by Don DeLillo
“Reeves Chubb took it. I saw him.”
“You’re lying. Don’t think I don’t know how much lying goes on around here. What’s she doing on your sofa with her legs like that?”
“She gets these mild attacks,” I said. “It’s some kind of minor diabetes thing. No cause for concern, Mrs. K.”
“I can see bare flesh above her stockings. Why are your hands under the desk?”
“I was just picking some loose skin off my fingers. You know the way the skin gets loose around the fingernails. I was kidding before about Reeves taking your stapler. Walter Faye took it. Say, I like your shoes, Mrs. K. I didn’t know Dr. Scholl’s had merged with Walt Disney Productions.”
After she left I dialed Ted Warburton’s extension.
“Warburton here.”
“Hello, Ted. It’s Dave Bell. I just wanted to say that I enjoyed that remark you made about Chip Moerdler. It’s most gratifying to be supported by a man of your stature. What was it you called him—an ignominious baboon?”
“A thundering ignoramus.”
“Superb,” I said.
“I was sorry to hear your show is being cancelled. It had its faults but it was one of the few programs I made it a point to watch. Don’t be disappointed, Dave. You’re young and able. One of the turks. I’ve been hearing good things about you.”
“Coming from you, Ted, those are encouraging words indeed.”
“I shouldn’t have thought you’d need any encouragement, particularly from an old buzzard like me.”
“How long have you been living here, Ted? I’ve been meaning to ask.”
“Since 1951,” he said. “I had always hoped to retire to England one day. But in a few months I’ll probably be dead. My wife is American, you know.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You’ll have to come over for dinner some night. We weren’t able to have children.”
“Ted, there’s one other thing I’d like to ask you. Did you read the Mad Memo-Writer’s latest effort? The St. Augustine quote? Actually I don’t usually refer to him as the Mad Memo-Writer. I call him Trotsky. It seems appropriate somehow.”
“Trotsky,” he said. “Quite good. I like that.”
“What I wanted to ask you was whether you could clear up the meaning of that particular quotation for me. You’re really the only one around here who might conceivably shed some light.”
“I don’t think I know precisely what you’re talking about.”
“The St. Augustine thing. And never can a man be more disastrously in death than when death itself shall be deathless. I’ve committed it to memory. It overwhelms me. I’m not sure why but it just hits me. It knocks me out.”
“It is a somewhat killing remark, isn’t it? But I don’t see why you think I can unravel it for you. I’m the kind of man who likes to rest his wits with anagrams. Theology is a bit out of my line.”
“The endless leagues of China,” I said.
“I don’t understand.”
“You recited that passage from Kafka to confuse them. I was watching your face. You were playing a game with them.”
“Weede is an overbearing jabberwock and Reeves Chubb is beyond all hope of redemption; nevertheless, one is my superior and the other a fellow human being entitled to cherish the illusion of his dignity, if nothing more. I abhor deceit and trickery in others and I try to the best of my waning ability to exclude these particularly shabby vices from my own repertoire. No, young man, I was playing no game. I’m afraid you misinterpreted whatever it was you saw on my face.”
“In that case I apologize, Ted. I guess I tied the two things together. The memo and your remarks about China. I thought there was a connection.”
“You were mistaken. I’m not who you think I am. I’m a man trying to do a job of work and having a bloody difficult time of it if you want to know the truth. These tiresome phone calls don’t help any. People ring me up automatically when they need an answer to some infantile question or a question for some ungodly answer. I am not the research department. I am not dial-a-prayer. And I most assuredly am not the Bishop of Hippo.”
“I’m sorry, Ted. I really am. Please forgive me.”
“We are endlessly dying,” Warburton said. “We begin dying when we are born. A short time later we die. By universal consent, more or less, this is known as death. In time the so-called resurrection of the body takes place. Soul and body become joined in what we have already defined as the state of death. But although we are in the state of death we are not dead because body and soul are intact once again and there is no recourse but to resume the process of dying. Or, if you will, the process of living—the words are interchangeable really. And since this process of dying goes on for all eternity we cannot be said to be waiting for death. Nor are we looking back on death, for the simple reason that we cannot look back on something which is not there but here. In this paradoxical, redundant and somewhat comical passage, what Augustine is getting at beyond all the gibberish is that death never dies and that man shall remain forever in the state of death. There is always the chance, of course, that I have misunderstood every word. I managed to obtain a key to the multilith room. I run off the copies after midnight and then distribute them. If I’m not able to get it all done before daybreak, I distribute the remaining copies during lunchtime, as was the case yesterday. I work quickly and stealthily. Naturally I am above suspicion.”
