by Don DeLillo
Alfonse Stompanato sat down, radiating aggression and threat. He seemed to be watching me, one department head measuring the aura of another. There was a Brooklyn Dodger emblem sewed to the front of his gown.
Lasher wadded up a paper napkin and tossed it at someone two tables away. Then he stared at Grappa.
“Who was the greatest influence on your life?” he said in a hostile tone.
“Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death. When Richard Widmark pushed that old lady in that wheelchair down that flight of stairs, it was like a personal breakthrough for me. It resolved a number of conflicts. I copied Richard Widmark’s sadistic laugh and used it for ten years. It got me through some tough emotional periods. Richard Widmark as Tommy Udo in Henry Hathaway’s Kiss of Death. Remember that creepy laugh? Hyena-faced. A ghoulish titter. It clarified a number of things in my life. Helped me become a person.”
“Did you ever spit in your soda bottle so you wouldn’t have to share your drink with the other kids?”
“It was an automatic thing. Some guys even spit in their sandwiches. After we pitched pennies to the wall, we’d buy stuff to eat and drink. There was always a flurry of spitting. Guys spit on their fudge pops, their charlotte russes.”
“How old were you when you first realized your father was a jerk?”
“Twelve and a half,” Grappa said. “I was sitting in the balcony at the Loew’s Fairmont watching Fritz Lang’s Clash by Night with Barbara Stanwyck as Mae Doyle, Paul Douglas as Jerry d’Amato and the great Robert Ryan as Earl Pfeiffer. Featuring J. Carroll Naish, Keith Andes and the early Marilyn Monroe. Shot in thirty-two days. Black and white.”
“Did you ever get an erection from a dental hygienist rubbing against your arm while she cleaned your teeth?”
“More times than I can count.”
“When you bite dead skin off your thumb, do you eat it or spit it out?”
“Chew it briefly, then propel it swiftly from the end of the tongue.”
“Do you ever close your eyes,” Lasher said, “while you’re driving on a highway?”
“I closed my eyes on 95 North for eight full seconds. Eight seconds is my personal best. I’ve closed my eyes for up to six seconds on winding country roads but that’s only doing thirty or thirty-five. On multilane highways I usually hover at seventy before I close my eyes. You do this on straightaways. I’ve closed my eyes for up to five seconds on straightaways driving with other people in the car. You wait till they’re drowsy is how you do it.”
Grappa had a round moist worried face. There was something in it of a sweet boy betrayed. I watched him light up a cigarette, shake out the match and toss it into Murray’s salad.
“How much pleasure did you take as a kid,” Lasher said, “in imagining yourself dead?”
“Never mind as a kid,” Grappa said. “I still do it all the time. Whenever I’m upset over something, I imagine all my friends, relatives and colleagues gathered at my bier. They are very, very sorry they weren’t nicer to me while I lived. Self-pity is something I’ve worked very hard to maintain. Why abandon it just because you grow up? Self-pity is something that children are very good at, which must mean it is natural and important. Imagining yourself dead is the cheapest, sleaziest, most satisfying form of childish self-pity. How sad and remorseful and guilty all those people are, standing by your great bronze coffin. They can’t even look each other in the eye because they know that the death of this decent and compassionate man is the result of a conspiracy they all took part in. The coffin is banked with flowers and lined with a napped fabric in salmon or peach. What wonderful cross-currents of self-pity and self-esteem you are able to wallow in, seeing yourself laid out in a dark suit and tie, looking tanned, fit and rested, as they say of presidents after vacations. But there is something even more childish and satisfying than self-pity, something that explains why I try to see myself dead on a regular basis, a great fellow surrounded by sniveling mourners. It is my way of punishing people for thinking their own lives are more important than mine.”
Lasher said to Murray, “We ought to have an official Day of the Dead. Like the Mexicans.”
“We do. It’s called Super Bowl Week.”
