Learning to Die

by Thomas Maloney

  He presses rewind, play, fast forward, play, intent on his mission to find the start of a particular piece of music. Years have passed since he sold his once-prized CD player to pay the rent, but at Christmas he found this dusty thing under the bed at his parents’ house, together with a stack of hand-labelled tapes. Click, clack, whir. Rewind an obsolete term now, a lost metaphor.

  Yes — literature being a roofless mockery of a refuge, James has turned to music, his oldest love-hate. His attachment spans several genres, but he has been clinging most tightly to certain albums of the Australian singer-songwriter he calls the Boatman. Any therapeutic benefits have, as usual, been impaired by his envious horror of finely executed art of any kind.

  Despite sharing genes with his fiddler uncle Joe and a grandmother renowned for belting out fado, James was born with no trace of musical ability. He recalls feeling, even when Becks sang in the shower — adding her own jazzy spin to an apparently vacuous pop ditty — the same hunted, despairing shiver of inadequacy induced by a page of Nabokov at his best.

  Ah, here: the pregnant hiss. Just time for a precursory breath, and it begins. Not the Boatman now — James has worn those songs out — but the last resort: his private anthem — the work he reveres above all others, above even the Exile’s greatest novel. Reverence was, indeed, born in him the moment he first heard it, twenty years ago.

  This close-guarded treasure is quite flawless, like no book or poem James has ever read: flawless like the freak apple he once addressed in fifty consecutive prose variations. Yet, unlike the apple, it remains flawless for eternity. He knows the composer’s name, the gist of the text, the distant century in which it was first performed — but nothing else. He’s never discussed it, never read a review of it, never listened to a jaded lecturer picking it apart, never heard it chosen on Desert Island Discs. Knowledge can be destructive; a second-favourite, Mozart’s Requiem, once prized by James for its power to evoke a visual panorama of spreading wings, beams of light, precipices, has never sounded the same since his father, a man of little culture but much trivia, gleefully informed him that it wasn’t all the master’s work. It was, in fact, finished off by some random punter. Horrible.

  But this piece, the private, secret anthem (or motet — let’s not quibble), the one now serenely unfolding, unrolling its Latin syllables, stands in unsullied splendour. Why this obscure, uncelebrated piece, above all others? Which root of his being does it reveal?

  He might as well ask, why Becks? Why Brenda? Why Brenda? Why Brenda? He might as well write a fucking autobiography. When the music stops, he snatches a sealed envelope from his desk and blunders down the stairs.

  One delicately lingering Monday evening after a productive day at the lab, Dan waits at Didcot station for his train home. A repurposed wall holds an original timber-framed window newly painted in white gloss but lacking its panes: in their place a shock of unimpeded air that draws and fascinates the eye. Perfect transparency.

  Dan smiles. Transparency is what he has too. He rejected the childish notion of fate at the age of nine, and so it has been humbling to have his own revealed in terrifying detail. Terrifying is the word for the sheer extent of incapacity that motor neurone disease has in store for him. But Dan will not yet submit to being terrified. The train arrives, its carriage windows open to admit the novel warmth of spring, and as he finally settles into his seat — another small battle behind him — he compares his own looming, creeping incapacity to other varieties.

  There is incapacity that strikes without warning: car, horse, assembly line, climbing frame — a momentary freak that transforms a life. Paralysis, blinding, loss of a limb. How those few seconds — so easily avoidable but irrevocable now — would needle and torment! He has been spared that, at least: there’s nothing he could have done. Then a different, bitterer flavour of trauma awaits victims of violence or recklessness — of drunk drivers, jealous partners, bungling thieves. Hatred an additional burden for them — seeing justice done. To be free of hatred, as he is, to be a victim only of the universe’s general injustice: a profound mercy. And the universe can do worse, of course, can condemn the very young who haven’t even had a chance to live. He’s had half a chance.

  So much for the circumstances of his misfortune. How should he evaluate the pathological details? How does that so-much-commoner fate than his, cancer, compare? More pain, probably (he reserves judgement). More tangible destruction. For many, a cruel and tantalising brush with remission; no such uncertainty for him. On the contrary, his diagnosis has brought more clarity, more certainty: his fate. And let’s spare a thought for the wider, subtler net of misery cast by behavioural disorders — addiction, uncontrolled anger, dysfunctional families, unspecified or undiagnosed sicknesses of the soul. Digging a lonely hole — hurting those you need most. For Dan, instead — so far, at least — a cradle of generosity, good intentions and love.

