White noise

37

The long walk started at noon. I didn't know it would turn into a long walk. I thought it would be a miscellaneous meditation, Murray and Jack, half an hour's campus meander. But it became a major afternoon, a serious looping Socratic walk, with practical consequences.

I met Murray after his car crash seminar and we wandered along the fringes of the campus, past the cedar-shingled condominiums set in the trees in their familiar defensive posture—a cluster of dwellings blending so well with the environment that birds kept flying into the plate-glass windows.

"You're smoking a pipe," I said.

Murray smiled sneakily.

"It looks good. I like it. It works."

He lowered his eyes, smiling. The pipe had a long narrow stem and cubical bowl. It was pale brown and resembled a highly disciplined household implement, perhaps an Amish or Shaker antique. I wondered if he'd chosen it to match his somewhat severe chin whiskers. A tradition of stern virtue seemed to hover about his gestures and expressions.

"Why can't we be intelligent about death?" I said.

"It's obvious."

"It is?"

"Ivan Ilyich screamed for three days. That's about as intelligent as we get. Tolstoy himself struggled to understand. He feared it terribly."

"It's almost as though our fear is what brings it on. If we could learn not to be afraid, we could live forever."

"We talk ourselves into it. Is that what you mean?"

"I don't know what I mean. I only know I'm just going through the motions of living. I'm technically dead. My body is growing a nebulous mass. They track these things like satellites. All this as a result of a byproduct of insecticide. There's something artificial about my death. It's shallow, unfulfilling. I don't belong to the earth or sky. They ought to carve an aerosol can on my tombstone."

"Well said."

What did he mean, well said? I vanted him to argue with me, raise my dying to a higher level, make me feel better.

"Do you think it's unfair?" he said.

"Of course I do. Or is that a trite answer?"

He seemed to shrug.

"Look how I've lived. Has my life been a mad dash for pleasure? Have I been hellbent on self-destruction, using illegal drugs, driving fast cars, drinking to excess? A little dry sherry at faculty parties. I eat bland foods."

"No, you don't."

He puffed seriously on his pipe, his cheeks going hollow. We walked in silence for a while.

"Do you think your death is premature?" he said.

"Every death is premature. There's no scientific reason why we can't live a hundred and fifty years. Some people actually do it, according to a headline I saw at the supermarket."

"Do you think it's a sense of incompleteness that causes you the deepest regret? There are things you still hope to accomplish. Work to be done, intellectual challenges to be faced."

"The deepest regret is death. The only thing to face is death. This is all I think about. There's only one issue here. I want to live."

"From the Robert Wise film of the same name, with Susan Hayward as Barbara Graham, a convicted murderess. Aggressive jazz score by Johnny Mandel."

I looked at him.

"So you're saying, Jack, that death would be just as threatening even if you'd accomplished all you'd ever hoped to accomplish in your life and work."

"Are you crazy? Of course. That's an elitist idea. Would you ask a man who bags groceries if he fears death not because it is death but because there are still some interesting groceries he would like to bag?"

"Well said."

"This is death. I don't want it to tarry awhile so I can write a monograph. I want it to go away for seventy or eighty years."

"Your status as a doomed man lends your words a certain prestige and authority. I like that. As the time nears, I think you'll find that people will be eager to hear what you have to say. They will seek you out."

"Are you saying this is a wonderful opportunity for me to win friends?"

"I'm saying you can't let down the living by slipping into self-pity and despair. People will depend on you to be brave. What people look for in a dying friend is a stubborn kind of gravel-voiced nobility, a refusal to give in, with moments of indomitable humor. You're growing in prestige even as we speak. You're creating a hazy light about your own body. I have to like it."

We walked down the middle of a steep and winding street. There was no one around. The houses here were old and looming, set above narrow stone stairways in partial disrepair.

"Do you believe love is stronger than death?"

"Not in a million years."

"Good," he said. "Nothing is stronger than death. Do you believe the only people who fear death are those who are afraid of life?"

"That's crazy. Completely stupid."

