by Don DeLillo
Fenig was seated on the large trunk that contained his manuscripts. He bumped the heels of his sneakered feet in elusive tempo against the front of the trunk. His clothes, freshly laundered, were the same as those he’d worn every other time we’d talked. Perhaps he bought items in fours and fives. It seemed possible this was everything he owned, five sweat shirts, five pairs of chinos, five pairs of tennis sneakers. Fenig and I intersected at curious places beneath the solvable plane. This made things simple, I thought. It’s always easier to live with similarities because they provide the shadings needed for concealment. Opposites tend eventually to corrode whatever democracy of feeling they made possible at the outset. In Fenig’s closet were four more Fenigs, laced, hooded, neatly creased.
“I failed at pornography,” he said, “because it put me in a position where I the writer was being manipulated by what I wrote. This is the essence of living in P-ville. It makes people easy to manipulate. It puts people on the level of things. I the writer was probably more aware of this than whoever the potential reader might be because I could feel the changes in me, the hardening of mechanisms, the subservience to lust-making and lust-awakening. You have to be half-mad to be a great pornographer and half-Swedish to expose yourself repeatedly to outright porn without losing a measure of whatever makes you human. Every pornographic work brings us closer to fascism. It reduces the human element. It encourages antlike response. I the writer suffered these things myself. As my child-characters whipped and raped each other around the clock, they began to fall apart in my fingers, and I myself slowly began to fragment Pornography’s limits and stereotypes worked against me from the very beginning and yet just beyond some last line or boundary I could imagine a new kind of P-ville full of characters who never even touch each other. But I’m not going anywhere near it. I’m not half-mad and I’m only one-eighth Swedish so obviously this is the wrong genre for me. The market wasn’t very lucrative anyway. Fifteen hundred dollars for a novel-length manuscript. I told them it’s not just pornography, it’s children’s pornography. They said a pussy’s a pussy no matter who it’s attached to. Genitals always take precedence. If it’s a question of mixed categories and genitals play a prominent part in one of the categories, then that’s the rate scale you’re working with. Listen, I’m happy to be free of it. I can entertain my terminal fantasy with a clear conscience. It’s not as though I’m a lust purveyor or incipient totalitarian of the world of letters. I have a fantasy that involves other people’s blood being shed but this fantasy isn’t part of the thread of my life. It isn’t consistent with who I am and what I do. It’s just an isolated aberration, much of it taking place in slow motion. If I was still involved in pornography for kids, then I’d be worried about a thread, a string, a consistency. But I’m free of that category and free of its miserable rate scale. Fi-nance, I get twelve and a half per cent after five thousand copies. Fi-nance is big time. The market’s dying except for fi-nance. Daytime dramatic serials are still pretty healthy but I personally shun TV as much as possible. TV is deep space, thin air, no oxygen. There and gone, my words tickling the ears of the walking dead. I’m definitely sticking with financial literature. Fi-nance is solid. There’ll always be millionaires and people who want to be millionaires. I’m midwifing this thing very carefully. This is the watershed of my career. Let’s face it, I’ve been turning out a pretty uneven oeuvre. I need a permanent base to express myself from. No more movement or fluctuation. I need to see a long line stretching straight ahead into the distance. The market’s spinning slower and slower and the lights are dimming and all the loud sounds are dying out. The great wheel is running down, no doubt about it, but I surprise myself by being philosophical. Even if the financial market dies out with the rest of the market, I maintain a certain fragile hope for my own eventual redemption as a functioning writer. I see empty streets. I see a dead market I see the dog-boys prowling. There I am at the typewriter. I’m old but still fit My mind is clearer than ever. I’m at the height of my powers. I’m in firm control of my material. I’m writing terminal fiction and I’m writing not for the market, not for the quick sale, not for the sake of professionalism or my name in print I’m writing for the survivors, that they may know what it was they survived. I’m writing, if you will, for posterity, that people may understand what went wrong and resist the historical imperative of judging us too harshly. I see tomato soup and saltines.”
