The Last Analects of Jasper James Kaufmann

1. Temporary Suicide

Part One

1. Temporary Suicide

"Life is an enigma, and the universe is an encyclopedia of clues."

So scribbled Jasper James Kaufmann in his old frayed yellow legal pad, in English, although he'd been living in West Berlin for two months now. He sat still in thought for a short moment and then sighed deeply, threw his pen down on the desk with a resigned flick of the wrist, and reached into his pants pocket for a cigarette. He felt around in his inside coat pocket for the lighter he had found that morning on the street. He never really had any attachment to lighters; they came and went as they pleased, like the scenes of his life. He lit the cigarette and took a long drag, breathing the smoke out with a depraved puff. He stared at the brick wall of his bedroom, where there was a poster opposite the pillow where he laid his head at night, a print of a Dali painting. He couldn't remember the title right then, but it was his favorite, depicting melting timepieces in front of a surrealistic landscape. He fell asleep to it every night and woke up to it every morning, constantly reminded thereby of the ephemeral nature of time itself. Finally he took another drag of the cigarette and extinguished it on the ashtray on his end table, saving the rest for later. He got up and wandered into the main room of the apartment, where he could see out the window another light on in the building opposite his. He saw a silhouette moving about indistinctly against the view, lit by the stars and the almost-full moon. He wondered who they were and what they were doing. He wondered if they were happy. After what seemed like a long time he wandered, seemingly aimlessly, back into his bedroom and sat back down at his desk. He picked up the pen, lying apathetically on the legal pad, and wrote, again in English:

"If sleep is the half-sister of death, then is intentionally going to sleep akin to temporary suicide?"

He opened one of the desk drawers and retrieved a half-full bottle of pills. Each pill was 25 milligrams of clozapine, which his roommate, a medical student, had somehow gotten a hold of. Jasper had bought them from him cheap a few weeks after arriving in Berlin. Clozapine was the ultimate sedative. You took it and it mercifully put you to sleep, a deep and profound sleep that gave you some measure of rest against mortality. It had originally been introduced in Europe in 1971, but withdrawn in 1975 because of the risk of some disease having to do with your white blood cell count. Jasper didn't really care what the disease was called, and if it happened to him... well, it was a hell of a good night to die. He was already sleepy from the cigarette and the Pilsner Urquell he'd downed earlier. Yes, there was something to be said for sobriety, but there was also something to be said for intoxication. They were two realms of the mind, each with its own idiosyncrasies and personality. They were brothers, sometimes peaceful, sometimes at war with one another. Now it was time for the third, mysterious brother, complete oblivion. He swallowed two of the pills dry, took off his coat and got into bed. It wasn't long before his brain sank into deep sleep, the turmoil that it contained dying out. The night was gone.