"Right. We all fear death to some extent. Those who claim otherwise are lying to themselves. Shallow people."

"People with their nicknames on their license plates."

"Excellent, Jack. Do you believe life without death is somehow incomplete?"

"How could it be incomplete? Death is what makes it incomplete."

"Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?"

"What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing."

'True. The most deeply precious things are those we feel secure about. A wife, a child. Does the specter of death make a child more precious?"

"No."

"No. There is no reason to believe life is more precious because it is fleeting. Here is a statement. A person has to be told he is going to die before he can begin to live life to the fullest. True or false?"

"False. Once your death is established, it becomes impossible to live a satisfying life."

"Would you prefer to know the exact date and time of your death?"

"Absolutely not. It's bad enough to fear the unknown. Faced with the unknown, we can pretend it isn't there. Exact dates would drive many to suicide, if only to beat the system."

We crossed an old highway bridge, screened in, littered with sad and faded objects. We followed a footpath along a creek, approached the edge of the high school playing field. Women brought small children here to play in the long-jump pits.

"How do I get around it?" I said.

"You could put your faith in technology. It got you here, it can get you out. This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature."

"It is?"

"It's what we invented to conceal the terrible secret of our decaying bodies. But it's also life, isn't it? It prolongs life, it provides new organs for those that wear out. New devices, new techniques every day. Lasers, masers, ultrasound. Give yourself up to it, Jack. Believe in it. They'll insert you in a gleaming tube, irradiate your body with the basic stuff of the universe. Light, energy, dreams. God's own goodness."

"I don't think I want to see any doctors for a while, Murray, thanks."

"In that case you can always get around death by concentrating on the life beyond."

"How do I do that?"

"It's obvious. Read up on reincarnation, transmigration, hyperspace, the resurrection of the dead and so on. Some gorgeous systems have evolved from these beliefs. Study them."

"Do you believe in any of these things?"

"Millions of people have believed for thousands of years. Throw in with them. Belief in a second birth, a second life, is practically universal. This must mean something."

"But these gorgeous systems are all so different."

"Pick one you like."

"But you make it sound like a convenient fantasy, the worst kind of self-delusion."

Again he seemed to shrug. 'Think of the great poetry, the music and dance and ritual that spring forth from our aspiring to a life beyond death. Maybe these things are justification enough for our hopes and dreams, although I wouldn't say that to a dying man."

He poked me with an elbow. We walked toward the commercial part of town. Murray paused, raised one foot behind him, reached back to knock some ashes from his pipe. Then he pocketed the thing expertly, inserting it bowl-first in his corduroy jacket.

"Seriously, you can find a great deal of long-range solace in the idea of an afterlife."

"But don't I have to believe? Don't I have to feel in my heart that there is something, genuinely, beyond this life, out there, looming, in the dark?"

"What do you think the afterlife is, a body of facts just waiting to be uncovered? Do you think the U.S. Air Force is secretly gathering data on the afterlife and keeping it under wraps because we're not mature enough to accept the findings? The findings would cause panic? No. I'll tell you what the afterlife is. It's a sweet and terribly touching idea. You can take it or leave it. In the meantime what you have to do is survive an assassination attempt. That would be an instant tonic. You would feel specially favored, you would grow in charisma."

"You said earlier that death was making me grow in charisma. Besides, who would want to kill me?"

Once more he shrugged. Survive a train wreck in which a hundred die. Get thrown clear when your single-engine Cessna crashes on a golf course after striking a power line in heavy rain just minutes after takeoff. It doesn't have to be assassination. The point is you're standing at the edge of a smoldering ruin where others lie inert and twisted. This can counteract the effect of any number of nebulous masses, at least for a time."

We window-shopped a while, then went into a shoe store. Murray looked at Weejüns, Wallabees, Hush Puppies. We wandered out into the sun. Children in strollers squinted up at us, appearing to think we were something strange.

"Has your German helped?"

"I can't say it has."

"Has it ever helped?"