After a while he lowered himself from the trunk and made coffee. We drank it quietly. Fenig held the large cup with both hands. To drink he lowered his head to the rim, making a small sacrament of the act. It was roughly the middle of the day. I could hear my phone ringing for the third time in the past hour. Fenig poured more coffee. He took his cup to the typewriter table this time. Soon he began to scratch at the keys, first with two fingers, then with his left hand, thumb capering on the space bar, eventually both hands working, ten fingers crashing on the keys, his head moving closer to the black machine, eyes appearing to follow the arc of each metal slingshot hurling ink upon the page.
I went downstairs and fell asleep almost immediately. The telephone rang and I dragged myself over there to lift away the noise. It was Watney somewhere in the British Isles.
“Back finally?”
“Here I am,” I said.
“Rang up before, Bucky. Three times exactly. No answer. Odd, I thought. Man’s not there. Wonder where, I thought. Wonder where the central figure in this rapidly evolving scenario is off to. Odd, innit? That’s what I thought.”
“I’m back finally.”
“Bucky, I’m contacting you as per our conversation of the twentieth last.”
“What conversation?” I said.
“We agreed I’d ring you at a specific time, such and such a day. That’s what I’ve been engaged in for the past hour. In other words I’m carrying out the specifics of our joint proposal as agreed upon. You said then you had no compass bearing on the product. I officially ask if the time is now a bit more propitious for a serious bid on the part of my Anglo-European associates and myself, as far as astrology and the gods are concerned.”
“The product is out of my hands completely. I don’t have it and I don’t know how to get it. Somebody named Hanes has it Five feet seven. A hundred and thirty pounds. No marks or scars.”
“Somebody named Hanes,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“Young. Slender. Fragile. Bored, sort of.”
“That’s him.”
“Alabaster skin.”
“That’s him,” I said. “Very descriptive. I like that. Oh, superb. Too bad he doesn’t have an aquiline nose. You’d have a good combination going. But sure, that’s him, that fits.”
“He’s had possession for a lengthy period of time, has he?”
“In terms of days or weeks I don’t recall. But I know he’s had the product since before you were here.”
“Fancy, fancy,” Watney said. “Seems I met Hanes in Toronto. He’d been lurking about for days. Dogging my every footstep. He came looking for me with that tarnished angelic look of his. Selling he was. What he called the ultimate drug. Selling outright. Selling shares. Selling European rights. He was flexible he was. See, all my information pointed to you, Bucky. You were the one with possession. I made my way through all of Canada, doing little bits of business here and there, laying groundwork, opening vistas. All the while intending to sneak up on the infamous Bucky Wunderlick and do some fanatical New York promoting. Lay a heavy-handed bid on my old comrade in arms. This boy Hanes came sauntering in with that desperate precious saunter of his. I gave it little thought I did. See, all the rumors in my dossier of rumors located the ultimate drug in your own notorious hands.”
“Hanes ran off with it. He was supposed to deliver it somewhere and then negotiate a deal. But he ran off to deal on his own.”
“Cheeky little bastard.”
“You threw him out, I take it.”
“Not a bit of it,” Watney said. “I neve
r toss people out the door. People are human beings. They’re creatures of infinite capacity. They have immortal souls they do. No, I followed the usual procedure and sent a small sample of his wares by courier back to ground zero for analysis. Back to our clandestine waterfront laboratory somewhere in the center of Birmingham. Back to our first-rate technical lads in their white smocks and high-heeled shoes. I speak in riddles, of course. I reveal only the salient findings.”
“Which were?”
