Stories

by Susan Sontag

My mother has always been a heavy drinker, though you might not actually call her an alcoholic. This is one of the reasons I would never have expected her to be attracted to the organization. (She was already a tardy forty-one when she joined.) If she drinks now, as I suppose she does, she has to do it in secret. She must be ashamed. Poor struggling, unhappy woman. To feel still guiltier than she already did!

  To take the glass from the organizer’s hand, I had to come within the borders of his sickly breath. He seemed to be in a particularly expansive mood. We went on talking.

  I was hovering near my customary theme. I wanted the organizer to explain and justify the movement to me—without letting on how serious were my own doubts and dissatisfactions. Yet, as always, I felt embarrassed to appear to be questioning what this frail, venerable man had devoted his life to, the cause for which all his relatives (before he arrived in this country) had been executed.

  The knocking next door has started again.

  Instead of actually talking about the organization, I alluded offhandedly to my own restlessness. The old man caught some undercurrent of my questions. He urged upon me the necessity of giving up private distress. “All that’s irrelevant now,” he said. From his point of view, he’s right. My problem is, indeed, small—compared to the suffering that the organization knows about, sufferings of all humankind, of history itself. That, finally, is our secret. For that, we carry ourselves so portentously through the world. For that, we are endowed with our fabled sense of humor, our mordant gaiety. We do know about suffering. “Guard the secret!” he shouted after me, as I got up and rushed toward the door.

  Was he drunk? That can’t be good for his heart. I must tell Lee.

  Secret! What secret? That each human being suffers? But everybody knows that. And if there are some people who don’t, blessed be their ignorance. And cursed be my own knowledge, which connects me with the pain of so many people, living and dead—from people I’ve never known to that dirty old man whom it repels me to touch. Cursed be the memories of centuries of suffering that are not mine, except as I am by temperament predisposed to acknowledge them. Cursed be millennia of isolation and complaining. Cursed be the paper chains that bind me.

  “Deeper and deeper into the books.” I miss Lee.

  I’ll begin again. Although I don’t yet know how to leave the organization, I know what would help me to find my way. I need someone with whom I can share my perplexity, someone who harbors similar rebellious discontents. It would be no good, of course, to confide in a nonmember. (What a disappointment it was with Nicky.) Don’t suppose it’s because I think a nonmember is not astute or warmhearted enough to help me with my problem. In principle, I’d like nothing better than to place my entire confidence in some nonmember, if only to show that I do not completely share that habit members have of looking only within the movement for friends—thinking that members are automatically smarter, more virtuous, quicker than nonmembers. Unfortunately, I can’t. But my reason is quite different: my loyalty to the organization. However much I may esteem the intelligence and humanity of many nonmembers, I can’t bring myself to confide in one. Hearing my own criticisms seconded by a nonmember would probably make me want to defend the organization. Despite what makes me long to resign, I still feel the most intense loyalty to it.

  If some new persecution were to erupt tomorrow, and the members of the organization were summoned from their modest dwellings, offices, libraries, to report to the police station, and from there dispatched to prison and executed, I know that without a moment of doubt I, wherever I was, ill even, with whatever excuses of disaffection or lapsed participation in our rites, would hasten to dress, descend in my elevator, and march through the street, singly and unescorted but with as much speed as if I were being hurried along by the butt of a rifle, to appear at that police station, sign my name to the bottom of the list, and share proudly the doom of my fellow members.

  I’m not boasting. Of course, my behavior is fairly predictable. For this is just what the organization teaches: how to die for the organization, as well as how to live (apart). Will I ever find the courage to be a traitor? I would have to stop thinking that I was someone special. I’d have to stop needing to feel that.

  It’s for this reason that I need to pour out my heart to a fellow member, one who feels the tug of the same irrational pride and loyalty. Only a member’s seconding of my own disenchantment will make sense to me. I’m bound to write off any criticisms of the organization from nonmembers as unfeeling prejudice.

