by Susan Sontag
In what follows, the dream rapidly condenses a whole lifetime into a series of revulsions.
A life of shouting and screaming and whining: Myra’s and the boy’s.
A life of broken dishes and the stench of fried fish.
A life of ceramic ashtrays spilling over with cigarette butts,
dirty laundry piling up by the foot of the uncarpeted staircase,
TV that’s never turned off,
a thousand filaments of copper hair embedded in the parlor carpet,
battered comic books wedged under the cushions of every chair in the parlor,
empty beer bottles in the back porch,
cockroaches in the coverless sugar bowl,
sour milk in the icebox,
ants in the cornflakes,
tubes of toothpaste squeezed askew and their caps misplaced,
corsets and brassières and stained underpants heaped on the closet floor,
hair curlers scattered between the infrequently changed sheets.
Doris?
Naked, thrashing about in bed with the bovine Myra, Diddy worries that someone hostile is watching. Even so, he can’t stop. Brave Diddy, sturdier than he thought. The woman cries with pleasure, digs her fingernails into Diddy’s lean shoulders. (Now) Diddy is on his back. The woman lying to his right on her side, her head, right arm, and right leg thrown across his body. How heavy she is. Diddy pushes her off, then rolls over on his left side, drenched in sweat. Who is watching?
Does he dare to try to fill Incardona’s place as husband and father, compounding the criminal annulment of a life with the theft of an identity? Tommy doesn’t seem to object. Diddy makes sure the scrawny boy has a plateful of strawberry ice cream at dinner most evenings, and tries to work up a stepfatherly interest in the Cub Scouts. But what about the murdered workman? Having lost his heavy body through the imprudent rite of cremation, Incardona can scarcely be tangible enough to make even a ghost. Yet the man is also too recently dead to be as faint, faded, and impotent as a ghost. Even boiled down into a little puddle of ashes, Incardona remains something more substantial. Still powerful. And pitiful. Like some sailor husband, given up as lost at sea, who steals back years later, unrecognized by his fellow townspeople because he’s grown a beard and his hair has turned white, to stand shivering in the snow outside his shabby old house. Then to creep forward, to peer in through the icy window in order to witness his beloved wife, still youthful and unlined, contentedly embracing her new husband and their baby. Yet, even as a heartbroken or embittered Enoch Arden haunting this house, Incardona must appreciate that Diddy gains nothing by his new life. Nothing. Diddy only means to make restitution.
But dreams are never content to expound a single thought. Which is how dreams become entangled with conscious fantasy and accurate memory. Also, how dreams are exegetical, even didactic. Diddy’s dream (now) proceeds to explain something he’d puzzled over, without success, during his interview that evening with Mrs. Incardona. For the woman in the dream isn’t only Incardona’s wife, at present Diddy’s inheritance and lawful burden. She’s also Mary, his nurse and Paul’s. Oxlike, demented, vaguely pious, reliable Mary who had fed the brothers, bathed them, dressed them, spanked them, and installed them for sleep and turned off the lights in their common bedroom since they were born. Myra Incardona (now) has Mary’s straight short hair, a natural faded brown, instead of her bright copper curls. And (now) the widow’s talk was identifiable as the same endless stream of inane wordy drivel that fell from the nurse’s mouth. Talk as physical and inexpressive as the mashed potatoes on Thursday night or the oatmeal for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday breakfasts that Mary spooned into their mouths. Talk as unvarying as her wide waist or the funny smell that lived under her arms.
That talk! It was a wonder of repetition. Each evening Mary read aloud to the boys whatever gruesome accident, rape, or murder, preferably multiple, the newspaper had to offer. While vacuuming or dusting or cooking or canning or sewing on buttons, she retold the dozen stories about her eight sisters, all living, who were nuns and nurses and housewives, and her one brother, who had died falling down the kitchen stairs, an unmarried alcoholic cab driver. The same deck of reminiscences led to her late father and mother, formerly cook and coachman on a big estate in Pennsylvania. And to one superstory, consecrated by countless retellings: of the kindness of their lady and gentleman, who once summoned Mary, when she was eight, to come up to the Big House and play with their daughter for the afternoon. Unforgettable afternoon. “She was dressed so pretty. And they gave me dinner. And you should of seen my sisters’ faces when I come home that evenin’. They didn’t see why I was picked to go, and not them. I guess I was the prettiest. Oh, were they burned up!”
