Death Kit

by Susan Sontag

  Diddy dreamed that night. Not as unpleasant a drama as he might have invented. No stark images of the slain workman or of the ambiguous sexual catharsis with Hester. It was a verbose dream, the dream of an exhausted man. Two persons from the train on Sunday, the stamp dealer in the tweed suit and the priest, are discussing the hobby they have in common. But it isn’t stamp collecting. In opposite seats of the compartment, leaning intently toward each other, they were passing a handsome shell back and forth between them. A fine, rosy specimen of a shell that Diddy recognizes: Conus gloriamaris, the Glory of the Sea. The two men are lavishing praise upon the shell, calling each other’s attention to its intricate whorls and markings. Not clear to Diddy who owns the Glory of the Sea. If it belongs to only one of the men, the other shows no signs of envy or covetousness. And if the precious object is their joint possession, it doesn’t seem to cause any dispute or friction between them.

  Diddy, both a spectator within the dream, sitting in the compartment next to the man in the tweed suit, and outside, somewhere, nowhere. Electrified with envy. He wants the shell for himself, though aware that he’s succumbed to an ugly feeling. For Diddy neither admires the shell nor finds it beautiful. Were he, while strolling alone along some empty beach, to come upon the Glory of the Sea resting on top of the damp brown bubble-studded sand, he wouldn’t honor it with a glance. Unless he stubbed his toe on the shell, in which case he’d kick it or, better yet, grind it under his heel. Diddy the Bad covets the shell (now) solely because he observes the value set on it by the man in the tweed suit and the priest.

  But he has no qualifications for ownership. Unlikely that these men would consider surrendering their prize to Diddy, who collects stamps.

  Thus permanently excluded from the indefinitely renewable joy that passes back and forth between the two collectors, Diddy grows more and more frustrated. Must do something. He doesn’t wrench the shell from their hands. For some unclarified reason knows he can’t take physical possession of the shell; at least not (now). But he can diminish their pleasure in it. Taking moral possession of it, so to speak.

  In an instant, act. Before the claims of conscience begin to whimper; materializing their rusty, familiar fetters. Diddy intervenes brutally. Merely by giving a lecture, one which distills all the rage and disappointment choking him. In order to deliver his discourse, he leaps gracefully from his seat up to the baggage rack. Sits leaning forward, for there’s not enough room to straighten his back; with his feet dangling. Looks down at the two men and begins to harangue them.

  First point: the great era of conchology is definitely over. There’s no point in trying to return to the past, is there? He looks below to check the impact his words are having on the two men. Already, they seem less elated. This hobby, Diddy continues, flourished in the nineteenth century, when there were still genuine discoveries to be made. (Now) everything is known and has been catalogued, these objects are no longer worthy of attracting the fancy of a truly serious person. Shell collecting, as one might expect, has passed into the hands of sentimental amateurs, who are content with arbitrary samplings and arrangements. And amateurs are notoriously credulous, easily taken in by fakes, forgeries, and misattributions. With no one to uphold the old standards of conchology, the market has been glutted with sanded-down, glazed, and tinted objects claiming to be shells. Which are really the beautified corpses of shells. One result of their being too numerous was that shells ceased to be treated with the respect properly owing to a wholly natural object, and taste in shells was irrevocably corrupted. In fact, Diddy raises his voice, eager to drive his point home, good taste in all domains fell into decline. An esoteric bit of information: the ruinous desire to improve on nature began with the first man who set about to convert a shell into a work of art. That, said Diddy the Capricious, spitting at the priest, is the true account of original sin.

  The priest is quietly wiping saliva off the front of his jacket, as Diddy goes on. If Mrs. Nayburn were here, she’d be thrusting her handkerchief at him before he’d time to reach for his own.

