The Zero and the One

by Ryan Ruby

  Zach’s defence of suicide was perversely moral. And by no means unpersuasive. It was the best way, he said, to preserve human dignity and freedom from the implacable annihilation that awaited us all, the only way, in fact, to pick the pocket of Nature, to whom we all owed a death. He rejected the argument that it was the preservation of life (impossible in any case) that was our moral duty, specially when this duty was construed as a duty to the feelings of the friends and family who would survive the suicide.

  “Suicide might be selfish, but it’s not weak or cowardly. And in any case, selfishness isn’t always a bad thing.” He spoke loudly and passionately. Looking at me rather than at the board, he moved his bishop again, pinning my queen. I would have no choice but to take it. My precarious defence was already beginning to crumble. “It’s pure hypocrisy! People call others selfish for not doing what they want them to do. They hate it when other people’s selfishness gets in the way of their own. It’s not at all surprising that the hypocrites who accuse suicides of being selfish also accuse them of being cowardly. Living solely for other people—you know what I call that? Slavery. And there’s nothing more cowardly than choosing to be a slave.”

  To call living for other people slavery struck me as an exaggeration and I told him so, but what other word was there, he wanted to know, for the opposite of freedom? “Ever heard of Hans Abendroth?” he asked. I admitted I hadn’t. “German philosopher. Twentieth-century. He wrote this book called Null und Eins. The Zero and the One. It’s almost impossible to find in English. I myself have never seen a copy, but I came across a quote from it in an article about Lacan’s Poe Seminar, and it really spoke to me. I’ve memorized it.”

  He held up a finger and recited, his dark eyes rolled reverently to the ceiling, his fringe swept to one side. “‘Every grave of every man who dies other than by his own hand should bear the same epitaph: returned to sender. But the suicide’s grave should read: arrived at its destination. A man’s mother may address the envelope and his father may pay for the postage, but that is no reason to allow them to dictate the letter’s contents or decide how it should conclude.’” He paused and added, “Especially not sentimentality about the inviolability of life. Well? What do you think?”

  “I think you’ve given this some thought,” I said, a little uneasily. I expected him to nod solemnly, but he merely smiled and told me that it was mate in four. He told me that he would sacrifice his queen on the next move and that any rational player would respond by taking it. Then he showed me how the combination of his two rooks would lead to my inevitable defeat. “Another round?”

  “Of chess?”

  He held up his empty glass.

  We made our way back to the bar and there the subject was dropped, but it wasn’t long before he picked it up again. Zach’s reflections on suicide also included a discourse on method: he thought which suicide you chose was also important. He didn’t endorse jumping in front of trains or cars, for example, because you were transferring your responsibility for your action to someone else, namely the train driver or the motorist, totally mutilating your body in the process. Overdosing on pills he considered a cry for help and on drugs hedonistic and cowardly. Jumping off a bridge was histrionic and attention-seeking. Self-immolation was also histrionic and attention-seeking and should be reserved for political protesters only. Slitting your wrists in the tub had merit from an historical and aesthetic point of view, but it gave a person too much time to reconsider: it would not be sufficiently instantaneous. Likewise hanging. Filling your pockets with heavy stones and drowning yourself in the river had a certain charm, but Virginia Woolf had already done it. And sticking your head in the oven or putting a hose into your car’s exhaust pipe? Who would want to spend his last seconds in an appliance? The same logic applied to asphyxiation with a plastic bag. And putting a gun in your mouth? That method was serious and effective, but ultimately too messy.

  The vanity he lavished on behalf of this hypothetical corpse amused me. It was hard to take him seriously when he spoke like that. Zach had a theory about everything, but, despite what he said, he seemed wedded to few of them. Opinions were to him mere playthings and he always spoke with an ironic smirk that all but dared you to take him at his word. If you did, you would find yourself at the receiving end of the withering expression seasoned jokesters reserve for the most gullible of their marks. Which is why, in the end, it was easy to overlook his true convictions. He was not just the boy who cried wolf. He cried whole packs of them. Some he locked away in silence. Others he hid in plain sight. To understand him you had to work backwards, by subtraction. You had to decode and decipher. You had to decrypt.

