Death Kit

by Susan Sontag

  Begins gently combing the vicious snarls and knots out of the mane that falls down on three sides of the Wolf-Boy’s head. Then, with the fine teeth of the comb, sifts through the brown curls on his forehead, the beardlike tufts that grow out from his cheeks, and the more delicate blondish hair protecting his neck. What’s this cool hard object buried in the fine hair just below his throat? On a slim silver chain. A kind of talisman. Somewhat resembling the medal Paul won at Warsaw. Diddy fingers the ornate disc for a moment; about to ask the Wolf-Boy where he got it and what kind of good fortune or protection it’s associated with. When he notices the creature’s polished teeth drawn slightly back, and an anxious vexed look veiling his handsome brown eyes. Don’t bother with questions (now). Don’t spoil his pleasure. Gently replacing the medal under the Wolf-Boy’s tattered khaki shirt, Diddy returns to deftly combing his hair. Notices, approvingly, the warm open look returning to the Wolf-Boy’s eyes. Who is squatting at Diddy’s feet (now), resting his head on Diddy’s knees. Even when Diddy fears that he’s inadvertently yanked the creature’s hair and hurt him, the body leaning against his legs doesn’t tense or flinch. No matter what Diddy does, the Wolf-Boy seems to be enjoying all of it. The sheer fact of Diddy’s paying so much attention to him as well as the physical sensations themselves. Making purring noises; sometimes yawning, tensing his pectorals, then relaxing. More strange noises, not like a cat’s. Indeed, from this point in the dream forward, apparently to the dream’s end, the Wolf-Boy doesn’t utter another word. He who seemed so at home in human speech, even boyishly loquacious when relating the story of his life, doesn’t seem (now) to know how to talk. Mute, as animals are.

  Diddy finishes his combing of the creature’s hair. The Wolf-Boy seems to be shrinking (now). Child-size and something like a child. Small enough to be carried. That’s what Diddy does. Picks him up and carries him toward the rear of the cave. Which extends much farther back than Diddy had imagined. The Wolf-Boy behaving as if he doesn’t ever want to be put down: lying in Diddy’s arms all curled up, his face buried in Diddy’s chest. So Diddy carries him for a long while, deeper into the tunnel-like recesses of the lion’s cave.

  Diddy still walking. And gradually, becoming afraid. Old superstitions have risen up to frighten him. A fear of contagion. In the same spirit in which he’d believed, when he was eight, despite his parents’ derision, that warts come from handling frogs, he (now) worries what he will catch from handling the Wolf-Boy. Will Diddy become an animal, too? Dwindle to less than five feet? Grow hair over the whole surface of his body? Diddy looks at his hands, clasped around the Wolf-Boy’s torso; takes one hand away to feel his neck, ears, and forehead. No unwanted hair or any other changes that he can detect. But this doesn’t hold true for the Wolf-Boy. Only a moment has elapsed since the last solicitous look—Diddy must occasionally interrupt his gaze to check his footing—but when he turns back (now) the creature has in the meantime sprouted more hair on his face and on each unclothed part of his body. Not only is his hair still growing, but at such an astonishing rate that growth can be seen, even by the most impatient spectator. The Wolf-Boy himself is visibly bigger than he was a few minutes ago; more heavily muscled, vastly stronger, more imposing-looking in a coarse way. Though still no heavier for Diddy to carry.

  A narrow passageway in the dark interior of the cave. “I’m going to put you down here,” Diddy says quietly. Half wants to, and half doesn’t. Gently sets down his grunting, squirming burden. The Wolf-Boy doesn’t seem to mind too much. Crouches on the cold floor of the cave or tunnel, and stares up appealingly at his benefactor.

  Diddy realizing something important. He has misunderstood the animal; wrongly feared it. Kneels down next to the Wolf-Boy. Hugs him. Awkwardly, for he can’t estimate how much affection and sheer physical contact the Wolf-Boy can bear. Wants to pull him on his lap, rock him back and forth. But only if that doesn’t offend the bereft creature’s pride or undermine his strength of character, purchased at great cost through pitiless solitude.

