What Are You Going Through

by Sigrid Nunez

  Except that fairy tales are beautiful, my friend said. Fairy tales are sublime, and mysteries are not.

  Another difference: unlike mysteries, fairy tales are not escapist. Even if they too simplify and conform to familiar formulas, the truths in fairy tales always run deep. That is why children love them. (Who knows better than a child what it’s like to be at the mercy of hidden and arbitrary forces, and that anything can happen, no matter how strange, either for good or for ill.) Fairy tales are real. They are more mysterious than any mystery novel. That is why, unlike mystery novels—meant to entertain, then be forgotten—fairy tales are classics. They are of the heart, not of the glands.

  I like that we owe fairy tales to old women. When the idea came to people to collect those of a given region, they began by taking down the tales told by its crones.

  What’s your favorite fairy tale? my friend wanted to know.

  Any one that has swans in it, I said. I remember, when I first read “The Six Swans,” how I wanted to be the brother whose magic shirt his sister doesn’t have time to finish, so when he’s turned back into a human being he still has one wing.

  You wanted to be the freak.

  Well, I didn’t think of it that way. Maybe just the different one, I said. The one who gets to keep part of his swan being. That appealed to me.

  Here’s something I wonder about, my friend said. They say people love thrillers and horror stories because it’s such fun to escape ordinary life and lose yourself in a world of gruesome violence and crime. Yes?

  Yes.

  So why aren’t romance novels full of bad sex with smelly people?

  That is not a logical analogy.

  Okay, never mind. Chemo brain! Just keep reading.

  We had taken to sitting side by side on the sofa when we were together in the living room, semi-recumbent with our legs stretched out and our feet up on the coffee table. She would nestle against me, sometimes letting her head drop to my shoulder. More than once while I was reading she fell asleep. I would stop reading and keep very still, alternately soothed and tormented by the sound of her breathing. I would remember the vigil at my father’s hospital bedside, when his breathing had become so labored that it was as if there were some malfunctioning machine in the room, and the shock of it ceasing, like that, as if the machine had been switched off, and the silence that followed, louder than his breathing had been, louder than any machine, louder than anything I’d ever heard before in my life.

  Or we’d sit together in the same position on the two-seater on the back porch, from where we liked to watch the sunset. Sometimes we linked arms or clasped hands. (Touch is so important.) At such moments I felt that she was as much a comfort to me as I was meant to be to her. Every now and then she would squeeze my hand without saying anything—without needing to say anything—but it was as if she had squeezed my heart.

  Golden hour, magic hour, l’heure bleue. Evenings when the beauty of the changing sky made us both go still and dreamy. Sunlight falling at an angle across the lawn so that it touched our elevated feet, then moved up our bodies like a long slow blessing, and I found myself a breath away from believing that everything was as it should be. See the moon. Count the stars. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end (Joyce). Infinitely rich, infinitely beautiful. Everything was going to be all right.

  Once as I was turning a page she picked her head up off my shoulder and kissed me. I laughed, startled, then kissed her back. And because she could never pass up an opening for a joke, she whined a pitch-perfect imitation of Bette Davis as Baby Jane: You mean all this time we could’ve been lovers?

  I’ve been so selfish, she said. I never thought about you. I guess I couldn’t allow myself to. But now that we’re here, now that all this is happening (all this: the inexorable, the inexpressible), I feel guilty.

  But I want to be here, I said. And as I said it I realized it was absolutely true. Nothing could have torn me away.

  That wasn’t what she meant, she said. It’s that I feel guilty about leaving you behind.

  It happens. It happens when people find themselves caught in some extreme situation, a crisis, an emergency, especially one involving death, or the threat of death, when even total strangers can become intensely close, in some cases developing a lasting bond. Survivors of disasters, or near disasters, thrown together even for just a short time, arrange for annual reunions that go on for years after the experience they shared had occurred. There is the story of two people who met for the first time when the elevator they were in got stuck between floors. By the time they were freed many hours later they had agreed to marry. And they lived happily ever after. Well, no. They broke their engagement about a year later, but I believe they remained friends.

  I didn’t think about you at all, my friend said. I didn’t count on having feelings for you, worrying about you.

  And the feelings I was having for her—I hadn’t counted on those, either.

  * * *

  —

  One of the many oddities of our situation had to do with grocery shopping. My friend’s interest in food was so diminished that she didn’t like to go shopping at all. The smells inside the supermarket could even sometimes nauseate her. Nor could she stand how freezing cold the store was kept, and the vast size of it—like a fucking airport, she said—exhausted her the minute she entered. (As for me, I am never in one of those megastores without wishing I were on blades.) So I usually went alone. But it was impossible to calculate how much food we’d need without touching on the awful question For how long. And so up and down the aisles I went, dazed and shuffling like a hundred-year-old woman.

