Stories

by Susan Sontag

  According to Lewis, he talked more often about those who visited more often, which is natural, said Betsy, I think he’s even keeping a tally. And among those who came or checked in by phone every day, the inner circle as it were, those who were getting more points, there was still a further competition, which was what was getting on Betsy’s nerves, she confessed to Jan; there’s always that vulgar jockeying for position around the bedside of the gravely ill, and though we all feel suffused with virtue at our loyalty to him (speak for yourself, said Jan), to the extent that we’re carving time out of every day, or almost every day, though some of us are dropping out, as Xavier pointed out, aren’t we getting at least as much out of this as he is. Are we, said Jan. We’re rivals for a sign from him of special pleasure over a visit, each stretching for the brass ring of his favor, wanting to feel the most wanted, the true nearest and dearest, which is inevitable with someone who doesn’t have a spouse and children or an official in-house lover, hierarchies that no one would dare contest, Betsy went on, so we are the family he’s founded, without meaning to, without official titles and ranks (we, we, snarled Quentin); and is it so clear, though some of us, Lewis and Quentin and Tanya and Paolo, among others, are ex-lovers and all of us more or less than friends, which one of us he prefers, Victor said (now it’s us, raged Quentin), because sometimes I think he looks forward more to seeing Aileen, who has visited only three times, twice at the hospital and once since he’s been home, than he does you or me; but, according to Tanya, after being very disappointed that Aileen hadn’t come, now he was angry, while, according to Xavier, he was not really hurt but touchingly passive, accepting Aileen’s absence as something he somehow deserved. But he’s happy to have people around, said Lewis; he says when he doesn’t have company he gets very sleepy, he sleeps (according to Quentin), and then perks up when someone arrives, it’s important that he not feel ever alone. But, said Victor, there’s one person he hasn’t heard from, whom he’d probably like to hear from more than most of us; but she didn’t just vanish, even right after she broke away from him, and he knows exactly where she lives now, said Kate, he told me he put in a call to her last Christmas Eve, and she said it’s nice to hear from you and Merry Christmas, and he was shattered, according to Orson, and furious and disdainful, according to Ellen (what do you expect of her, said Wesley, she was burned out), but Kate wondered if maybe he hadn’t phoned Nora in the middle of a sleepless night, what’s the time difference, and Quentin said no, I don’t think so, I think he wouldn’t want her to know.

  And when he was feeling even better and had regained the pounds he’d shed right away in the hospital, though the refrigerator started to fill up with organic wheat germ and grapefruit and skimmed milk (he’s worried about his cholesterol count, Stephen lamented), and told Quentin he could manage by himself now, and did, he started asking everyone who visited how he looked, and everyone said he looked great, so much better than a few weeks ago, which didn’t jibe with what anyone had told him at that time; but then it was getting harder and harder to know how he looked, to answer such a question honestly when among themselves they wanted to be honest, both for honesty’s sake and (as Donny thought) to prepare for the worst, because he’d been looking like this for so long, at least it seemed so long, that it was as if he’d always been like this, how did he look before, but it was only a few months, and those words, pale and wan-looking and fragile, hadn’t they always applied? And one Thursday Ellen, meeting Lewis at the door of the building, said, as they rode up together in the elevator, how is he really? But you see how he is, Lewis said tartly, he’s fine, he’s perfectly healthy, and Ellen understood that of course Lewis didn’t think he was perfectly healthy but that he wasn’t worse, and that was true, but wasn’t it, well, almost heartless to talk like that. Seems inoffensive to me, Quentin said, but I know what you mean, I remember once talking to Frank, somebody, after all, who has volunteered to do five hours a week of office work at the Crisis Center (I know, said Ellen), and Frank was going on about this guy, diagnosed almost a year ago, and so much further along, who’d been complaining to Frank on the phone about the indifference of some doctor, and had gotten quite abusive about the doctor, and Frank was saying there was no reason to be so upset, the implication being that he, Frank, wouldn’t behave so irrationally, and I said, barely able to control my scorn, but Frank, Frank, he has every reason to be upset, he’s dying, and Frank said, said according to Quentin, oh, I don’t like to think about it that way.