I didn’t want to listen to this. I had my own dying to dwell upon, independent of fantasies. Not that I thought Grappa’s remarks were ill-founded. His sense of conspiracy aroused in me a particular ripple of response. This is what we forgive on our deathbeds, not loveless-ness or greed. We forgive them for their ability to put themselves at a distance, to scheme in silence against us, do us, effectively, in.
I watched Alfonse reassert his bearish presence with a shoulder-rolling gesture. I took this as a sign that he was warming up to speak. I wanted to bolt, make off suddenly, run.
“In New York,” he said, looking directly at me, “people ask if you have a good internist. This is where true power lies. The inner organs. Liver, kidneys, stomach, intestines, pancreas. Internal medicine is the magic brew. You acquire strength and charisma from a good internist totally aside from the treatment he provides. People ask about tax lawyers, estate planners, dope dealers. But it’s the internist who really matters. ‘Who’s your internist?’ someone will say in a challenging tone. The question implies that if your internist’s name is unfamiliar, you are certain to die of a mushroom-shaped tumor on your pancreas. You are meant to feel inferior and doomed not just because your inner organs may be trickling blood but because you don’t know who to see about it, how to make contacts, how to make your way in the world. Never mind the military-industrial complex. The real power is wielded every day, in these little challenges and intimidations, by people just like us.”
I gulped down my dessert and slipped away from the table. Outside I waited for Murray. When he emerged I held his arm just above the elbow and we walked across campus like a pair of European senior citizens, heads bowed in conversation.
“How do you listen to that?” I said. “Death and disease. Do they talk like that all the time?”
“When I covered sports, I used to get together with the other writers on the road. Hotel rooms, planes, taxis, restaurants. There was only one topic of conversation. Sex and death.”
“That’s two topics.”
“You’re right, Jack.”
“I would hate to believe they are inextricably linked.”
“It’s just that on the road everything is linked. Everything and nothing, to be precise.”
We walked past small mounds of melting snow.
“How is your car crash seminar progressing?”
“We’ve looked at hundreds of crash sequences. Cars with cars. Cars with trucks. Trucks with buses. Motorcycles with cars. Cars with helicopters. Trucks with trucks. My students think these movies are prophetic. They mark the suicide wish of technology. The drive to suicide, the hurtling rush to suicide.”
“What do you say to them?”
“These are mainly B-movies, TV movies, rural drive-in movies. I tell my students not to look for apocalypse in such places. I see these car crashes as part of a long tradition of American optimism. They are positive events, full of the old ‘can-do’ spirit. Each car crash is meant to be better than the last. There is a constant upgrading of tools and skills, a meeting of challenges. A director says, ‘I need this flatbed truck to do a midair double somersault that produces an orange ball of fire with a thirty-six-foot diameter, which the cinematographer will use to light the scene.’ I tell my students if they want to bring technology into it, they have to take this into account, this tendency toward grandiose deeds, toward pursuing a dream.”
“A dream? How do your students reply?”
“Just the way you did. ‘A dream?’ All that blood and glass, that screeching rubber. What about the sheer waste, the sense of a civilization in a state of decay?”
“What about it?” I said.
“I tell them it’s not decay they are seeing but innocence. The movie breaks away from complicated human passions to show us something elemental, som
ething fiery and loud and head-on. It’s a conservative wish-fulfillment, a yearning for naivete. We want to be artless again. We want to reverse the flow of experience, of worldliness and its responsibilities. My students say, ‘Look at the crushed bodies, the severed limbs. What kind of innocence is this?’ ”
“What do you say to that?”
“I tell them they can’t think of a car crash in a movie as a violent act. It’s a celebration. A reaffirmation of traditional values and beliefs. I connect car crashes to holidays like Thanksgiving and the Fourth. We don’t mourn the dead or rejoice in miracles. These are days of secular optimism, of self-celebration. We will improve, prosper, perfect ourselves. Watch any car crash in any American movie. It is a high-spirited moment like old-fashioned stunt flying, walking on wings. The people who stage these crashes are able to capture a lightheartedness, a carefree enjoyment that car crashes in foreign movies can never approach.”
