you would never abandon me); on the other hand, if you have money, you can pay for company, for a nurse, male or female. Right up until the very last moment, you can pay for a chiropodist to buff away the hard skin on your feet and cut your toenails — a task that has become more exhausting each time you attempt it — and to trim your nails so that they don’t become ingrown, a delicate, expert fellow who removes your corns and treats the dangerous sores on the bottom of your foot which, because of your hyperglycaemia, threaten to become chronic, and which, if they fail to heal and begin to spread, can become gangrenous and might then lead to you having your foot or leg amputated; money allows you to pay for a masseur and a barber who cuts your hair and shaves you in bed, a pharmacist who gives you the most effective sedatives to help you up to heaven quickly, to hear the celestial bells and see the soft wings of the angels (did you know that in the church of a nearby village, they worship a feather from the archangel Michael’s wing?), and you can even afford to pay some gorgeous piece of ass (and forgive the crude language, Liliana) to give you a hand-job. And all this in a comfortable house or clinic in Lucerne, a lovely bright room with views of a lake, green meadows, the cows from the Milka chocolate bars and the snows of Kilimanjaro, while you recline on a memory foam (is that what it’s called?) mattress, on which you are dying like someone taking their four o’clock tea if you’re English or a pre-lunch beer and a dish of calamares