Stories

by Susan Sontag

  When I arrived at my mother’s apartment last Saturday, she was absorbed in a book about the war. Her eyes were bloodshot; she rubbed them frequently. I felt prosperous, healthy, at ease with myself. “You were always a bit stuffy,” she muttered. “That’s why the organization appealed to you.” She looked down at her arthritic hands. “We’re full of well-meaning prigs.” I didn’t mind her insults, if they made her feel better. And I marked that “we.”

  “Listen,” she said, putting down the book. “There’s another organization.” I think her speech was slurred. “What?” I exclaimed. “You heard me,” she said.

  “You mean one of the rival groups?” I asked cautiously. “No, I mean another one like ours,” she muttered. “But more enlightened. You’d like that one better.” She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. “I’m not shopping,” I said, almost gaily. The terror was underneath.

  If only I could commit a crime, and be done with it.

  Members in this country have started watering down the rules. If there have to be rules, I prefer them to be stricter.

  Perhaps I should say something about the structure of the movement. We have a loose hierarchy, with an organizer in each locality where members are numerous. Members in some countries use the Central Committee system; in others, they elect a president. There’s no written constitution. Attempts to set up a permanent international headquarters were abandoned generations ago as too risky, and it’s customary to hold the annual conference of organizers in a different country each year. The most striking evidence of our lack of centralization are the several schismatic groups who continue to call themselves chapters of the organization, and whose adherents (who insist on calling themselves members) send a sizable annual contribution for the upkeep of the central archives. And there is the long-rumored existence of entirely secret chapters, such as a sect in southern India that compiled its own anthology of quotations and Commentaries. Besides the academy for training advanced members, the only regular institution in each locality is a court. The duties of the court (which is composed of ten senior members) require that it convene whenever a persecution of the movement seems imminent, to draw up plans for safeguarding the members’ lives and properties. The decisions of the court, when it functions in the usual, judicial sense, don’t require a unanimous vote. I might explain that nothing is ever unanimous in the society.

  The court also screens candidates for membership and supervises the education of new members. At the court of the local branch, disciples and counterdisciples of the old man hold frequent classes on our history and teachings. (He is housebound now, because of his illnesses and because he is preparing another book.) After a lecture, the class is thrown open to discussion. The movement has traditionally placed great faith in lengthy and free debate. Members are not a particularly quarrelsome lot. At least, the quarrels practically never lead to physical violence. But we are notorious among outsiders for being word-drunk and loquacious. Our weekly meetings, scheduled to break off at midnight, often go on until three in the morning. After a meeting is adjourned, a few members can usually be found outside, continuing the discussion until dawn.

  Are these discussions a device whereby we perpetuate ourselves? In my twelve years of belonging to the organization, I don’t remember that anything has ever been decided at a meeting. Words with us seem to be ends in themselves. We spend altogether too much time talking.

  Perhaps that’s why the bodies of most members strike me, now, as underdeveloped; why so many of us who inhabit northern climates exhibit an uncommon sensitivity to the cold, and often seem a bit overdressed alongside nonmembers. When I see the members standing outside the meeting hall in the early hours of the morning, the steam rising from the manholes in the empty streets, disputing some fine point in the discussion, I see them in my mind’s eye mostly in turtleneck sweaters and long overcoats—whatever the season.

  Perhaps I exaggerate.

  In the tropical country to which I imagine moving with Lee, we could complain all the time about the heat. Our daughter would grow up a familiar of piranhas. She would swim naked with village children in the local stream. She would sleep under mosquito netting. I would sweat over my typewriter; and when it broke down there would be nobody to repair it. Lee would be out in the bush, dispensing quinine pills and treating scabrous infants and examining the feet of water carriers for jungle rot. Every few weeks I would take a raft downriver to the nearest post office to send off my proofs or collect a small check for the last book or receive a new manuscript—perhaps in a language studied in college but from which I’ve never before translated.