“Look past the violence.”
“Exactly. Look past the violence, Jack. There is a wonderful brimming spirit of innocence and fun.”
29
BABETTE AND I move down the wide aisle, each with a gleaming cart. We passed a family shopping in sign language. I kept seeing colored lights.
“How do you feel?” she said.
“I’m fine. I feel good. How are you?”
“Why don’t you have a checkup? Wouldn’t you feel better if you found out nothing was there?”
“I’ve had two checkups. Nothing is there.”
“What did Dr. Chakravarty say?”
“What could he say?”
“He speaks English beautifully. I love to hear him speak.”
“Not as much as he loves to speak.”
“What do you mean he loves to speak? Do you mean he takes every possible opportunity to speak? He’s a doctor. He has to speak. In a very real sense you are paying him to speak. Do you mean he flaunts his beautiful English? He rubs your face in it?”
“We need some Glass Plus.”
“Don’t leave me alone,” she said.
“I’m just going to aisle five.”
“I don’t want to be alone, Jack. I believe you know that.”
“We’re going to come through this thing all right,” I said. “Maybe stronger than ever. We’re determined to be well. Babette is not a neurotic person. She is strong, healthy, outgoing, affirmative. She says yes to things. This is the point of Babette.”
We stayed together in the aisles and at the checkout. Babette bought three tabloids for her next session with Old Man Treadwell. We read them together as we waited on line. Then we went together to the car, loaded the merchandise, sat very close to each other as I drove home.
“Except for my eyes,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Chakravarty thinks I ought to see an eye man.”
“Is it the colored spots again?”
“Yes.”
“Stop wearing those dark glasses.”
“I can’t teach Hitler without them.”
“Why not?”
“I need them, that’s all.”
“They’re stupid, they’re useless.”
“I’ve built a career,” I said. “I may not understand all the elements involved but this is all the more reason not to tamper.”
The déjà vu crisis centers closed down. The hotline was quietly discontinued. People seemed on the verge of forgetting. I could hardly blame them even if I felt abandoned to a certain extent, left holding the bag.
I went faithfully to German lessons. I began to work with my teacher on things I might say in welcoming delegates to the Hitler conference, still a number of weeks off. The windows were totally blocked by furniture and debris. Howard Dunlop sat in the middle of the room, his oval face floating in sixty watts of dusty light. I began to suspect I was the only person he ever talked to. I also began to suspect he needed me more than I needed him. A disconcerting and terrible thought.
There was a German-language book on a ruined table near the door. The title was lettered in black in a thick heavy ominous typeface: Das Aegyptische Todtenbuch.
“What’s that?” I said.
“The Egyptian Book of the Dead,” he whispered. “A best-seller in Germany.”
Every so often, when Denise wasn’t home, I wandered into her room. I picked up things, put them down, looked behind a curtain, glanced into an open drawer, stuck my foot under the bed and felt around. Absentminded browsing.
Babette listened to talk radio.
I started throwing things away. Things in the top and bottom of my closet, things in boxes in the basement and attic. I threw away correspondence, old paperbacks, magazines I’d been saving to read, pencils that needed sharpening. I threw away tennis shoes, sweat socks, gloves with ragged fingers, old belts and neckties. I came upon stacks of student reports, broken rods for the seats of director’s chairs. I threw these away. I threw away every aerosol can that didn’t have a top.
The gas meter made a particular noise.
That night on TV I saw newsfilm of policemen carrying a body bag out of someone’s backyard in Bakersville. The reporter said two bodies had been found, more were believed buried in the same yard. Perhaps many more. Perhaps twenty bodies, thirty bodies—no one knew for sure. He swept an arm across the area. It was a big backyard.
The reporter was a middle-aged man who spoke clearly and strongly and yet with some degree of intimacy, conveying a sense of frequent contact with his audience, of shared interests and mutual trust. Digging would continue through the night, he said, and the station would cut back to the scene as soon as developments warranted. He made it sound like a lover’s promise.
