Daylight spills over the horizon and floods the paths of the famous cemetery. From the rooftop patio of an adjacent gastropub, the superintendent of the dead appraises his domain. He wonders what it might be like to live in a city that boasts, for example, a famous zoo.

As the sun ascends, the shadows of angels scroll across the bars and restaurants of the block before retreating to their extravagant tombs. The superintendent of the dead sips his pilsner. He does not want to be laid to rest in any of those morbid apartments. Most of his family is buried in a modest plot in the north. The rest are bones at the bottom of the ocean.

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But the superintendent is becoming morose. He does not want to be morose. Morosity is taking over. In this city of pet lovers and psychotherapists, morosity is all the rage.

Within the walls of the famous cemetery, a sullen mourner mutters extranjeros as he walks through the path of a camera’s lens. The mourner is offended — as if the angels were not posing, as if the corpses cared, as if we are not, all of us, strangers to death, that final country, where everyone lives rent-free.

Alas, in the city of the dead only the living complain of noisy neighbors, leaking roofs, stray cats. Given the choice between tending to the tourists or the bereaved, the superintendent would choose the cats.

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In an effort to combat morosity, the superintendent of the dead is writing a novel. The novel will span eons. Its form is meant to replicate the tendency among people, and by extension nations, to repeat the mistakes of the past. Even the most attentive readers will find themselves forgetting not only prominent characters, but entire storylines, this natural forgetting complicated by nefarious subplots designed to induce historical amnesia.

The line cook has finished his shift and joins the superintendent for a beer. The line cook is also a poet, and together he and the superintendent discuss what one might call the literature of attrition.

A novel of this kind would take a lifetime to read, says the line cook.

And a lifetime to write, says the superintendent.

There is, of course, the matter of endings.

You’re speaking now, of the end of the world.

The line cook nods. Herbert was mistaken, he says. Rats will not become the currency; rather, rats will inherit the earth.

Ah, like the meek.

On the contrary, says the line cook, the rats will grow to the size of dogs and emerge as the apex predator.

The superintendent becomes morose. He’d always thought his beloved cats might endure the end of the world within the walls of the famous cemetery. Perhaps, with the proper preparation, the cats could withstand the siege, persevere, change the tide of history.

Is this how your novel ends? asks the line cook.

The superintendent scribbles a few words on a bar napkin.

The line cook snatches the napkin and places it in his mouth, chews, swallows.

Literature should be of the body, says the line cook.

Look at my wrists, my knuckles! says the superintendent. He flaunts his mangled paws. Look how I sit! My novel will corrupt the posture of generations to come!

The kids these days — they don’t read, says the line cook. They’re too busy turning themselves into corporations.

Alas, says the superintendent, perhaps I should become fluent in rat.

The men laugh and nurse their beers.

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It was true about the kids. And soon everyone was turning themselves into corporations. Though few were profitable, the new status allowed for certain legal protections that cut the prison population in half. This might have been a problem, had the laid-off prison guards not turned themselves into corporations. But they did. And life plodded on. For lawyers and morticians, it was a time of great prosperity.

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