  Lately, I’ve been trying to train my body against the cold. I just opened the window. The papers are fluttering on my desk. That may be the sound of a fire engine. The children on the staircase are romping like wolves.

  In the tropical country to which Lee and I might emigrate, the mail takes three weeks to arrive; and the postal service is erratic. Lee and I might hear of a right-wing coup d’état in the capital. We won’t even be indignant. We’ll be foreigners, and it’s none of our business.

  But we may have to work even harder in that green distant village than we do here, to stifle the feelings of strangeness. (I’ll have to translate still more books. Lee will have to deliver more babies, comfort more dying people.) Members tend to become despondent when they are away too long from other members—from the family-like shelter of the organization. Even if we enjoyed nature as children, we grow to feel uneasy there. It’s none of our business.

  Not even a twinge of indignation? But have we heard how bad it really is? Will the news reach us among our banyan trees that ten thousand union leaders, journalists, students, and other supporters of the former government were penned up in the new modernistic soccer stadium without food ten days ago, six hundred of whom have been maimed by torture and then carried out and immediately propped up against the cement wall inside the Municipal Park and shot by military firing squads?

  It’s obvious why members of the organization tend to cluster in cities. That’s where we can do the most good. Cities are where things happen, where (we feel) we are needed. In the cities, art is made and power is wielded. The decisions that affect everybody, for good or bad, are reached in cities. The countryside may seem beautiful to us, but it also seems morally empty. It is a place to exercise the physical but not the moral will. It’s not for cultivating any degree of moral intensity. The country is amoral. The city is either immoral or moral.

  Part of the manuscript of the organizer’s new book has been blown onto the floor. I’m closing the window.

  Need I talk some more about the moral will? Last summer, I almost left Lee for someone else. Sometimes when I said I had an appointment with an editor or was conferring with the old man, I had actually gone to a painter’s studio downtown. In bed with Nicky, I suffered all the pangs of guilt. Monogamy is rather more strictly observed among members than nonmembers; and we are known for the warmth and stability of our family life.

  The Translator Is on the Verge of Talking About Sex.

  Instead of going on about the moral will, I’d rather talk about sex. But there’s an obstacle here—of my own making. I have told you I am married. I have mentioned an adultery. But I don’t want to go into too much detail. I’m afraid of your losing the sense of my problem as a general one.

  That’s why I have made a point of not making it clear whether I’m a man or a woman. And I don’t think I will—because, either way, it might subtract from the point of what I’m trying to explain. Think about it. If I’m a man, the problem stands but I become a type. I’m too representative, almost an allegorical figure. If I’m a woman, I survive as a singular individual but my dilemma shrinks: it reflects the insecurities of the second sex. If I tell you I’m a woman, you’ll write off my problem—still the same problem!—as merely “feminine.”

  Assume I’m a man, if that makes it easier for you to understand the problem as a general one. A man, say, in his m
id-thirties, tall, good-looking, sallow, thickening in the waist, etc., who usually wears a suit and tie. Lo and behold, Everyman. And Lee and Nicky are women. Nicky is probably a blonde, chews gum, and takes a larger-size bra than Lee. Nicky reads rock magazines and smokes pot; Lee wears glasses. But it doesn’t have to be like that. I could be an adolescent-looking woman in my mid-thirties, with long straight hair, small breasts, fair skin, and nail-bitten hands, who wears jeans and button-down shirts. If I am a woman, Lee can be my overworked, gently reared, soft-spoken husband; and Nicky my proletarian, paint-bespattered, beer-swilling, rough-talking lover. In either version, you’ll assume, the sex is livelier with Nicky than it is with Lee. Unfortunately, I have to agree with you.

  As a translator, I’m aware that this may be the only language in the world that allows me to leave the matter open. (Except for having to steer away from a telltale “his” or “her,” it shouldn’t be hard.) All other languages I know are saturated with gender. A little triumph. I have the pleasure of writing, myself, something that can’t be translated.

