Death Kit

by Susan Sontag

  Diddy slept late. Brought his reluctant dog down to the basement and handed the super ten dollars to board him for a week. Xan was behaving the way he did when Diddy brought him to the vet. Whining, dragging his nails along the green linoleum that covers the entire floor of the super’s tiny apartment, as Diddy, coaxing and threatening, led him into the kitchen. The super’s small children want to start playing with Xan immediately. “It’s all right, Mr. Torres,” said Diddy to their father, who looked as if he already regretted the transaction. “He’ll calm down as soon as I go.” Would that Diddy were as confident as he sounded. The animal’s whine nauseated him.

  Then he caught a cab to the station, and boarded the third car from the end of the Sunday afternoon Privateer. Special new luxury express train, each car divided, European style, into compartments accommodating six people. One improves on the new by returning to the old.

  * * *

  On time. We left the city heading northwest. Diddy in a window seat, finding what comfort he could for his narrow haunches on the prickly upholstery, occupied himself for the first hour with the heavy Times he’d bought in the station. No obligation to look. Besides, he’d taken this trip often, was familiar with the strip of sights available from the window as we bolted through the outskirts of the city. If each factory has a smokestack, if all the housing projects are unadorned boxes built of brick, if a power station is a power station, and a prison always confines—what point is there in looking? To fabricate differences, discern nuances, is the job of those seeing for the first time. On other trips, Diddy’s highly compromised desire for confrontation had permitted more looking at the houses seen through train windows—houses he could accept and refuse, as in a daydream, without ever inhabiting them. This time, Diddy refused the organized looking offered by the window.

  What else? All the ideas he ought to be thinking, typed out on legal-size yellow paper and clipped together, were stored in his briefcase on the rack over his head. The rest were unthinkable. Diddy settled behind the newspaper, grateful to be able to wall himself off from his traveling companions. A compartment is public space, open to anybody. Yet it has a certain intimacy, too. A maximum of six persons are shut up together, temporarily sealed off from everyone else. A little cell of travel. Forced neighboring, which increases the reign of order.

  Diddy bored (now). He’s finished the newspaper. Hungry, which always happens on trains. Restless. A conductor comes to collect everyone’s ticket. Whose tickets? Our tickets. In an express train which is rapidly passing many stations without stopping, each station identical with the last, Diddy is cooped up among interchangeable people. But being a fellow traveler of life, incorrigibly hopeful though sharply disillusioned, he will make the effort to tell one from the other. He casts a moderate, diffused look at the others in the compartment: to stare wouldn’t be polite.

  Occupying the window seat opposite, a woman in a faded woolen suit, with untidy gray hair and small sharp eyes, mistress of two bulging shopping bags at her feet. Perhaps the bags contain food. But the journey wasn’t that long. Gifts for rowdy indifferent grandchildren? Whatever the contents of the bags, Diddy guessed, this was a woman who tried too hard and habitually gave what was not wanted.

  She is whispering with congested urgency to an extremely pretty girl on her right. The girl seemed to be listening, but it was as if something, perhaps the large sunglasses she wore, exempted her from having to reply. The lenses were greenish-black; so dark the girl’s eyes couldn’t be seen, and Diddy wondered how well she could see through them. There’s a wall for you!

  Next to the girl, on the outside seat opposite Diddy, was a paunchy cleric whose plump face had been lowered toward his breviary since the train started; his underlip trembled systematically as he read. A breviary can’t be used up like a newspaper; it’s to read and reread forever. What a system! Could Diddy the Good ever have been a priest, with something worthwhile and always the same to read? Not the right sort of goodness, maybe. Too much Done-Done.

  Sharing Diddy’s seat, on his left, was a ruddy, heavily built, ostentatiously clean-shaven man in a tweed suit, smelling of cheap after-shave lotion or eau-de-cologne. About Diddy’s age. Who had spread a large magazine on his knees at the start of the journey, but instead of taking it up, plucked a handkerchief from his pocket, spat quietly at it; then remained quite still, looking into the handkerchief. The magazine didn’t slip off his lap even when the train tilted, swooped round a curve.

