Free When I Was Mortal by Javier Marías

process by which everything becomes indefinitely postponed for a while, and we always believe that there will continue to be a tomorrow in which it will be possible to stop what today and yesterday passes and elapses and flows, what is imperceptibly becoming another routine which, in its way, also levels out our days and our nights until they become unimaginable without all their essential elements, and the nights and days must be identical, at least in their essence, so that nothing is relinquished or sacrificed by those who want them and those who endure them. Now I remember everything and that’s why I remember my death so clearly, or, rather, what I knew of my death when it happened, which was little and, indeed, nothing in comparison with all that I know now, given the constant razor edge of repetition.
    I returned from one of my trips exhausted and Luisa didn’t fail me, she came to meet me. We didn’t talk much in the car, nor while I was mechanically unpacking my suitcase and glancing through the accumulated mail and listening to the messages on the answering machine that she had kept for my return. I was alarmed when I heard one of them, because I immediately recognized Maria’s voice, she said my name once and was then cut off, and that made my feeling of alarm subside for a moment, the voice of a woman saying my name and then breaking off was of no significance, there was no reason why Luisa should have felt worried if she had heard it. I lay down on the bed in front of the television, changing channels, Luisa brought me some cold meat and a shop-bought dessert, she clearly had neither the time nor the inclination to make me even an omelette. It was still early, but she had turned out the light in the bedroom to help me get to sleep, and there I stayed, drowsy and peaceful, with a vague memory of her caresses, the hand that calms even when it touchesyour chest distractedly and possibly impatiently. Then she left the bedroom and I eventually fell asleep with the television on, at some point, I stopped changing channels.
    I don’t know how much time passed, no, that’s not true, since now I know exactly, I enjoyed seventy-three minutes of deep sleep and of dreams that all took place in foreign parts, whence I had once again returned safe and sound. Then I woke up and I saw the bluish light of the television, the light illuminating the foot of the bed, rather than any actual images, because I didn’t have time. I see and I saw rushing towards me something black and heavy and doubtless as cold as a stethoscope, but it was violent rather than salutary. It fell once only to be raised again, and in those tenths of a second before it came crashing down a second time, already spattered with blood, I thought that Luisa must be killing me because of that message which had said only my name and then broken off and perhaps there had been many other things that she had erased after listening to them all, leaving only the beginning for me to listen to on my return, a mere foreshadowing of what was killing me. The black thing fell again and this time it killed me, and my last conscious thought was not to put up any resistance, to make no attempt to stop it because it was unstoppable and perhaps too because it didn’t seem such a bad death, to die at the hands of the person with whom I had lived in peace and contentment, and without ever hurting each other until, that is, we finally did. It’s a tricky word to use, and can easily be misconstrued, but perhaps I came to feel that my death was a just death.
    I see this now and I see the whole thing, with an afterwards and a before, although the afterwards does not, strictly speaking, concern me and is therefore not so painful. But the before is, or rather the rebuttal of what I glimpsed and half-thought between the lowering and the raising and the lowering again of the blackthing that finished me off. Now I can see Luisa talking to a man I don’t know and who has a moustache