Twelve square meters, maybe fifteen. Skai sofas, spotless, cream. Low tables. A coat rack. White light. All discreet. Modern, clean, impersonal. A door, closed, gives access to a toilet. Another, in the background, is open. In fact it is just a vain, as if to make it easier to cross it, but hardly anyone ventures to cross it.
Will it be the waiting room of a notary, a dentist...? No: there would be more movement, posters, piped music. This place, on the other hand, has bare walls and a dead air... Is it the business center of a hotel frequented by executives?... Neither: there are no computers. The reception of a real estate agency?...
The person who comes to serve us seems, yes, a salesperson. Or not a flat, but a seller of something. She's wearing a beaming smile, like from a toothpaste ad. A rare smile. Imperturbable, fixed, a smile that does not interact. That she seems to be pinned to the cheeks with thumbtacks. And we, remembering who is – and is no longer – on the other side of the door without a door, we begin to cry. And we realize the detail that distinguishes this place from any doctor's office, agency, or waiting room: on each low table there is an elegant and discreet box containing tissues.
Why is everything so insignificant? What sin do we commit so that something as tremendous as firing the one we loved the most, something great and terrible like death, takes place in a kind of office, between sofas and coat racks? Why does the most sophisticated and wealthy civilization the Earth has ever known make such a fool of herself next to the pyramids of Egypt, the Taj Mahal, the mausoleum of Julius II sculpted by Michelangelo, Mozart's Requiem, The Matthew Passion of Bach…?
I am willing to convert! What religion? Any; not because I aspire to meet my mother in another life –I would like to, but I don't have the credulity that much–, but because I enjoy, even a little bit, the dignity, the grandeur, the consolation that beauty offers us in such a bitter trance... But then, I go into any church and it goes away. There is no salvation: today the churches also look like offices.