  There’s one more misfortune to add to this by-no-means exhaustive parade of woe: just getting old, with its slowly gathering conspiracy of health gremlins. The big one. The inescapable elephant in the room of life. Arthritis, incontinence, memory loss, deafness, a dicky ticker, all weighing heavy against the supposed consolations of wisdom. With each passing year the odds leaning further in the wrong direction; the youngsters’ world a foreign country; friends and siblings going or gone. Marriages skewed, like Dan’s will be, into carer and cared-for, or the roles of child and parent humiliatingly reversed, or the lingerer a mere burden on the buckling state, a life reduced to an unsustainable statistic. The long, crabby descent. Decades, perhaps, to taste its unfathomable sadness.

  Life without motor neurone disease, Dan concludes, is no picnic either. The more he ponders his predicament, the more he regards its fundamental substance as universal. The diagnosis has merely rearranged his woes, given them a vigorous shake like dice in a bag. The arrangement is unique to each of us, yes, but everyone has the same dice, and the same sumptuous, moth-eaten, ridiculous bag of life.

  Mike Vickers appraises himself in the lift’s mirror: a daily indulgence. The eyebrow cocks itself without his prompting. Would you trust this man? Another daily ritual — now lapsed — was to peer over the polished railings of the stairwell on his way to the trading floor. This was to commemorate his once overbalancing while hitching an intransigent sock en route to a meeting, and coming absurdly close to pitching over the rail; the meeting was a great success. I see you, old boy, he would murmur each morning to Death, smiling up at him from a depth of eighty feet. I know all about you. Turning away would feel like a gift, a lucky break — but somehow he lost the habit.

  He’s meeting Dan tonight for one of their periodic chit-chats. If his old friend asks him what he’s done with his fabulous riches, he’ll say he’s biding his time — gathering his thoughts before stepping boldly into a new life. Measure twice, cut once, as his dad would say. His experimental purchases of Life, by the yard or by the glass, so seemingly insipid or absurd, have, after all, a potent narcotic aftertaste. He forgets himself. Political hoo-ha about a double-dip recession appears charmingly abstract; old doubts have lost their sting. But the swimming pool of digits isn’t a legitimate topic of conversation, even with Dan.

  Strolling beside the canal after work, Mike tries to conjure the spirit of their friendship. For the first five or six years, the two of them were merely rivals, eyeing each other coldly in the run-up to Exam Week and passing the hallowed Form Prize back and forth each summer. By the age of thirteen, each had studied the other’s weaknesses so intimately, and found them to be so perfectly non-overlapping with his own, that an alliance seemed not just desirable but inevitable. The next two decades have laboured the point.

  As he approaches the usual pub, a black cab pulls up outside. A pair of crutches emerge from the open door and a hand gropes at the roof, hauling its owner upright.

  ‘Do you need some help?’ asks Mike, stepping forward and opening the door more
fully with a benevolent flourish. For once, he’s going to be a good egg. The struggling invalid looks up and smiles wearily.

  ‘Dan! Jesus! What have you done to yourself?’ Mike helps him arrange the crutches and closes the door. ‘You went and crashed the bike. Am I right? I knew you would. Closet adrenaline junkie.’

  ‘You are right,’ says Dan, ‘but you’re also wrong.’ There’s no sign of a cast on his leg. He’s wearing a normal shoe. Mike has a sudden feeling of disorientation.

  ‘Dan, what is it?’

  ‘Buy me a bloody drink and I’ll tell you.’

  20. Tracing paper

  ‘We are each of us richer than we think.’

  Montaigne

  There is, of course, no answer to James’ letter. The involuntary yearning that may still be, for all he knows, an emanation of his buried self constantly draws his thoughts after it, northward. But his love (the conventional terminology) is wary now: to chase after Brenda — actually to invade her mountain retreat, to knock on her door and rap on her windows — seems unthinkable. This is why his limp, weary body is heading south, towards Mike.

  The smarmy spiv isn’t looking so smarmy when he opens the door. His face is flushed and puffy, his shirt creased, he didn’t shave this morning.

