Courage and the Terror of Death

Abstract

for membership in a counterrevolutionary organization. Sixteen years were added to my sentence. After an Odyssey through punishment cells, was transferred from the prison camp of Spac to the prison camp of Ballsh. There was allocated to hut number nine, otherwise known as the geriatric ward, because it contained a large number of elderly men. My neighbor in the next bed to the right happened to be an old man, plump but sturdily built, who introduced himself as Frano Ilia. We exchanged the usual information traded by prisoners meeting for the first time: the length of our sentences and how many years we had served. Frano told me that he had been given 25 years and that he had about 15 left. When asked him why he had been sentenced, he told me that he was a Catholic priest, that he had been convicted as an agent of the Vatican, and that he had been given a death sentence, later commuted to the 25 years. After a while, we became friends, to the point that one day, out of curiosity, asked him about the story of his conviction. He told me that the charge of espionage had been entirely fabricated, but he had nevertheless admitted to it to save his skin. was then bold enough to put a question that was continually on my mind, but which would never have put to anybody but a priest: Frano, said, I am an atheist and to tell the truth do not think would withstand the terror of death, because see death as the final extinction of my being.