  Second point: the poor shells themselves, defenseless as the soft molluscs they once housed, could do nothing to halt this degrading metamorphosis. Most gave up right away; a few struggled, in vain. How could they resist, much less hope to prevail, having no eyes? So not only their quantity but their very substance altered. Shells became coarse, brutish. Look closely, Diddy says, at that shell you’ve been fondling. It’s true that once the Glory of the Sea was the rarest, costliest, the most coveted of shells. In the early 1800’s, there were only two known specimens in the entire world; both found in the waters east of New Guinea. But by the end of the century the shell was being found in indecently profuse numbers. The price plummeted. (Now) anyone can send away for one of the debased, modern specimens. Not to mention the carefully crafted imitations being turned out by several factories in Japan.

  “Now, let’s have a look at this particular specimen…” Diddy snaps his fingers brusquely. The man in the tweed suit clambers to his feet and reverently passes the shell up to Diddy on his perch. No need for Diddy to bother with the stethoscope or the reflex hammer. What’s wrong with this shell, he declares, is plain enough to the unaided senses. With a negligent thrust of his right index finger, Diddy calls attention to the fact that the body whorl is tilted in the reverse direction of the true Glory of the Sea, and that the reticulations of the whorl run transversely to those of authentic specimens. Shows the abashed connoisseurs below him that the shell has a badly chipped lip, too, and a thickened margin in exactly the wrong place. They react to this denunciation of their prize with appropriate dismay. Diddy, unpitying, persisting. “You’ve been cheated. A worthless trinket!” Callously tosses it down for them to catch, if they can. “In short, gentlemen,” Diddy concludes triumphantly, “what you are holding in your hands is a murdered and broken shell.”

  Diddy stares down at the two men contemptuously, as they frantically handle the shell and peer into it, in the hope of refuting his superbly ordered attack. Diddy has sized up what kind of people he’s up against. The priest and the dealer are large, fat men; and therefore partial to small things. Stamps, shells, dolls, key rings, matchboxes, little magazines, recorders, small cars, miniature dogs, minor paintings, little virtues. Diddy likes big virtues; and large, strong things. Nothing exquisite or fragile suits his tastes. A slug of gin any day for him, in preference to a bowl of jasmine tea from Peking. Still, he can feel protective toward what is delicate or vulnerable. Right (now), for instance, Diddy worries that the fat priest is taking up far too much room, more than his third of the seat; squeezing Mrs. Nayburn and Hester. Diddy’s concern is needed to rectify the priest’s gross conduct. They’re probably too polite to complain.

  But the blond girl and her aunt aren’t in the compartment any more. Probably disturbed by so much arguing. An affair of men only. In the ensuing debate, Diddy, having boldly taken an unpopular position, will have to stand his ground.

  The silken-voiced priest asks Diddy, who has admitted to not being a conchologist, the source of his information. Diddy knowing that his whole lecture is a pack of lies. And delivered with such a clear conscience. Diddy the Dauntless or Diddy the Depraved? But wait, maybe what he’s been saying is true. Without his knowing it. A lucky break, that perhaps he once saved a newspaper article on the Glory of the Sea which set forth everything one might want to know about it.

  Triumphant Diddy replies to the priest, citing that definitive unchallengeable article. Adding that, needless to say, he always carries the clipping in his wallet. For just such emergencies of credibility as this. The two men ask to be allowed to examine the clipping. Isn’t that suspicious? Clever Diddy smells danger in their reasonable request. Suppose they intend to confiscate his clipping—either tear it up or pocket it themselves. Should he lose the clipping, which is irreplaceable, Diddy has lost the only hard evidence he possesses for his fraudulent case against the shell. So Diddy tells them he’ll bring out the clipping some
other time; they’ll have to take his word for it right (now). Then begins his whole speech over again.

  As he is hectoring the two men from above their heads, Diddy fears he’s overdoing it. A thesis utterly remote from the truth doesn’t, in the end, convince or deceive anyone. So his destructive intention won’t appear too blatant, clever Diddy decides that it’s time to call attention to some of the shell’s virtues. The fine granulations on the outer valve, the delicate tones with which the shell is ringed or banded. But just as he’s getting his eulogy underway, Diddy observes that these good features no longer exist. The shell is (now) as unequivocally ugly as he had maliciously pronounced it to be. The two collectors see that just as clearly as Diddy does. In disgust, they hurl the shell from them. Out the window. “Do not throw anything from the train window.”