  It’s at this moment, for some reason, that Incardona breaks into the dream. Not as an actual physical presence, but the thought of him. While Diddy is gazing affectionately at the Wolf-Boy, trying to say with his face what he knows he can’t clothe in words, he can simultaneously conceive that there exists, somehow, a hope of making restitution in the matter of the slain workman. He wants to make this restitution. Not to a single person, Incardona, a stranger. Rather to what Diddy had despised and feared in Incardona—animal vigor, for instance. Diddy feels (now) that he’s not haunted by Incardona any more. Is capable of affirming him.

  An exorcism: although disembodied, the most satisfying part of the dream. Perhaps it’s this part alone which propels Diddy up from sleep feeling somewhat lighter, purged; not the long story accumulated from the beginning of the dream. It works best if he’s lucky enough to wake exactly at this point, instead of going farther into the dream, as he sometimes forces himself to do. Where he became completely lost. One foot in front of the other, into the trap. One-way ticket. Diddy the Damned.

  Diddy has put the bad ending aside. If he could only maintain that good feeling—which comes from going far, but not too far—whenever he has it, however infrequently. Not embalm it in amber. Instead, plant it. Get it to take root, to grow. But some acid secreted by his own character always dissolves the good feeling; or some force from outside weights it with lead, then drags Diddy back to his own fettered consciousness.

  The ending remains uncertain. That’s why, although he would gladly have read Hester the manuscript of the unfinished “novel” which inspired this recurrent dream, Diddy finds it impossible to recount the dream itself. Not because Incardona figures in it, and he’s never forced her to accept the truth about Incardona; which he might well be able to accomplish just by reading her the clipping. Though Hester’s ignorance might create a problem, were all other obstacles to his telling the dream cleared away, the other obstacles do exist. The dream seems such an intimate part of himself. Everything’s bound up in it. His relation to his parents, to Mary, to Paul, to Joan. Above all, to himself. The arbitrary and swift yet indelible drama with Incardona. And his love for Hester.

  Diddy, who feels obscurely that he has dreamed out his very soul. Would like, in principle, to share that event with Hester. As he’s yearned to deposit everything with her, keep nothing back. Maybe he’s just afraid. Since that bitter row after Paul’s unannounced visit, doesn’t altogether trust Hester; never will, in the old way, again. God knows, he wants to. But can’t. Her words have scored him. Like the light that scored his eyes on the night Paul came, when Diddy first opened the door and peered into the hall.

  As the loss of Xan has damaged him, too. Though it was Diddy, not Hester, who suggested getting rid of the dog. Renouncing Xan has only reconfirmed this punishing vision of himself and of a world at large in which it’s lunacy to trust anyone or anything. But what if Diddy weren’t Diddy the Damaged but another person? The kind of person capable of reclaiming Xan; who could have restored that hysterical, frightened animal to itself? To its better self. And what if Diddy weren’t Diddy the Damaged but another person? The deft vital person he obstinately thinks he should be?

  Wanting to be Diddy the Good. And consistently living, morally, beyond his emotional means.

  In that case, shouldn’t Diddy settle for something less?

  These are the questions Diddy can’t face. Because he isn’t outstandingly intelligent? Or simply not strong enough? Or just defective from the start in vitality and force of character? Diddy has never tackled these questions, either. Or even tried. As always, he tries to force his way through the terrible questions to some endurable, stoical vantage point. Expunge the glittering agony. Find a cool quiet place where he can sit in safety. The battering ram of the will. Using his will, Diddy tries to will his way through. Emulating blindness.

  Actually, there are two kinds of blindness.

  Noble blindness. As in the Greek statues. Because t
hey’re eyeless, these figures seem that much more alive, more centered in their bodies, more present. Making us, when we contemplate them, feel more present in ourselves.

  Ignoble blindness: the blindness of impacted rage and despair. Something passive. A thing of absence. As in the negative statuary of death. When someone drowns, the eyes are the first element of the body to disintegrate or rot; it’s through the vacant eye sockets of a freshly drowned corpse that eels swim.

  Diddy would like to be blind in the noble way, like the Greek statues. Would that he knew how!

