by Don DeLillo
Azarian came from Los Angeles to offer condolences. He climbed the stairs, shook hands with me, stood at the far end of the room. Somewhere along the way he had been given official word; her death was natural, coming as a result of unrelenting neglect. An acute pancreatic infection, viral pneumonia, an intestinal obstruction, a non-infectious kidney disease centered in the blood vessels of that organ. I wondered how much pain she’d endured in order to comply with her own cruel rudiments of conduct. Attrition. Let the stress of trying to live determine how you die. Ride along and hope it doesn’t hurt too much. The intransigence of an enchanted child. Loving the child, I’d been half in fear of the woman, knowing she was serious, an unbroken line defining whatever it was she’d hoped to gain or lose. Someone to measure myself against. Azarian went on to say that Globke had contacted the family and arranged for the body to be sent back home, air freight express.
“What are you doing in L.A.?” I said.
“Tremendous things. I probably shouldn’t tell you about it. In fact I’m determined not to.”
“What is it?”
“Blackness.”
“Black music?”
“Black everything,” Azarian said. “Blackness as such.”
“What’s it like being into blackness.”
“I’m not too far into it yet. But I’m making my way, little by little. I really shouldn’t be talking about it. It’s really deep, Bucky. Deep and dark. It’s pressing against me with tremendous weight, practically crushing my chest. A lot of fear is involved. All kinds of fear. It’s hard to pick out a single moment when I’m not afraid.”
“How do you get into something like blackness? Do you have to shed your whiteness first? Or do you just go hurtling forward, bang, and risk all kinds of injury, mind and body?”
“How do I get into blackness? Is that what you’re asking?”
“Can you put it in words?” I said.
“It’s a street thing. Blackness is a street thing. It’s the self-identification of the people on the street. Watts is a whole big bunch of streets. Same with Bed-Stuy. Harlem, it’s not so much the streetness of Harlem, it’s more the history and the badness of the vibes. Black is baddest in the best sense. I mean that’s where you have to go to make sense of the magic of existence. You pass through all that streetness and weight and terror and you come out a more dimensional person.”
“But how do you get into blackness, being nonblack?”
“I can’t put it in words,” he said.
I pointed toward a chair but he said he preferred to stand. He seemed to avoid looking directly at me. The curse in the eyes of the bereaved. I watched puddles form under his boots as a series of tiny ice slides occurred.
“How’s the band?”
“We’re laying down vocals,” he said. “Still plenty of contract problems though. I don’t know at this point who we’re recording for. People come in screaming at us. When are you making it back out?”
“Not yet. I’ve been set back. Have to reassemble myself.”
“Bucky, these people I represent. They’re real interested in getting their hands on the product we spoke about last time I was here.”
“Talk to Happy Valley.”
“I’m afraid to, Bucky. It’s not just fear of being physically hurt or maimed for Me. It’s the whole idea of who they are that scares me.”
“Who are they?”
“You know that better than I do. You’ve been in touch with them. They hired Opel to deal for them. At this late date you know more about them than I do. In other words you’re the one that should talk to them. I know you’re in mourning or whatever the hip equivalent of mourning is. So obviously you’ve got other things on your mind and I appreciate the fact that if you don’t want to do business right now, there’s a time and place. But if I go in there and talk to Happy Valley on my own, anything and everything might and can happen, especially since there’s been a split in their own ranks.”
“That makes things more interesting,” I said. “You can play one side against the other.”
“Are you crazy? I wouldn’t get involved in anything like that. Are you crazy?”
“Why don’t you stick to music then?”
“I am sticking to music, Bucky. Being into blackness the way I am, I’m getting interested in root forms of rock ‘n’ roll. I’m beginning to delve real deep in that area. But I also have this other part of my life that I’m trying to find a place for. There’s so much to be afraid of in contemporary society. I’m establishing a permanent relationship with these people I’ve mentioned on the Coast in order, among other things, to examine and find the sources of my own fear. Together we’ve come up with a plan whereby you with your influence and mystique can make an offer to the Happy Valley Farm Commune, this or that faction, flip a coin, whoever’s got control of the product, and you can do it without letting on that I’m involved or my people on the Coast are involved or anybody’s involved except who you say the involved party is. Do you want to hear the details?”
I shook my head and once again pointed out a chair. Azarian wanted to stand, remaining in a far corner, apparently trying to avoid the center of the room, an area he seemed to regard as dangerous, if not totally unapproachable, Opel’s deathly fumes still clinging to furniture and choice belongings, and he talked of the old days, his uncomplicated fame, the girls who walked in and out of his bed, several every night, coming and going like popcorn vendors at a circus. We shook hands again. Then he went uptown to be interviewed on stereo FM.