  Suddenly Diddy feels contrite. Reviles himself for having been mean-spirited, dishonest. Has slandered something beautiful. Thereby, ignorant that he had such powers, turning it into something ugly. At this point in the dream, Diddy is reminded of blackened Andy twitching on his funeral pyre while the neighborhood kids stand by, jeering. He wants to retrieve the shell, hoping that he can restore it, resurrect something of its former beauty and reawaken the esteem of its disgruntled, gullible ex-owners. “Wait,” he shouts to the two men, “I’ll be right back.” What Diddy does is to jump from his high perch, eyes tightly closed, off the rapidly moving train. Do not throw oneself from the train window?

  Falling is simple, if you don’t think about it. Landing, Diddy has scraped some skin off his knees and palms; like a kid, Diddy himself when a kid, sliding into first base. Pain flickers, subsides. Getting to his feet, dusting himself off, he sees he’s in a dark tunnel. Although the train, maintaining its high speed, has already flashed out of Diddy’s sight, he isn’t worried about being able to catch up with it eventually, far ahead (now) along the track, and climb aboard again. After he’s found the shell.

  If there were light, Diddy could use a microscope. Purpose: seeing the unseen. Method: enlarging small objects. But without proper external light, optical microscopes are useless. Diddy mustn’t underestimate the difficulty of what he aims to do. It’s no easy task to locate so small an object as a conical shell about five inches long, unassisted, in the dark. Diddy’s task almost as hard as these fiendishly difficult assignments passed out to ingenuous young princes in fairy tales, as a test of their courage and innocence. But the young prince, long before he collapses in despair, is invariably accosted by a benevolent old crone with untidy gray hair and small sharp eyes, who donates a first-class item of magic gear to his cause, or by some helpful little animal gifted with human speech, who volunteers a secret password or gives some necessary directions. No one is helping Diddy.

  Diddy wanders through the damp tunnel, and doubles back. Then makes the same round trip again. Always fearful, because he can’t see well, that he may inadvertently tread on the shell and shatter it. Would the light, bony, inanimate structure bleed? Could a tiny, frightened mollusc still be hiding inside? What seems like hours limp by, without Diddy having any success. Diddy the Discouraged. But then something changes in the topography of his quest that wipes out failure; makes everything come out right. Another victory for Diddy’s unshowy, methodical mind. Good mind. Abruptly though unclearly, Diddy understands the reason why, despite all his hard thorough scanning of the dark tunnel ground as he marches back and forth, he’s been unable to find the pink and white Glory of the Sea. It’s because he’s already inside it (now). The discarded shell, no longer small, is as vast and capacious as the tunnel. Tunnel and shell can substitute for each other, so Diddy can wander in either as he sees fit.

  That for this moment he half walks and half climbs along the slippery, whorled inner face of the shell relieves some of the alarm Diddy felt over a fact noted early in his fruitless walking, when in the tunnel. What was alarming was how much sharper the curve of the track seemed (now) than it did before. Diddy leaves that “before” unexamined, feeling himself excused by the well-known rule that there’s no time in dreams, only space. But rules of thought are made to be thought through, surpassed. If that hasn’t occured to Diddy, is it because he’s lazy? or evasive? or merely not very bright? Doesn’t he know there is not only time but times; many times; some continuous, others intermittent, running simultaneously or concurrently or disjunctively? Somewhere he does know, surely. And Diddy is anything but eager to think of the other time he was in the tunnel.

  * * *

  As instructed, the desk clerk phoned Room 414 Tuesday morning at six-fifty. Diddy, already awake, requested the Courier-Gazette to be brought to his room immediately. Today he will be able to take a better sounding of this deep business. First, by whether there’s a follow-up on yesterday’s story on page 16. Second, for he assumes there is, by the length and position of the new story. Is it longer or shorter than yesterday’s four chunky paragraphs? Has it been moved further front or to the back of the paper? And what’s the second article’s theme? More about Incardona? Or developments in the inquiry the police are making into possible negligence on the part of the railroad?