  Also, there was shame. Almost nothing can curb my appetite, and, during this time, for whatever reason (or perhaps for a very obvious reason), I was always hungry. Every meal with my friend ended the same: her plate barely touched, mine clean. I snacked between meals as well. Without getting on a scale I knew that I was gaining weight, and I was ashamed of this. Though I resisted gorging on things like doughnuts and ice cream, I was ashamed of how much I craved them. My greedy appetite seemed to me like an insult to my dying friend. Small wonder that, though the meals I ate were nutritious, they were usually followed by indigestion.

  It was while I was at the supermarket one afternoon that my friend, who even on scorching days often suffered from chills, decided to take a hot bath. This particular day she was also suffering more than usual from fatigue. She lay down to wait until the bathtub was filled.

  I sloshed across the room to the bed where she sat hugging her knees to her chest, dazed and shivering, like a person adrift on a raft after a shipwreck.

  I just wanted to close my eyes for a minute, she said. Teeth chattering.

  I climbed onto the bed, tucking my wet feet under me. Two persons adrift.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way, she said. All I wanted was peace. I wanted to die in peace, and now it’s turned into this nightmare. This farce. This hideous, humiliating farce.

  Then she was crying so convulsively that she could no longer get the words out. I heard them anyway: She had wanted to be strong. She had wanted control. She had wanted to die on her own terms and with as little trouble to the world as possible. She had wanted peace. She had wanted order.

  Peace and order around her was all she had asked for.

  A calm, clean, graceful, even—why not?—beautiful death.

  Was what she’d had in mind.

  A beautiful death in a nice house in a scenic town on a fine summer night.

  Was the end my friend had written for herself.

  It’s not your fault, I said. And of course it wasn’t my fault, either. So why could I not shake the feeling that, on the contrary, I, and nobody else, was very much to blame?

  As I sat trying to comfort her, I was also trying to think about what must be done. How would we ever explain this to o
ur hosts? But hateful as that duty was, it could not be put off. They would need to contact their home insurer immediately.

  A couple sits in their living room watching TV when suddenly the ceiling cracks open, releasing a cascade of water from an overflowing bathtub upstairs. As they jump to their feet, clutching their heads in dismay, the house door opens and in marches a crew of smiling, uniformed, attractive young people. Now the homeowners are bewitched into statue-stillness and the team sets to work, cleaning up the mess and fixing everything, good as new. As the door closes behind them, the couple are released from their spell, unaware that anything was ever amiss. Like it never even happened is the company’s promise. I’d seen their TV commercial many times, and I’d seen their trucks with FIRE AND WATER CLEANUP AND RESTORATION painted on the side, and now, a little dementedly, I kept seeing the commercial in my head, drawing hope from its magic, its fairy-tale ending.

  Meanwhile, my friend was rambling. It had been a mistake to come here, it was a stupid idea. It was a fantasy. She should have known it would go all wrong. It was unfair, it was so fucking unfair.

  After a pause she shook me out of my thoughts by shouting, I’ve never been so unhappy in my life! I hate myself!

  To die in despair. The phrase came to me, and all the water in the room turned to ice.

  It must not happen. It must not be allowed to happen.

  My friend was shrieking now. Oh, what is this, what the fuck is this.

  It was life, that’s what. Life going on, in spite of everything. Messy life. Unfair life. Life that must be dealt with. That I must deal with. For if I didn’t do it, who would?

  PART THREE

  Everything that a writer writes could just as easily have been different—but not until it’s been written. As a life could have been different, but not until it’s been lived.

  —Inger Christensen

  The journal I had planned to keep, a record of my friend’s last days—that never happened. I started it, but almost immediately I stopped. I did not even save the few pages I had written. I discovered that I didn’t want to make a written record after all. The reason seemed to be that I had no faith in it. From the beginning it felt like a betrayal—I don’t mean of my friend’s privacy but of the experience itself. No matter how hard I tried, the language could never be good enough, the reality of what was happening could never be precisely expressed. Even before I began I knew that whatever I might manage to describe would turn out to be, at best, somewhere to the side of the thing, while the thing itself slipped past me, like the cat you never even see escape when you open the house door. We talk glibly about finding the right words, but about the most important things, those words we never find. We put the words down as they must be put down, one after the other, but that is not life, that is not death, one word after the other, no, that is not right at all. No matter how hard we try to put the most important things into words, it is always like toe-dancing in clogs.

  Understood: language would end up falsifying everything, as language always does. Writers know this only too well, they know it better than anyone else, and that is why the good ones sweat and bleed over their sentences, the best ones break themselves into pieces over their sentences, because if there is any truth to be found they believe it will be found there. Those writers who believe that the way they write is more important than whatever they may write about—these are the only writers I want to read anymore, the only ones who can lift me up. I can no longer read books that—

  But why am I telling you all this?

  Language would falsify everything. Why, then, create an inauthentic document, to be taken (mistaken) by anyone who later read it—including even myself—for the truth?

  Something else: Writing in the journal did not have the steadying or consoling power I’d hoped for. It did not soothe me. It frustrated me instead. It made me feel dumb. Dumb and hopeless. It filled me with anxiety: what a terrible writer I had become.