  My daughter is standing at the door of the study, munching on a celery stalk. She wants to know when Lee is coming home.

  Oh, it’s easy enough to criticize the organization from the outside. We are always being attacked: for our stubbornness, our vanity, our exclusiveness. I flinch when I realize I’m now echoing these judgments. I tell myself that when I, a member, say such things, it’s different. After all, I’ve felt the lure of the organization’s ideals, have submitted to its discipline. To make such criticisms costs the others nothing while it costs me a great deal. But does it, actually? What price do I pay, besides the agony of knowing myself to be a damned hypocrite? For I’ve yet to do anything—even speak my mind.

  And if I were to speak up, suddenly bursting out in a meeting and denouncing the organization, is it likely that they would let me go? After all, criticism of the organization is one of our members’ most cherished occupations. The last time I saw the old man, when I touched ever so lightly upon the defects of the organization and some of its members, he quite agreed. Of course, we’re pretentious and corrupt, he said.

  He’d been drinking tea laced with whiskey. Maybe he was drunk.

  I still don’t see the way out. The Translator Reaches an Impasse.

  That’s why I need a confidant. But who? Not Lee. Any complicity with me would be too easily explained as conjugal loyalty rather than independent conviction. Besides, Lee’s given no sign of ever regretting belonging to the organization, or being dissatisfied with its regimen. The prospect of approaching any of my friends here in the local branch fills me with apprehension. I don’t dare. Better to make a stab in the dark.

  That’s why I am writing this, and will have it photocopied tomorrow.

  I promise you who are reading this that only members have it in their hands. Nonsense, you’ll interrupt.

  I agree that what I’ve written may seem destined to be read by nonmembers. Otherwise, why would I have painstakingly explained matters well known to everybody who belongs to the organization? But don’t be deceived by appearances! How could I have seriously considered sending this to nonmembers? (That would be too vast a treason.) I shall have no confidant who is not herself or himself a member.

  I am mailing copies to a hundred members living here and abroad. Apart from Lee, who has a right to know what I’m thinking; the scholar (not Cranston) who actually initiated me, the third member I ever met; my mother, etcetera, most of the names on my list are members I don’t know, chosen at random from the archive files. Let anyone who cares to answer it.

  I anticipate my answers.

  Someone, perhaps Cranston, will write me. “Your problem is mediocre, and therefore has no solution. It is the problem of a mediocre person. The liberty you seek is mediocre, as is your view of the bondage you are trying to escape. Who the hell cares about your small problems? What do you know about wisdom?”

  What will I do then? Perhaps it’s true that I don’t know much about wisdom. But credit me, at least, with this: that a love of wisdom was one of the main reasons I joined the organization and have for most of these twelve years been such a zealous, passionate member.

  And if my notion of constraint and of liberty is mediocre, that still creates a real problem, one at least dimly sensed by millions of people: the invention of liberty.

  Several people will write to denounce me in much less eloquent terms, as a renegade, a coward, a weakling. Perhaps one of these letters will come from my mother.

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�Whatever put this idea in your head, anyway?” another letter will begin. “Don’t tell me it was slow discontent ripening over the years. There must have been something specific, some experience, a conversation with someone that set you off.”

  “Yes,” I will reply. “There was … an experience of sorts. But I don’t want to talk about it.” Why not? “Because it’s my business,” I’ll answer firmly. “Because I couldn’t describe it,” I’ll add. “Because,” I’ll conclude, “it’s not a reason for quitting the organization. Only a spur.”

