It was time to die, white-bearded Bhishma thought. He’d lived a long life! He’d seen it all, even the disaster that was the battle on the Kurushetra plains. Even the darkness that was soon to fall over India.
The fighting around him stopped. His great-nephew, Arjuna, sought to slake his uncle’s thirst by firing an arrow into the ground to let cooling spring water arc into his mouth. Silence reigned over the battlefield. And in the time that was left to him, Bhishma spoke.
He spoke of what he’d learnt in his long life. He spoke of his horror at the battle that set uncle against nephew, friend against friend. He spoke of what was to come, and his horror at what was to come. And then his white-haired head fell back, and death came as a sweetness to him.
What will he say, I ask W., now the end has come, the endless end? Will he speak of love? Of friendship? Of the life of thought? He’ll speak about me, says W. Of not being able to get rid of me. Of my being here, even now …
It’s time to die, says W. But death does not come.
About the Author
LARS IYER lectures in philosophy at Newcastle University. He is the author of the novel Spurious, two books on Maurice Blanchot (Blanchot’s Communism: Art, Philosophy and the Political and Blanchot’s Vigilance: Phenomenology, Literature and the Ethical) and his blog Spurious. He is also a contributor to Britain’s leading literary website, Ready Steady Book. Watch for the final book in the trilogy, Exodus, coming in 2013.