“Let’s see then. A volunteer took a poke in the arm. Since then all he does is dribble and whine. Our technical lads did their clever tests at first. But the results were vague. So they called a volunteer out of the line and gave him a poke. Our biggest problem comes from volunteers queuing up on the sidewalk in broad daylight. So bloody eager they are to serve the cause of science. Let’s see then. The drug attacks a particular region in the left hemisphere of the brain. That’s the verbal hemisphere, it seems. Where the words are kept. The boy’s been reduced to chronic dribbling. Naturally when I got the report I informed your Hanes person that we wanted no part of his vicious product. Christ, ethics do exist. I told the technical lads they should have used a bloody cat. They pointed to the fact that cats don’t speak in the first place. Thus small value in injecting a cat. Little did I know when sweeping into your flat with my accustomed grandiosity that I’d already had my hands on the much-sought-after product.”
“Do you know where you left the bubble gum cards?” I said.
“The airline bag, is it? Is that where my man left it? Did he leave it with you? Blessy’s truly dim, you know. It’s not just a game we play. He wants watching, that one does. I shall have to rake him over the electric coals for this. Shall have to instruct that boy in the wages of sin. He claimed the driver of the limousine drove off with it. No harm done. But sets a nasty precedent.”
“If it’s not an unfair question, why do you travel around with bubble gum cards?”
“Not a bad likeness of me, is it? Taken some years back. All done up in blue velvet I was. A childhood dream come true. My own bubble gum card. They’re magic cards, Bucky. Very hush-hush. Promise not to breathe a word.”
“Okay.”
“Truly promise. Put heart and soul into it. A soldier’s oath. The vow of a pristine nun. Second thought, not much sense of obligation left in those quarters anymore. Give me a blacker oath. The kind they take in shabby inner offices. Narcotics agent. Postal inspector. Customs official. Give me an oath with blood on it.”
“Brothers,” I said.
“I take hundreds of bubble gum cards everywhere I go. The Watney bubble gum card. Hard-to-get item. Rarer than a pair of blue suede shoes in Tierra del Fuego. I’ve virtually cornered the market, you see. I’ve established a virtual monopoly. Sometimes two or three of the cards in my luggage are different from all the rest. These are the magic cards, a direct offspring of our own Industrial Revolution. Buy British, I always say. The magic cards are constructed in such a way that they can be sealed and resealed a number of times with our own private sealing agent. The tiniest sample of this or that item can be placed inside a miniature casing of anodized metal, which in turn is fitted into a given card and taken to a given place. Card unsealed. Item tested. We carried samples of microdot LSD in from Malta with Watney bubble gum cards. Thoroughly enjoy carrying the things about. Wonderful at parties. One’s own bubble gum card. Good fun to flash on unsuspecting fellow passengers aboard a great jetliner streaking across the heavens. I enplane at point A. I deplane at point B. Blowing metaphorical bubbles all the way. Just ordinary cards in the bag Blessy left at your flat. None of the magics there. The magics were in the luggage proper. The heavy luggage. The real thing. The baggage. Sets a bad precedent however. Shall have to get grim with that boy.”
“I’m going back out on tour. What do you think? Do you think I’m crazy? I feel I have to do it Time’s up. Have to make the move.”
“Back out, is it? Back into the pits and dung troughs. Best provide for all contingencies, old Bucky. Prepare an overdose for the critical minutes. Have it sitting on the dresser. Ancient bitch of the road. Best do it, old friend. You don’t want to drop apart gradually. Bad for the image. You’re required to go all at once. Excess. That’s the number under your name. I could never match the genius of your excess. I was too artificial. Had to make it all up and shake it all down. That was my critical failing. I failed to embody true and honest excess. I was just a wad of chewing gum on your shoe. So stick to the image, old Bucky. Prepare a careful OD and flame yourself away. Be deliberate about it. Be as thorough as humanly possible. Don’t forget to lick the spoon.”
“I want to become a dream,” I said. “I’m tired of my body. I want to be a dream, their dream. I want to flow right through them.”
“You have to die first.”
“I knew I’d left something out.”