"I can't say. I don't know. Who knows these things?"

"What have you been trying to do all these years?"

"Put myself under a spell, I guess."

"Correct. Nothing to be ashamed of, Jack. It's only your fear that makes you act this way."

"Only my fear? Only my death?"

"We shouldn't be surprised at your lack of success. How powerful did the Germans prove to be? They lost the war, after all."

"That's what Denise said."

"You've discussed this with the children?"

"Superficially."

"Helpless and fearful people are drawn to magical figures, mythic figures, epic men who intimidate and darkly loom."

"You're talking about Hitler, I take it."

"Some people are larger than life. Hitler is larger than death. You thought he would protect you. I understand completely."

"Do you? Because I wish I did."

"It's totally obvious. You wanted to be helped and sheltered. The overwhelming horror would leave no room for your own death. 'Submerge me,' you said. 'Absorb my fear.' On one level you wanted to conceal yourself in Hitler and his works. On another level you wanted to use him to grow in significance and strength.

I sense a confusion of means. Not that I'm criticizing. It was a daring thing you did, a daring thrust. To use him. I can admire the attempt even as I see how totally dumb it was, although no dumber than wearing a charm or knocking wood. Six hundred million Hindus stay home from work if the signs are not favorable that morning. So I'm not singling you out." 'The vast and terrible depth." "Of course," he said. "The inexhaustibility." "I understand."

'The whole huge nameless thing." "Yes, absolutely." "The massive darkness." "Certainly, certainly." 'The whole terrible endless hugeness." "I know exactly what you mean."

He tapped the fender of a diagonally parked car, half smiling. "Why have you failed, Jack?" "A confusion of means."

"Correct. There are numerous ways to get around death. You tried to employ two of them at once. You stood out on the one hand and tried to hide on the other. What is the name we give to this attempt?" "Dumb."

I followed him into the supermarket. Blasts of color, layers of oceanic sound. We walked under a bright banner announcing a raffle to raise money for some incurable disease. The wording seemed to indicate that the winner would get the disease. Murray likened the banner to a Tibetan prayer flag.

"Why have I had this fear so long, so consistently?" "It's obvious. You don't know how to repress. We're all aware there's no escape from death. How do we deal with this crushing knowledge? We repress, we disguise, we bury, we exclude. Some people do it better than others, that's all." "How can I improve?" "You can't. Some people just don't have the unconscious tools to perform the necessary disguising operations."

"How do we know repression exists if the tools are unconscious and the thing we're repressing is so cleverly disguised?"

"Freud said so. Speaking of looming figures."

He picked up a box of Handi-Wrap II, reading the display type, studying the colors. He smelled a packet of dehydrated soup. The data was strong today.

"Do you think I'm somehow healthier because I don't know how to repress? Is it possible that constant fear is the natural state of man and that by living close to my fear I am actually doing something heroic, Murray?"

"Do you feel heroic?"

"No."

'Then you probably aren't."

"But isn't repression unnatural?"

"Fear is unnatural. Lightning and thunder are unnatural. Pain, death, reality, these are all unnatural. We can't bear these things as they are. We know too much. So we resort to repression, compromise and disguise. This is how we survive in the universe. This is the natural language of the species."

I looked at him carefully.

"I exercise. I take care of my body."

"No, you don't," he said.

He helped an old man read the date on a loaf of raisin bread. Children sailed by in silver carts.

"Tegrin, Denorex, Selsun Blue."

Murray wrote something in his little book. I watched him step deftly around a dozen fallen eggs oozing yolky matter from a busted carton.

"Why do I feel so good when I'm with Wilder? It's not like being with the other kids," I said.

"You sense his total ego, his freedom from limits."

"In what way is he free from limits?"

"He doesn't know he's going to die. He doesn't know death at all. You cherish this simpleton blessing of his, this exemption from harm. You want to get close to him, touch him, look at him, breathe him in. How lucky he is. A cloud of unknowing, an omnipotent little person. The child is everything, the adult nothing. Think about it. A person's entire life is the unraveling of this conflict. No wonder we're bewildered, staggered, shattered."