  ‘Speculation go bad?’ says James. ‘Pesky third world farmers get one over on you?’

  ‘Shut up and come in,’ says Mike. ‘It’s good to see you.’ James walks into the well-remembered party space, now empty and mildly dishevelled. A bog-standard bachelor pad with added trinkets and stretched dimensions. Brenda stood there, and there.

  ‘As it happens,’ says Mike, already pouring from an open bottle, ‘I did donate four million dollars to global markets on behalf of my investors today — but that’s par for the course.’ He hands James a predictably oversized glass, sweeps some obstructions off the sofa — a jacket, a blinking phone, The Economist, an auction catalogue — and slumps down. ‘I also met an old friend yesterday — or rather, a young friend — and found out —’ He hesitates, and the last remnants of his chirpy, salesman’s inflection drain away. ‘I found out he’s dying. Has been for while, and I didn’t know.’

  James studies the frown drawing Mike’s translucently blond eyebrows together. Privilege, he thinks, confronted by something that can’t be bought off. The indignation! But James knows what it’s like to lose friends.

  ‘At least you know now,’ he offers.

  ‘I was his best man,’ confesses Mike. ‘I sort of compare myself to him, if you know what I mean. I’ve always felt like the two of us are just setting out, like nothing is ruled out yet. Suddenly he’s out of the race, just like that.’ Mike looks up at his ridiculous chandelier as though at a religious icon. ‘Still, he’s achieved more than I have. He’s a world expert on — what was it? — insertion devices in particle accelerators. A finger in the pie of progress. Whereas I —’

  ‘Your only achievement has been to perfect the art of being a total insertion device.’ Mike nods without smiling.

  ‘This job — ’ he waves dismissively at the phone ‘— was supposed to be a temporary diversion. Work experience. In the last few years, since I turned thirty, I’ve started hearing a whispering, a warning that I need to get a move on and do something meaningful, but I haven’t listened to it.’

  ‘Meaningful?’ scoffs James. ‘It doesn’t have to be meaningful. It only has to be useful — or scratch an itch.’ He yawns, recognising no obligation to display pity he doesn’t feel. It’s nice to have a partner in failure, though. ‘It’s pathetic, isn’t it, how we all fall for the same stupid delusions, just like our parents, and their parents, and everyone else on this deluded planet.’ He rummages in his bag, extracts the leather-bound Montaigne and holds it out. ‘Here.’

  Mike looks at it blankly for a moment. ‘Oh, that — are you sure you’ve finished with it?’

  ‘Yes,’ replies James, quickly. ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘I’ve never actually read it, you know.’

  ‘That I can believe.’

  Mike turns the book in his hands, frowns at the obvious new bruises, then opens it just a crack, as though committing a forbidden act, and peers inside. ‘Crispin, my old boss, gave me the set for my thirtieth birthday. I was holding out for a bottle of ’82, and didn’t know what to say. He was very solemn about it. Should I read it, do you think? Would I get much out of it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says James, reaching for the wine bottle. ‘I can’t remember what it’s about.’ He smirks at the label: what Mike has achieved is for the ’82 to become his daily plonk.

  Dan asks Natalie to help him up the ladder into their tiny loft. There isn’t enough headroom to convert it — academic now — but last autumn Dan insulated and part-boarded the space. Slid the boxes of their least often-needed possessions into two neat rows. Cold storage in winter, in summer a kiln. Now, in spring, there is merely an ecclesiastical coolness as the Mocks kneel beside the open hatch, surveying their sentimental hoard.

  In her row: a few large zipped portfolio cases; long carrier bags stuffed with storage tubes, rolls of tracing paper, balsa offcuts; CDs; a large backpacker’s rucksack stuffed with old clothes — Dan’s mind makes a glancing, involuntary connection to the stack of letters, the ex-boyfriend that he’d forgotten all about — a high stool; an easel he gave her that never saw much, if any, use. Before he knew her, she painted.

  In his row: a heavy box of miniature soldiers from his childhood — his mind’s eye sees the stacked rank and file, cavalry with paper pennons laboriously painted and curled, siege engines, winged beasts in lurid hues — once so prized, now a perplexing irrelevance. Irrelevant too the school essays, exercise books, embarrassingly bad artworks, his house tie — a decade in one box. Ah, but this is more like it: his homemade wind-up radio, his collection of fossils and rock samples in stacked ice cream tubs, his chemistry set, his Commodore 64, and finally, right at the back, just visible, bubble-wrapped barrel lying across the unboarded rafters, his telescope.