“You have to die all at once. None of this gradual wasting away of the middle classes. You have to burst into flame. It’s all a worthless gesture, of course. Sorry to be the one who has to bear this depressing message. But true, it’s all worthless. One’s death must be equal to one’s power. The OD or assassination is esthetically lovely but in point of fact means little unless it reverberates to the sound of power. The powerful man who achieves a gorgeous death automatically becomes a national hero and saint of all churches. No power, the thing falls flat Bucky, you have no power. You have the illusion of power. I know this firsthand. I learned this in lesson after lesson and city after city. Nothing truly moves to your sound. Nothing is shaken or bent. You’re a bloody artist you are. Less than four ounces on the meat scale. You’re soft, not hard. You’re above ground, not under. The true underground is the place where power flows. That’s the best-kept secret of our time. You’re not the underground. Your people aren’t underground people. The presidents and prime ministers are the ones who make the underground deals and speak the true underground idiom. The corporations. The military. The banks. This is the underground network. This is where it happens. Power flows under the surface, far beneath the level you and I live on. This is where the laws are broken, way down under, far beneath the speed freaks and cutters of smack. You’re not insulated or unaccountable the way a corporate force is. Your audience is not the relevant audience. It doesn’t make anything. It doesn’t sell to others. Your life consumes itself. Chomp. I hear it across three thousand miles of gray ocean. Chomp, chomp. I know illusions I do. Illusions forced me to change my life. I remember the end of my last regular tour in the music business. Broken man I was. Victim of illusion. No sorrier figure in all the realm. Shall I tell you how I tried to cope? Where I went and how I got there? It’s a sad tale, it is. Promise you won’t breathe a word. Have I got your oath in blood?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Promised like a true friend. Truly promised. Shall I tell you then? Shall I tell you what I did?”
“Sure.”
“I took a walk down Lonely Street to Heartbreak Hotel.”
24
HER NAME came back to me the moment before he spoke it. He opened a bottle of warm champagne and we gathered together, at angles of caricatured intimacy, huddled all three in the room’s lone dollop of sunlight. Globke passed out the drinks in paper cups he had brought along, suspecting unsanitary conditions in the native glassware. Seated in my bowl-shaped chair, knees above my belly, I drank to the health of the mountain tapes.
“Bucky, you remember Michelle.”
“Definitely.”
“You had dinner with us over at our place about a year ago, right after we just moved in.”
“I remember.”
“We had roast leg of lamb and two kinds of wine. Michelle made those fantastic Hindu vegetable things she makes. We listened to highlights from Madame Butterfly. We sipped our wine in the candlelight.”
“I remember,” I said.
“Then we sat on the upper terrace and talked about the uses of money. Then we talked about greed. Then we talk
ed about the misuses of money. Then we had tea and that gummy dessert-shit I hate so much. Then I called a limousine to take you to the airport. So anyway here she is. My young wife. Wife, mother, lover, colleague, friend. You remember Michelle.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Don’t touch her,” Globke said.
“I won’t.”
“It makes me nervous when she gets touched. See, oldness and fatness. See that? See what it does? Makes me a figure of fun. But I’m not succumbing without a fight. I’m pushing on ahead. I’m double-clutching through middle age. You should have seen me when I got my hands on the tapes. I was all action. My voice crackled with authority. I rounded up personnel, made plans, gave instructions. Then I put the tapes in my Pan Am flight bag and flew off in the night to Cincinnati, where I called you from. Combination studio–warehouse–record plant. Small but big enough. Known to few. A place where for years they recorded marching bands and high school chorales. Cincinnati. Queen city of the early West. All technical work on the tapes plus final pressing being done there. Call it unfounded fear but I was afraid to take that material anywhere else. Too much chance of sabotage. Material that there’s no way to duplicate can’t be handled like a job-lot product. We drink to the mountain tapes. The mountain tapes. Keep them safe, God of my fathers, until the record’s in the racks.”