He hung up. I kept the phone at my ear for a long moment, almost expecting his voice to return, drumming and bagpiping, overwhelming the animistic buzz of the telephone. Then I returned the receiver to its cradle and went for a walk. All the office doors were closed and I opened them one by one as I progressed through the corridors. Jones Perkins was down on one knee, golf club in hand, lining up a seven-foot putt; a tipped-over paper container served as cup. Walter Faye was reading the Kama Sutra to his secretary. Mars Tyler was at his desk, running a strand of dental floss between his teeth. Reeves Chubb was in the process of changing his shirt. Richter Janes and Grove Palmer were pitching quarters to the wall. Quincy Willet was having his shoes shined by the freelance bootblack. Paul Joyner sat on his royal blue sofa, barefoot, in the lotus position. I was like a movie camera catching documentary glimpses of everyday life in a prison, on an aircraft carrier, in a home for the criminally insane. Phelps Lawrence had gone but his secretary, Ellen Quint, was in his office, his ex-office, pacing, eyes red, hair ribbon undone. Carter Hemmings was strumming his guitar. Nobody was in Chandler Bates’ office and I did not open Ted Warburton’s door.
Then I saw Jennifer Fine turning a comer and I went into the men’s room. Later I went back to my office, woke up Binky and told her to go home. As she put on her coat she nearly fell, stone zombie drunk, and I had to help her to the elevator. On the way back I stopped at Jody Moore’s desk and we talked about her upcoming trip to Indonesia. Then I got my coat and went down to the Gut Bucket. The bartender Leon, who was studying to be an actor, ignored me for five minutes while he talked to a girl wearing an eyepatch and a zoot suit. Finally he sauntered over, set both hands flat on the bar and gave me his ironical Marlonesque cowboy grin.
“The usual,” I said.
“Now what would that be?”
“I thought you were Monty. Monty usually works this end of the bar. Cutty Sark on the rocks. It’s so goddamn dark in here.”
“One Cutty it is.”
I was on my second drink when five or six network people came in, laughing and stomping, all gloved, scarved and rosy. They joined me at the bar. The men shook hands with me and the women kissed me. We were there for about two hours, in our coats and rubber boots, standing in snow puddles. I bought the last three rounds and then they left, complaining about trains and taxis, cursing the husbands who would be waiting for dinner to be cooked, the wives and Volkswagens meeting the trains, the children demanding their gifts, the boyfriends who would be jealous, the pets who would claw the furniture, the relatives who would be arriving, the time, the s
eason, the epoch, the age. I told them to have a nice weekend. Then I had another drink, drew a smile from the girl in the eyepatch and departed without leaving a tip.
Wendy Judd lived in the east eighties, an area which always made me think of a drugstore stretching to infinity. Her building was called Modigliani Terrace Apts. The lobby was bleached in fluorescent lighting and decorated with gold-fringed mirrors and balding tapestries. There was a pool, full of cigarette butts, with a graceful stone naiad standing in the middle, rusty water trickling from her navel. Murals depicted Montmartre, Fort Lauderdale and Mount Fujiyama. The doorman asked my name and then called Wendy on the intercom and announced me. In the elevator was a printed notice pointing out that for the safety and convenience of the tenants there were hidden TV cameras in all the elevators as well as in the laundry room and in both the Giacometti and Lipchitz sculpture gardens. I walked down a long corridor. There was a Christmas wreath on Wendy’s door with a note pinned to it that read: Dis is de place. She ushered me in, missing my mouth with a pigeon kiss. Then I had to stand at the entrance to the living room while she called off the names of the other guests, adding coy biographical notes. They nodded when introduced, one of the ladies raising her hand with kindergarten brightness, the men lifting their rumps from sofa and chairs like pianos that do not wish to be hoisted. Wendy took my coat.
“And this is David Bell, one of my ex-lovers,” she said. “Isn’t he something, girls? Pow.”
Her apartment was decorated with revolutionary wall posters in Chinese script. There were smooth brown Buddhas sitting on the bookshelves along with several shiny volumes of Oriental art reproductions and a number of miniature samurai swords that seemed to be part of an ashtray arrangement. In addition to Wendy and myself, there were four men and four women in the room. None of them appeared to be beautiful, handsome or talented. I sensed tremendous hostility.
I sat on the sofa next to a girl whose left leg was in a cast.
“What do you do?” she said.