  And it was while he was still home, recuperating, getting his weekly treatment, still not able to do much work, he complained, but, according to Quentin, up and about most of the time and turning up at the office several days a week, that bad news came about two remote acquaintances, one in Houston and one in Paris, news that was intercepted by Quentin on the ground that it could only depress him, but Stephen contended that it was wrong to lie to him, it was so important for him to live in the truth; that had been one of his first victories, that he was candid, that he was even willing to crack jokes about the disease, but Ellen said it wasn’t good to give him this end-of-the-world feeling, too many people were getting ill, it was becoming such a common destiny that maybe some of the will to fight for his life would be drained out of him if it seemed to be as natural as, well, death. Oh, Hilda said, who didn’t know personally either the one in Houston or the one in Paris, but knew of the one in Paris, a pianist who specialized in twentieth-century Czech and Polish music, I have his records, he’s such a valuable person, and, when Kate glared at her, continued defensively, I know every life is equally sacred, but that is a thought, another thought, I mean, all these valuable people who aren’t going to have their normal fourscore as it is now, these people aren’t going to be replaced, and it’s such a loss to the culture. But this isn’t going to go on forever, Wesley said, it can’t, they’re bound to come up with something (they, they, muttered Stephen), but did you ever think, Greg said, that if some people don’t die, I mean even if they can keep them alive (they, they, muttered Kate), they continue to be carriers, and that means, if you have a conscience, that you can never make love, make love fully, as you’d been wont—wantonly, Ira said—to do. But it’s better than dying, said Frank. And in all his talk about the future, when he allowed himself to be hopeful, according to Quentin, he never mentioned the prospect that even if he didn’t die, if he were so fortunate as to be among the first generation of the disease’s survivors, never mentioned, Kate confirmed, that whatever happened it was over, the way he had lived until now, but, according to Ira, he did think about it, the end of bravado, the end of folly, the end of trusting life, the end of taking life for granted, and of treating life as something that, samurai-like, he thought himself ready to throw away lightly, impudently; and Kate recalled, sighing, a brief exchange she’d insisted on having as long as two years ago, huddling on a banquette covered with steel-gray industrial carpet on an upper level of The Prophet and toking up for their next foray onto the dance floor: she’d said hesitantly, for it felt foolish asking a prince of debauchery to, well, take it easy, and she wasn’t keen on playing big sister, a role, as Hilda confirmed, he inspired in many women, are you being careful, honey, you know what I mean. And he replied, Kate went on, no, I’m not, listen, I can’t, I just can’t, sex is too important to me, always has been (he started talking like that, according to Victor, after Nora left him), and if I get it, well, I get it. But he wouldn’t talk like that now, would he, said Greg; he must feel awfully foolish now, said Betsy, like someone who went on smoking, saying I can’t give up cigarettes, but when the bad X-ray is taken even the most besotted nicotine addict can stop on a dime. But sex isn’t like cigarettes, is it, said Frank, and, besides, what good does it do to remember that he was reckless, said Lewis angrily, the appalling thing is that you just have to be unlucky once, and wouldn’t he feel even worse if he’d stopped three years ago and had come down with it anyway, since one of the most terrifying features of the disease is that you
don’t know when you contracted it, it could have been ten years ago, because surely this disease has existed for years and years, long before it was recognized; that is, named. Who knows how long (I think a lot about that, said Max) and who knows (I know what you’re going to say, Stephen interrupted) how many are going to get it.

  I’m feeling fine, he’s reported to have said whenever someone asked him how he was, which was almost always the first question anyone asked. Or: I’m feeling better, how are you? But he said other things, too. I’m playing leapfrog with myself, he is reported to have said, according to Victor. And: There must be a way to get something positive out of this situation, he’s reported to have said to Kate. How American of him, said Paolo. Well, said Betsy, you know the old American adage: When you’ve got a lemon, make lemonade. The one thing I’m sure I couldn’t take, Jan said he said to her, is becoming disfigured, but Stephen hastened to point out the disease doesn’t take that form very often any more, its profile is mutating, and, in conversation with Ellen, wheeled up words like blood-brain barrier, I never thought there was a barrier there, said Jan. But he mustn’t know about Max, Ellen said, that would really depress him, please don’t tell him, he’ll have to know, Quentin said grimly, and he’ll be furious not to have been told. But there’s time for that, when they take Max off the respirator, said Ellen; but isn’t it incredible, Frank said, Max was fine, not feeling ill at all, and then to wake up with a fever of a hundred and five, unable to breathe, but that’s the way it often starts, with absolutely no warning, Stephen said, the disease has so many forms. And when, after another week had gone by, he asked Quentin where Max was, he didn’t question Quentin’s account of a spree in the Bahamas, but then the number of people who visited regularly was thinning out, partly because the old feuds that had been put aside through the first hospitalization and the return home had resurfaced, and the flickering enmity between Lewis and Frank exploded, even though Kate did her best to mediate between them, and also because he himself had done something to loosen the bonds of love that united the friends around him, by seeming to take them all for granted, as if it were perfectly normal for so many people to carve out so much time and attention for him, visit him every few days, talk about him incessantly on the phone with each other; but, according to Paolo, it wasn’t that he was less grateful, it was just something he was getting used to, the visits. It had become, with time, a more ordinary kind of situation, a kind of ongoing party, first at the hospital and now since he was home, barely on his feet again, it being clear, said Robert, that I’m on the B list; but Kate said, that’s absurd, there’s no list; and Victor said, but there is, only it’s not he, it’s Quentin who’s drawing it up. He wants to see us, we’re helping him, we have to do it the way he wants, he fell down yesterday on the way to the bathroom, he mustn’t be told about Max (but he already knew, according to Donny), it’s getting worse.

