In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster Page A

little laugh, one of those smug, abject noises that can only come from people who are in fact already dead, and at that moment I knew precisely what I was going to do. There was a depth of certainty to this knowledge that I had never felt before. I did not struggle, I did not cry out, I did not react with any part of myself that I could recognize as my own. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. I mean nothing at all. There was this certainty inside me, and it destroyed everything else. The moment Ferdinand touched me, I knew that I was going to kill him, and the certainty was so great, so overpowering, that I almost wanted to stop and tell him about it, just so he would be able to understand what I thought of him and why he deserved to be dead.
    He slid his body closer to mine, stretching out along the edge of the pallet, and began to nuzzle his rough face against my neck, muttering to me about how he had been right all along, and yes, he was going to fuck me, and yes, I was going to love every second of it. His breath smelled of the beef jerky and turnips we had eaten for dinner, and we were both sweating bullets, our bodies totally covered with sweat. The air was suffocating in that room, utterly withoutmovement, and each time he touched me I could feel the salt water slide across my skin. I did nothing to stop him, just lay there limp and passionless without saying a word. After a while, he began to forget himself, I could feel it, could feel him foraging around my body, and then, when he started to climb on top of me, I put my fingers around his neck. I did it lightly at first, pretending to be playing with him, as though I had finally succumbed to his charms, his irresistible charms, and because of that he suspected nothing. Then I began to squeeze, and a sharp little gagging sound came out of his throat. In that first instant after I began to apply the pressure, I felt an immense happiness, a surging, uncontrollable sense of rapture. It was as though I had crossed some inner threshold, and all at once the world became different, a place of unimaginable simplicity. I shut my eyes, and then it began to feel as if I were flying through empty space, moving through an enormous night of blackness and stars. As long as I held on to Ferdinand’s throat, I was free. I was beyond the pull of the earth, beyond the night, beyond any thought of myself.
    Then came the oddest part of it. Just when it became clear to me that a few more moments of pressure would finish the job, I let go. It had nothing to do with weakness, nothing to do with pity. My grip around Ferdinand’s throat was like iron, and no amount of thrashing and kicking would ever have loosened it. What happened was that I suddenly became aware of the pleasure I was feeling. I don’t know how else to describe it, but right there at the end, as I lay on my back in the sweltering darkness, slowly squeezing the life out of Ferdinand, I understood that I was not killing him in self-defense—I was killing him for the pure pleasure of it. Horrible consciousness, horrible, horribleconsciousness. I let go of Ferdinand’s throat and pushed him away from me as violently as I could. I felt nothing but disgust, nothing but outrage and bitterness. It almost didn’t matter that I had stopped. A few seconds either way was all it meant, but now I understood that I was no better than Ferdinand, no better than anyone else.
    A tremendous, wheezing gasp emerged from Ferdinand’s lungs, a miserable, inhuman sound like the braying of a donkey. He writhed around on the floor and clutched his throat, chest heaving in panic, desperately gulping air, sputtering, coughing, retching up the catastrophe all over himself. “Now you understand,” I said to him. “Now you know what you’re up against. The next time you try something like that, I won’t be so generous.”
    I didn’t even wait until he had fully recovered. He was going to live, and that was enough, that was more than enough. I