  What if all this time we have misunderstood the story of the Tower of Babel? My ex once put the question in an essay. Behold the people is one, and they all have one language. Said God, This will not do. As one, the people might actually succeed in building the city and the heavenward tower with which they hoped to make their name. Indeed, the All-Knowing knew that, with a common tongue, nothing would be impossible for them. The way to stop this abomination was to replace the one language with many. And so it was done.

  But what if God had in fact gone even further. What if it was not just to different tribes but to each individual human being that a separate language was given, unique as fingerprints. And, step two, to make life among humans even more strifeful and confounding, he beclouded their perception of this. So that while we might understand that there are many peoples speaking many different languages, we are fooled into thinking that everyone in our own tribe speaks the same language we do.

  This would explain much of human suffering, according to my ex, who was being less playful than you might think. He really did believe that’s how it was: each of us languaging on, our meaning clear to ourselves but to nobody else.

  Even people in love? I asked, smilingly, teasingly, hopefully. This was at the very beginning of our relationship. He only smiled back. But years later, at the bitter end, came the bitter answer: People in love most of all.

  * * *

  —

  I once heard a journalist say that whenever he’s working on a piece, he knows his language probably isn’t clear when he finds himself repeatedly cleaning the computer screen.

  Bringing to mind Orwell’s ideal of prose as clean and clear as a windowpane.

  Look out the window, goes the schoolteacher’s writing prompt. What do you see?

  When I looked out the window, the monster was still there.

  * * *

  —

  I have not, so far, regretted not having kept the journal, though I suppose one day I might. On the other hand, I find myself thinking about a film called No Home Movie, in which the Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman documented conversations with her mother during the last months of her mother’s life. We should all be great filmmakers.

  I understand it’s a thing now, people making videos and arranging to have them delivered posthumously to one or more persons whom they knew in life. In some cases the video is intended to be shown at the deceased’s memorial service. I’m not sure why, but I find it hard to imagine this being done in any way that doesn’t feel cheesy.

  The podcast my friend had told me about, the one she’d made at the request of a hospital social worker to answer questions about what it was like to be terminally ill, and which she afterward regretted—as I’d suspected, it’s not as bad as she made it sound. I, at least, would not describe it, as she did, as her going “off the rails,” even though she made me wince a few times. What will I miss most? I won’t miss anything, I’ll be dead. I won’t have any feelings. Brittle little laugh.

  She sounds irked. She is irked. (How often has it been said of me that I don’t suffer fools.)

  A surprise: asked whether she’d thought of taking her own life, without hesitation she answers no, when in fact we know this thought had been with her from the day of her diagnosis.

  Regrets?

  Not that she hadn’t spent more time with her daughter, not that she hadn’t succeeded in making amends with her, but rather that she hadn’t had another child (a statement that obviously can be read in two ways).

  How she loathes the term bucket list. How she prefers fatal to terminal. Not only does she not believe in an afterlife, she is gobsmacked that so many people do believe in one.

  Probably it was her tone that she regretted. She didn’t want to appear angry or bitter. To be emotional over your own death was unbecoming (her use of that word on the podcast was one winceable moment). To the end, she clung to an image of stoical poise.

  Being alrea
dy there, I get sucked in and listen to the other episodes in the series. No surprise that most of the participants are women (as is the social worker). Aren’t women always more willing than men to talk about their feelings? Why wouldn’t they be more willing to talk about being ill and what they’re going through as they face death. Besides, most of those interviewed are old, and everyone knows how laconic old men tend to be—especially if at some time in their lives they’ve been to war. Also, it seems to me that, when asked to do something for someone else, women, even if not greatly enthused, are more likely than men to oblige. (There appears to be some controversy about studies, of which there are no few, that involve asking the dying for interviews or to fill out surveys or questionnaires and so on. Is it ethical to take up the time of those to whom so little time remains, ask some.)

  What I hear, listening to the podcast, is an extraordinary amount of accord. Whether or not there is acceptance, there is also fear. Fear of pain. Fear of the dark. Even those who do “go gentle” don’t seem entirely sure about the “good” part. (It seems the one person with whom the poet could not share his poem was the very one who had inspired it, and who is addressed in it, the reason being that Dylan Thomas’s father hadn’t been told that he was dying.) Far more anxiety than zen, I hear. Every single one of those interviewed has watched someone die before them. Bucket lists and last wishes are modest. One more Christmas. One more spring. (“I’m hoping for a last vacation with the grandkids” . . . “to make my son’s law school graduation” . . . “to finish the renovations on the house.”) Several find themselves quite naturally dwelling on the past. (“Mother’s face keeps coming back.” “The anger I felt all these years about my divorce I don’t feel anymore.”) Sadness and worry for those left behind, for whom one’s death is predicted to be harder than for oneself. (“If only my kids weren’t so young.” “I’m not sure my husband even knows where the kitchen is, he’s gonna starve to death.” And what about the cats?)