  When I was home, he is reported to have said, I was afraid to sleep, as I was dropping off each night it felt like just that, as if I were falling down a black hole, to sleep felt like giving in to death, I slept every night with the light on; but here, in the hospital, I’m less afraid. And to Quentin he said, one morning, the fear rips through me, it tears me open; and, to Ira, it presses me together, squeezes me toward myself. Fear gives everything its hue, its high. I feel so, I don’t know how to say it, exalted, he said to Quentin. Calamity is an amazing high, too. Sometimes I feel so well, so powerful, it’s as if I could jump out of my skin. Am I going crazy, or what? Is it all this attention and coddling I’m getting from everybody, like a child’s dream of being loved? Is it the drugs? I know it sounds crazy but sometimes I think this is a fantastic experience, he said shyly; but there was also the bad taste in the mouth, the pressure in the head and at the back of the neck, the red, bleeding gums, the painful, if pink-lobed, breathing, and his ivory pallor, color of white chocolate. Among those who wept when told over the phone that he was back in the hospital were Kate and Stephen (who’d been called by Quentin), and Ellen, Victor, Aileen, and Lewis (who were called by Kate), and Xavier and Ursula (who were called by Stephen). Among those who didn’t weep were Hilda, who said that she’d just learned that her seventy-five-year-old aunt was dying of the disease, which she’d contracted from a transfusion given during her successful double bypass of five years ago, and Frank and Donny and Betsy, but this didn’t mean, according to Tanya, that they weren’t moved and appalled, and Quentin thought they might not be coming soon to the hospital but would send presents; the room, he was in a private room this time, was filling up with flowers, and plants, and books, and tapes. The high tide of barely suppressed acrimony of the last weeks at home subsided into the routines of hospital visiting, though more than a few resented Quentin’s having charge of the visiting book (but it was Quentin who had the idea, Lewis pointed out); now, to insure a steady stream of visitors, preferably no more than two at a time (this, the rule in all hospitals, wasn’t enforced here, at least on his floor; whether out of kindness or inefficiency, no one could decide), Quentin had to be called first, to get one’s time slot, there was no more casual dropping by. And his mother could no longer be prevented from taking a plane and installing herself in a hotel near the hospital; but he seemed to mind her daily presence less than expected, Quentin said; said Ellen, it’s we who mind, do you suppose she’ll stay long. It was easier to be generous with each other visiting him here in the hospital, as Donny pointed out, than at home, where one minded never being alone with him; coming here, in our twos and twos, there’s no doubt about what our role is, how we should be, collective, funny, distracting, undemanding, light, it’s important to be light, for in all this dread there is gaiety, too, as the poet said, said Kate. (His eyes, his glittering eyes, said Lewis.) His eyes looked dull, extinguished, Wesley said to Xavier, but Betsy said his face, not just his eyes, looked soulful, warm; whatever is there, said Kate, I’ve never been so aware of his eyes; and Stephen said, I’m afraid of what my eyes show, the way I watch him, with too much intensity, or a phony kind of casualness, said Victor. And, unlike at home, he was clean-shaven each morning, at whatever hour they visited him; his curly hair was always combed; but he complained that the nurses had changed since he was here the last time, and that he didn’t like the change, he wanted everyone to be the same. The room was furnished now with some of his personal effects (odd word for one’s things, said Ellen), and Tanya brought drawings and a letter from her nine-year-old dyslexic son, who was writing now, since she’d purchased a computer; and Donny brought champagne and some helium balloons, which were anchored to the foot of his bed; tell me about something that’s going on, he said, waking up from a nap to find Donny and Kate at the side of his bed, beaming at him; tell me a story, he said wistfully, said Donny, who couldn’t think of anything to say; you’re the story, Kate said. And Xavier brought an eighteenth-century Guatemalan wooden statue of St. Sebastian with upcast eyes and open mouth, and when Tanya said what’s that, a tribute to eros past, Xavier said where I come from Sebastian is venerated as a protector against pestilence. Pestilence symbolized by arrows? Symbolized by arrows. All people remember is the body of a beautiful youth bound to a tree, pierced by arrows (of which he always seems oblivious, Tanya interjected), people forget that the story continues, Xavier continued, that when the Christian women came to bury the martyr they found him still alive and nursed him back to health. And he said, according to Stephen, I didn’t know St. Sebastian didn’t die. It’s undeniable, isn’t it, said Kate on the phone to Stephen, the fascination of the dying. It makes me ashamed. We’re learning how to die, said Hilda; I’m not ready to learn, said Aileen; and Lewis, who was coming straight from the other hospital, the hospital where Max was still being kept in the I.C.U., met Tanya getting out of the elevator on the tenth floor, and as they walked together down the shiny corridor past the open doors, averting their eyes from the other patients sunk in their beds, with tubes in their noses, irradiated by the bluish light from the television set
s, the thing I can’t bear to think about, Tanya said to Lewis, is someone dying with the TV on.