That talk! There were enigmatic battles with the milkman and the butcher and the grocer, apparently over whether they had the right to cheat Mary. Battles she always claimed to have won. “Told ’em where to get off, I did.” And her faith, of which Paul and Diddy heard no end. The Church, or at least the idea of it, was nurse’s solace. Father So-and-so said it was all right that she missed mass the last three Sundays, seeing as she had two boys to bring up practically by herself. Upon rising, there were the painstaking recitals of what they were going to eat that day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. To Diddy and Paul, who took all their meals with Mary, the schedule of menus was all too well known. Without Mary’s daily bulletin, all they had to know was the day, since long ago Mary had admitted the existence of exactly twenty-one possible meals and then closed the canon; and each triad was nailed forever to a particular, unvarying day of the week. And occasionally, Mary would have an unintelligible anecdote to relate about a date she’d had on her Wednesday off. One of the anonymous boyfriends, Diddy remembered, was a sailor. But nothing ever lasted long enough for Diddy and Paul to meet one of Mary’s suitors at some street corner, unknown to their parents. When each new one came along, Mary’s hopes rose fast, then waned even more rapidly. Disillusioned, she’d explain that this one had gotten fresh while walking her home. Or that the other one had tried to do dirty things to her in the balcony of a movie theatre, things that had something to do with the signals that old man in Moors Park was making behind the tree one Sunday morning when Mary hurried them away. “Of course, I know my boys won’t be like that when they grow up.” For many years Paul and Diddy didn’t understand a word of all this. It didn’t seem to matter, since when Mary was talking she never waited for an answer, never seemed to expect a response. Their mere physical presence sufficed. As long as Paul and Diddy could recall, they hadn’t actually been listening to anything Mary said.
Paul was six years old and almost done with first grade when he bravely sought an audience with their mother to appeal for some independence from Mary’s suffocating ministrations and inflexible routines. Diddy, finishing second grade, gained one more reason for admiring Paul and wishing to emulate him. Is Diddy the Bold about to be born? Not yet. Not done so easily. Usually, whatever Paul accomplished first became that much harder for Diddy to do. “Well, I lost one baby,” said Mary, ostentatiously detouring around Paul’s bed to come over to Diddy and tuck him in. “But I still got my other baby, don’t I?” Leaning over, she hugged Diddy, partly pinned down by the sheets, to her huge bosom. Seven-year-old Diddy felt as sad as he did trapped, understanding how hurt Mary was. An irrepressible sympathy for her, like a sound to which one can’t close one’s ears. The sound meant he couldn’t join Paul in his independence right away. Diddy was all that remained to Mary, the sole object of her already much-confined lust to care. What a responsibility, to be someone’s Last Pleasure! Mary would have to be very tactfully and patiently weaned, like a greedy oversized baby. The same project (now) with Myra Incardona. In the dream, Diddy knows he doesn’t intend to remain married to her forever. It’s just for a little while. Until she recovers from the shock of her husband’s death. Then Diddy would be free.
Yet in the dream, Diddy thinks that it can’t be right to have marr
ied his nurse. Mary must be so much older than he. Paul should be helping him, instead of lightheartedly claiming his liberty and then running off to enjoy it, leaving Diddy to mend the broken hearts and prop up the bruised egos of the adults. Were Paul to marry Incardona’s widow, the recuperative process might go much faster. Paul neither as patient nor as sentimental as Diddy. With Paul, Myra Incardona would have to do her share of the job.
Has enough happened? Diddy watches Myra Incardona, who has kicked the top sheet to the foot of their double bed and sprawls, sleeping, with her nightgown rolled above her breasts. She seems happier (now). Diddy keeps to the edge of the bed. If he is to leave, he might do it best while she sleeps. Before she wakes and starts up that stream of whining babble that, surely, she can’t expect him to listen to or take seriously. Language is sacred. As sacred as the body. Myra Incardona is one of the profaners of language, Mary’s true disciple. With Mary, it had been a wonder that Diddy hadn’t gone deaf. Beware of Myra. Diddy, although not as strong as he once was, doesn’t intend to be so indulgent of others again.
