Don DeLillo: White Noise

"Amazing lady. Is she right or wrong?"

"In theory? She's probably right."

"Isn't there a sludgy region you'd rather not know about? A remnant of some prehistoric period when dinosaurs roamed the earth and men fought with flint tools? When to kill was to live?"

"Babette talks about male biology. Is it biology or geology?"

"Does it matter, Jack? We only want to know whether it is there, buried in the most prudent and unassuming soul."

"I suppose so. It can be. It depends."

"Is it or isn't it there?"

"It's there, Murray. So what?"

"I only want to hear you say it. That's all. I only want to elicit truths you already possess, truths you've always known at some basic level."

"Are you saying a dier can become a killer?"

"I'm only a visiting lecturer. I theorize, I take walks, I admire the trees and houses. I have my students, my rented room, my TV set. I pick out a word here, an image there. I admire the lawns, the porches. What a wonderful thing a porch is. How did I live a life without a porch to sit on, up till now? I speculate, I reflect, I take constant notes. I am here to think, to see. Let me warn you, Jack. I won't let up."

We passed my street and walked up the hill to the campus.

"Who's your doctor?"

"Chakravarty," I said.

"Is he good?"

"How would I know?"

"My shoulder separates. An old sexual injury."

"I'm afraid to see him. I put the printout of my death in the bottom drawer of a dresser."

"I know how you feel. But the tough part is yet to come. You've said good-bye to everyone but yourself. How does a person say good-bye to himself? It's a juicy existential dilemma."

"It certainly is."

We walked past the administration building.

"I hate to be the one who says it, Jack, but there's something that has to be said."

"What?"

"Better you than me."

I nodded gravely. "Why does this have to be said?"

"Because friends have to be brutally honest with each other.

I'd feel terrible if I didn't tell you what I was thinking, especially at a time like this."

"I appreciate it, Murray. I really do."

"Besides, it's part of the universal experience of dying. Whether you think about it consciously or not, you're aware at some level that people are walking around saying to themselves, 'Better him than me.' It's only natural. You can't blame them or wish them ill."

"Everyone but my wife. She wants to die first."

"Don't be so sure," he said.

We shook hands in front of the library. I thanked him for his honesty.

"That's what it all comes down to in the end," he said. "A person spends his life saying good-bye to other people. How does he say good-bye to himself?"

I threw away picture-frame wire, metal book ends, cork coasters, plastic key tags, dusty bottles of Mercurochrome and Vaseline, crusted paintbrushes, caked shoe brushes, clotted correction fluid. I threw away candle stubs, laminated placemats, frayed pot holders. I went after the padded clothes hangers, the magnetic memo clipboards. I was in a vengeful and near savage state. I bore a personal grudge against these things. Somehow they'd put me in this fix. They'd dragged me down, made escape impossible. The two girls followed me around, observing a respectful silence. I threw away my battered khaki canteen, my ridiculous hip boots. I threw away diplomas, certificates, awards and citations. When the girls stopped me, I was working the bathrooms, discarding used bars of soap, damp towels, shampoo bottles with streaked labels and missing caps.

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My head was between her breasts, where it seemed to be spending a lot of time lately. She stroked my shoulder.

"Murray says the problem is that we don't repress our fear."

"Repress it?"

"Some people have the gift, some don't."

"The gift? I thought repression was outdated. They've been telling us for years not to repress our fears and desires. Repression causes tension, anxiety, unhappiness, a hundred diseases and conditions. I thought the last thing we were supposed to do was repress something. They've been telling us to talk about our fears, get in touch with our feelings."

"Getting in touch with death is not what they had in mind. Death is so strong that we have to repress, those of us who know how."

"But repression is totally false and mechanical. Everybody knows that. We're not supposed to deny our nature."

"It's natural to deny our nature, according to Murray. It's the whole point of being different from animals."

"But that's crazy."

"It's the only way to survive," I said from her breasts.

She stroked my shoulder, thinking about this. Cray flashes of a staticky man standing near a double bed. His body distorted, rippling, unfinished. I didn't have to imagine his motel companion. Our bodies were one surface, hers and mine, but the delectations of touch were preempted by Mr. Gray. It was his pleasure I experienced, his hold over Babette, his cheap and sleazy power. Down the hall an eager voice said: "If you keep misplacing your ball of string, cage it in a Barney basket, attach some organizer clips to your kitchen corkboard, fasten the basket to the clips. Simple!"

The next day I started carrying the Zumwalt automatic to school. It was in the flap pocket of my jacket when I lectured, it was in the top drawer of my desk when I received visitors in the office. The gun created a second reality for me to inhabit. The air was bright, swirling around my head. Nameless feelings pressed thrillingly on my chest. It was a reality I could control, secretly dominate.

How stupid these people were, coming into my office unarmed.

Late one afternoon I took the gun out of my desk and examined it carefully. Only three bullets remained in the magazine. I wondered how Vernon Dickey had used the missing ammo (or whatever bullets are called by people familiar with firearms). Four Dylar tablets, three Zumwalt bullets. Why was I surprised to find that the bullets were so unmistakably bullet-shaped? I guess I thought new names and shapes had been given to just about everything in the decades since I first became aware of objects and their functions. The weapon was gun-shaped, the little pointed projectiles reassuringly bullet-shaped. They were like childhood things you might come across after forty years, seeing their genius for the first time.

That evening I heard Heinrich in his room, moodily singing "The Streets of Laredo." I stopped in to ask whether Orest had entered the cage yet.

"They said it was not humane. There was no place that would let him do it officially. He had to go underground."

"Where is underground?"

"Watertown. Orest and his trainer. They found a public notary there who said he would certify a document that said that Orest Mercator spent so many days incarcerated with these venomous reptiles blah blah blah."

"Where would they find a large glass cage in Watertown?"

"They wouldn't."

"What would they find?"

"A room in the only hotel. Plus there were only three snakes. And he got bit in four minutes."

"You mean the hotel let them place poisonous snakes in the room?"

"The hotel didn't know. The man who arranged the snakes carried them up in an airline bag. It was a whole massive deception except the man showed up with three snakes instead of the agreed twenty-seven."