The protagonist was aware that his uncle Xitai, his mother’s eldest brother, had cancer, only after it was getting serious. The fact gradually sank into his head, by the time it was mentioned two or three times, starting from a worried call picked up by his mother in about June, concluding with an announcement that he was admitted into palliative care.
Uncle and his family currently lived in the US, and he had seen him only twice, so he didn’t feel much sadness, except the emptiness that emerged every time he knew somebody was dying. His mother didn’t appear to be weeping, though, and he didn’t actively bring up the matter. He could only imagine how devastated Xitai’s wife was, from the broken English (even having stayed in the US for decades) which she wrote on Line to repeatedly ask the Lord for his blessing.
He was an anesthesiologist, and was attentive to his health; he was frugal with money and hard working. Still he got ill, suddenly due to a recurring throat cancer, ironically just one month before he retired. Lately he was drinking only cokes, and locked himself in his room. Maybe because he was able to research his own survival curve.
How terrifying it would be to face death, the protagonist imagined, such that even the most intelligent ones, including Einstein and Grothendieck, could in their last days convert from atheists to believers? Religions, he knew, helped people cope with their short and brutal life. Nevertheless, how were they persuaded that what they wished for was real, as long as they wished? (He once read through a long Reddit discussion on the reasons atheists converted to believers, and that didn’t clarify the matter any more.)
The next day, perhaps to alleviate the ominous air, he went for a walk in National Taiwan University, and visited the Campus Bookstore for the first time after the remodelling. In the Christian bookstore, one of the displayed books was «The Reason for God» by Timothy Keller, and he recalled Isaac the chess player, in one of his apologetic posts, had shared quotes by Keller.
He picked it up and skimmed. Considering our natural craving beyond the material realm—it so argued—didn’t it hint that the immaterial realm could actually exist? He put it down and went upstairs. It was here that once Celia pressed him to join a church gathering for Bible interpretation, and he wouldn’t, which led to their arguments and finally a breakup. Those translations of western canons disappeared, leaving a more hollow second floor, except the Bibles of course.
In the middle of the night, at 3 or 4, the protagonist’s mother reported that Xitai was dying. Everybody died, he thought in his fading consciousness before falling asleep. Still, why did some believe that they would be more than dust when they were gone? As long as such possibilities made they feel better? Maybe that was a certain form of optimism, just as the belief that that their life had a value? Then it was hard to blame that many accepted it. But he didn’t. He would face the everlasting, meaningless suffering life would certainly offer in abundance. People died together, but he died alone.
Except perhaps with the companion of music, as Nietzsche would have agreed in «The Birth of Tragedy». That it was only through the intoxication in music that we could unite and find the power to overcome the bleak reality. He therefore promised to linger a little longer on the earth, before the sound died in the air into nothingness.
Some 6 hours later in the morning, Father read the messages on Line saying that Xitai had passed away. He was 74.
❧ October 9, 2020; rewritten July 9, 2021; revised October 24, 2021