"Aren't you going too far?"

"I'm from New York."

"We create beautiful and lasting things, build vast civilizations."

"Gorgeous evasions," he said. "Great escapes."

The doors parted photoelectronically. We went outside, walking past the dry cleaner, the hairstylist, the optician. Murray relighted his pipe, sucking impressively at the mouthpiece.

"We have talked about ways to get around death," he said. "We have discussed how you've already tried two such ways, each cancelling the other. We have mentioned technology, train wrecks, belief in an afterlife. There are other methods as well and I would like to talk about one such approach."

We crossed the street.

"I believe, Jack, there are two kinds of people in the world. Killers and diers. Most of us are diers. We don't have the disposition, the rage or whatever it takes to be a killer. We let death happen. We lie down and die. But think what it's like to be a killer. Think how exciting it is, in theory, to kill a person in direct confrontation. If he dies, you cannot. To kill him is to gain life-credit. The more people you kill, the more credit you store up. It explains any number of massacres, wars, executions."

"Are you saying that men have tried throughout history to cure themselves of death by killing others?"

"It's obvious."

"And you call this exciting?"

"I'm talking theory. In theory, violence is a form of rebirth. The dier passively succumbs. The killer lives on. What a marvelous equation. As a marauding band amasses dead bodies, it gathers strength. Strength accumulates like a favor from the gods."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"This is theory. We're a couple of academics taking a walk. But imagine the visceral jolt, seeing your opponent bleeding in the dust."

"You think it adds to a person's store of credit, like a bank transaction."

"Nothingness is staring you in the face. Utter and permanent oblivion. You will cease to be. To be, Jack. The dier accepts this and dies. The killer, in theory, attempts to defeat his own death by killing others. He buys time, he buys life. Watch others squirm. See the blood trickle in the dust."

I looked at him, amazed. He drew contentedly on his pipe, making hollow sounds.

"It's a way of controlling death. A way of gaining the ultimate upper hand. Be the killer for a change. Let someone else be the dier. Let him replace you, theoretically, in that role. You can't die if he does. He dies, you live. See how marvelously simple."

"You say this is what people have been doing for centuries."

'They're still doing it. They do it on a small intimate scale, they do it in groups and crowds and masses. Kill to live."

"Sounds pretty awful."

He seemed to shrug. "Slaughter is never random. The more people you kill, the more power you gain over your own death. There is a secret precision at work in the most savage and indiscriminate killings. To speak about this is not to do public relations for murder. We're two academics in an intellectual environment. It's our duty to examine currents of thought, investigate the meaning of human behavior. But think how exciting, to come out a winner in a deathly struggle, to watch the bastard bleed."

"Plot a murder, you're saying. But every plot is a murder in effect. To plot is to die, whether we know it or not."

'To plot is to live," he said.

I looked at him. I studied his face, his hands.

"We start our lives in chaos, in babble. As we surge up into the world, we try to devise a shape, a plan. There is dignity in this. Your whole life is a plot, a scheme, a diagram. It is a failed scheme but that's not the point. To plot is to affirm life, to seek shape and control. Even after death, most particularly after death, the search continues. Burial rites are an attempt to complete the scheme, in ritual. Picture a state funeral, Jack. It is all precision, detail, order, design. The nation holds its breath. The efforts of a huge and powerful government are brought to bear on a ceremony that will shed the last trace of chaos. If all goes well, if they bring it off, some natural law of perfection is obeyed. The nation is delivered from anxiety, the deceased's life is redeemed, life itself is strengthened, reaffirmed."

"Are you sure?" I said.

"To plot, to take aim at something, to shape time and space. This is how we advance the art of human consciousness."

We moved in a wide arc back toward campus. Streets in deep and soundless shade, garbage bags set out for collection. We crossed the sunset overpass, pausing briefly to watch the cars shoot by. Sunlight bouncing off the glass and chrome.

"Are you a killer or a dier, Jack?"

