Dying Inside

TWENTY-SIX.

Winter is here. Sky and pavement form a seamless, inexorable band of gray. There will be snow soon. For some reason this neighborhood has gone without refuse pickups for three or four days, and bulging plastic sacks of trash are heaped in front of every building, yet there is no odor of garbage in the air. Not even smells can flourish in these temperatures: the cold drains away every stink, every sign of organic reality. Only concrete triumphs here. Silence reigns. Scrawny black and gray cats, motionless, statues of themselves, peer out of alleys. Traffic is light. Walking quickly through the streets from the subway station to Judith’s place, I avert my eyes from the faces of the few people I pass. I feel shy and selfconscious among them, like a war veteran who has just been discharged from the rehabilitation center and is still embarrassed about his mutilations. Naturally I’m unable to tell what anybody is thinking; their minds are closed to me now and they go by me wearing shields of impenetrable ice; but, ironically, I have the illusion that they all have access to me. They can look right into me and see me for what I’ve become. There’s David Selig, they must be thinking. How careless he was! What a poor custodian of his gift! He messed up and let it all slip away from him, the dope. I feel guilty for causing them this disappointment. Yet I don’t feel as guilty as I thought I might. On some ultimate level I just don’t give a damn at all. This is what I am, I tell myself. This is what I now shall be. If you don’t like it, tough crap. Try to accept me. If you can’t do that, just ignore me.

“As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most excellent speech finally falls into silence. Silence is audible to all men, at all times, and in all places.” So said Thoreau, in 1849, in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Of course, Thoreau was a misfit and an outsider with very serious neurotic problems. When he was a young man just out of college he fell in love with a girl named Ellen Sewall, but she turned him down, and he never married. I wonder if he ever made it with anybody. Probably not. I can’t imagine Thoreau actually balling, can you? Oh, maybe he didn’t die a virgin, but I bet his sex life was lousy. Perhaps he didn’t even masturbate. Can you visualize him sitting next to that pond and whacking off? I can’t. Poor Thoreau. Silence is audible, Henry.

I imagine, as I near Judith’s building, that I meet Toni in the street. I seem to see a tall figure walking toward me from Riverside Drive, hatless, bundled up in a bulky orange coat. When we are half a block apart I recognize her. Strangely, I feel neither excitement nor apprehension over this unexpected reunion; I am quite calm, almost unmoved. At another time I might have crossed the street to avoid a possibly disturbing encounter, but not now: coolly I halt in her path, smile, hold up my hands in greeting. “Toni?” I say. “Don’t you know me?”

She studies me, frowns, seems puzzled for a moment. But only a moment.

“David. Hello.”

Her face looks more lean, the cheekbones higher and sharper. There are some strands of gray in her hair. In the days when I knew her she had one curious gray lock at her temple, very unusual; now the gray is scattered more randomly through the black. Well, of course she’s in her middle thirties now. Not exactly a girl. As old now, in fact, as I was when I first met her. But in fact I know she has hardly changed at all, only matured a little. She seems as beautiful as ever. Yet desire is absent from me. All passion spent, Selig. All passion spent. And she too is mysteriously free of turbulence. I remember our last meeting, the look of pain on her face, her obsessive heap of cigarette butts. Now her expression is amiable and casual. We both have passed through the realm of storms.

“You’re looking good,” I say. “What is it, eight years, nine?”

I know the answer to that. I’m merely testing her. And she passes the test, saying, “The summer of ’68.” I’m relieved to see that she hasn’t forgotten. I’m still a chapter of her autobiography, then. “How have you been, David?”

“Not bad.” The conversational inanities. “What are you doing these days?”

“I’m with Random House now. And you?”

“Freelancing,” I say. “Here and there.” Is she married? Her gloved hands offer no data. I don’t dare ask. I’m incapable of probing. I force a smile and shift my weight from foot to foot. The silence that has come between us suddenly seems unbridgeable. Have we exhausted all feasible topics so soon? Are there no areas of contact left except those too pain-filled to reopen?

She says, “You’ve changed.”

“I’m older. Tireder. Balder.”

“It isn’t that. You’ve changed somewhere inside.”

“I suppose I have.”

“You used to make me feel uncomfortable. I’d get a sort of queasy feeling. I don’t any more.”

“You mean, after the trip?”

“Before and after both,” she says.

“You were always uncomfortable with me?”

“Always. I never knew why. Even when we were really close, I felt—I don’t know, on guard, off balance, ill at ease, when I was with you. And that’s gone now. It’s entirely gone. I wonder why.”

“Time heals all wounds,” I say. Oracular wisdom.