  ‘Will you help me bring it down?’ he says. Natalie knows what he’s referring to, and sexily straddles the boxes to reach it. On his way down, with Nat guiding his useless foot onto each rung, he takes one last look before switching off the light.

  James picks his way judiciously around Mike’s flat. Sliding glass doors recede into walls; ink drawings are printed on huge sheets of metal; windows have both blinds and curtains for good measure; toilet seats hover and then come to rest gracefully like UFOs. Even the air, once exhaled or abluted in, is silently, protectively drawn away to accommodate a filtered inflow.

  He feels the old twinge of possibility — that there’s material here. This is life, after all, for better or worse. This is the age he’s been born into, and every age has a story to tell posterity.

  Over breakfast Mike tried to explain, to justify his profession. Even if we are just monkeys throwing darts, he said, we’re necessary. We’re oil in the works. We operate in public markets using public information. Outcomes are dominated by randomness in many enterprises. Whale-watching tours. Test cricket in rainy nations. He claimed there were industries with less honourable methods and worse consequences. Not just satisfying a need, but creating one. Bottled water, he suggested, piously. Every second, thousands of plastic bottles are made, shipped, bought, landfilled. The Minoans, he said, were piping water four millennia ago. Whatever makes you feel better, replied James. Self-justification is, of course, a battle he understands.

  He surveys the booze cabinet and wine fridge, idly sends heavy kitchen drawers rolling out and back on silent bearings. This material disparity between two losers apparently a meaningless accident. But no, not meaningless. The penniless humiliation of the artistic life is essential and just, a test of intention as well as resolve, and the mercenary’s riches are no different.

  A cascade of electronic chimes breaks into his thoughts: the
doorbell. He might well have ignored it, but happens to be standing at that moment in the hall. The heavy front door, three inches thick, swings back from its lisping seal and there, gracing with faded denim and khaki the grotesque, indigo marblings of the corridor carpet, stands Brenda the beloved.

  ‘Surpri—’ she starts to say. Surprise does indeed reverberate, ricochet between them, measuring out its own silent space. James is doubly confused, ambushed by vivid imaginings, decade-buried but scored deep, of the reunion, the reckoning that he never had with Becks. He’s practised this scene over and over, but with the wrong script.

  ‘Brenda,’ he murmurs at last, drawn out across the threshold. Thus I; faltering forward. ‘You got my letter.’

  Brenda steps back, her eyes child-wide. She steps back again, retreats. Then her face crumples into a mask of very grown-up disgust.

  ‘Brenda. Wait. Just wait a moment. You don’t have to say anything. Just listen.’ She shakes her head, turns and hurries away down the corridor, duffle bag swinging. ‘Wait! I’ll leave, you stay.’ He follows to the stairwell, hears her echoing steps below.

  ‘I’m nobody — you stay!’ he calls. ‘I’ll leave!’ Then in desperation he adds, ‘I’m sorry for what I said! I was confused!’ Confused? These are the wrong words, he knows. The footsteps recede and a door bangs shut.

  ‘Can’t we just start again?’ he pleads of the silence.

  Back in the cavernous fraternal crime scene of a flat, he calls Mike, leaves a message telling him to call Brenda tout de suite and packs his miserable bag.

  Brenda Vickers stands beside the canal, her body soaked in cold sweat and her mind a hot infusion of anger and self-loathing (a hint of dissolved sweetness is ignored). Why did Mike have to put her through that? What was he thinking? Why is the world so stupid?

  Her phone buzzes in her pocket. She yanks it out: Mike. Her phone, she suddenly understands, is the surgical implant by which these hateful people control her. Invading her mental space with their pathetic, desperate sexts and their concerned family signals (commands, rather) and their rescheduled appointments, pressing their obligations upon her. She lets it swing for a moment between her finger and thumb, cracked screen abrading cracked skin, then flicks it spinning into the canal. Plop. The water is clear, and she sees it plumb the four or five feet to the bottom, raise a little puff of silt, and lie there, face up in the sun, drowning mutely. Out of your misery. An electronics serial killer now.