Three nights later I wandered into Heinrich’s room, where the TV set was temporarily located. He sat on the floor in a hooded sweat-shirt, watching live coverage of the same scene. The backyard was floodlit, men with picks and shovels worked amid mounds of dirt. In the foreground stood the reporter, bareheaded, in a sheepskin coat, in a light snow, giving an update. The police said they had solid information, the diggers were methodical and skilled, the work had been going on for over seventy-two hours. But no more bodies had been found.
The sense of failed expectations was total. A sadness and emptiness hung over the scene. A dejection, a sorry gloom. We felt it ourselves, my son and I, quietly watching. It was in the room, seeping into the air from pulsing streams of electrons. The reporter seemed at first merely apologetic. But as he continued to discuss the absence of mass graves, he grew increasingly forlorn, gesturing at the diggers, shaking his head, almost ready to plead with us for sympathy and understanding.
I tried not to feel disappointed.
30
IN THE DARK the mind runs on like a devouring machine, the only thing awake in the universe. I tried to make out the walls, the dresser in the corner. It was the old defenseless feeling. Small, weak, deathbound, alone. Panic, the god of woods and wilderness, half goat. I moved my head to the right, remembering the clock-radio. I watched the numbers change, the progression of digital minutes, odd to even. They glowed green in the dark.
After a while I woke up Babette. Warm air came rising from her body as she shifted toward me. Contented air. A mixture of forgetfulness and sleep. Where am I, who are you, what was I dreaming?
“We have to talk,” I said.
She mumbled things, seemed to fend off some hovering presence. When I reached for the lamp, she gave me a backhand punch in the arm. The light went on. She retreated toward the radio, covering her head and moaning.
“You can’t get away. There are things we have to talk about. I want access to Mr. Gray. I want the real name of Gray Research.”
All she could do was moan, “No.”
“I’m reasonable about this. I have a sense of perspective. No huge hopes or expectations. I only want to check it out, give it a try. I don’t believe in magical objects. I only say, ‘Let me try, let me see.’ I’ve been lying here for hours practically paralyzed. I’m
drenched in sweat. Feel my chest, Babette.”
“Five more minutes. I need to sleep.”
“Feel. Give me your hand. See how wet.”
“We all sweat,” she said. “What is sweat?”
“There are rivulets here.”
“You want to ingest. No good, Jack.”
“All I ask is a few minutes alone with Mr. Gray, to find out if I qualify.”
“He’ll think you want to kill him.”
“But that’s crazy. I’d be crazy. How can I kill him?”
“He’ll know I told you about the motel.”
“The motel is over and done. I can’t change the motel. Do I kill the only man who can relieve my pain? Feel under my arms if you don’t believe me.”
“He’ll think you’re a husband with a grudge.”
“The motel is frankly small grief. Do I kill him and feel better? He doesn’t have to know who I am. I make up an identity, I invent a context. Help me, please.”
“Don’t tell me you sweat. What is sweat? I gave the man my word.”
In the morning we sat at the kitchen table. The clothes dryer was running in the entranceway. I listened to the tapping sound of buttons and zippers as they struck the surface of the drum.
“I already know what I want to say to him. I’ll be descriptive, clinical. No philosophy or theology. I’ll appeal to the pragmatist in him. He’s bound to be impressed by the fact that I’m actually scheduled to die. This is frankly more than you could claim. My need is intense. I believe he’ll respond to this. Besides, he’ll want another crack at a live subject. That’s the way these people are.”
“How do I know you won’t kill him?”
“You’re my wife. Am I a killer?”
“You’re a man, Jack. We all know about men and their insane rage. This is something men are very good at. Insane and violent jealousy. Homicidal rage. When people are good at something, it’s only natural that they look for a chance to do this thing. If I were good at it, I would do it. It happens I’m not. So instead of going into homicidal rages, I read to the blind. In other words I know my limits. I am willing to settle for less.”
