Prelude

He opened his eyes and all was darkness.

He breathed deeply. He blinked and opened his eyes again, but he perceived nothing but an immense blackness enveloping everything. His heart quickened in fright, and he breathed again, very deeply, to calm himself. He felt around him with his hands, and discovered that he could barely move them, for there were walls on both sides of his body. He crossed them over his chest and noticed that there was a wall above him too, very close to his body.

At that moment, he remembered something. He had woken that day with a terrible headache, and had not been able to get out of bed. His wife covered him with a blanket. She sent for the doctor. He heard his wife’s voice, he saw his son run out into the street to fetch the doctor. He had felt her hand, her soft hand, resting on his forehead. After these memories, everything was confused, dark: he could not manage to remember anything else.

He tried to move, but he was surrounded by walls. Above, below, on both sides. His hand came to rest on the upper wall, and he felt it cold and hard. He pushed it hard, but the wall did not yield. He took a few seconds to breathe. He pushed it again, this time so hard that his wrist cracked, and the wall moved a little.

When he felt that slight movement, a terrible thought buried itself in his mind. His breathing stopped short and his heart shot off in an unbridled race. He knew at once where he was and what had happened. And the memories came back to him in a stampede. Then everything was clear, fatally clear: his mind made him remember sounds, weeping, sad songs, the pealing of bells, horses’ hooves and the wheels of a carriage… and the hammering on the wood and the thudding of the earth on the lid. And then the silence, that silence that made his ears burst.

He heard his own breathing, and felt the throbbing of his heart about to burst with dread. He screamed loudly, and his whole body and the coffin shook with the din. But no one heard him then.

He breathed hard, trying to control himself, to think of a way out, an escape. But his wife knew what his wishes were for the day of his death: two meters underground. How to escape, trapped under two meters of earth? He sweated profusely. He beat on the lid with clenched fists, and felt the indescribable frustration of human helplessness before certain death. And he lost all hope.

Then logic stopped working and the instinct to survive took hold of him. He thrashed ferociously in his captivity, striking himself against the wooden walls. And when he felt the air grow heavier and hotter, emptier of oxygen, he became a brute entirely. He howled like an animal and clawed at the lid in desperation, and his nails came away from his fingers. He smashed his head against the lid until the blood running down his forehead mingled with his hysterical tears.

And he went mad with pain and suffocation. He convulsed without thinking and lost all sense of reality. His hands pressed against the lid and strained until the bones of his arms broke. His sobbing ceased and his breathing became deep and empty. He opened his mouth and his eyes, and felt himself dying quickly.

Then, when his body had already surrendered to suffocation, he suddenly stopped feeling pain and remembered his wife. And in his delirium, he saw her coming, heard her speaking sweetly to him, and felt her hand once more on his forehead. And he felt nothing more.