  Someone, a rather high official in the organization, who perhaps will turn out to be George, will write me. “You never understood me. You thought I was just that gum-chewing advertising executive with thirty pairs of moccasins who married your aunt. Actually, I was carry ing out an important secret assignment in your benighted community, and had to adopt this persona as a cover. Now it’s your turn. You’ve never understood anything, for all the confidences to which you’ve been privy. It’s never occurred to you that the organization, as you have described it, is only a front. Stop carping, stop wailing, stop thinking only of yourself. Believe me, it’s a good cause, the best there is. And right now it’s in grave danger.” Then follow instructions designating me the assassin of a cabinet minister of a neighboring country who is about to start a lethal persecution of our membership there, using mobs of ignorant local patriots. A plane ticket and a phony passport are enclosed. I am supposed to leave on my dangerous mission tomorrow, furnished with credentials from the highest international council of the organization.

  What will I do then?

  Someone, perhaps a colleague of Lee’s, will write me. “You’ve got everything backward. To you the organization is just a cumbersome set of obligations. But I can testify to its value as a source of consolation. First of all, in history. Second, personally.” The letter goes on to recount the story of her marriage, and how her husband abuses and neglects her. “How can you want to leave,” she adds, “once you’ve invested suffering in the organization?”

  Someone, perhaps the organizer of a branch in another city, will write. “I have sent my instructions to the Central Committee naming you my successor. You are the new organizer.”

  One answer could come from Morgan, a school friend I haven’t seen since we were in our teens, who became a member two years after I did. (I have consulted Morgan’s dossier in the organization’s files; her living in the country seems to me a good omen. But what I don’t know is that Morgan was expelled in a secret ceremony eighteen months ago, and that it was only after her disgrace that she bought the abandoned farmhouse and restored it.) What I will receive from Morgan is not a direct answer but the mirror image of what I have written here. It begins: “I want to return. But I can’t.”

  And so on. I try to imagine the variety of responses I might receive. The outcome is unpredictable, for not all the responses are caustic. Some are sympathetic.

  Wouldn’t it be strange if I learn that I am not unusual—that the confidant I seek, far from being unfindable, exists everywhere? Perhaps wanting to leave the organization is a not uncommon trait in a member and there are thousands of complaints similar to mine in circulation throughout the world. If that is the case, should I stay?

  Not unless it comes from the organizer himself. (To whom I’ll also send a copy of this.) That may seem unlikely, but who knows? From his mouth anything is possible.

  A story is told about an organizer in another country, adjudicating a case in the presence of a favorite disciple. First he hears one side of the dispute, reflects for a while, and tells the plaintiff, “You’re right.” The woman goes out, and her enemy comes in. The organizer listens gravely to her version of the grievance, pauses, and then says, “You’re right.” The second plaintiff departs, equally satisfied that a just verdict has been rendered. As soon as the organizer and the young disciple are left alone, the disciple breaks out: “But, sir, the two stories are completely contradictory, and you told each one of them she was right. That’s wrong, that’s impossible. You’ve made a mistake.” The organizer ponders for a moment, and then says to the disciple, “You’re right.”

  I remember the old man’s brilliant essay on the principle of contradiction, the topic of the Third Lesson. Although I can more easily imagine him telling me off, berating me for my insolence and superficiality, I can also imagine him agreeing with me.

  Perhaps I shall get a letter from the organizer, saying that he wants to leave too. He has always wanted to leave, and never dared. To hell with his murdered relatives. To hell with his responsibilities. Even though he’s very old, he wants to have fun—dance and chase young girls and go surfing and play the alto sax. He proposes that we resign together.

  Should I discover that this is the case, then I shall stay.

  I’ve just reread what I’ve written so far. Consider that I have noted its limitations. (As a translator I have a certain knowledge of texts.) I squirm as I reread it. For I recognize that I am incapable of investigating my plight without embodying it. That leaden, bloodless tone of the true member! Anyway, other members will recognize my voice. It’s my certificate of identity, like a thumbprint.

  Oh, if I could change my style. (Then I wouldn’t need to think about changing my country.) Jump out of my own skin. When Nicky said, “You can’t become other than what you are,” I murmured, “I can, I can, Nicky. That’s just what I have to do.” If I could stay—with the strut of commitment. Or really leave.