“I suppose you’re right. God, it’s cold! Do you think it’ll snow?”

“It’s bound to, before long.”

“I hate the cold weather.” She huddles into her coat. I never knew her in cold weather. Spring and summer, then goodbye, get out, goodbye, goodbye. Odd how little I feel for her now. If she invited me up to her apartment I’d probably say, No, thank you, I’m on my way to visit my sister. Of course she’s imaginary; that may have something to do with it. But also I’m not getting an aura from her. She’s not broadcasting, or rather I’m not receiving. She’s only a statue of herself, like the cats in the alleys. Will I be incapable of feeling, now that I’m incapable of receiving? She says, “It’s been good to see you, David. Let’s get together some time, shall we?”

“By all means. We’ll have a drink and talk about old times.”

“I’d like that.”

“So would I. Very much.”

“Take care of yourself, David.”

“You too, Toni.”

We smile. I give her a little mock-salute of farewell. We move apart; I continue walking west, she hurries up the windy street toward Broadway. I feel a little warmer for having met her. Everything cool, friendly, unemotional between us. Everything dead, in fact. All passion spent. It’s been good to see you, David. Let’s get together some time, shall we? When I reach the corner I realize I have forgotten to ask for her phone number. Toni? Toni? But she is out of sight. As though she never was there at all.

That’s Tennyson: Merlin and Vivien. You’ve heard that line about the rift within the lute before, haven’t you? But you never knew it was Tennyson. Neither did I. My lute is riven. Twang. Twing. Twong.

Here’s another little literary gem:

Samuel Miller Hageman wrote that, in 1876, in a poem called Silence. Have you ever heard of Samuel Miller Hageman before? I haven’t. You were a wise old cat, Sam, whoever you were.

One summer when I was eight or nine—it was before they adopted Judith, anyway—I went with my parents to a resort in the Catskills for a few weeks. There was a daycamp for the kiddies, in which we received instruction in swimming, tennis, softball, arts crafts, and other activities, thus leaving the older folks free for gin rummy and creative drinking. One afternoon the daycamp staged some boxing matches. I had never worn boxing gloves, and in the free-for-alls of boyhood I had found myself to be an incompetent fighter, so I was unenthusiastic. I watched the first five matches in much dismay. All that hitting! All those bloody noses!

Then it was my turn. My opponent was a boy named Jimmy, a few months younger than I but taller and heavier and much more athletic. I think the counselors matched us deliberately, hoping Jimmy would kill me: I was not their favorite child. I started to shake even before they put the gloves on me. “Round One!” called a counselor, and we approached each other. I distinctly heard Jimmy thinking about hitting me on the chin, and as his glove came toward my face I ducked and hit him in the belly. That made him furious. He proposed now to clobber me on the back of the head, but I saw that coming too and stepped aside and hit him on the neck close to his adam’s-apple. He gagged and turned away, half in tears. After a moment he returned to the attack, but I continued to anticipate his moves and he never touched me. For the first time in my life I felt tough, competent, aggressive. As I battered him I looked past the improvised ring and saw my father flushed with pride, and Jimmy’s father next to him looking angry and perplexed. End of round one. I was sweating, bouncy, grinning.

Round two: Jimmy came forth determined to knock me to pieces. Swinging wildly, frantically, still going for my head. I kept my head where he couldn’t reach it and danced around to his side and hit him in the belly again, very hard, and when he folded up I hit him on the nose and he fell down, crying. The counselor in charge very quickly counted to ten and raised my hand. “Hey, Joe Louis!” my father yelled. “Hey, Willie Pep!” The counselor suggested I go over to Jimmy and help him up and shake his hand. As he got to his feet I very clearly detected him deciding to butt me in the teeth with his head, and I pretended to be paying no attention, except when he charged I stepped coolly to one side and banged my fists down on his lowered back. That shattered him. “David cheats!” he moaned. “David cheats!”

How they all hated me for my cleverness! What they interpreted as my cleverness, that is. My sly knack of always guessing what was going to happen. Well, that wouldn’t be a problem now. They’d all love me. Loving me, they’d beat me to a pulp.

Judith answers the door. She wears an old gray sweater and blue slacks with a hole in the knee. She holds her arms out to me and I embrace her warmly, pulling her tight against my body for perhaps half a minute. I hear music from within: the Siegfried Idyll, I think. Sweet, loving, accepting music.

“Is it snowing yet?” she asks.

“Not yet. Gray and cold, that’s all.”

“I’ll get you a drink. Go into the livingroom.”

