by Don DeLillo
In the evening I sped out to the airport to meet my daughter’s plane. She was excited and happy, wore Mexican things. She said the people who sent her mother books to review wouldn’t leave her alone. Dana was getting big thick novels every day, writing reviews which she microfilmed and sent to a secret archive. She complained of jangled nerves, periods of deep spiritual fatigue. She told Steffie she was thinking of coming in from the cold.
In the morning I sped out to Glassboro to take the further tests my doctor had advised, at Autumn Harvest Farms. The seriousness of such an occasion is directly proportionate to the number of bodily emissions you are asked to cull for analysis. I carried with me several specimen bottles, each containing some melancholy waste or secretion. Alone in the glove compartment rode an ominous plastic locket, which I’d reverently enclosed in three interlocking Baggies, successively twist-tied. Here was a daub of the most solemn waste of all, certain to be looked upon by the technicians on duty with the mingled deference, awe and dread we have come to associate with exotic religions of the world.
But first I had to find the place. It turned out to be a functional pale brick building, one story, with slab floors and bright lighting. Why would such a place be called Autumn Harvest Farms? Was this an attempt to balance the heartlessness of their gleaming precision equipment? Would a quaint name fool us into thinking we live in pre-cancerous times? What kind of condition might we expect to have diagnosed in a facility called Autumn Harvest Farms? Whooping cough, croup? A touch of the grippe? Familiar old farmhouse miseries calling for bed rest, a deep chest massage with soothing Vicks VapoRub. Would someone read to us from David Copperfield?
I had misgivings. They took my samples away, sat me down at a computer console. In response to questions on the screen I tapped out the story of my life and death, little by little, each response eliciting further questions in an unforgiving progression of sets and subsets. I lied three times. They gave me a loose-fitting garment and a wristband ID. They sent me down narrow corridors for measuring and weighing, for blood-testing, brain-graphing, the recording of currents traversing my heart. They scanned and probed in room after room, each cubicle appearing slightly smaller than the one before it, more harshly lighted, emptier of human furnishings. Always a new technician. Always faceless fellow patients in the mazelike halls, crossing from room to room, identically gowned. No one said hello. They attached me to a seesaw device, turned me upside down and let me hang for sixty seconds. A printout emerged from a device nearby. They put me on a treadmill and told me to run, run. Instruments were strapped to my thighs, electrodes planted on my chest. They inserted me in an imaging block, some kind of computerized scanner. Someone sat typing at a console, transmitting a message to the machine that would make my body transparent. I heard magnetic winds, saw flashes of northern light. People crossed the hall like wandering souls, holding their urine aloft in pale beakers. I stood in a room the size of a closet. They told me to hold one finger in front of my face, close my left eye. The panel slid shut, a white light flashed. They were trying to help me, to save me.
Eventually, dressed again, I sat across a desk from a nervous young man in a white smock. He studied my file, mumbling something about being new at this. I was surprised to find that this fact did not upset me. I think I was even relieved.
“How long before the results are in?”
“The results are in,” he said.
“I thought we were here for a general discussion. The human part. What the machines can’t detect. In two or three days the actual numbers would be ready.”
“The numbers are ready.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready. All those gleaming devices are a little unsettling. I could easily imagine a perfectly healthy person being made ill just taking these tests.”
“Why should anyone be made ill? These are the most accurate test devices anywhere. We have sophisticated computers to analyze the data. This equipment saves lives. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen. We have equipment that works better than the latest X-ray machine or CAT scanner. We can see more deeply, more accurately.”
He seemed to be gaining confidence. He was a mild-eyed fellow with a poor complexion and reminded me of the boys at the supermarket who stand at the end of the checkout counter bagging merchandise.
“Here’s how we usually start,” he said. “I ask questions based on the printout and then you answer to the best of your ability. When we’re all finished, I give you the printout in a sealed envelope and you take it to your doctor for a paid visit.”
“Good.”
“Good. We usually start by asking how do you feel.”
“Based on the printout?”
“Just how do you feel,” he said in a mild voice.
“In my own mind, in real terms, I feel relatively sound, pending confirmation.”
“We usually go on to tired. Have you recently been feeling tired?”
“What do people usually say?”
“Mild fatigue is a popular answer.”
“I could say exactly that and be convinced in my own mind it’s a fair and accurate description.”
He seemed satisfied with the reply and made a bold notation on the page in front of him.
“What about appetite?” he said.
“I could go either way on that.”
“That’s more or less how I could go, based on the printout.”
“In other words you’re saying sometimes I have appetitive reinforcement, sometimes I don’t.”
“Are you telling me or asking me?”
“It depends on what the numbers say.”
“Then we agree.”
“Good.”
“Good,” he said. “Now what about sleep? We usually do sleep before we ask the person if they’d like some decaf or tea. We don’t provide sugar.”
“Do you get a lot of people who have trouble sleeping?”
“Only in the last stages.”
“The last stages of sleep? Do you mean they wake up early in the morning and can’t get back to sleep?”
“The last stages of life.”
“That’s what I thought. Good. The only thing I have is some low threshold animation.”
“Good.”
“I get a little restless. Who doesn’t?”
“Toss and turn?”
“Toss,” I said.
“Good.”
“Good.”
He made some notes. It seemed to be going well. I was heartened to see how well it was going. I turned down his offer of tea, which seemed to please him. We were moving right along.
“Here’s where we ask about smoking.”