  The gray-haired woman was the first to speak, asking if anyone minded her opening the window. Not a bad day. Rather warm. Diddy the Good did it for her, dirtying the tips of his fingers. “Do not lean out of the window.” We exchanged comments about the improved service on this line since the new trains had been installed, and about the refinement of traveling, six together, in a compartment, rather than being lined up and paired off in an open coach. The man in the tweed suit said he’d heard that the railroad, long rumored to be virtually bankrupt, was pulling itself out of the red. Diddy felt his mind getting gluey, his palate becoming furred. Conversation is always a trap for those who love the truth, isn’t it? Yet common sense said Don’t fret, Don’t waste your integrity on a situation that isn’t serious. A hard rule. Who cares about the condition of the railroad, its innovations, its finances? Does anyone here really care? Oh, but have pity upon people, poor soft-tongued creatures who should be kissing flowers but find, instead, that toads are leaping out of their mouths. Though irritated by the man’s nervous way of speaking, Diddy has pity. Here’s a toad, too. (Now) that the trains were punctual, Diddy remarked, they-ought-to-be-washed-down-more-often. He grimaced at the streaked windowpane, the dusty ledge, the trampled cigarette butts on the floor. The gray-haired woman found Diddy a paper napkin in one of her bags—a food bag, then—that he could use to clean his hands. Diddy thought the woman looked unwashed. Probably not dirty at all, but soiled by age.

  The man in the tweed suit stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket, cleared his throat, picked up his magazine. We could read the cover (now). Philately Annual.

  “A collector, I assume.” We hadn’t seen the priest look up. The suave voice issued from a mouth that moved without rendering any more expressive the face surrounding it. A face such as psychoanalysts acquire early in their training. Veiled, nerveless, relatively immobile.

  “Yes, I am. And a dealer, too.” The man in the tweed suit seemed to need to cough or to spit again.

  “Have you seen this issue?” said the priest. “Very rare, I believe.” From his vest pocket, the priest produced a pair of tweezers; then from another black pocket on the inside of his jacket, withdrew a walletlike case, opened it, lifted up a flap with his thumb and forefinger, and cautiously extracted a block of blue stamps with the tweezers.

  So the priest and the man in the tweed suit both turn out to be collectors of stamps, valuable paper miniatures of a country, a king, a building, a tree, a face; both took out and compared their latest acquisitions. At tweezers-length, the joys of common interests. Diddy, if he wanted to talk, was left to the gray-haired woman and, he hoped, to the pretty girl with whom she was traveling, silent so far. The woman needed little encouragement. She explained that she was accompanying the girl, her niece, who was going to have an eye operation at the renowned medical center upstate. Is the girl totally blind? Diddy wondered. Seemed rude to ask. The woman launched into a description of her niece’s prospective surgery, how much it will cost, its hazards, its chances of success. She insisted on using, but kept mispronouncing, words like “corneal” and “ophthalmic” and “choroid.” Diddy annoyed. He became restless when people spoke imprecisely, or didn’t get things right.

  “Hester, isn’t that so? Isn’t that what the doctor said?”

  Thus far, the girl had refused to confirm anything. Perhaps she is embarrassed or angry. Or was she inured to her aunt’s volubility? The aunt, as she babbled on, kept touching the girl’s cheek, shoulder, and forearm in a proprietary dull way. Diddy wis
hed he could tie up the aunt’s hands. But didn’t feel like silencing her, blocking off the stream of information. Since the events of a month ago, he had more patience with people addicted to recounting their illnesses and operations. No, not only that. Subjugated to some bolder desire he’d not yet acknowledged to himself, he floated down the old woman’s river of discourse. Aimed his own words at the aunt, kept his eyes on the sightless girl. A blind person couldn’t see Diddy, emaciated from his abortive closure with death and the hospital regimen. But the girl could talk, if she would; and Diddy felt sure it would be, unlike her aunt’s talk, clean and unlittered. Diddy wanted to touch her, too.

