Page 73 - Sorrow of the Earth: Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business

mouth, but he no longer had the strength to speak. He couldn’t say anything.

Ah! he suddenly had so much to recount... so many details, and so
many secrets to tell. He closed his eyes. We’ll never know. We’re born never
to know. We’ll have had fifteen or thirty years, and all the time we’ll have
been alone, in the company of other people, and we’ll have loved them very
powerfully, but sotto voce. No one has ever been a child, not a single soul.
We’ve never been anything other than blind and deaf.
The morning was already well advanced. The sun had warmed the pillow

and, when he slowly turned his head, he felt the warmth of the sheet on his
cheek. Lord, it felt good! Shouldn’t that have been enough? Everything was so
distant now... What had happened? All he hoped was that his sister would
come upstairs this morning; he would so much have liked her to be with him,
for a moment. He didn’t want to die alone, crammed inside his wound. Ah! if

only someone could have been there, beside him. He wanted to die like
everyone else.
But death is patient. It stands facing the bed, like a spectator in front of the
stage. There’s no escaping it. It’s paid for its seat, and it will see us croak.