  THE SACRED VEIL OF ISIS.—The innermost chamber of the Temple of Isis, at Sais, in Egypt, was partitioned by a sacred veil, which it was forbidden to raise or remove. It was said that the goddess herself dwelt behind the veil, but that any mortal that looked upon her would immediately fall into the hands of Osiris, Guardian of the Underworld, who would pluck out the offender’s heart and feed it to a crocodile-headed monster. To ensure that the temple priests would not themselves succumb to natural curiosity, their eyes were put out during their initiation rites. Protected by piety and fear, and the obedience of the blinded priests, the sacred veil remained undisturbed for a thousand generations. Until one day, a young Athenian nobleman visited the temple, burning with a desire to look behind the veil and see the beautiful goddess. The priests attempted to dissuade him, warning him of the dangers of his passion, but did not prevent him from entering the temple. Standing before the innermost chamber, the youth tore the sacred veil from its beam, horrified by what he discovered there: another veil. Consumed with rage, he tore down the second veil, only to find, behind it, a third. He tore and tore until he fell to his knees, weeping in despair, buried in the veils he had so foolishly desecrated. His body was later discovered, caught in the reeds along the banks of the Nile, a dagger in his chest, dead of his own hand.

  You’re Owen, the voice had said. You’re exactly as my brother described you.

  Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for her. Zach never described Vera to me. Never showed me a photo, or anything like that. I didn’t even know he had a sister until our meeting with Bernard in Berlin.

  As he left us, in the lobby of the Adlon, Bernard reached into his coat pocket and produced an envelope. Zach went red. Was his father really going to hand him money in front of me? Instead he told Zach, It’s from your sister. Then he turned to me. It was nice meeting you, Owen. I’m sorry I didn’t have more time to spend with you both. He gave me his business card and told me to phone if I ever needed anything. Then he shook my hand and firmly clasped Zach before entering the lift, neither of us knowing that he had just seen his son for the last time.

  You have a sister? I asked when we were outside. A twin sister, he said. Vera. If Zach detected from the tone of my question that I thought it odd that he’d never mentioned a twin sister, he took care to hide it. As we walked back down Unter den Linden, I tried to ask about her, but he deflected all my questions with one- or two-word answers. Siblings, I remember thinking at the time, a perpetual mystery. I’ve never understood how they operate, the rules that are meant to apply to them. I can imagine what it would have been like to have been born in another country or during another era and perhaps even what it would have been like to have been born a woman. But as an only child, I can’t fathom what it would be like to have a sibling, let alone a twin. To change the subject, I asked him about his mother. She owns an art gallery in Chelsea, he told me. And left it at that.

  When we reached the Liebknechtbrücke, he opened the envelope. As he read, his face darkened. Is everything all right? I asked with concern. He handed me the letter, as though this would explain everything, but the page might as well have been covered in hieroglyphics. At first I thought his sister must have the worst handwriting in the world, but when I looked closer it became clear that the letter was written in an invented alphabet. The two communicated
in code, for Christ’s sake. Put out by this false gesture of intimacy, I held up the piece of paper. What shall I do with this? I asked. Tear it up and throw it into the river. I hesitated, wondering if he really meant it, but when his expression didn’t change, I did as I was told. Good, he said, as we watched the last scrap fall onto the surface of the water. Now let’s go get hammered.

  I tell Vera I’m sorry for her loss—and immediately regret it.

  I’m sorry for your loss, Owen. You were his best friend. We have all suffered a great loss. There’s no reason to pretend that I’m in more pain than you are just because I’m his sister and you’re in my house.