  Then, suddenly, the day failed. So did our conversation. Diddy remembered this tunnel, approximately two hours out of the city. But why didn’t the lights in the compartment and the corridor go on? No? All right then. From the instant the compartment went dark, no one spoke. We wanted to wait, to be in silence as well as darkness. Then, after an endurable pause, resume our desultory conversations on the far side of the tunnel, at the exact point at which they’d broken off. The train charged through the darkness, it seemed to go faster, dangerously fast, its motion like a horizontal fall. But, just about when, according to Diddy’s memory, we should have thrust the tunnel behind us, the train convulsed, shrieked, and came to a stop. Sighs, scrambling hands, exclamations. Anyone hurt? Instantly we all began to talk. If darkness had silenced us, darkness minus motion loosened our tongues. New situation, new behavior. Well, not so new. We weren’t worried. Trains are reliable. Diddy consulted the luminous dial of his watch. We had been in the tunnel at least seven minutes. Then we saw a light jogging along the corridor, heard the neighboring compartment’s door rattle open. A deep voice spoke briefly, words we couldn’t make out. When the door was slammed shut, Diddy braces himself for a nearer, harsher sound. Officialdom calling has its distinctive noises and movements. And Diddy was something of an experienced traveler. What was happening (now) was just like a border control in funny old Europe, but this is a big country, too big; we weren’t at a border, but in the middle of a tunnel. Sure enough, our compartment door was rolled back. A flashlight with a man vaguely outlined behind it on the threshold. “Apologies from the chief engineer, ladies and gentlemen.”

  “Is anything wrong?” asked the stamp dealer. When, obviously, something is.

  “Young man, why aren’t you in your caboose or wherever you’re supposed to be, getting the train started?” said the aunt.

  “I’m not the chief engineer, lady,” said the man. A complacent toad. “I’m just bringing the apologies. Take ’em or leave ’em.”

  “What seems to be the difficulty?” asked the priest.

  “We’ve had to make a stop in the tunnel.”

  “That we can see for ourselves!” said the aunt tartly.

  The flashlight wobbled, then focused on the woman’s face. “Lady, will you let me finish?” She gasped and threw up her arm; the light drooped. “We’ve had to stop because the track isn’t clear. There’s, uh, something in the way ahead.”

  “Is the track being repaired?” asks Diddy.

  “No record of any work going on in this tunnel that we know of.”

  “I never heard of anything so stupid,” said the woman. “Hester, do you hear?” Could she be deaf, too? Diddy wondered.

  “Relax, lady. We’ll get the train going.”

  “Crash right through,” said the girl softly. Not deaf. Just quiet.

  “Lovey, don’t get upset. You see, young man, there’s a sick person here.”

  “I’m not sick,” said the girl. “I was only joking.”

  “What next?” said Diddy.

  “Well,” said the conductor or whoever he was, “as soon as they figure out whether this is the middle of the tunnel or close to the end … I mean, because it may be that we’re in the wrong tunnel.…”

  “Wrong tunnel!” exclaimed Diddy.

  “But there’s no doubt that the tunnel is blocked,” concluded the conductor.

  “Couldn’t the right tunnel be blocked?” asked the priest.

  “Look, folks, don’t give me a hard time, will you? I’m just passing on what I’ve been told to say, and that is, that right now the chief engineer and the head conductor are in conference—”

  “Conference!” muttered the woman.

  “Either they’ll be able to remove the obstruction, which might not be all that solid, you know, just some prank. Or they’ll back the train out.”

  Diddy could hear the stamp dealer’s irregular, heavy breathing—indication, even before the man spoke (now), of his alarm. “What you’re telling us is that we’re in big trouble. Whether we just sit here, or try to plow through, or back out of the tunnel, we’re likely to be rammed from the rear by the next train on this route.”

  More alarmed than Diddy? At this point, yes. Diddy was slow to panic. That’s what he used his mind for. Good mind. Diddy remembered the stamp dealer gazing into his handkerchief. A hypochondriac, probably. Certainly the worrying type. And that collecting of little paper trophies. Obsessional, too.

  “When’s the next train due on this route?” asked Diddy, trying to be helpful. His shoulders ache with tension.

