E. Doctorow - The Book of Daniel

“Susan—”

“I mean what did they do it for? What did they die for? For this piece of shit?”

“Susan—”

“Leave me alone, Daddy. You let him sit there and twist everything I say. My mother and father were murdered — why do you let him sit here and do it again!”

4. You no longer exist. This curse, for that is its literary form, actually has two stages. The first is a prophecy of the final outcome, a disappearance of Daniel into his own asshole, which is the only appropriate destination for his egocentricity. Until that happens, however, another act is required to get him immediately out of the human community. He is “written” out of mind. Why in this complicated construction is Daniel not ready now to disappear up his own asshole? Because he has not used up all the chances? Because he is not yet beyond redemption? Someday is not today. Nevertheless he must be purged. There is some indication that this was easier said than done. There is some evidence that she was driven finally to eradicate him from her consciousness by the radical means of eradicating her consciousness.

1947

A certain importance had come to the household. It was not bad at all. It was almost exciting. He wore his good white shirt with the clip-on bow tie. And his new trousers. He was told to stay clean. And nobody bothered him much. On the kitchen table was a fantastic treasure of cakes and candy: sponge cake, honey cake with thinly sliced nuts in the crust, home-baked layer cake with pink icing. The sponge and honey cake came in paper containers with the edges slightly browned. You peeled the crinkly paper from the slice and then at the end licked the cake stuck to the paper. There were also white cardboard boxes of cookies from the bakery — those little crumbly cookies with dabs of chocolate in the center or sticky maraschino cherries, or green dots. There were boxes of candy still wrapped; he stacked these boxes in tiers behind the cakes. He played store.

On the stove was a glass pot of coffee with a small light under it. Cups and saucers were arranged on the counter. Every once in a while someone, some woman with a whiff of the street, would come in and smile falsely, cutely, at him and say something stupid and pour a cup of coffee and return with it to the front of the house. Sometimes they would notice the memory glass on top of the icebox, and they would try to look sad. Voices which bothered him filled the house. The chattering flew back into the kitchen like birds. Nevertheless he had to admit it was exciting. The excitement shook the house into harmony. The house, heavy with people, the air made heavy with the voices of people, seemed to sit everything more firmly on the ground. If, for instance, a great storm came up, the house would be less likely to blow away with so many people. A great wind, crying and straining and cursing, would have to work much harder to carry away so many people. These people were like heavy stones to hold the house down. Perhaps a great wind would leave the house alone altogether because it wasn’t just him and his family, but all those other people who had nothing to do with it. Who had nothing to do with it.

Every now and then a man would come into the kitchen and pour whiskey from the open bottle that stood on the counter with three or four tiny glasses around it. He would pour the whiskey into one of the little glasses and gulp the whiskey down and smack his lips or drink a glass of water from the tap. It did not matter to any of these men if the glasses were used. They put the glasses down without washing them, and used them again that way. But they did not immediately become drunk, which was encouraging. They drank whiskey and went back to the front of the house and weren’t drunk, which was a relief. So the bitter volatile smell was endurable. The smell of the coffee was good, and the scent of baking that came out of the cakes was very good — warm and lemony. Like the visitors, all the smells were new, busy smells. They meant that when someone dies, not everyone dies. It was very encouraging to know this. Just because someone you know dies doesn’t mean you have to die too. It does not mean it is your turn to die right then. He was grateful for this. He was happy. He wondered if all the laughter and chatter from the front of the house meant everyone else was feeling as good as he was. He had noticed when he was answering the door that every person came in with a very sad look on his face, but after a few minutes inside was talking away merrily, chatting and laughing. Maybe they were simply glad his grandma was dead. Because Grandma had died instead of them. Because maybe by dying she used up all the dying for a while so that nobody else would die for a long time. Or maybe everyone was talking and laughing but only pretending to be happy. And only trying to cheer his mother up. And make her not so sad. He went down the hall to the living room to see her. There were ladies from the neighborhood sitting around her and talking merrily, but she was sitting on a little wooden bench and she had no shoes on. That bothered him. She had no shoes on and her hair was not neat. She was sitting in a hunched-over position with her arms across her knees, as if she was on the potty. Her face was all swollen and puffy around her eyes. He stared at her mournfully. She saw him and sat up, holding out her arms. “Here’s my happiness,” she said, smiling through her unfamiliar, puffy face.

He hadn’t wanted to be seen. “Look at that doll,” one of the women said. “He’s getting so big!”

“He’s a good boy,” his mother said. “He’s a very good boy.” She pulled him onto her lap, her skirt rising above her knees as she took him into her arms. She held him tightly.

“Well, that’s something,” another of the women said. “At least she had the blessing of grandchildren.”

“She loved them,” his mother said in an unnaturally soft voice. “For all her troubles she always had time to smile when Danny came into the room. He was her favorite. She never really got to know the baby, but Danny? Danny could do no wrong in her eyes. She was crazy about him.”

“He’s bigger than my Philip,” one of the women said.

He stopped listening. Gradually he loosened his mother’s grip until he judged he could slip away without attracting her attention.

In the front of the living room his father was talking to some men. His sleeves were rolled up and his tie was pulled down a little and his collar was open. He was smoking a cigar and moving it in the air with his hand as he talked. The afternoon sun was coming through the windows; it shone on his glasses. When the smoke from the cigar came into the sunlight, it became a blue-white color. He tried to watch one segment of smoke as it rippled up from the tip of the cigar and then burst into brilliant blue whiteness and then turned dim, even seeming to disappear as it rose, spreading out, above the planes of sunlight.

“It is unbelievable to me,” his father said, “that the Congress of the United States could pass such an insane bill. It is simple insanity. If the Communist Party doesn’t register it breaks the law. If it does register, it admits to the status of conspiracy to overthrow the United States. It is damned if it does, and damned if it doesn’t. Only insane men could make such a law. Only insane men could expect it to survive in the Courts.” His father laughed in a kind of fake astonishment. His father’s face was flushed and his eyes were bright. He looked very happy and excited.

A man said, “But my dear Isaacson, that this should be unbelievable to you I Do you have a lingering respect for the United States Congress that you are so astonished? Do you expect more from these atavars? Half of them are criminals; and the other half are petty bourgeois profiteers. Every southern Congressman is in office illegally, and each session they all vote to increase the appropriation of the Un-American Activities Committee. What is so unbelievable?”