  Diddy in suspense, let down. Today’s paper, just as scrupulously read as the two yesterday, contained nothing about the workman’s death. Not even a paragraph on the obituary page. Nor so much as a line about investigating the railroad. Could people’s interest be that short-lived, so that the furor is really over? Reducing an arbitrary and violent death to something just as slight and unrecurring as a half-column of newsprint?

  Of course, Diddy hadn’t forgotten Incardona’s funeral, which, according to yesterday’s “Final,” takes place this afternoon at two o’clock. If he goes, it won’t be in order to view Incardona’s mangled corpse. Diddy the Ghoul has not yet been dreamed of. A corpse which it’s unlikely Diddy could see even if he wanted to; usually, when the body is mutilated, the coffin is sealed immediately. Nor, if he attends, will it be to mourn Incardona. Doesn’t honestly feel grief over the workman’s death. Horror still, though more remotely. Little apart from that.

  What mainly prompted Diddy to consider attending the services at the funeral home—at the cemetery he’d be too conspicuous—is the wish to set eyes on Incardona’s widow and son. Their reality had to become welded to his experience. Perhaps seeing them in the flesh would lay to rest forever his cramping residual doubt, despite the incontrovertible evidence of the Courier-Gazette story, whether he’d ever had the encounter with the swarthy workman. Especially wanted to see Thomas Francis, age 11. In whom, if this is the son of the man Diddy killed, he’d surely see at least a trace of resemblance to his father. Then Diddy would be certain that he’d gotten off the Privateer when it stalled in the tunnel. Had assaulted someone. And that the someone was Angelo Incardona, who was dead.

  The other decision awaiting Diddy’s attention: whether or not to visit Hester today. He’d awakened feeling he doesn’t want to go. Yesterday Hester virtually sent him away. Faulty in knowledge; awkward in conduct. He shouldn’t return until he understands more about the barriers that separate them. Further, Diddy doesn’t want to suggest to either of the women, by paying two consecutive visits, that Hester could count on a visit every night during the week he’s here.

  At least that’s settled. Not a hard decision to make. Just a postponement, since he could see Hester any time this week; tomorrow night, if he likes. But Incardona’s funeral would take place only once.

  All Diddy has to come up with is a plain Yes or No. Should he go this afternoon? No answer. Diddy repeats the question. Should he? Still no answer. How complicated everything seems. And is. Something morbid in this plan. Diddy the Peeping Tom. Spying on people’s grief for his own splintered motives. Not to mention the bad taste: a murderer piously, rather than gloatingly, in attendance at his victim’s funeral. Something merely self-destructive in it, too. Perhaps Diddy just wants to put himself in a situation where he could suddenly find himself at the feet of the widow and orphan, sobbing out his co
nfession. Maybe the desire for a quick confession is drawing Diddy, balked by the thought of the complex mediations of police and judiciary, to the Floral Gardens Funeral Home at two o’clock. And yet.…

  The phone rings. A telegram from Duva saying he won’t be up for the conference at all. Special delivery letter follows.

  What was Diddy thinking before the phone rang? Well, he couldn’t decide (now). And meanwhile he was neglecting the noncontroversial order of the day. Let’s get in step with that for a time. Make his appearance downstairs, breakfast with Jim and the others, go out to the plant, take part in the morning meetings. One foot in front of the other. The decision could be made just before lunch. Diddy put on his jacket, checked his briefcase to see he had everything he needed. Went downstairs.

  * * *

  In the elevator, Jim saying in a low voice to Katz, “Hey, this town is wide open. Things have sure changed around here in the last couple a months. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Plenty of after-hour clubs. And all those places on Parker Street.”

  “Where?” said Katz.

  “About fifteen blocks from the Rush-Me.” Jim always grinned at his own jokes.

  Reager reaching the door of the conference room at the same time as Diddy. A chilly “Good morning, Harron,” as he passes into the room first. I’m going to be spared an evening with the family this trip, Diddy thought; perhaps dinner at the club as well. Reager’s disfavor acted like a tonic on Diddy, crystallizing the muddle inside his head.