  Perhaps if I rewrote what I’ve written here, it would be more convincing. If I could be lyrical! Unpredictable! Concise! In love with things as they are! But, alas, this thin, overscrupulous voice is mine. And if I could change my voice, have written this differently, I would not be the person I am. I would not have the problem I have.

  The Translator Indulges in Some Generalizations.

  My problem is identical with my language. I mean, if I didn’t have this language, I wouldn’t have this problem. If I didn’t have this problem, I wouldn’t have this language. I wouldn’t need your help.

  It’s because I am the sort of person to whom only this language is available that I’m forced to plead for your help and sympathy. But it may be that this very language is not capable of evoking sympathy—at least, not in anyone I could respect.

  You should be honest with me. Have I forfeited all claim to your sympathy by the way I write? Have you written me off as passionless? Unspontaneous? Too unspecific? Disembodied? But I have a body, I assure you. If I don’t tell you more about myself and the kind of body I have, it’s only because I know my problem is a general one.

  I’m trying not to lose my calm. I’m trying not to become hysterical.

  This fabric, this bolt of language, belongs to whom? To me, yes. But I disavow it. I’m more than my voice. If I’ve written about my dilemma with this high-handed treatment of details and lack of concreteness, hiding behind a stiff, somewhat old-fashioned voice, it’s because I’m embarrassed, shy—and afraid. Because I’m not free. Because I am what I am. Because I’m a member. But even being what I am, I can want to be different. You’ll admit that, I imagine.

  My profession has perhaps also contributed to deforming my language. I work between two (or more) languages. But that seems appropriate, somehow—since my problem lies between two (or more) problems. If the sentence structure and diction that comes naturally in writing this is not fully grounded in one language—my own beautiful, rich, native language, which offers so many words and rhythms I haven’t used—but contains constricting echoes of other languages, it is apt, since my problem contains echoes of other problems.

  The language in which I tell you all this is a language floating a few inches off the ground. As my problem (the one I’ve related to you) is a problem located a few inches off the ground. The language may be poor. I will not go far in defending it. But the problem is real, even if it’s a familiar story. An Old Complaint. A Heretic’s Nostalgia. A Dissenter’s Apology. A Traitor’s Pathos.
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  Knowing that my dilemma is perhaps contemptible, imagine how I feel. Imagine what that does to my writing: how it deforms my idiom and inhibits my voice. Please don’t judge me too quickly.

  If I began again from the beginning, would you understand better? Don’t laugh.

  I’ve heard there are members of the organization who never open their mail. They’re too busy talking or reading. Or sighing. Or chopping the air with their hands. Or breeding children who they hope will be future members. Or bettering themselves and improving the world. Or stroking their beards. Or running away from their would-be murderers. Or staying and getting killed. Or writing books. Or making money. Or looking ironically about them with their expressive, melancholy, heavy-lidded eyes. None of that is an answer. I can do those things, too.

  Speak to me! Answer me!

  I shall wait for your answers.

  Monday

  What we decided, doctor, was that it would be best to lay our problems before a really competent professional person. God knows, we’ve tried to do the best we could. But sometimes a person has to admit defeat. So we decided to talk to you. But we thought it would be better not to come together. If one of us could come Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the other on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, that way you could get both of our points of view.

  A few debts. Not many. We try to live within our means.

  Of course we can afford it. We don’t want to spare any expense. But, to tell the truth, we picked you because your fee was more reasonable than some others. And Dr. Greenwich said you specialized in problems of this sort.

  No, we’re not doing anything right now. Just riding out the storm.

  Certainly not. That’s what we’re here to find out from you.

  How much background do you need to know?

  Yes, we’ve both had physical checkups within the past year.

  Both born in this country, good native stock. Why, did you think we were foreigners? You’re a foreigner, aren’t you, doctor? You don’t mind questions like that, do you?