This is a viewpoint especially popular in Nicos’s motherland. But to deny the utmost fact is to deny its causes – the deterioration, the everyday decay to scorn the microscopic invaders, to laugh at the frail coronary vessels, to disrespect the passing of time. Nobody really wants to die even suicides need a split second of insanity to commit their awe-inspiring act. It is the absolute delusion, it is our trademark, stemming, like speech, romance and music (like all things which to other living organisms must seem so very peculiar) from the greediness of an overdeveloped nervous system, loath to concede that at some point the stimuli of life will cease to reach it.
Whichever attitude we choose, one thing is certain: to shy away from death is human. As with all stories one may read between the lines, perceiving the evolution of mankind either as the glorious chronicle of a species passionate to the point of foolhardiness, or as the sad tale of a race of cowards and losers, who refuse to accept the simple truth accepted by every living thing from protozoon to blue whale – namely, that death is invincible. The history of man can be read as a history of carelessness of willfully exposing himself to danger, of defying his obvious vulnerability against the elements of Nature and the creatures that walk the Earth, of ultimately pursuing immortality (and ultimately failing to achieve it). It was unthinkable but really rather simple. And at once he knew what he was being told. However, Nicos had sensed, above all else, the underlying boredom in the good doctor’s jargon, the vanitas vanitatum in his weary eyes. They would immediately begin an intensive treatment he would be given the various new-and-hopefully-more-potent cocktails he would even receive special monthly AIDS-related benefits. The blood test simply sealed his fate – for as the resident virologist lugubriously informed him, his wasn’t a case of HIV but the full-blown dreaded syndrome. He found out a month ago, following an examination of what he thought was a baffling yet benign whitening of the tongue, coupled by the astute physician with a persistent diarrhea of which he complained. He is going to become ill, monstrously ill his body will be devoured by a multitude of cancers he will be probed and stuffed with bright yellow poisons that’ll make him even sicker he will receive a compulsory, futile treatment – which will feel like an additional humiliation, like a punishment he will lie helpless in the hands of helpless strangers, people frustrated by their own helplessness and nurturing the irresistibly vicious suspicion that what he suffers is awful yet just – the mere fruit of his aberrance. And yet Nicos knows he is to suffer as much as any death-row inmate – more, even. Not that he’ll actually be executed capital punishment was abolished in Greece a year before he was born, sadly too late (the last man executed being flagrantly innocent). I’ll be dead within a year, thinks Nicos – a man condemned, as certain of the fact as one awaiting execution. Last but not least, remember that this is a work of fiction if anyone should feel offended by it I apologize, but once more: it’s just harmless fiction just a book.
But fate being cruel and inescapable, Nicos ends up instead involved in a weird love triangle with his parents – or, rather, with their unsuspecting guileless selves, younger than him by a decade.Īlso, please bear in mind that as Greek is the author’s mother tongue, the English of the novel’s original version – untouched by a native speaker, unedited and poured out in white heat – may often leave much to be desired. The story is quite simple: Nicos, a young Athenian gay man living in the 00s finds out he’s dying of AIDS and decides to travel back in time to prevent not only his birth, but his very conception (by preventing his parents, in the early 70s, from so much as ever encountering one another). So, this is intended for the enjoyment of readers alone – any other use of the text consists copyright infringement. The following novel was originally written in English, thereafter translated by the author into Greek and published by Kastaniotis Publications in 2008 under the title Ο αφανισμός του Νίκου.