“I sat still for a while, as if I were empty. I realized I’d reached a point I’d been preparing for.

“I felt a chill and examined my soul to see if it was fear and couldn’t determine whether it was. Then I realized it could also be pleasure.

“At that moment, something unexpected came over me, an attack of vanity, I guess, and I rolled the paper up into a little tube and slipped it onto Manuel’s desk, the way we sometimes do to help each other out during exams.

“Manuel checked to be sure the teacher’s back was turned. He unrolled it and I felt his gaze, deeply questioning.

“I watched as he, in turn, added a few words to the same paper and slipped it back to me.

“After my words, ‘I am going to kill myself,’ he’d written, ‘Me, too.’

“I was offended. It felt as if Manuel was cheapening my action. He didn’t believe me, and was only making fun of me with his idle boast that he, too, could also ‘kill himself’ just like me.

“It was a provocation and I dug in my heels. I decided to make him commit to it, scare him so badly he’d be forced to back down. The dialogue continued, the paper coming and going between us:

“‘Then what are you waiting for?’

“‘Nothing.’

“‘When?’

“‘I haven’t thought about it.’

“‘When you’re 177 years and 7 months old?’

“This time it took a long while for the paper to come back. I looked over at Manuel. Until then both of us had been pretending to follow the lesson, our eyes on the bit of chalk in the teacher’s fingers. Manuel’s face had an expression of sincere joylessness.

“Still, I decided to back him into a corner. On another piece of paper I scribbled, ‘Would you do it right now, in the bathroom, with a noose?’

“When it reached him, he unrolled it on his desk and I understood that the time for quick replies was over. Manuel was meditating and I felt certain of my superiority.

“A few minutes went by before he picked up the pen again; when he did it was to ask me a question: would I really do it. With energy, I wrote down, ‘Yes, I will do it,’ and emphatically underscored the words.

“‘Why?’ he wanted to know.

“‘And why not?’ I replied.”

At that point the story pauses and there’s a blank space on the page. The suspension is timely: That magnetic final line has captivated me.

Indeed. The question isn’t why I would kill myself. It’s why I wouldn’t kill myself.

The court clerk offers me a cup of coffee, I’m in his home. Without looking at him, I say, “Just a moment,” underscoring the words with a gesture. Immediately I’m aware of my own insolence. I’d practically shooed him away—“Don’t interrupt, don’t be a nuisance”—when there was no need for that at all.

I go on reading.