I stand by the window. A few snowflakes blow by. My nephew appears and studies me at a distance of thirty feet. To my amazement he smiles. He says warmly, “Hi, Uncle David!”

Judith must have put him up to it. Be nice to Uncle David, she must have said. He isn’t feeling well, he’s had a lot of trouble lately. So there the kid stands, being nice to Uncle David. I don’t think he’s ever smiled at me before. He didn’t even gurgle and coo at me out of his cradle. Hi, Uncle David. All right, kid. I can dig it.

“Hello, Pauly. How have you been?”

“Fine,” he says. With that his social graces are exhausted; he does not inquire in return about the state of my health, but picks up one of his toys and absorbs himself in its intricacies. Yet his large dark glossy eyes continue to examine me every few moments, and there does not seem to be any hostility in his glance.

Wagner ends. I prowl through the record racks, select one, put it on the turntable. Schoenberg, Verklaerte Nacht. Music of tempestuous anguish followed by calmness and resignation. The theme of acceptance again. Fine. Fine. The swirling strings enfold me. Rich, lush chords. Judith appears, bringing me a glass of rum. She has something mild for herself, sherry or vermouth. She looks a little peaked but very friendly, very open.

“Cheers,” she says.

“Cheers.”

“That’s good music you put on. A lot of people won’t believe Schoenberg could be sensuous and tender. Of course, it’s very early Schoenberg.”

“Yes,” I say. “The romantic juices tend to dry up as you get older, eh? What have you been up to lately, Jude?”

“Nothing much. A lot of the same old.”

“How’s Karl?”

“I don’t see Karl any more.”

“Oh.”

“Didn’t I tell you that?”

“No,” I say. “It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“I’m not accustomed to needing to tell you things, Duv.”

“You’d better get accustomed to it. You and Karl—”

“He became very insistent about marrying me. I told him it was too soon, that I didn’t know him well enough, that I was afraid of structuring my life again when it might possibly be the wrong structure for me. He was hurt. He began lecturing me about retreats from involvement and commitment, about self-destructiveness, a lot of stuff like that. I looked right at him in the middle of it and I flashed on him as a kind of father-figure; you know, big and pompous and stern, not a lover but a mentor, a professor, and I didn’t want that. And I started thinking about what he’d be like in another ten or twelve years. He’d be in his sixties and I’d still be young. And I realized there was no future for us together. I told him that as gently as I could. He hasn’t called in ten days or so. I suppose he won’t.”

‘‘I’m sorry.

“No need to be, Duv. I did the smart thing. I’m sure of it. Karl was good for me, but it couldn’t have been permanent. My Karl phase. A very healthy phase. The thing is not to let a phase go on too long after you know it’s really over.”

“Yes,” I say. “Certainly.”

“Would you like some more rum?”

“In a little while.”

“What about you?” she asks. “Tell me about yourself. How you’re making out, now that—now that—”

“Now that my superman phase is over?”

“Yes,” she says. “It’s really gone, eh?”

“Really. All gone. No doubt.”

“And so, Duv? How has it been for you since it happened?”

Justice. You hear a lot about justice, God’s justice. He looketh after the righteous. He doeth dirt to the ungodly. Justice? Where’s justice? Where’s God, for that matter? Is He really dead, or merely on vacation, or only absent-minded? Look at His justice. He sends a flood to Pakistan. Zap, a million people dead, the adulterer and the virgin both. Justice? Maybe. Maybe the supposedly innocent victims weren’t so innocent after all. Zap, the dedicated nun at the leprosarium gets leprosy and her lips fall off overnight. Justice. Zap, the cathedral that the congregation has been building for the past two hundred years is reduced to rubble by an earthquake the day before Easter. Zap. Zap. God laughs in our faces. This is justice? Where? How? I mean, consider my case. I’m not trying to wring some pity from you now; I’m being purely objective. Listen, I didn’t ask to be a superman. It was handed to me at the moment of my conception. God’s incomprehensible whim. A whim that defined me, shaped me, malformed me, dislocated me, and it was unearned, unasked for, entirely undesired, unless you want to think of my genetic heritage in terms of somebody else’s bad karma, and crap on that. It was a random twitch. God said, Let this kid be a superman, and Lo! young Selig was a superman, in one limited sense of the word. For a time, anyhow. God set me up for everything that happened: the isolation, the suffering, the loneliness, even the self-pity. Justice? Where? The Lord giveth, who the hell knoweth why, and the Lord taketh away. Which He has now done. The power’s gone. I’m just plain folks, even as you and you and you. Don’t misunderstand: I accept my fate, I’m completely reconciled to it, I am NOT asking you to feel sorry for me. I simply want to make a little sense out of this. Now that the power’s gone, who am I? How do I define myself now? I’ve lost my special thing, my power, my wound, my reason for apartness. All I have left now is the memory of having been different. The scars of it. What am I supposed to do now? How do I relate to mankind, now that the difference is gone and I’m still here? It died. I live on. What a strange thing you did to me, God. I’m not protesting, you understand. I’m just asking things, in a quiet, reasonable tone of voice. I’m inquiring into the nature of divine justice. I think Goethe’s old harpist had the right slant on you, God. You lead us forth into life, you let the poor man fall into guilt, and then you leave him to his misery. For all guilt is revenged on earth. That’s a reasonable complaint. You have ultimate power, God, but you refuse to take ultimate responsibility. Is that fair? I think I have a reasonable complaint too. If there’s justice, why does so much of life seem unjust? If you’re really on our side, God, why do you hand us a life of pain? Where’s justice for the baby born without eyes? The baby born with two heads? The baby born with a power men weren’t meant to have? Just asking, God. I accept your decree, believe me, I bow to your will, because I might as well—what choice do I have, after all?—but I’m still entitled to ask. Right?