  I should have known that, like Zach, she’d bridle at the slightest deference to social niceties. In the inflections of her voice, I hear his own. Like hearing, for the first time, a famous concerto played on the original harpsichord. That the similarity of their appearance was easily explained did not make it any less uncanny. Zach’s face, an almost elfin collection of angles, was here softened, from the tip of the ear, down the jawline, to the smooth point of the chin. They both had bow-shaped lips, but Vera’s were thicker, just as her prominent cheekbones were rounder than his. She wore her black hair—which looked like it had been recently and somewhat raggedly cut—shorter than Zach had done, but what was absolutely identical were their eyes, whose irises were so dark that they were almost indistinguishable from the pupils, and their eyebrows, which extended across their foreheads like the wings of the crows in the turbulent sky above the yellow wheatfields of Auvers.

  To avoid Vera’s glare, made all the more penetrating by the red corona round her strained eyes, I turn again to the painting. What’s it called? I ask.

  She pauses for a moment before she answers. She studies me, deciding whether to grant me a reprieve, a second chance to make a better first impression.

  It’s called The Everlasting Irony in the Life of the Community. The painter is Pavel Diminovich. He was one of those Soviet Jews the U.S. bought from Brezhnev in the 70s. Or that’s what he said he was. Lots of people did that, claimed to be Jewish, just to get out of the USSR. He used to live with a couple of other artists in this loft in the building Mommy and Daddy owned on Greene Street. He paid for his rent in paintings—this one was supposed to have been inspired by the time he spent in Greece waiting for his visa to be authorized. Mommy could probably sell it for a million dollars, but she’s attached to it for some reason. She thinks he’s better than Cy Twombly.

  I’ve never seen a painter cut his canvas like that before.

  Oh that. Vera frowns. Her hand rises to her necklace, and, as if it were a nervous habit, she begins to fiddle with it. Diminovich didn’t do that, she says. He’s not Lucio Fontana or anything. When the painting was on loan to the Whitney for his retrospective, this guy, this unstable art student, vandalized it. After he was arrested, he told the judge that he thought the painting was filthy, a moral abomination, and that the only way to review it was with a box cutter. It was a huge scandal.

  It was never restored?

  Diminovich wouldn’t let it be. He actually liked the way the cuts looked. He told the press they were strokes of genius. In all honesty, I think the guy who did it was on to something. Mommy should really cover it with brown paper. At least for today.

  I wonder what it would be like to grow up with such a painting in your sitting room. Modern art is a discovery you should make for yourself—at least that’s how it seems to me. It should draw you away from the assumptions with which you’ve been raised; it should be a revelation that the world is much larger and stranger than your hometown has led you to expect. But from Everlasting Irony, where could you possibly go to discover the shock of the new? To experience surprise, excitement, even wonder? Backwards. You had to go backwards. To the archaic. The anachronistic. The out-of-date. To the dead ends and castoffs of history. To the ruins of a medieval abbey sinking stone by stone into the marshy ground.

  Is he here? I ask, gesturing with a limp finger at the other mourners.

  Diminovich? He died of AIDS in the early 90s—91, I think, or maybe 92. That was one of the first funerals I ever went to, come to think of it. The entire New York art world was there. If you want, I can show you a portrait he painted of me and Zach when we were kids. Come, you’ll be doing me a favor. If I have to hear the words since you were this high one more time, I’ll rip out what’s left of my hair.

  I follow her down one of the hallways that has been temporarily created by the sliding doors. On the wall opposite: framed movie posters, perhaps of the films produced by Bernard. I don’t have time to examine them, though. When we reach the end of the hallway, another door spins on its axis. Zach’s mother emerges, blotting her eyes with a tissue.

  She looks at me and then at her daughter. What do you need, sweetie?

  I was just going to our room. To show Owen the Diminovich.

  Now’s really not the best time, dear. The tone of her voice is almost critical, as if she were reprimanding Vera for failing to uphold the most basic of social graces. She turns to me. Owen… I don’t believe we’ve… you’re a friend of…

  Vera straightens and blinks twice. In a forceful whisper, she says, He was the one Zach wrote the letter to. The one from Oxford.

