The Sentence

After the Writer was imprisoned, (for political reasons, naturally) the General gave an order which he himself did not understand, on the advice of the fat, grey-haired company man, to whom the General owed his revolution.

The Writer was not to be killed, ordered the General, but under no circumstances was he to be allowed either paper nor any instrument of writing. The General was not a fool, and he believed that he had given the order out of respect for the considerable power of symbols and those who wield them. He did not wish to create a martyr, but neither could he allow the Writer to walk free. The company man, however, had just won his war of symbols: what he feared was magic.

The Writer lingered in prison. He was not an eloquent man, and the guards regarded with disdain his attempts to charm them. His presence was not commanding but shrewish, and he could not even beg successfully for cigarettes.

After a few months, the Writer pricked his finger with a fork, and he wrote on the wall a single, perfect sentence. Profound and subtle, carrying as it were all of the sadness, all of the beauty of the world; pearls of loss and redemption strung together along the flawless syntax.

In the morning, the guard who brought his bread saw what he had written on the wall, and, overcome by the moment, the guard wept. The Writer escaped, and was shot in an alley in Buenos Aries three months later. The sentence faded, and has been lost.

gauche
14 Mar 05