Hey, God? God? Are you listening, God?

I don’t think you are. I don’t think you give a crap. God, I think you’ve been fucking me.

Dee-dah-de-doo-dah-dee-da. The music is ending. Celestial harmonies filling the room. Everything merging into oneness. Snowflakes swirling beyond the windowpane. Right on, Schoenberg. You understood, at least when you were young. You caught truth and put it on paper. I hear what you’re saying, man. Don’t ask questions, you say. Accept. Only accept, that’s the motto. Accept. Accept. Whatever comes to you, accept.

Judith says, “Claude Guermantes has invited me to go skiing with him in Switzerland over Christmas. I can leave the baby with a friend in Connecticut. But I won’t go if you need me, Duv. Are you okay? Can you manage?”

“Sure I can. I’m not paralyzed, Jude. I haven’t lost my sight. Go to Switzerland, if that’s what you want.”

“I’ll only be gone eight days.”

“I’ll survive.”

“When I come back, I hope you’ll move out of that housing project. You ought to live down here close to me. We should see more of each other.”

“Maybe.”

“I might even introduce you to some girlfriends of mine. If you’re interested.”

“Wonderful, Jude.”

“You don’t sound enthusiastic about it.”

“Go easy with me,” I tell her. “Don’t rush me with a million things. I need time to sort things out.”

“All right. It’s like a new life, isn’t it, Duv?”

“A new life. Yes. A new life, that’s what it is, Jude.”

The storm is intense, now. Cars are vanishing under the first layers of whiteness. At dinner time the radio weather forecaster talked of an accumulation of eight to ten inches before morning. Judith has invited me to spend the night here, in the maid’s room. Well, why not? Now of all times, why should I spurn her? I’ll stay. In the morning we’ll take Pauly out to the park, with his sled, into the new snow. It’s really coming down, now. The snow is so beautiful. Covering everything, cleansing everything, briefly purifying this tired eroded city and its tired eroded people. I can’t take my eyes from it. My face is close to the window. I hold a brandy snifter in one hand, but I don’t remember to drink from it, because the snow has caught me in its hypnotic spell.

“Boo!” someone cries behind me.

I jump so violently that the cognac leaps from the snifter and splashes the window. In terror I whirl, crouching, ready to defend myself; then the instinctive fear subsides and I laugh. Judith laughs too.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever surprised you,” she says. “In 31 years, the first time!”

“You gave me one hell of a jolt.”

“I’ve been standing here for three or four minutes thinking things at you. Trying to get a rise out of you, but no, no, you didn’t react, you just went on staring at the snow. So I sneaked up and yelled in your ear. You were really startled, Duv. You weren’t faking at all.”

“Did you think I was lying to you about what had happened to me?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why’d you think I’d be faking?”

“I don’t know. I guess I doubted you just a little. I don’t any more. Oh, Duv, Duv, I feel so sad for you!”

“Don’t,” I say. “Please, Jude.”

She is crying softly. How strange that is, to watch Judith cry. For love of me, no less. For love of me.

It’s very quiet now.

The world is white outside and gray within. I accept that. I think life will be more peaceful. Silence will become my mother tongue. There will be discoveries and revelations, but no upheavals. Perhaps some color will come back into the world for me, later on. Perhaps.

Living, we fret. Dying, we live. I’ll keep that in mind. I’ll be of good cheer. Twang. Twing. Twong. Until I die again, hello, hello, hello, hello.