The mattress is very soft. Diddy slips over the side to his knees, hoping that Myra isn’t awakened by the creaking springs. If he can find his shoes.…
“Where you goin’, doll?” says the woman sleepily.
Diddy realizes he’s awake (now). Not dreaming. The space has changed again, and this woman is blond, small-breasted, and has a large black mole on her left shoulder.
“I can’t stay the night. But I dozed off, and now,” looking at his watch, “it’s four o’clock.”
“Suit yourself, lover,” says the woman. Without switching on the light, Diddy gathers his clothes from the floor and dresses.
“Doris, I’m going now,” he says softly.
“Sure thing. Maybe I’ll see you again.” She seems almost asleep.
* * *
Four-thirty. In the lobby of the Rushland, Diddy buys the “City” edition of the Courier-Gazette and then goes to the elevator; but once in his room merely glances through the paper before turning off the light. Before going up, Diddy has instructed the night clerk to wake him at nine o’clock. Doesn’t even seem a victory of sorts not to rise at seven, as he’s done every other morning this week, for the “Late Final.” Why should Thursday’s paper have something in it for him, if there’s been nothing on Tuesday and Wednesday? Anyway, Diddy utterly exhausted. Even four hours more of sleep won’t be enough. Skip breakfast, take a long hot bath. Then come down in time to get the car.
Just barely. Diddy is almost too late. Hurrying through the front door of the Rushland a minute after ten o’clock. Jim and the two others are already in our car, the Oriental chauffeur is softly revving the motor.
“You just made it, Dalt,” said Jim. “We were going to leave without you.”
“That would have been all right. I could have taken a taxi.”
“What happened? Oversleep?”
“I slept later than usual.”
“I bet you did. I dropped by your room about 2 a.m. to borrow your copy of the Butler memorandum, and you weren’t in yet.”
Diddy in the jump seat again; didn’t answer. We are moving out of the central part of the city. A brilliant sunny morning. His eyes hurt him, after so little sleep.
Passing through the sedate residential streets. The three men are discussing a persistent rumor that the company may, at last, allow itself to be bought out by one of the giant firms that has made repeated offers in recent years.
“Reager will try to pass it off as something great,” said Jim. “A merger. But you know what that means, don’t you? Kaput.”
“What do you think, Dalton?” Fred asks.
“Don’t ask him anything,” said Jim. “He’s still asleep.”
Diddy, who has glimpsed the blue and gold dome—the first tantalizing sight, quickly obscured—is not pondering the company’s affairs. He wishes he could. Work would be an antidote to his obscure anxieties. But Diddy is without work. Only mysterious projects. The company’s future, his own carefully tended job, are receding. Becoming intangible.
Already the fourth morning, leaving only one more day.
Through the gate, up the driveway. The dome shining with peculiarly vigorous brilliance. Our car had stopped. Diddy thinks of the blue and gold dome. Once again recalls its origins, dismisses its recent use. Diddy appreciated the fantasy the dome embodies; felt renewed, sometimes, by contemplating the eccentric energies of the man who’d insisted on this gaudy crown to his enterprise.
Diddy, going into the building. Up the elevator. Along the crowded hallway of the third floor. Into the long rectangular conference room. Most of us were already seated at the oval table. Diddy opening his briefcase, taking out his notes.
He admired people who loved their labor. Allowing themselves to be led by this love into extravagances, such as Amos Watkins’ dome. Diddy’s misfortune was to lack a vocation, some activity he could perform with love. Not to have gone into a profession, such as law or medicine or teaching, or into one of the arts. Instead, Diddy had only a job, which thus far he had valiantly aspired to like better than he actually did. Sad destructive choice. For which Diddy pays dearly. After the exasperating boredom of elementary school and high school, he’d enjoyed his pre-med studies at Dartmouth. Had been accepted at two high-ranking medical schools. What had prevented him? Meeting Joan in July, a month after graduation; getting married in August; by September acceding to her insistence on moving right away to New York? Only that? As simple, as merely erroneous as that? No. He refused to blame everything on Joan. If he’d truly wanted medical school, Diddy would have found an eloquence sufficient to persuade Joan to accompany him to Ithaca or Baltimore. Instead of letting her persuade him. Getting him to do what he really wanted to do. Not to do what he really didn’t want to do. Diddy the Irresolute. Everyone gets the life he truly wants.