"You know the answer to that. I've been a dier all my life."

"What can you do about it?"

"What can any dier do? Isn't it implicit in his makeup that he can't cross over?"

"Let's think about that. Let's examine the nature of the beast, so to speak. The male animal. Isn't there a fund, a pool, a reservoir of potential violence in the male psyche?"

"In theory I suppose there is."

"We're talking theory. That's exactly what we're talking. Two friends on a tree-shaded street. What else but theory? Isn't there a deep field, a sort of crude oil deposit that one might tap if and when the occasion warrants? A great dark lake of male rage."

'That's what Babette says. Homicidal rage. You sound like her."

"Amazing lady. Is she right or wrong?"

"In theory? She's probably right."

"Isn't there a sludgy region you'd rather not know about? A remnant of some prehistoric period when dinosaurs roamed the earth and men fought with flint tools? When to kill was to live?"

"Babette talks about male biology. Is it biology or geology?"

"Does it matter, Jack? We only want to know whether it is there, buried in the most prudent and unassuming soul."

"I suppose so. It can be. It depends."

"Is it or isn't it there?"

"It's there, Murray. So what?"

"I only want to hear you say it. That's all. I only want to elicit truths you already possess, truths you've always known at some basic level."

"Are you saying a dier can become a killer?"

"I'm only a visiting lecturer. I theorize, I take walks, I admire the trees and houses. I have my students, my rented room, my TV set. I pick out a word here, an image there. I admire the lawns, the porches. What a wonderful thing a porch is. How did I live a life without a porch to sit on, up till now? I speculate, I reflect, I take constant notes. I am here to think, to see. Let me warn you, Jack. I won't let up."

We passed my street and walked up the hill to the campus.

"Who's your doctor?"

"Chakravarty," I said.

"Is he good?"

"How would I know?"

"My shoulder separates. An old sexual injury."

"I'm afraid to see him. I put the printout of my death in the bottom drawer of a dresser."

"I know how you feel. But the tough part is yet to come. You've said good-bye to everyone but yourself. How does a person say good-bye to himself? It's a juicy existential dilemma."

"It certainly is."

We walked past the administration building.

"I hate to be the one who says it, Jack, but there's something that has to be said."

"What?"

"Better you than me."

I nodded gravely. "Why does this have to be said?"

"Because friends have to be brutally honest with each other.

I'd feel terrible if I didn't tell you what I was thinking, especially at a time like this."

"I appreciate it, Murray. I really do."

"Besides, it's part of the universal experience of dying. Whether you think about it consciously or not, you're aware at some level that people are walking around saying to themselves, 'Better him than me.' It's only natural. You can't blame them or wish them ill."

"Everyone but my wife. She wants to die first."

"Don't be so sure," he said.

We shook hands in front of the library. I thanked him for his honesty.

"That's what it all comes down to in the end," he said. "A person spends his life saying good-bye to other people. How does he say good-bye to himself?"

I threw away picture-frame wire, metal book ends, cork coasters, plastic key tags, dusty bottles of Mercurochrome and Vaseline, crusted paintbrushes, caked shoe brushes, clotted correction fluid. I threw away candle stubs, laminated placemats, frayed pot holders. I went after the padded clothes hangers, the magnetic memo clipboards. I was in a vengeful and near savage state. I bore a personal grudge against these things. Somehow they'd put me in this fix. They'd dragged me down, made escape impossible. The two girls followed me around, observing a respectful silence. I threw away my battered khaki canteen, my ridiculous hip boots. I threw away diplomas, certificates, awards and citations. When the girls stopped me, I was working the bathrooms, discarding used bars of soap, damp towels, shampoo bottles with streaked labels and missing caps.

PLEASE NOTE. In several days, your new automated banking card will arrive in the mail. If it is a red card with a silver stripe, your secret code will be the same as it is now. If it is a green card with a gray stripe, you must appear at your branch, with your card, to devise a new secret code. Codes based on birthdays are popular. WARNING. Do not write down your code.

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