the last book I ever read (If This is a Man by Primo Levi, excerpt ten)

from If This is a Man by Primo Levi:

“I have a ration of bread under the mattress. Divide it among the three of you. I won’t be eating anymore.”

We couldn’t find anything to say, but for the time being we didn’t touch the bread. Half his face was swollen. As long as he remained conscious, he was closed in a bitter silence.

But in the evening, and for the whole night, and for two days, without interruption, the silence was broken by his delirium. Following a last, interminable dream of submission and slavery, he began to murmur “Jawohl” with every breath, regularly and continuously like a machine, “Jawohl,” every time his poor rib cage subsided, thousands of times, so that you wanted to shake him, suffocate him, or at least make him change the word.

I never understood so clearly as at that moment how laborious is the death of a man.