13
NOTHING CHANGED, altered or varied. There were no plants in the room to climb or die. I saw no insects. Sleet struck the window with sparse fragile impact and all demolition in the area was halted by weather. Time did not seem to pass as much as build, slowly gathering weight. This was the sole growth in the room and against it hung the silence, peeled back to reveal the white nightmares voiced on the floor below. I tried to remember places and things. Rain on the runway of the international airport. Rain on the simulated hamlet. Rain in the terminal province. Rain at vespers in the heliport near the river. Rain in the abstract garden. Rain in the boots of the bitch in Munich. Rain on the nameless moor. I returned to the radio, to watching the firehouse, to becoming fixed in place. The artist sits still, finally, because the materials he deals with begin to shape his life, instead of being shaped, and in stillness he seeks a form of self-defense, one that ends with putrefaction, or stillness caught in time lapse. But I wasn’t quite at that point in my career. I dreamed a return to the old palaces, the great jaded hulks of rock ‘n’ roll, boarded up but still standing, as far as I knew, in this city and that, always on the edge of comatose slums.
A man came to see me. He was wrapped in a double-breasted suit and high tight shirt collar. His custom-styled hair was rigid and thick, sprayed into place and fitted trimly over his forehead — a work of Renaissance masonry, it seemed. He stood in the doorway, coat over his arm, earnest hand waiting to be taken.
“Who are you?”
“ABC,” he said.
“Forget it.”
“Nothing big or elaborate. An abbreviated interview. Your televised comments on topics of interest. Won’t take ten minutes. We’re all set up downstairs. Ten minutes. You’ve got my word, Bucky. The word of a personal admirer.”
“Positively never.”
“I’ve got a slot on the local mid-morning news. In case you didn’t catch the face. I do youth events and youth personalities. Sure, it’s the same old commercial brainwash that we’ve all been fighting against but on the other hand the only way we can get exposure for certain voices is to slip them into little scheduling cracks here and there. It’s a question of easing the pressure the different slots exert on each other and then slipping in there with the visionaries, the prophets if you will, the authentic non-bullshit voices. Ten minutes of televised question and answer. Frankly I’ve been researching hell out of you.”
“No.”
“I haven’t do
ne this kind of massive research since I’ve been in the glamour end of the business. I used to be in the ass end. But there’s a softening in the market as old faces crumble and new slots become available. I’m trying to fill some of these slots with youth-oriented con-ceptuals. Bucky, just your unrehearsed comments on the rumors, the whereabouts, the future plans if any. What I’m making is really a small demand on your time. Frankly it barely qualifies as a demand, considering the demands I’m accustomed to making.”
“Maybe later in the decade.”
“Your power is growing, Bucky. The more time you spend in isolation, the more demands are made on the various media to communicate some relevant words and pictures. We make demands on you not because we’re media leeches of whatever media but frankly because proportionate demands are being made on us. People want words and pictures. They want images. Your power grows. The less you say, the more you are. But this is an obvious truism of the industry and I didn’t come down here to present my credentials as some kind of theorist or moneychanger in ideas. I’m an on-camera entity. I do my thing and go to black. It’s a complicated way to live. Let me tell you in ten words or less what I’ve got downstairs.”
“Can it wait?”
“I’ve got camera and I’ve got sound,” he said. “They’re down there in the street. Cameraman, soundman, both top people, artists if you will. We’d like to do the interview directly in front of the building. We do a vertical pan down the building right to you and me. We’re standing there in the sleet. I’m holding an umbrella over both of us as we talk.”
He looked at my hands and then my face, as if checking flesh tones and textures to measure against his camera’s passion, the nibbling skills of its enormous jaws.
“Come back when I’m not here,” I said. “It’ll be easier. You can do whatever you want.”
“I’m really anxious to fill those slots, Bucky. Your power grows. I hate to think of all those slots going unfilled. What’ll we put in there? We’ve used clips of rock festivals absolutely everywhere but in the Okefenokee Swamp and I’m sure that’s next with everybody either getting typhoid or ripped apart by alligators.”
“That’s an interesting shirt you’re wearing.”
“This shirt I’m wearing? This shirt is a knit concept. Higher neckband than the average knit. Treble-button cuffs. Strong coloration. Snug body-fit. It’s a Scandinavian import and it totals out at twenty-two ninety-five. Take a look at my face.”
“Why?”
“Take a look at my face. Go ahead, a close look. Now what do you see?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You see healthy pores. You see pores that aren’t clogged. How do I do it, right? I’ve got a facial-aid skin machine. This is a device for cleansing pores of all the pollutants in the air. It blasts pollutants right out of the holes in the face. Why do I take the trouble, right? Listen, I’m on camera an average of three minutes total every day of the week six days a week. That tells you everything. The heat. The lights. The tension. The sweat. The tight close-ups. Now it begins to make sense, right? The skin machine. The accessory pore-brush. The clear gel peel-away mask. The deep dissolving nonaller-genic soap. I make it my business to communicate a crisp image. Do you want me to tell you how I knew you were here?”
“No.”
“Somebody talked,” he said. “Somebody’s pushing. Somebody’s trying to get you out of here. But meanwhile it’s time for me to get back uptown. Shame to waste that slot. God bless, despite everything. So long now. See you soon. Peace.”
“War,” I said.
I listened to the radio. Announcers took turns reciting the same news reports. Each man gave way to the next man in the series until a cycle was completed. Wording was altered only slightly and vocal tones remained consistent all through the hour. Out of a nest of static came a new voice now, fantastic and savage, beautiful to my ear, churning with gastric power.