“I do things with McAndrew at Amherst.”
“Have I heard of him?”
“No,” I said.
“If you’re wondering about the leg, I broke it skiing.”
“I was about to ask.”
“Are you a good lover?” she said.
“Even a hawk is an eagle among crows.”
“You’re real quick. I won’t mess with you anymore. You’re too quick for me. I was trying to get you off balance and you come up with a terrific line probably from some great old Randolph Scott movie in that green Technicolor. Where do you drink? We all drink at the Bow-Wow on Second Avenue.
The bartender’s name is Roone. He’s real quick too. Some of the things he says. Too much. But I don’t like him visually. We’re all sharing a house at Fire Island this summer. There’s a half a share left. If you’re interested, tell Barry or Spike. A half a share costs a hundred and sixty. Then you chip in for food, liquor and incidentals. Bring a blanket because it gets cold at night. The house we’re getting this year is just one house down from the dunes. Are you a Scorpio by any chance?”
Then Wendy walked in, dragged a chair to the middle of the room and straddled it in the manner of a Berlin nightclub singer in the disillusioned twenties.
“I’m so delighted David could come tonight. David Bell is the only one who can save me. We were lovers in college. David had this white Thunderbird and we used to drive into the desert and take our clothes off. Pow. Where can you do that in New York? I went up to one of the sundecks in my blue bikini last August and they wouldn’t even let me take off the top. In Panama City I had a lover who had David’s eyes. It was fantastically uncanny. But he was a freak in everything else. I couldn’t believe this man. He was some kind of banana agent and he had this thing about tarantulas. We were in a restaurant once and he said what if a big furry tarantula suddenly crawls out of your food; what will you do; you have to be ready for something like that in this part of the world. I’ve had some freaky lovers. Antony Ambrose wanted to put me to work in a SoHo striptease joint because of my breasts. I couldn’t believe that man. When we split up he told me thanks for the mammaries.”
I went into the bathroom. There were books, woodcuts, a magazine rack, two scatter rugs, a small bronze gong. I sat on the rim of the tub and flipped through a magazine article about the war. Each page of the article was adorned with color photographs. Opposite a picture of several decapitated villagers was a full-page advertisement for a new kind of panty-girdle. The model was extraordinarily lovely, a tall dove-colored girl holding a camel whip. The copy said this high-fashiony girdle clings to your bodyskin and comes in three huggy colors. I turned to a brandy ad. A woman in a white evening dress was walking a leashed panther across the lawn of a Newport estate. The war article covered about fifteen pages, the text set in very small type. I realized the bathtub was full of water bugs. I went into the kitchen and Wendy turned and then we were all over each other, heavy and ravenous, jammed into a corner, and what I saw in my mind was Binky asleep on my sofa.
Dinner was chicken and rice. We sat around the living room, plates on knees, and searched each other’s raincloud faces for some clue to our dilemma. I counted the greeting cards which Wendy had placed on exhibit throughout the room. There were sixty-four of them.
“There are water bugs in your bathtub,” I said.
“That’s impossible,” Wendy said, her mouth puffed with rice, and I was sure that all ten of us shared a skittering image of quick black creatures nesting in every scoop of rice in every bowl.
“I tried to count them but there were too many.”
“This is a new building. It has a sanitary code you wouldn’t believe. David is just being macabre, everyone. It’s his own special brand of humor. Just go on eating and don’t worry about a thing. Once a week they clean and scrub every inch of this building from top to bottom with the most modern equipment available.”
“There were at least twenty,” I said. “You have to be ready for something like that in this part of the world. I’m sure they’ve been scanned on the radar by this time. One of them was having babies.”
Dessert was a nervous affair. The women did not remain seated and even avoided standing in one spot for more than a few minutes at a time. I said I had to catch a big silver bird to the Coast early the next morning and Wendy saw me to the door. She reprimanded me for being naughty and then, tongue to my ear, promised me a night of canal-zone pleasures if only I would remain. The elevator was not working and I had to walk down sixteen flights. It was snowing heavily. On Second Avenue dozens of off-duty cabs went by. Finally one of them pulled up. I got in and the driver batted down the flag and started off toward lower Manhattan at high speed in the total snow.
