Death with Interruptions by José Saramago

WE'VE ALL HAD OUR MOMENTS OF WEAKNESS, AND IF WE manage to get through today without any, we'll be sure to have some tomorrow. Just as beneath the bronze cuirass of achilles there once beat a sentimental heart, think only of the hero's ten years of jealousy after agamemnon stole away his beloved, the slave-girl briseis, and then the terrible rage that made him return to war, howling out his wrath at the trojans when his friend patroclus was killed by hector, so, beneath the most impenetrable of armors ever forged and guaranteed to remain impenetrable until the end of time, we are referring here, of course, to death's skeleton, there is always a chance that one day something will casually insinuate itself into the dread carcass, a soft chord from a cello, an ingenuous trill on a piano, or the mere sight of some sheet music open on a chair, which will make you remember the thing you refuse to think about, that you have never lived and that, do what you may, you never will live, unless.

You had sat coolly observing the sleeping cellist, that man whom you could not kill because you got to him when it was too late, you saw the dog curled up on the carpet, and you were unable to touch that creature either, because you are not his death, and in the warm darkness of the room, those two living beings who, having surrendered to sleep, didn't even know you were there, only served to fill your consciousness with an awareness of the depth of your failure. In that apartment, you, who had grown used to being able to do what no one else can, saw how impotent you were, tied hand and foot, with your double-o-seven license to kill rendered null and void, never, admit it, not in all your days as death, had you felt so humiliated.