“That’s easy. The answer is no. And it’s not a matter of having stopped five or ten years ago. I’ve never smoked. Even when I was a teenager. Never tried it. Never saw the need.”
“That’s always a plus.”
I felt tremendously reassured and grateful.
“We’re moving right along, aren’t we?”
“Some people like to drag it out,” he said. “They get interested in their own condition. It becomes almost like a hobby.”
“Who needs nicotine? Not only that, I rarely drink coffee and certainly never with caffeine. Can’t understand what people see in all this artificial stimulation. I get high just walking in the woods.”
“No caffeine always helps.”
Yes, I thought. Reward my virtue. Give me life.
“Then there’s milk,” I said. “People aren’t happy with the caffeine and the sugar. They want the milk too. All those fatty acids. Haven’t touched milk since I was a kid. Haven’t touched heavy cream. Eat bland foods. Rarely touch hard liquor. Never knew what the fuss was all about. Water. That’s my beverage. A man can trust a glass of water.”
I waited for him to tell me I was adding years to my life.
“Speaking of water,” he said, “have you ever been exposed to industrial contaminants?”
“What?”
“Toxic material in the air or wate
r.”
“Is this what you usually ask after the cigarettes?”
“It’s not a scheduled question.”
“You mean do I work with a substance like asbestos? Absolutely not. I’m a teacher. Teaching is my life. I’ve spent my life on a college campus. Where does asbestos fit into this?”
“Have you ever heard of Nyodene Derivative?”
“Should I have, based on the printout?”
“There are traces in your bloodstream.”
“How can that be if I’ve never heard of it?”
“The magnetic scanner says it’s there. I’m looking at bracketed numbers with little stars.”
“Are you saying the printout shows the first ambiguous signs of a barely perceptible condition deriving from minimal acceptable spillage exposure?”
Why was I speaking in this stilted fashion?
“The magnetic scanner is pretty clear,” he said.
What had happened to our tacit agreement to advance smartly through the program without time-consuming and controversial delving?
“What happens when someone has traces of this material in his or her blood?”
“They get a nebulous mass,” he said.
“But I thought no one knew for sure what Nyodene D. did to humans. Rats, yes.”
“You just told me you’d never heard of it. How do you know what it does or doesn’t do?”
He had me there. I felt I’d been tricked, carried along, taken for a fool.
“Knowledge changes every day,” he said. “We have some conflicting data that says exposure to this substance can definitely lead to a mass.”
His confidence was soaring.
“Good. Let’s get on to the next topic. I’m in something of a hurry.”
“This is where I hand over the sealed envelope.”
“Is exercise next? The answer is none. Hate it, refuse to do it.”
“Good. I am handing over the envelope.”
“What is a nebulous mass, just out of idle curiosity?”
“A possible growth in the body.”
“And it’s called nebulous because you can’t get a clear picture of it.”
“We get very clear pictures. The imaging block takes the clearest pictures humanly possible. It’s called a nebulous mass because it has no definite shape, form or limits.”
“What can it do in terms of worst-case scenario contingencies?”
“Cause a person to die.”
“Speak English, for God’s sake. I despite this modern jargon.”
He took insults well. The angrier I got, the better he liked it. He radiated energy and health.
“Now is where I tell you to pay in the outer office.”
“What about potassium? I came here in the first place because my potassium was way above normal limits.”
“We don’t do potassium.”
“Good.”
“Good. The last thing I’m supposed to tell you is take the envelope to your doctor. Your doctor knows the symbols.”
“So that’s it then. Good.”
“Good,” he said.
I found myself shaking his hand warmly. Minutes later I was out on the street. A boy walked splay-footed across a public lawn, nudging a soccer ball before him. A second kid sat on the grass, taking off his socks by grabbing the heels and yanking. How literary, I thought peevishly. Streets thick with the details of impulsive life as the hero ponders the latest phase in his dying. It was a partially cloudy day with winds diminishing toward sunset.
That night I walked the streets of Blacksmith. The glow of blue-eyed TVs. The voices on the touch-tone phones. Far away the grandparents huddle in a chair, eagerly sharing the receiver as carrier waves modulate into audible signals. It is the voice of their grandson, the growing boy whose face appears in the snapshots set around the phone. Joy rushes to their eyes but it is misted over, infused with a sad and complex knowing. What is the youngster saying to them? His wretched complexion makes him unhappy? He wants to leave school and work full-time at Foodland, bagging groceries? He tells them he likes to bag groceries. It is the one thing in life he finds satisfying. Put the gallon jugs in first, square off the six-packs, double-bag the heavy merch. He does it well, he has the knack, he sees the items arranged in the bag before he touches a thing. It’s like Zen, grampa. I snap out two bags, fit one inside the other. Don’t bruise the fruit, watch the eggs, put the ice cream in a freezer bag. A thousand people pass me every day but no one ever sees me. I like it, gramma, it’s totally unthreatening, it’s how I want to spend my life. And so they listen sadly, loving him all the more, their faces pressed against the sleek Trimline, the white Princess in the bedroom, the plain brown Rotary in granddad’s paneled basement hideaway. The old gentleman runs a hand through his thatch of white hair, the woman holds her folded specs against her face. Clouds race across the westering moon, the seasons change in somber montage, going deeper into winter stillness, a landscape of silence and ice.
Your doctor knows the symbols.
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 wanted 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.”
&nbs
p; “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 Hay-ward 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?”