Sullivan lived in a top-floor loft on Greene Street. Her reputation was growing locally and I felt it wouldn’t be long before the critics and art marketeers and all those natty little gallery men with vicious shoes and dagger sideburns recognized that she belonged in the top rank of American sculptors. She worked in mahogany, epoxy and automobile paint. In her own words, everything she did pursued a curve. The smoothness of her shapes and the dull blunt colors she used seemed to suggest a horrible softness, that of slugs or worms, boneless things curling at the edge of one’s sleep. Several people had told her they were afraid to touch her pieces of wood and this pleased her but only to a point; she said her highest ambition was to give people the feeling that they were eating small live wet amphibians. The Whitney owned two of Sullivan’s works and private collectors accounted for about ten more. At least thirty had been bought by various corporations. A chemical firm in Muncie had recently purchased three of her smaller things and placed them in the lobby. This had surprised and delighted me. Like all those who loiter around talent I tended to overpraise Sullivan and to consider her work one of the essential measures in the salvation of the republic, and it did not seem impossible to me that Indiana might rise to new spiritual heights thanks to Sullivan’s three piece
s of carefully handcrafted afterbirth. She told me not to get too excited. The chemical firm was merely trying to improve its image; they had even sent a number of their executives to a mountain retreat where they walked around in sandals and togas; and it was all a tax gimmick anyway. I had met Sullivan when our unit at the network did a half-hour filmed report on something we called the phenomenon of power-art, meaning art produced by electric tools. Two minutes were devoted to Sullivan and her fantastic studio. It took almost a whole day to film this segment and she and I spent a good part of it in conversation. She said she liked me because I was so beautiful and sad, so squarely in the American tradition. Only Sullivan, I believed, could save me.
The front door was off its hinges. It stood in the tiled hallway with the word DOOR painted white across the glass pane which composed its upper half. I walked up the first flight. The two doors were marked GOOD and EVIL. I kept climbing. The tiled steps were rounded and black at the edges. I passed four more doors. One was labeled BREAST and the others were marked JUSTICE, MARTYRDOM and RIVER. Climbing the final flight to Sullivan’s loft, I smelled something terrible blowing through the building, some presence that carried with it a sudden vivid evocation of open wounds, swamp, panic and disease, the stench of a retreating army, and it was so strange and pervasive that I knew I must make a joke of it, as I did, ultimately, with all those things I did not understand, and so I assembled an opening remark to toss at Sullivan. The remark would be both clever and graphic and I was still working on the exact phrasing when I opened the unmarked door and walked into the room.
She was not there. Seven coiled shapes, hulking and purgatorial, stood around the loft. They were much larger than anything she had done before and far more complex, wheels inside wheels, scythes rising from the rounded edge of a ludicrous shield, men or burial urns, industrial menace of cogs and inner clocks, a massive butter churn, all fearful, indefinable in the end, looming and never still, her long soul in wood. To shape, bond and coat. She said it was the blessing of God, the final grace, to have given us opposable thumbs. I could never enter Sullivan’s studio without feeling that I had just stepped, unwillingly, into an alien country, one visited in the past but with a landscape that remained no more than the barest of memories. There were first the shapes circling in and out of their own smooth contours. There were the two spotlights placed on pedestals at opposite ends of the room. There was the wood-dust covering everything and then the hungry tools with teeth and claws, the radial-arm saw and saber saw, the orbital sander, the huge band saw and stationary sander, all their wires looped in the dust. There was, finally, most alien, the membranous chemical material which covered the walls and ceiling. Similar to the kind of wrapping used to keep sandwiches fresh, but somewhat more dull and opaque, this material was not wallpapered on in sections; it was a single tentlike unit, clinging, billowing slightly at times, bubbled with air pockets between itself and the walls. One rectangular section corresponding to the length and width of the door had been cut away so that people could enter and leave. The thing had been placed in the loft by the previous tenant, a Swiss inventor and collagist who was totally, rampagingly mad as only the Swiss can be. He referred to this, his lifework, as the Cocoon, and to himself as the Cocoonist. It had been his hope to fashion an environment that would be a work of life as opposed to one of art, an organism insulated from the hostile outer topography, a clump of palpitating caterpillars, a micro world, a man beyond the man who made it. The material, after all, was made of chemical substances and therefore could be said to possess some basic life-force different in degree but not in essence from that shared by all things which crawled or walked. This is what he told Sullivan and this is what Sullivan told me. The Cocoon had been just the beginning of his work but soon after it was floated into the loft he ran out of money, got into trouble with the landlord for setting fire to an alley cat as part of a formal satanic ritual and finally borrowed enough money to book passage on a freighter bound for North Africa, departing in a pair of Sullivan’s flyless dungarees and the Lady Hathaway shirt I had given her as a birthday present.