“I don’t think it matters. I mean, look at you; you’re thirty-seven and dying from heart failure. Fucking heart failure, Matome, at thirty-seven.”

“As opposed to dying of what glamorous disease, may I ask?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head again. “But honestly, I think anything would make more sense than freaking heart disease at thirty-seven.”

“You’re saying there’s something funny about this?”

“There should be. Otherwise, it’s too sad and pointless and just plain nihilistic. We just need to find the joke in there somewhere. There should be one, right?”

“There isn’t one. I’m a dying man and that’s all there is to it. There is no meaning, no moral of the story – just a defective heart and premature death. That’s life.”

“See,” I said, pointing, “that’s what frightens me—the futility of it all. We’re staying alive just to stay alive, knowing full well we’re going to die. Can you really wonder why I’m suicidal?”

“I can, actually. But I think you should continue with your story, Nsuri, before we get too morbid and stray too far from…from whatever this,” he waved his hand about, “is.”

“See,” I said, pointing, “that’s what frightens me – the futility of it all. We’re staying alive just to stay alive, knowing full well we’re going to die. Can you really wonder why I’m suicidal?”

“I can, actually. But I think you should continue with your story, Nsuri, before we get too morbid and stray too far from…from whatever this,” he waved his hand about, “is.”

“That’s what I’m trying to say: the morbidity isn’t something I can escape by simply changing the subject. I’ve always been suicidal. The first time I tried to kill myself I was thirteen. I drank a full bottle of my mother’s nail polish remover. All it did was make me feel uncomfortable for a few hours. After that, I hated myself even more because I had failed. Living felt like a cruel sentence.”

He opened his mouth but I cut him off with a wave of my hand. “Before you ask, the answer is no, there wasn’t a specific reason I did it.”