  Not that this is the only difference between this language and the others. Think of how many ways one could translate the following words: pariah, onslaught, inbred, insurgent, fear.

  I am reluctant to describe myself at all, for fear that too many particularities will make you take my problem less seriously. But I can describe Nicky to you, and that way I’ll also, by inversion, be describing myself. Nicky has many qualities that I signally lack—for example, an unwillingness to judge others. Nothing makes Nicky indignant.

  In bed this steamy summer, I tried to arouse Nicky’s sympathy for my longing to quit the organization. All I got for an answer was a smile, although not a callous smile. (It was certainly not the typical response of a nonmember, glad to hear the bad news about us.)

  Actually, what I wanted to be—when I was a child—was a saint. With the full awareness of how ridiculous this was. People who want, desperately, often want to be either angels or saints. Unfortunately, angels are not saints. And saints are not angels. Nicky (fortunately?) was an angel.

  Once, Nicky explained to me how it was possible to get through the day without judging. The art is in not letting any time elapse between events and one’s acting upon them. A judgment, said Nicky, is a cry of impotence. When people can’t do anything to change a situation, what’s left but to judge it? But isn’t judging necessary in order to act, I asked, when we are acting rationally? Isn’t there, in all our acts, at least an implicit judgment? “No,” Nicky replied. Judgment is no more implicit in acts, according to Nicky, than impotence is implicit in potency.

  As for judging oneself—one of my favorite occupations—you can imagine what Nicky thought of that.

  The portrait Nicky started painting toward the end of our affair did not judge me. It observed me, it recorded me—in my mid-thirties, tall and well formed, etc., or with long hair and small breasts and nail-bitten hands, it doesn’t matter. (It’s very important to me whether I am a man or a woman. But whether most of you know isn’t important at all.) I kept wanting Nicky to add something. “What more do you want?” Nicky asked. “It’s the face,” I replied. “I’m not as calm as you portray me.”

  “Do you want me to paint doubt?” asked Nicky. “Grief?” As Nicky left the canvas to get a beer from the refrigerator, I shook my head. “I want you to show someone in the process of becoming someone else. But do it without making the portrait any less linear and figurative. Don’t let the paint drip or smudge or blur.”

  “You can’t become other than what you are. Only more or less what you are. You can’t walk over your own feet.”

  “I can, I can, Nicky,” I murmured. “That’s just what I have to do.”

  Nicky was right, of course. But that didn’t prevent me from returning to Lee. It wasn’t guilt that brought me back. It was a very peculiar kind of homesickness: a longing for the word. Nicky and I could have a certain kind of laconic, aphoristic conversation. But the full-blooded verbal union that I had with Lee finally counted for more. Returning to Lee, I was plunged back into the warm bath of talk that I’ll never be able to do without.

  Never mind the pleasures of the body that I had enjoyed with Nicky. In the end, the life of members is founded on the word. Talking becomes an addiction—like alcohol (which members tend to shun) and work (to which they are particularly addicted).

  I feel how verbal we are as I reread what I’ve written up to now. But I can’t see the alternative. If I could be silent, maybe I could walk over my own feet. Maybe I could even fly. But if I’m silent, how can I reason? And if I can’t reason, how can I ever find a way out? And if I can’t talk, how can I complain, accuse, sum up? I need words for that.

  A summing up. “I accuse the organization of depriving me of my innocence. Of complicating my will.

  (I don’t deny that it has improved my mind, taught me to see the world in a truer, less falsely expectant way. But what use is truth if it makes you despise other people? In despising others, you only despise yourself.)

  I accuse the organization of depriving me of my commonness. Of instilling me with false pride.

  (I don’t deny there is altruism in all this. I’m ambitious not for myself but for the glory of the organization—to be a credit to them. But what use is altruism if it makes one more vain?)

