by Susan Sontag
Isn’t there anyone else around to drag that heavy body in here, and hoist it on the wall and secure it with the ropes? Assuming, of course, that there’s room. That a place can be made for him.
Indeed, space seemed to be rapidly becoming more of a problem. As Diddy ventured farther, quitting the room that was Incardona’s prospective resting place for new rooms, noticed how much more crowded they are getting. Also that most of the bodies he saw (now) had scarcely begun to decay, which suggested that it was the population of the recently dead rising to unmanageable numbers? Strange. Doesn’t the casualty rate remain fairly constant? Maybe not. Whatever the explanation, the density of the bodies is definitely increasing. The ones hanging on the walls more closely packed together, and sometimes in double rows; those on the floor, stacked higher and higher and also farther toward the center. One room succeeds another. The unachievable goal being, eventually, to leave no empty space at all. Let the vacuum be filled. The house properly ordered. A plenum of death.
What does Diddy feel as he reconnoiters the future, taking note of the inexhaustible contents of this charnel house? Except for being too warm, he’s not physically uncomfortable; and dusty old-fashioned blade fans suspended from the ceiling in some of the rooms are slowly turning, circulating the musty air a little. His state of mind and heart not too uncomfortable, either. You might imagine he’s overcome, some or all of the time, by disgust. But that’s not so. Then is he at least depressed by what he sees? Not that either. Frightened? Which would seem to be natural. Again, no. As it happens, none of these emotions are the ones appropriate to this labyrinthine interior and its displays. Which, however somber, generate in Diddy a mood that’s somehow light. Despite the squalor and overcrowding that had at first so upset Diddy, the effect of this place upon him is curiously soothing. Inducing a state that’s almost emotionless.
Bathed in this dull iridescent state of feeling, Diddy continues walking. But gradually slowing down. Such his compromise between the urge to run and the insidious desire to dally along the way. Another barely perceptible conflict headed off.
Sometimes he visits the same room twice. Which isn’t particularly his intention.
Yet Diddy is not just wandering, trying to pretend he isn’t lost. Rather than feeling like a tourist bravely attempting to master an exotic town who lacks both guide and an adequate itinerary or agenda, he feels like a pilgrim who has been briefed thoroughly by his predecessors. If becalmed, then with the concentration of devoutness. What remains to be done has been done before many times, by many others. Diddy not in possession of all the details. Yet how could he feel so confident, so at home; why should everything novel he sees also look familiar? The explanation is easy. What has been happening thus far has constituted an order. Why shouldn’t it so continue? Diddy can’t be lost. Even though, at this point, in this place, has stumbled into a new medium. Entering a new phase. What phase? From one point of view, this space is a panoramic stage set, a kind of theatrical display. And Diddy may be invited to give his opinion of it. Unless he’s got matters wrong, and he’s not the judge at all. Maybe, if this space is a theatre of judgment, Diddy’s task is to find another person, a judge. Who will examine and render a verdict on him.
From another view, of course, nothing could be less relevant here than judgment. That’s what death is about. They’re all collected here, the guilty and the innocent, those who tried and those who didn’t. Which thought makes Diddy laugh aloud. Absolved from the duty of classifying himself or appraising his surroundings.
What Diddy sees is, at the very least, never less than interesting. Death = an encyclopedia of life.
Is this place Diddy’s nightmare? Or the resolution of his nightmare?
A false question, since there are in fact two nightmares. Distinct, if not contradictory. The nightmare that there are two worlds. The nightmare that there is only one world. This one.
Wait. Perhaps he has the answer to that desperate thought about the world. Life = the world. Death = being completely inside one’s own head. Do those new equations refute the puzzle of the two nightmares?
Diddy pondering so intently about these matters that for long intervals he completely forgets where he is. Where and in what state is his body. Even (now), his thoughts bully him. Wouldn’t you think he would have discarded them, along with his clothes, when he entered this place? But they’re still with him, preserved in their own amber.
As though Diddy were living at last in his eyes, only in his eyes. The outward eye that names and itemizes, the inward eye that throbs with thought.
But he’s not always so solemn. Sometimes almost gay. “Gather ye rosebuds.” This is when, while perfectly able to see, he is not just a pair of wet vulnerable eyes lying in their sockets like molluscs in their shells. Swarms with the happiness of being in his body, and feels his nakedness as a delicious blessing. His alert head; the strength of his supple feet traversing the cool stone flooring; the easy hang of his shoulders and the bunched muscles of his calves; his sensitive capacious chest; the hard wall of his lean belly; the tender sex brushing the top of his thighs. Astonishing, isn’t it, that any infant human being ever surrenders such pleasures. And consents to put on clothes.
Other moments, though, he can’t help tensing his shoulders, raising them; his breathing becomes shallower and his step sags. Feels a sickening edge of something that resembles fear. A particular hush. A rancid smell. He may be about to ask himself what he has done. Whether all this is a dishonorable isolation, a useless ordeal. But Diddy knows how to cope with such vexing moments that threaten to subvert his courage. He dreams that he will find Hester at the end of his tour. That at this moment she is in some distant room or gallery, placidly awaiting him. Her role a perfectly clear one, and well within her powers. To save him, like the princess in some fairy tale. Love’s power sweeping him up from the kingdom of death. “Death and the maiden.”
All he has to do is keep walking. Put one foot in front of the other. Whether Hester is waiting or not.
More rooms. More deaths.
Has Diddy reached his destination?
Dying is overwork.
Again Diddy hears the sound of a train, and faint shouts. A dog barking.
A trim, youngish Negro wearing white jacket and pants wheels a cart to his bed. Reeking of vomit. Who is? Diddy. Diddy the Soiled.
More rooms. Diddy walks on, looking for his death. Diddy has made his final chart; drawn up his last map. Diddy has perceived the inventory of the world.
FICTION
The Benefactor
I, etcetera
The Way We Live Now
The Volcano Lover
In America
ESSAYS
Against Interpretation
Styles of Radical Will
On Photography
Illness As Metaphor
Under the Sign of Saturn
AIDS and Its Metaphors
Where the Stress Falls
FILM SCRIPTS
Duet for Cannibals
Brother Carl
PLAY
Alice in Bed
A Susan Sontag Reader
DEATH KIT. Copyright © 1967 by Susan Sontag. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sontag, Susan, 1933–
Death ki
t / Susan Sontag.
p. cm.
ISBN 13: 978-0-312-42011-6
1. Title.
PS3569.O6547D4 1991
813'54—dc20
90-22220
CIP
First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First Picador USA Edition: June 2002
eISBN 9781466853546
First eBook edition: October 2013