The Benefactor

by Susan Sontag

  It was news of the difficulty Jean-Jacques might soon be in which impelled me to resume my relationship with him. For some months after my wife’s death, I could not bear the thought of seeing him. I couldn’t help holding him partly responsible for the distressing events of that fatal night, and the fact that he made no effort to see me after the funeral confirmed the unhappy revelation of his contempt for me. But when I heard that he might be in serious trouble, I decided to call on him, and our friendship revived in a weary, guarded way. We used to meet at his rooms, or mine, or at some restaurant for lunch or dinner. Jean-Jacques had changed so much that he rarely spent any time in cafés now, except to meet someone such as a translator or a young writer with whom he had made a definite appointment.

  His habits had changed in another way. Age, naturally, now made unseemly and unconvincing his nocturnal excursions in costume. Nevertheless I should not have supposed that Jean-Jacques had given up his philandering, promiscuous habits. Imagine, then, my astonishment when he told me one time when we met for dinner, about a year after my wife’s death, that he had fallen in love, and for the first time in his life had taken someone to live with him. He described the object of his affections, a young Greek theological student, with such ardor that I could not fail to be persuaded of the change in him. Shortly after, I was introduced to the young man, whom I found stolid rather than charming. Dimitri had curly black hair and wore eyeglasses, and talked a great deal about his mother and about an obscure schism in the Orthodox Church on which he was writing his dissertation. An unlikely choice for Jean-Jacques! I was not surprised to learn later that he had left Jean-Jacques, but I was surprised that my friend was so dejected.

  I have to admit that neither Jean-Jacques’ lovesickness nor his new style of respectability moved me. It must have been a deep grudge which I bore him for his complicity in my wife’s death, though I could not blame him for anything in particular. What had he done that night except try to be entertaining, as I had invited him to be? And he was still quite amiable, although he joked less, and seemed less eager to hear accounts of my latest dream.

  Here is a final conversation, or rather two conversations, with Jean-Jacques, which took place some eighteen months after my wife’s death. I draw upon the entry in my journal.

  “Dec. 5. While walking to meet Jean-Jacques today, I longed for an act which might be completed, for our recent meetings have been inconclusive.

  “I thought of violence, because there could be no satisfying conclusion to a quarrel with him. He has always outtalked me.

  “I thought of betrayal. I could go to the police and denounce him for the black market venture, the affair with the SS colonel, and the other things he unguardedly joked about with me. I wish I were capable of such an act. But I doubt that it would be good for Jean-Jacques to be locked up in a cell.

  “Would that that venerable and happy custom, the duel, still existed in this country as a satisfying means of settling a quarrel, or merely a feeling of displeasure, between two men of honor who do not hate each other. As I walked I imagined this duel, but I could not find the weapon—sword? pistol? knives?—which would suit us. Our weapons have always been words, which wound me more than they do him—as in the following duel between us, which then took place in my mind. It was I who began:

  Attack

  I: You don’t take your feelings seriously.

  Jean-Jacques: They are too complex for that.

  I: You are Vain.

  Jean-Jacques: I am a homosexual and a writer, both of whom are professionally self-regarding and self-esteeming creatures.

  I: But you are merely acting the part of a homosexual.

  Jean-Jacques: The difference is amusing, and not important.

  I: You are a tourist of sensations.

  Jean-Jacques: Better a tourist than a taxidermist.

  I shot a look of triumph at my opponent, for I was pleased with my performance. But Jean-Jacques did not rest with defending himself. He proceeded to attack me.

  Counter-Attack

  I: You build so high that the bottom is bound to fall out of so unstable and fanciful a structure.

  Jean-Jacques: You build so low.

  I: You are a busybody.

  Jean-Jacques: You have a passion for collecting advice and reprobation.

  I: You are a villain.

  Jean-Jacques: You are an impotent villain-worshipper.

  I: You are frivolous.