  I accuse the organization of depriving me of my strength. Of teaching me to fear those who are not members. I accuse the organization of depriving me of my stupidity. Of making me solemn, heavy, judging …”

  Are you with me? Have I surprised you? A gasp of admiration, anyone? One short round of applause?

  I’d deserve it, had I actually said these things at one of our weekly meetings. But I’ve done nothing—except to adopt a certain evasiveness in my gaze when I listen to my fellow members. I am silent more often at meetings, although when I do speak it’s with an unaccustomed fervor. I used to be quite a capable orator. Largely because of that talent, I attained my present modest rank in the organization’s hierarchy. But when I get up to speak now, I feel my face flush and even my eyeballs seem hot. I stammer, I gesticulate at inappropriate moments, I go on too long and have to be gently reprimanded by the old man.

  All this inner tumult, while I am voicing sentiments of the most irreproachable orthodoxy. But it’s shame that makes me ardent, for all the while I know I’m deceiving my credulous fellow members, betraying their trust. Instead of expounding with my old certitude the Eight Lessons and the other doctrines, I ought to have the courage to make a clean breast of my doubts. “Look at me!” I ache to say. “I’m no good to you any more. Truths in my mouth are lies. Don’t listen to me. I don’t believe what I’m saying. I’ll infect you, you’ll begin to doubt, too. Teach me. Demote me. Expel me.” Of course, I haven’t said anything of the kind. I fear the laughter that might greet me, or the resentful smiles, or the patronizing gestures of sympathy as for someone temporarily deranged.

  Or maybe I’m afraid that the membership would take me at my word, and expel me, after which I should suffer all the pangs of exile. Habituated to the battles, the sectarian controversies, I would find the world empty. I’d be struck from the organization’s mailing list. I would no longer receive monthly publications and private memos. There would be no calls during the night for emergency meetings. No meetings at all. Alone.

  I don’t want this decision forced on me by an impetuous, irrevocable act that I should undoubtedly regret. An act of bravado, some histrionic gesture, would be bound to backfire. I want my leaving the organization to be my decision, not theirs. Though I don’t expect or hope to be cajoled into remaining (do I lie to myself now?), I should like my departure to be imposed on my fellow members, against their will.

  Enough of rhetoric. Only an important deed can do the trick. But even then there is the possibility that the leading members of the local branch will refuse to recognize that I have left and continue to treat me as a member.

  One idea: when I resign I w
ill get someone else (an equally devoted and trusted member) to resign with me; and perhaps, by that calculated doubling of the offense, I shall at least guarantee my own expulsion.

  Maybe my private discontent isn’t enough to make anything happen, which would accord very well with the central doctrines of the movement—just as the old man’s personal qualities and defects do not impugn or even describe his right to be the Old Man. For instance, his fingernails, the back of his neck, and so forth, are dirty. Tufts of hair sprout from his ears and nostrils. His tie is often egg-stained. His fly is usually open. Each time I have to bend over him, to show him a passage in a manuscript of his I’m translating, I am assailed by the smell of his sour breath. I can’t look at the paintings on the walls of his apartment, dreadful in their ugliness and lack of taste. I hate the way he badgers his wife. But what does my private squeamishness matter?

  The dignity of his office, the values he symbolically upholds, have nothing to do with the large mole on his chin.

  The last time I went to see the organizer was Wednesday evening, at his apartment. Lee had given him his bimonthly checkup the day before, and told me that his cardiac condition appeared stable. He did indeed seem more robust than he had been when I’d seen him earlier in the month; but with fragile health like his, one never knows. When I arrived, he started complaining about his lumbago. I expressed my sympathy; he brightened and, in the midst of telling me what a good doctor Lee is, called out for his wife and told her to bring two glasses of tea laced with whiskey. I was surprised, not just because I’d never seen the organizer drink but because, as is well known, the organization enforces a rule of strict temperance. Lee should have a word with him.