  He doesn’t. Instead resumes, in this even more dangerously condensed and concentrated arena of his new life with Hester, the old habits of not being fully present. Not being in his life. Once, coming out into the kitchen for an apple while Hester is preparing lunch, he finds her in a spasm of raw, bleak tears. It’s only the second time he’s seen her weep, isn’t it? The first being toward the end of their quarrel on the night of Paul’s visit. And the first time Diddy’s ever discovered her crying; for no particular reason that he knows. Though she once told him—he will never forget the telling and its circumstances—that she cried often. Apparently, then, she either no longer cries: something remarkable, worth understanding. Or else she still cries stanchlessly, but conceals it from Diddy: also worth understanding, if that’s the case.

  Shouldn’t Diddy have grasped how precious this moment in the kitchen was? Another turning point, possibly. And been able to reach out for a three-dimensional Hester, to find her in a way he’s never done before.

  But Diddy, once again, fails to seize the moment. Tangled in the labyrinthine skein of his own inner life, he merely takes Hester in his arms. Praying silently that she is not unhappy because of him, or over anything he’s done.

  And when, after a few minutes, Hester dries her eyes and smiles at him, takes that at face value, too.

  * * *

  Diddy and Hester have been living for more than six weeks on West Twenty-first Street. Since Xan was disposed of, a few days after Paul’s abortive visit, no living being shares the apartment with them.

  The awful quarrel seems almost forgotten. At least, as far as Diddy is concerned. And Hester never alludes to it, or makes remarks to Diddy which remind him of her devastating accusations that night. The fact that Paul has, quite typically, disappeared again, Diddy assumes, has convinced Hester he wasn’t being unfair about his brother. But he can only infer that she must be persuaded. They haven’t actually discussed Paul since. Hester not only seems far from quarreling, but lately has said very little at all. Though unfailingly loving to Diddy. And seeking to become useful to him in all sorts of charming, unexpected ways. For instance, she can cut his nails and hair. When she first implored him to let her try, Diddy doubted she could possibly do a decent job, or fail to cut either herself or him in the process. He was wrong, as with the cooking. Hester didn’t have one mishap with the nail scissors. And Diddy’s prematurely graying hair, when he examines it afterwards with two mirrors, has been given as even a trim as any skilled home barber could give.

  Is this the paradise Diddy anticipated? Yes and no.

  Has exclusive possession (now) of his love, whose physical beauty and laconic speech afford him inexhaustible pleasures. Yet, also aware that some of his own newfound strength, on which he’d counted so much, is ebbing away. A curious symptom. At times, Diddy starts to say something to Hester after a long silence. Of course, she hears the unspoken buds of sound trembling at the back of his throat and pressing forward into his mouth. Looks up, waits. But then Diddy can’t think of what he was about to say. This might be written off as a nervous tic, nothing alarming. What’s important is that Diddy and Hester aren’t quarrelsome. Seem pledged to avoid any more battles like that awful one. Even if they talk a good deal less, what words they do exchange are loving. And isn’t it usually so, that lovers who share their daily lives with each other gradually find they need to put very little into words? Once it was Hester who set the example with her terse habits of speech. (Now) Diddy even more sparing with words than she. There seems less to say; good reason, often, not to talk at all.

  So far, so good. But there’s more. Occasionally, but with increasing frequency, Diddy imagines that he’s losing the power to speak.

  At times, the fantasy repels and upsets him. It has occurred to him that the craving to be mute must mean that there’s something very important to say, something he wants to say and is not saying. Diddy the Coward. If mute, he’d have no choice. Couldn’t say it, whatever it was—even if he wanted to. Other times, he views the fantasy in a more indulgent light. As part of his love, a passionate metaphor. Were Diddy unable to talk at all, it would establish a rough party between himself and Hester. The girl being blind, justice demands that Diddy subtract a comparable faculty. So considered, the fantasy of being mute pleases him.

  Still, something has definitely gone wrong. The two of them becoming closed in. Which was not at all Diddy’s intention, his original scheme. Planned for himself and Hester to inhabit a bigger space. And one that’s fresh for Diddy; not encrusted with the immortal dirt of the past and the habits of faltering vitality. But they haven’t moved; Diddy hasn’t even looked at the Times ads or phoned a real-estate broker. Remaining where they are, where Diddy has lived for three years. This apartment was compact; which means comfort and security to a blind person. But Diddy has needs of his own to satisfy. However suitable for Hester, the apartment is too small for him. Too familiar. The space divided into three rooms, that Hester (now) knows as well as he, seems to be shrinking. Becoming almost as cramped and overcharged with use as their compartment on the Privateer.

