom she received the necessary instructions to carry out the job she was charged with. They placed the regulations in her hands, pointed out the words thou shalt kill as the one guiding light of her future activities and told her, doubtless not noticing the macabre irony, to get on with her life.

Death did indeed work her fingers to the bone, because, of course, she is all bone.

Words have their own hierarchy, their own protocol, their own aristocratic titles, their own plebeian stigmas.