  “Not for a long time. Close to an hour,” replied the conductor, his voice dimming. He was backing off (now), his hand beginning to close the compartment door.

  “Are you telling us the truth, young man?” asked the aunt.

  “I’ll be back soon,” said the conductor. Slam. We heard the door of the compartment to our left roll open. People are cattle, thought Diddy. Why isn’t anyone screaming? Or weeping or praying? Why, instead, so eager to believe everything’s going to be all right?

  We sat in silence, eavesdropping on the unintelligible discourse seeping through the partition behind Diddy and the stamp dealer. The same conversation? Diddy wondered if the occupants of that compartment were accepting trustfully the conductor’s sloppy explanation. Or if, daring to feel alarm, they were pressing him with anxious questions. The stamp dealer struck a match. How shadowy and grim we all looked. The man already holds the cigarette between his lips. Diddy anticipated, then failed to detect, any trembling of the flame as it approached the man’s jaw.

  “I suppose no one has a flashlight,” said the soft-voiced priest.

  “I have a pencil flashlight.” Diddy the Helpful. “If that’s any use.”

  “Hardly,” said the aunt, sulking.

  Staring at the disembodied red tip of the stamp dealer’s cigarette, Diddy was starting to come undone. The passably well-knit empire of his body yielding to secession and rebelliousness. His gut was a suitcase full of bricks, his chest a keg of eels. The blood thundered in his ears; whitish lines, like wilted lightning, went zigzagging from left to right. The door of the neighboring compartment slammed shut. Then a dim light went on in the corridor, probably an electric hand lamp, reserved for emergencies, lit by the evasive messenger before he passed into the car behind. Is this an emergency? At least the darkness wasn’t total (now).

  “How do you like them apples!” exclaimed the stamp dealer.

  None of us seemed prepared to answer him.

  “This is a hell of a mess!” he added. The stamp dealer sounded angry.

  Diddy panicking (now). While others remain calm. Unbidden, the thought of his death settles like a flat stone on his chest.

  “Do you think we’re in real danger?” Diddy wondered to whom the girl’s question was addressed. And whether, since she couldn’t see anyway, she found the situation as oppressive as the others did.

  “No,” said the priest.

  “No, darling,” said the aunt.

  Death, thought Diddy, is like a lithographer’s stone. One stone, cool and smooth to the touch, can print many deaths, virtually identical except to the expert eye. One lightly inscribed stone can be used, reused indefinitely.

  “I tell you, this is the last time I ride this railroad,” said the stamp dealer. He cleared his throat.

/>   Diddy, sliding down in his seat, trying to lift the stone off his chest. He has to move. “Look,” he said, “I want to see what’s going on. Maybe I can find someone with more information.”

  “Good,” said the woman. Good Diddy.

  What Diddy felt (now) could only be described as panic.

  He got up and became dizzy, had to reach for the baggage rack and hang on in order to bypass pairs of dark shoes and the old woman’s parcels and the cheap briefcase at the stamp dealer’s feet without falling. Rolled the door back, stepped out. The corridor window as opaque and uninformative as the window in the compartment. Loosening his collar, he turned right and began to walk along the corridor, away from the emergency lantern. He tried to avert his glance from the dim shapes that slumped, tilted, leaned toward one another in each of the compartments. Why does everyone talk so softly? In one compartment a baby was crying. Ahead was the only other person who, like him, had fled to the corridor—a smoking person, Diddy could see at a distance; a fat woman wearing slacks, as he came closer. Turning sideways to pass her, Diddy drew in his chest, mouthed “Excuse me.”

  “Say, do you know the time?”

  “Five-nineteen,” said Diddy, more audibly. Jaw tightening, feeling the tentacles of her anxiety around his ankles. She seemed about to touch him.

  “Boy, I hope they know what they’re doing.”

  “So do I.” Diddy moving on. No victim, he.

  “Hey, wait a minute! Please!”

  “I’m going to find out.” If Diddy stopped, turned around, he’d feel sorry for her, have to carry her as well as the stone. Goody Did had given himself a different task, less chivalrous. But, hopefully, more useful.

  When Diddy reaches the end of the car, he has a choice.