  Jean-Jacques: You have begun to bore me.

  At this point, severely wounded, I retired from the imaginary field of honor. As I already knew, the verbal duel is generally without issue. Only physical violence or an act of unmerited generosity can finish it. Today, at any rate, my feelings were too sore to risk a closer encounter. Just as the verbal duel in my head was ending, I was passing a post-office. I stopped to send Jean-Jacques a pneumatique that I would not be able to meet him today, and spent the afternoon at a chess club instead.”

  By the evening of that day, I remember, my wounds—which were after all self-inflicted—had healed. The welcome spirit of objectivity had taken possession of me, and I could view the matter without pain. I saw that what was interesting about this imaginary conversation was that both speakers spoke the truth. Both weapons were sharp and well-aimed. I knew that I no longer amused Jean-Jacques—probably ever since I married, a decision which he was incapable of understanding. Jean-Jacques did not appreciate the subtle climaxes and revolution of my life; for him, it must have appeared that I had undertaken a journey on a treadmill, and from his point of view that description would be correct. My hits, however, were equally just. It was true that he was frivolous, vain, disloyal, and homosexual principally out of loyalty to the style of exaggeration. Altogether we had become a most ill-matched pair of friends.

  The next day we did meet, for I went to call on him at his room. Jean-Jacques was at his writing table, soaking his feet in a pail of warm water, and cutting out pictures from a sports magazine with a razor blade. He looked sullen, and greeted me in a distracted manner. My own rancor had passed, and I remembered my old affection for him. But the impulse to violence, which I had stifled, was contagious. I observed that he wished to denounce me.

  “Why don’t you speak?” I said. His complexion was sallow, I noticed, and he seemed to have a bad cold.

  “Why should I?” he replied sourly. “You can talk without me.”

  “But this morning I’ve nothing to say. I think I have come to do something.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said, blowing his nose vigorously and then staring for a long time at the handkerchief.

  “How did you spend your morning?”

  “Writing letters. Tearing them up. Pissing in my pot. Deciding to grow a moustache.”

  “Come, come,” I said, amazed at this maudlin fretful side of Jean-Jacques which I had never seen before.

  “I’ll tell you what’s the matter. Why not? You are the hero of the play, a comedy, I have been working on for more than a year,” he said. “Along with other things, of course. This morning I gave the play up. I can’t compete with your nature.”

  “Maybe you can’t write plays.”

  “Alas, no. My talent is intact. It’s my subject,” Jean-Jacques said to me. “You are a great comic fragment.”

  “Why a fragment?”

  “Because no life has completed you,” he replied. “You are a character without a story. You are a self-made objet-trouvé. You are your own idea, thought up by yourself.” He blew his nose. “Unless,” he added, “your character completes itself in those dreams you always speak about.”

  “No,” I said sombrely, “my dreams annul me.”

  “And the way you pore over yourself!” he said sharply. “I have no objections to spending one’s life before a mirror; I spend a lot of time there myself. But I can’t approve of the timidity of your self-regard. You are in love with your dreams but don’t possess them. Instead you hold back—hugging your dream-life, hanging over it
s cradle, deploring it, fearing it, perpetually hankering.”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t recognize myself in that picture. Except for one detail. The man in love with the idea of himself is forever seeking heroes before whom he can abase himself, since he alternates between self-esteem and self-condemnation. For me that hero has been you. However, I have renounced you.”

  “Well, well,” Jean-Jacques smiled. “A declaration of independence, is it? My objet-trouvé is climbing down off my shelf?”

  “Your words don’t hurt me. Let’s be friends.”

  “Now that the war is over and those glamorous brutes, our enemies, have departed, I want to leave the city for a while.” He sighed. “I’m bored.”

  I knew his real reason for wanting to leave the city was to wait until certain unpleasant, and possibly dangerous, rumors and suspicions had died down. Nevertheless I took his remark seriously, knowing that Jean-Jacques, being so full of contradictions, could not tell a total lie about his feelings even if he tried. I began to explain to him how unnecessary it was to be bored, but he waved his hand in impatience.

