White Noise (36 page)

“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 water.”

“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

T
HE 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.”

“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?”

“How could it be incomplete? Death is what makes it incomplete.”

“Doesn’t our knowledge of death make life more precious?”

“What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It’s an anxious quivering thing.”

“True. The most deeply precious things are those we feel secure about. A wife, a child. Does the specter of death make a child more precious?”

“No.”

“No. There is no reason to believe life is more precious because it is fleeting. Here is a statement. A person has to be told he is going to die before he can begin to live life to the fullest. True or false?”

“False. Once your death is established, it becomes impossible to live a satisfying life.”

“Would you prefer to know the exact date and time of your death?”

“Absolutely not. It’s bad enough to fear the unknown. Faced with the unknown, we can pretend it isn’t there. Exact dates would drive many to suicide, if only to beat the system.”

We crossed an old highway bridge, screened in, littered with sad and faded objects. We followed a footpath along a creek, approached the edge of the high school playing field. Women brought small children here to play in the long-jump pits.

“How do I get around it?” I said.

“You could put your faith in technology. It got you here, it can get you out. This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature.”

“It is?”

“It’s what we invented to conceal the terrible secret of our decaying bodies. But it’s also life, isn’t it? It prolongs life, it provides new organs for those that wear out. New devices, new techniques every day. Lasers, masers, ultrasound. Give yourself up to it, Jack. Believe in it. They’ll insert you in a gleaming tube, irradiate your body with the basic stuff of the universe. Light, energy, dreams. God’s own goodness.”

“I don’t think I want to see any doctors for a while, Murray, thanks.”

“In that case you can always get around death by concentrating on the life beyond.”

“How do I do that?”

“It’s obvious. Read up on reincarnation, transmigration, hyper-space, the resurrection of the dead and so on. Some gorgeous systems have evolved from these beliefs. Study them.”

“Do you believe in any of these things?”

“Millions of people have believed for thousands of years. Throw in with them. Belief in a second birth, a second life, is practically universal. This must mean something.”

“But these gorgeous systems are all so different.”

“Pick one you like.”

“But you make it sound like a convenient fantasy, the worst kind of self-delusion.”

Again he seemed to shrug. “Think of the great poetry, the music and dance and ritual that spring forth from our aspiring to a life beyond death. Maybe these things are justification enough for our hopes and dreams, although I wouldn’t say that to a dying man.”