  In still another way, as far as cleanliness and order go, the apartment increasingly resembles the ill-maintained train. The condition of the floors, strewn with cigarette butts and dirty plates and LP’s not put back in their sleeves and clothing discarded in the haste of making love. Hester’s no longer doing the cleaning each day. Look at the windows. In such a filthy city, windows are the first to show the results of inattention. A thin layer of soot forms on the outside of the windowpanes. Perspiration on the inside of the windowpanes of the overheated apartment mixes with the subtler grime that collects on indoor glass in New York. Together, weakening the already faint winter light that enters the apartment during the day; imparting to the light inside a deader quality. Filtering out the clarity and detail in Diddy’s view of the street and neighboring buildings. Less and less view. Not so much organized looking. Instead, organized screening out.

  Of course, unlike the view from a train window, the one from an apartment scarcely changes. Except in particulars.

  Who is on the stoop across the street? The grocer’s boy.

  There’s a red Volkswagen parked by the fire hydrant.

  That man has been standing in front of the Mexican restaurant for hours.

  The woman across the street on the third floor is walking around naked. No, there she goes. She’s pulling down the shade.

  And so forth. Despite particulars, still remaining essentially the same.

  After the fourth week, less tempting to move about. It’s approaching full winter (now). These are the shortest days of the year, supplying the least light. It seems natural for Hester and Diddy, like the animals, to spend more time in bed.

  Usually they fall asleep at the same time, but Hester habitually sleeps several hours longer than Diddy. From the beginning Diddy chose to remain by her side until she opened her eyes, around noon, smiled, reached for her dark glasses on the night-table, and rose up naked, putting her bare feet on the floor. At first, it was from the desire to keep her company that Diddy stayed in bed, awake, through the long morning. As well as from the delight of remaining close to her warm, soft body. Lately, he’s found it hard to get up even when Hester does. Often staying in bed while she takes a shower, brushes her hair, dresses, and then moves into the living room to play records or into the kitchen to prepare some food. By this time, it’s usually about one o�
��clock. Hester brings the food into the bedroom; they eat. If he succeeds in dissuading her from then returning to do the dishes, she will often get back in bed. If she insisted on returning to the kitchen, within fifteen minutes Diddy is calling from the bed; telling her to come back.

  When she does return, they make love. Which is, more and more, the unifying theme of their relationship. At first somewhat inhibited and, since Joan’s tirades, holding a modest opinion of his talents in bed, Diddy amazed to find himself graceful and almost tireless with Hester. A miracle. And, another miracle, this lust does not feed on deprivation and rejection. Seems to be fully returned. She, no less enthusiastic, inventive, and eager than he. After a month, they’re making love even more frequently than they did at first. Three, four times a day. Diddy suspects he’s inspired by more than sheer erotic need. Could the same be true of Hester, who seems equally hungry for their sexual union and takes the initiative as often as he does?

  The vertigo of sex. The miniature frontal lobotomy that follows orgasm. Diddy drifting off, but not exactly into sleep. And sometimes wishing he dared to propose to Hester, Let’s die together. Let’s kill ourselves (now). While we’re united and really happy.

  Sometimes Diddy thinks they must have a long talk. Not to quarrel. Not to propose a suicide pact. To clear the air, drag whatever it is that neither of them understands out in the open. Right. Start (now). But just at these moments his mind grinds to a halt, goes blank and hums faintly and senselessly like a television screen when all the channels are off. Diddy possessing no idea, not even the vestige of an idea, of what he thought he wanted to say. Tries to summon the fugitive idea. But he feels so heavy in his flesh. Is it the effort of trying to think, and not succeeding? An overwhelming lassitude. If he’s not already in bed, wants to rush beneath the covers. If he is in bed but Hester’s not beside him, wants to summon her immediately. To linger there together. To sleep with every part of his body embracing Hester’s, his chest against her mobile back, his arm folded around her supple, full waist and tucked in under her side. To wake, to kiss, to rub, to make love. To dream, not to wake fully, to make love.