  “I have to borrow money from you, old Maecenas,” he said. “My writer’s vocation summons me to the countryside.” He grinned. “You know my customary sources of income. These would be cut off. I don’t think I should take to seducing heavy-shoed farmhands or robbing parish poorboxes.”

  Another lie! I knew this to be untrue. Besides the small income which I had settled on him some years before, he had been making money from his writing; and such sources of income as prostitution and theft, which he had practiced years before when I first knew him, had long since been outgrown.

  “Why should I lend you money?” I said, annoyed at his flippant way of taking my good-will toward him for granted.

  “Why should you refuse me, my little dreamer?”

  “Don’t be affectionate with me. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “I can’t restrain myself, because we’re saying goodbye for a while.”

  “If I lend you money, will you be less angry? Will you be honest with me from now on, even if we never see each other again? Will we have settled our accounts at last?”

  “Yes,” he answered gravely. “Why do you think I continue to be friendly with you?”

  “Then I’ll give you the money. Where will you go?”

  He took his feet out of the basin and began drying them. “I have an urge to be a pilgrim,” he replied. “I’m thinking of settling near the famous grotto in the south where the lame come to throw away their crutches and the tuberculars kneel in the sun to bleach their lungs.”

  He put on his shoes, then his coat, and took me by the arm. We walked to the door.

  “I am sorry to part with you,” I said.

  “You don’t need me any more,” he replied languidly.

  We went to my bank. I made arrangements to transfer a reasonable sum of money to Jean-Jacques in the form of a letter of credit. Then after the purchase of a train ticket and some luggage, I accompanied him back to his apartment to help him pack. I did not see him off, when he left two days later.

  I was glad when Jean-Jacques went away, though I knew it was not the end of our friendship.

  Oh, what a gloomy winter that was. Terrible cold, food shortages, mysterious fires and lootings in the neighborhood where I lived, old friends disappearing, reappearing, or being confirmed as dead. I fell ill and remained in bed for several months, tasting all the voluptuousness of illness. It was then that I returned fully to the contemplation of my dreams.

  During the four years of my marriage and the two years following my wife’s death, there had been many new dreams—with interesting variations, second, third, fourth editions of each. I remember particularly “the dream of the red pillow,” “the dream of the broken window,” “the dream of the heavy shoes,” and “the dream of the arsenal.” The man in the black bathing suit occasionally appeared to advise or to reprove me, or to make arbitrary demands upon my limited physical grace.

  The first of these, “the dream of the red pillow,” was a mild, pacific dream. I came before a judge who sentenced me to become overseer of a prison for delinquent children. My administration was a humane one. I sat in a revolving chair in the center of the courtyard, leaning back on a red pillow, and observed my charges systematically. The chair, my own invention, moved too slowly. Much went on behind my back, of which I was only partly aware. But as long as the children did no violence to each other, I chose not to interfere.

  In “the dream of the broken window,” I was in a film, acting the part of a housemaid. The director explained very carefully the part I was to play, and cautioned me not to say one word more than was necessary. I mopped the floor, polished the furniture, dusted the books, and scraped the wax from the inside of the candlesticks. You may imagine my dismay when I inadvertently broke one of the window-panes in the course of my exertions, for it was necessary to shoot the entire scene again.

  In “the dream of the heavy shoes,” I was looking for Jean-Jacques, who had been caught in an indecent act with the village idiot boy and had fled the country. I remember the rounded shoulders and dirty knees of the idiot boy, the torn coffee-colored shorts and dirty undershirt he wore, and above all the heavy leather shoes two sizes too big for him, in which he lumbered through the dream. I pleaded for Jean-Jacques before the authorities, and he was pardoned.