One of the scientists is presenting the budget for the proposed research on revamping the Micro-Recorderscope.
So he’d never had a vocation to love. And after a long, difficult time—eight years—he didn’t have Joan either. That deficit must also be charged to his account. When she left she had said that he didn’t love her. Though his feelings cried calumny, maybe she’d been right. Had he ever had anything beyond need and sexual attachment? Where was love? There was nothing stirring his energy to generate it. Genuine work would have fired his energy. Anything, from the most delicate problem-solving to gross labor. To love one’s work is a way of loving oneself, and leaves one freer to love other people.
But beware the difference between loving one’s work and being merely engrossed in it. This last Sunday afternoon, Angelo Incardona, totally absorbed in his work, had been anything but amiable. The workman had violently resented Diddy’s intruding on the scene of his labor, distracting him. Became irascible, menacing. Had moved to destroy him. Whereas if Incardona were (now) to burst into this conference room, no chance of Diddy being too engrossed in his work to welcome him. Diddy would go over to him, grab his arm and then, apologizing for the interruption, introduce him to Reager, Watkins, and the others. To hell with their surprise at discovering Harron, who’s “one of us,” acquainted with a dirty, lower-class slob. If Diddy condescended to explain to those stuffed shirts, he could say the workman was a long-lost brother of his. Or perhaps someone brotherlike, such as the son of his old nurse. Incardona might be disarmed by such a reception. He could observe that Diddy entertained friendly feelings toward him, and most likely meant him no harm.
But Incardona isn’t going to arrive. Neither mollified, entering after a quiet knock; nor cursing with outrage, battering open the door. Diddy tries to listen to what the others are saying. Time to vote on the new budget for the laboratory? Or has the vote already taken place? Perhaps a few minutes ago Diddy raised his hand quite automatically, without knowing what he did.
Diddy catches Jim gazing his way. Is it possible that that little friendly mind has some deeply buried clue to what’s preoccu
ping Diddy? Unlikely. Not the same wave length. Still, Jim is looking. Diddy tears off a sheet from his pad, scribbles a sentence on it, folds the paper; then asks Ayres, the head PR man, Diddy’s neighbor to his right, to pass the note on to Allen. Jim spots the paper traveling toward him, reaches out for it, coughs. Unfolds it and reads. A perplexed look at Diddy. Then Jim, bowing his head, writes briefly on the same sheet, refolds it, has it passed back to Diddy. Furtively, Diddy opens the paper.
What he’d written was: “Jim, do you happen to know if there is a state law that makes an autopsy mandatory before someone is cremated?” And Jim had scrawled below. “Yes, I believe there is. Almost positive. Why?”
Diddy looks up; tries to fabricate an astute, friendly nod.
Jim is probably right. Still, what was performed Monday or Tuesday morning upon Incardona wasn’t the autopsy Diddy wanted. The important thing for Diddy to remember is that if he wanted to check further, it was easy to find out for sure. Since Diddy tends to find any reliable piece of information soothing, why hasn’t he already resolved this question? Could have called the Courier-Gazette or City Hall days ago to inquire about the existence of such a regulation.
He can do that later. (Now) must try to concentrate on what’s at hand, Watkins & Company, the present. Diddy trying to behave as if the sole reason he is upstate, living for a week in this city, is business: he was picked—a flattering assignment—to attend the company conference. Trying to convince himself inwardly, while he lets the rote behavior of the competent junior executive persuade the others.
Diddy the Good was taking a business trip. Banish all private projects. Especially those two. Pursuing his investigation into the workman’s death and his feelings about it. Visiting Hester in the hospital, and exploring his sentiments toward her.… Neither project is going well, a fact that’s making him not so much uneasy as somewhat giddy and lightheaded. Does this lack of success make his projects more pure?