  Mrs. Foedern connects the name to a face and the face to her son. She steadies herself and extends her hand to me, fingers first, as if I were meant to kiss it rather than shake it. With exaggerated formality, she says, I’m so sorry we had to meet under these circumstances.

  As am I, Mrs. Foedern. I look at Vera and tell her mother that I’m sorry for her loss.

  Unlike her daughter, Mrs. Foedern has no objection to polite condolences. She asks me to please call her Rebecca and even thanks me for coming all this way to attend the… she searches for the right word and ultimately decides on service. She asks me how long I’ll be staying in New York, a question in which I can hear the residues of the maternal solicitousness she’ll never again be able to lavish on her own son.

  My flight back is in a few days. This is my first time in the States so—

  First time in America! The forcefulness of her exclamation takes us, not least of all Rebecca herself, by surprise. She colours a little at having lost control of the volume and pitch of her voice. But it’s only natural. She likely hasn’t spoken above a whisper—or below a scream—in days.

  Zach spoke a great deal about growing up here, I lie. So I thought I should go to some of the places he’d mentioned. As a kind of tribute…

  Vera, who had been impatiently rocking back and forth on her heels, interrupts to ask where I’m staying. She’s horrified to find out.

  What! There? You can’t stay there!

  Why not, dear? Rebecca asks.

  He just can’t, okay? It’s a backpacker hostel. East of the park, Mom. Morningside Park.

  No really, it’s quite nice. And quite reasonably—

  It’s a flophouse for junkies and broke tourists! You can’t stay there, Owen. You just can’t. You’ll sleep at my apartment until you find somewhere else. A Craigslist rental. In Williamsburg if you have to. Anywhere but that place.

  We are both taken aback, I think, by Vera’s vehemence. Then again, perhaps it’s not so surprising. Vera must have recognised that she was the intended audience of my condolences to her mother. She wanted to show me that she was not one to concede the last word to anyone else. Even if she had to get it by other means.

  And where will you sleep? Rebecca asks her.

  I’ll sleep here. In our room. Besides, the upstairs neighbors are throwing a party on the rooftop tonight and I know I don’t want to be around for that.

  Are you sure?

  Vera, you’re very kind. But I couldn’t possibly—

  Refuse? Good, it’s settled then. I’ll text my roommate, Katie, to let her know to expect you.

  I follow the whirlwind of activity Vera has become to the kitchen, where she writes the address of her flat and the directions on a Post-it not
e.

  Now go uptown and get your luggage. And make sure you check it for bugs before you bring it into the apartment. I’ll see you there in the morning.

  Taking my wrist, she adheres the bright yellow Post-it to my palm by tracing a line across the top with her finger.

  THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES.—My father once threatened to disown me for questioning the existence of God, whilst my former colleagues at the university, knowing the subject of my research, accused me of indulging in metaphysics. I was insufficiently materialist for the taste of the communists I once knew, though liberals suspected me of being a fellow traveller. Amongst republicans I would argue for aristocratic values, just as amongst monarchists I would praise the general will. I have been called a fascist by an aesthete and a degenerate by a fascist. Where politics is concerned, to everyone I am something else and to no one am I anything in particular. Not that this at all troubles me. Only insects are easily pinned down.

  Our friendship with Tori and Claire did not pause for breath until Zach and I boarded the plane for Berlin two months later. I’m not entirely certain at what point our relationships became relationships, official and exclusive. Claire and I, at least, never discussed it. (To my relief: because with discussion the possibility of definitive rejection always remained.) I came along with Zach, Zach was with Tori, Tori came along with Claire, and so, by some transitive property of romantic logic, Claire was with me. Whenever I phoned, she answered; whenever I rang the doorbell, she opened the door. At some point it became less awkward not to wonder whether she would let me spend the night. Within a fortnight the glass on the bathroom sink in the flat on the Bevington Road contained four toothbrushes. In the chest of drawers in each room were spare sets of shirts and trousers.