  In “the dream of the arsenal,” I was conscripted into preparing a huge bomb which was to be dropped upon the enemy. The man in the black bathing suit arrived to examine the progress of our work, and pointed out to us that we had constructed a searchlight instead of a bomb. He told us that he could smell a badly-executed task from a great distance, and that the stench of our irresponsible exertions had drawn him all the way from his headquarters several hundred miles away.

  The subject of my dreams was often judgment and punishment. I suppose that I was punishing myself for the judgment which society, no doubt through oversight, had failed to inflict on me. Once, more than once, I had done something wrong. But I had failed to provide a minimal center of force against which others would react. My daily life had become weightless, and my dreams continued to mock me with their pictures of methodical and useless effort. The calmness I had happily elected in my life appeared in my dreams in the unwholesome light of bewilderment, dependence, malfunctioning, passivity.

  There was one dream which gave me a clue in a different direction. This dream, the last, by the way which I shall mention without recounting it in full, I call “the literary dream.” In the dream I am my famous namesake of myth and drama, vowed to celibacy. Frau Anders is my lusty step-mother. But since this is a modern version of the story I do not spurn her. I accept her advances, enjoy her, and then cast her off. Nevertheless I am punished. As the goddess in the opening of the ancient play declares: those who disregard the power of Eros will be chastised. Perhaps that is the meaning, or one of them, of all my dreams.

  Thus, during my marriage and after, my dreams had not become less plentiful or less interesting to me. But I viewed them with greater detachment. I was now capable of asking myself if my dreams were a habit or a compulsion. One cultivates habits. One surrenders to compulsions. Perhaps a compulsion is only a stifled habit.

  My dreams, which began as a compulsion, had settled into a habit; then the habit began to deteriorate, to parody itself. Not sensing the change, nor smelling their bad odor, the odor of decay, I rested complacently in what I now regarded as the ample bosom of my own poetry. Little alarmed me, though much saddened me. This restful state of affairs was, however, brought to an abrupt close by a dream I had, some two years after my wife’s death, which was the only one of all my dreams that I could call a nightmare.

  I dreamed that I was in a crowd, walking up a hill toward some kind of entertainment. The hill ended in a cliff or precipice. My companions began to descend by means of toe-holds in the face of the cliff, which they managed as easily as a flight of stairs. But I did not find
the descent easy. I lingered, certain that I could not negotiate the steep descent, that I would become dizzy and fall. Finally I lowered myself a little way, then stopped and clung in terror to a sort of railing, unable to move up or down.

  I remember thinking that I had tried this descent before, and already learned that I could not manage it.

  The next moment, however, I was on the ground, milling about with the others who had made the descent. It was a sort of arena, surfaced with asphalt, but without seats and walled in on all sides like a handball court. In the center of this arena, quite apart from everyone else, stood three people, two men and a woman.

  I immediately surmised, from their scanty costume and their bare arms and legs, that they were acrobats. Also, from the way they stood together, talking among themselves, completely absorbed in each other and indifferent to the crowd around them, I inferred that they must be foreigners.

  They began to walk away from the center of the arena still talking to each other. But after taking only a few steps, one of them limped, stumbled, and then sat on the floor and examined his leg. I saw that he had a strange scar on his calf. Then I looked closer and saw his injury was more serious than I had thought: the scar ended in a disgusting cylindrical protuberance of flesh.

  The man and the woman stood over him protectively, exhibiting great concern. I heard the other man say to himself, “No, he can’t perform in that condition.” He looked into the crowd, then singled out one of the onlookers and addressed him directly.

  “Would you be so kind?” he said.

  The onlooker made some diffident, non-committal reply.

  “Please help,” said the acrobat. “You can see how badly hurt he is.”

  The injured acrobat still sat, holding and scrutinizing his deformed leg. The woman stood next to him and watched the progress of the other acrobat’s entreaties. This one, the man who entreated the onlooker for his assistance, was plainly the leader of the troupe.