Thomas Maloney - Learning to Die

Natalie Mock grasps the handle of the rumbling kettle, stares out of the window at the neighbour’s fence and surrenders for a moment to selfish thoughts. She can’t believe this is happening again. For twenty years she’s constructed something original and resilient on the rubble of her father’s death. She can still remember asking him what the word diagnosis meant. Horrible long-legged insect of a word, now crawling back into her life. Did she ignore Dan’s symptoms because of scar tissue in her brain blocking out any thoughts of a re-run? Will it be harder this time? Slower? Lonelier?

She looks down at the two waiting mugs and feels an upwelling of love that inhabits, recolours her anger. Dan is sitting quietly, waiting. Is he ready for what’s going to happen?

She sets the mugs down and takes her usual place, half facing him on the adjacent side of the old table they bought in Sheffield for twenty pounds. Winter sun charms the twin snakes of steam and makes a dissection puzzle of the tabletop, belying, offending the overwhelming atmosphere of gloom. When Natalie speaks, her voice is barely audible even to herself.

‘It’s all those particles you work with.’ Dan says nothing. When he lifts his mug, he uses both hands. ‘Radiation. Magnetic fields. It must be. It’s scrambled your nervous system. That place you work is so — so unnatural.’

‘I don’t think it was my work.’

‘But that other physicist — whatshisname — Stephen Hawkins. He got the same thing.’

‘Hawking. He’s a theorist,’ replies Dan, wearily. ‘He wasn’t exposed to anything more hazardous than a stick of chalk.’

Natalie is powerless. ‘Then why?’ she whispers. ‘Why you?’

‘I don’t know. For years I’ve felt like there’s — something not quite right with me. Getting old before my time.’ This is the first Natalie’s heard of it.

‘Why didn’t you say something earlier?’

‘I told myself it was just paranoia. It probably was. We all feel a bit feeble inside, a bit achy and creaky, a bit twitchy — don’t we?’

Natalie shakes her head. Feeble in her mind, yes — ignorant, peevish, yes — but she’s always trusted her body. Firm, reliable, downright miraculous little body. If you look after it, your body isn’t supposed to just give up on you at thirty-three.

‘If living organisms weren’t unstable, imperfect systems,’ says Dan, staring down into his tea, ‘there could be no evolution. Some of us are not born to be ancestors. We’re just sketches for the main project. Defective specimens. Off-cuts. Dead ends.’

‘Stop. Don’t talk like that.’

He looks up. Reaches out a sun-striped hand. Natalie can see what he’s doing, even feels a rush of pride for her serene, nerdy husband with his unshakable foundation of self-knowledge — no snivelling, no wallowing for him, no denial, no anger, no bargaining (whatever the hell that means). At the same time, she feels a desperate frustration that they can’t face this together and in the same way. The normal, bewildered way.

This — the thing they have to face — being the prospect of Dan, husband, lover, best friend, disintegrating before her eyes and then vanishing altogether. She watched some films on the internet about other sufferers of the disease. Men with young kids, mostly — she’s read that more older people get it, but maybe they don’t have the same urge to record, to preserve. One young dad read bedtime stories into a tape recorder, for when his voice went. Another made video messages for his kids to watch when they were old enough to understand. For these men, the knowledge they would never be the father they should have been for their kids and wouldn’t see them grow up was the deepest of their many sorrows.

But they had kids. A legacy. The saintly wives had a reason to be strong. What if you have no kids to listen to your video messages after you’re gone? To one day stand your pre-disease, pre-dribble picture on their bedside table in their unimaginable student digs? To remind your wife of the man you once were?

What if you’re going to simply disappear and leave the world — and your wife — as you found them?

The gents’ at Mike’s office has two urinals side by side — not one or three, but a snug pair — and is notorious among junior employees for awkward encounters with their superiors. Stagefright; remarkable farts that can’t be remarked on; expectoration and misdirected spitting ditto; the garrulous, the weirdly intent, the human firehose. Some cowards pee in the cubicles, but their ungentlemanly behaviour is noted.

Mike is relaxed unless his pee-buddy is the Generalissimo — a highly strung introvert-turned-billionaire, a genius of sorts — or his immediate boss, with those wandering, basilisk eyes. Today it’s George, a friendly, tubby bigshot who trades commodities, wears a Rolex, and has a prestigious desk near the gravitational centre of the floor. He’s known as the Gas Man — natural gas futures were his big ticket.

‘I heard you had a good year,’ George says, with a glance round to see that the cubicles are empty. ‘Feeling pretty flush.’ Mike nods. ‘I bet you haven’t spent any of it yet.’

‘Nope.’

‘We all started with a year like you’ve just had. We all felt the way you’re feeling — out of our depth. But if you hold your nerve, you could earn twice, three times as much this year. Ten times as much, within a few years.’ Mike follows him to the washbasins. ‘Here’s a word of advice,’ continues George. ‘That dubious theory about money not buying happiness — you can only test it if you spend a little. You probably still feel like a student of life, or something. Forget that now. You’ve graduated. Go out there, stand tall, and purchase life’s rich tapestry by the yard.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ says Mike, in the corridor. ‘Thanks.’ He walks slowly back to his desk. Maybe the Gas Man’s right. Does it matter that he made his money from an erroneous trade? In this business, how do you distinguish the deliberate from the accidental anyway? He could start by blasting his way through twenty or thirty grand and just see what happens. Perhaps doors will open. He is, after all, the goddamn Rocket Jesus.

That night he calls Victoria. She’s seeing someone now, she says. That’s a shame, says Mike, because I’ve got a table at Hibiscus and tickets for the Hunger Games premiere and after-party. You’d need a dress, of course — my treat. Carmen’s not invited this time. Didn’t you hear me, says Victoria. I’m seeing someone. Pity, says Mike. Let me know if you change your mind. The next day, she does change her mind. Rich tapestry, here I come.

Dan Mock stands on the towpath at dusk, looking out across Father Thames. The river’s surface is flat calm but dimpled by the rain, and distinctly marbled in the fading light by meandering lanes of gloss and matt. This giant endpaper in monochrome is, he decides, a conspicuous manifestation of some subtle physics. It could be floating deposits — diesel, perhaps — interfering with the surface tension, or it could be thermal circulation caused by the entry of colder water from above. He’d like to find out for sure, one day. This unthinking invocation of the future brings the disease crashing into his thoughts: if he wants to find out anything about anything, he’d better get onto it pronto.

The disease will, at least, leave his mind untouched until the end. This is a relief not only because his greatest (or rather his loftiest) pleasures are cerebral, but also because he’ll be able to decide, in principle at least, when enough is enough. Dementia would be a more terrifying, a more degrading prospect for him: the world becoming senseless. But his mind will only get him so far. How do you take an overdose when your hands won’t move? Arrangements will have to be made carefully and in good time.