“Lissen what I say, bay-bee, this be Doo-Wop here, bop and groove, yow yow yow, lissen what I say but no do what I do, boogie with your footie, ay chihuahua, stone gold monster music, down and round, popping at my console, Doo-Wop bay-bee, lissen and live, stone gold number eight, Bad Jasper Brown with Mama Mama Mama, jive and dive, Doo-Wop bopping your dead head, yow you) yow, stone gold eight, mama mama what’s it all mean, Bad Jasper, cut me down.”
Hanes visited then. His exemplary fatigue made him appear even younger than he was, stylish boy of the boulevards, intelligent and frail, ever ready to renounce even his own spectral pleasures, a voluptuary indulging himself in the idea of restraint. He was carrying a Macy’s shopping bag.
“Regrets et cetera,” he said. “She was just beginning to accept me as a person. She even said she might eventually learn to like me. I have no reason to believe it wouldn’t have worked out — Opel and I working together.”
“Did you come for the package?”
“There’s a corpo on the steps outside.”
“Must be recent,” I said.
“His head’s been bashed.”
“We need Florence Nightingale to come back and tell us how to deal with these matters.”
“I may get an eight-track stereo cartridge recorder. What kind do you recommend I get? It’s the one thing my music system’s missing. Don’t let money interfere with your line of thought. I may very soon be in a position to afford pretty much the best.”
“I’m not up on things,” I said.
“You’re missing a lot. There’s a lot going on. It’s all under the surface, of course. Surface events are practically nil. But that doesn’t mean nothing’s going on. Incidentally you were seen in three different cities in England day before yesterday. And you’re buried in an unmarked grave in rural Montana. As opposed to urban Montana, I guess.”
“The rumors are getting a little sloppy.”
“Poetic is the word according to Globke. But things keep going. Things haven’t let up at all. The press is still having the dry heaves over your disappearance. The underground press. The radical press. The trade press. The straight press. The revolutionary press.”
“It can’t be much of a disappearance. ABC was here this morning. Do you want the package or not?”
“Do I want the package or not? Well now that’s not the easiest question to answer. I do want the package, yes. But what do I want to do with it? Now that’s something else. I’ve been given a plane ticket and certain instructions. But there are other courses I might pursue. These people known as Happy Valley aren’t necessarily prepared to understand every little nuance of the situation. I mean presumably the thing is up for bidding. It’s a free market, isn’t it? There are subtleties. Maybe somebody is prepared to bid on this product. There are nuances. There are ambiguities. Life itself is sheer ambiguity. If a person doesn’t see that, he’s either an asshole or a fascist.”
“But you’ll take the package with you.”
“Absolutely,” he said. I’ll do that absolutely. In fact I leave on vacation in a matter of hours. Point or points unknown. Globke will have to get along without me for the next few weeks. Actually I haven’t made my big decision yet. I want to wait till the last minute. This flight or that. I may choose to take my seat at the negotiating table with Dr. Pepper. Or I may decide to deal on my own. Straight salary gets to be boring, tax structures being what they are. So who knows? I may risk all.”
“Florence Nightingale and a whole lot of bandages.”
He raised the shopping bag.
“Here, take this,” he said.
“What is it?”
“It’s the product.”
The package he took from the shopping bag looked the same as the one in the trunk. Brown wrapping paper. Brown gummed tape. Same size. Roughly the same weight. Hanes displayed his amusement by putting his hand to his face and gazing into the middle distance.
“Opel,” I said.
“Very good. Excellent. I didn’t think you’d know. She gave it to me when I was last here. You were sleeping the
sleep of the innocent. She told me to call it the product. I don’t normally approve of private jokes. But in this case, two people I’ve admired — why not? Apparently she was going to leave it here for you to find once we were on our way to Pepperland. She had no intention of coming back here, as you may or may not know. When we finished with Dr. Pepper she planned to head directly for Spain. Eventually you’d find the package and that would be the end of the little joke. But when the courier turned out to be an old acquaintance, namely myself, she thought it would be a nice idea to embellish the joke by having me deliver the goods. I have no idea what’s in there and don’t intend to ask. To be opened when the Glob begins to menace. Her words. When the Glob begins to menace.”
“Whatever it is, it’s my birthday present.”
“Happy birthday,” he said. “But I want you to know I’m disappointed you don’t have any advice for me on what kind of cartridge recorder to get. I love to get advice from people at the top of a particular professional heap. Any kind of advice from such people I find is worth listening to.”
“Any kind at all?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
“Be willing to die for your beliefs, or computer printouts of your beliefs.”
“That’s nearly a very interesting remark,” Hanes said.
I opened the trunk, gave him the original package and replaced it with Opel’s gift. That night there was a woman in the hall when I went down the stairs. She was in the process of opening the door to the first floor apartment. Her galoshes, with shoes inside them, were set against the wall, dripping snow, and she stood in bare feet and sorted through the keys in her handbag. She was a short compact woman whose ankles seemed to have a special density. I nodded to her — the kind of greeting exchanged by men confined in submarines for long periods.