Staring at the Sun

by Julian Barnes

  There were some who believed in the courage of laughter. The way to defeat death is to mock it: decline to take it at its own high estimation and you take away its terror. With a joke we disarm eternity. Scared? Not me. Eternal life? I can take it or leave it. Does God exist? Have another slice of pork pie. Gregory in his younger days had been attracted by the cosmic smirk; but no longer. We all fear death; we would all prefer some system of eternal life, even if we had it only on approval to start off with. Six thousand years of afterlife, sale or return, no obligation to make a final purchase: we’d all fill in that coupon. And so Gregory declined to join those who laughed at death. Laughing at death is like pissing in the waist-high bracken beside a golf course. You see steam rising, and you persuade yourself that this denotes heat.

  Fifteen, Gregory thought. That there is no God, but there is eternal life. This would be an interesting system. After all, do we technically need them both? We could organize eternal life without God’s help, couldn’t we? Children, left to themselves, invent games and rules. We could surely manage to run things on our own. Our record so far may not be that good, but the conditions under which we’ve been labouring in these brief terrestrial lives of ours have been less than perfect. I mean, for a start there was a lot of ignorance around, and then our material circumstances left much to be desired, and there was some pretty terrible weather, and then just when our kings and our wise men began to get things into some kind of order, this terribly, terribly unfair backhander called mortality comes along and wipes them all out. Had to start again with a brand-new set of kings and wise men. Hardly surprising in the light of this that we frequently take two paces forward and one back. Whereas, if we had eternal life … there’s no knowing what we might not achieve.

  “Let me show you something,” Jean said. She took out a cigarette, lit it and began to smoke.

  After a minute or two, Gregory said, “What is it?”

  “Wait and see.”

  He waited; she smoked; the ash on her cigarette grew longer, but did not fall. He looked puzzled at first, then watched her seriously, then began smiling. Finally he said, “I didn’t know you were a magician.”

  “Oh, we can all do magic,” Jean said, and laid down her pillar of ash. “Uncle Leslie taught me this one. He told me the secret not long before he died. You just put a needle down the middle of the cigarette. Then it’s easy.”

  In bed, Gregory began to brood about his mother’s trick. She had never done anything like it before. Was she trying to tell him something? Her motives were becoming ever more opaque. Perhaps the needle in the cigarette was meant to be the soul in the body, or something like that. But his mother didn’t believe in such things; she had once told him approvingly about an old Chinese philosopher who had written an essay called “The Destructibility of the Soul.” Perhaps she was saying that the needle in the cigarette was like the soul in the body in this respect: that it was only a trick—something which made us seem impressive, but which in the end was really no more than an ordinary piece of magic. He would have asked what she meant, except that increasingly she chose not to answer questions if she didn’t feel like it. She would merely smile; and he didn’t know if she was just a clever old woman or if she hadn’t been paying attention.

  In the Temple of Heaven, through a Chinaman’s ear, you hear soft Western voices. What are they saying? What are they saying?

  Gregory went to consult TAT on a morning when the grey sky sat low and flat on the city like a saucepan lid. He had a doctor’s certificate and a permission slip signed by Jean. A girl receptionist in a blue-green suit with an official lapel pin gave him a will form and showed him how to use the auto witnessing machine. She smiled confidingly and said, “It’s not as bad as it seems.”

  Gregory felt cross with her. He didn’t want to be told that everything was really all right, that there was nothing to worry about. He wanted the formalities to be extensive, the gravity to be impressive, the fear to come easily. He wanted them to make him bring overnight things in a holdall. He wanted them to take away his tie and shoelaces at the door. For God’s sake, you only come to TAT once in your life: why couldn’t they make it more of an event?

  Gregory had little interest in politics. To him the history of his country consisted of a neurotic shuffle between repression and anarchy, and those periods praised for their stability were merely chance instants of balance: points at which both anarchy and repression briefly had their appetites gratified. When the state was being nasty it called itself decisive; when sloppy, it called itself democratic. Look what was happening to marriage. He had never married himself, but he was appalled at the way others did the deed. People wanted to get married with no more sense of seriousness and occasion than they might bring to picking up a hitchhiker; so that was democratically permitted. Some state official would arrive like a baker’s roundsman, knock discreetly on the back door and whisper, “It’s quite all right about you two being married, you know. On the other hand, if you don’t want to, that’s quite all right as well.” Just so that no one felt the strain of commitment, of seriousness …

  Well, maybe he was just getting old. And if that was what they all wanted—as the computervote had emphatically confirmed—then that, he supposed, was what they should be allowed to have. Even so, he thought the approach to TAT ought to have been made a little more bracing, a little more austere. It felt no more formal than going into hospital.

  The receptionist flipped his three forms onto her desk—one skimmed down to the floor, but she didn’t bother to pick it up—and led him along a buff corridor. The carpet was the colour of the receptionist’s uniform, and the walls were hung with the originals of newspaper cartoons about the opening of TAT. Gregory fleetingly noticed the TAT building portrayed as a mincing machine, a psychiatric hospital, a crematorium and a state video parlour. He sighed disapprovingly: why did the place display such a cheerful collusion in the popular image of itself?

  He was left in a cubicle which, apart from its blue-green colour, looked like any other GPC cubicle. He expected a happy-pill dispenser, or a spy hole, or a mirror that might be two way; or something. But the room looked ordinary, even a bit scruffy, and the TAT console no different from any GPC input. There was nobody keeping him here, or looking after him, or suggesting how he might proceed. He was free, it seemed, to do as he liked; there was a lock on the inside of the door, but not the outside. So where had all these myths started, the ones in which TAT-enquirers were strapped onto couches like laboratory animals and force-fed truth until they vomited it out?

  Gregory entered his social security number and GPC reference, then waited for instructions. A surprisingly long minute went by before the READY sign came on and the green cursor started to flash. He wondered how to begin. The mesmerizing diamond blinked relentlessly, like a blip on a surgical monitor: as long as it continued, he was still alive … Then it became the blip on a radar screen: as long as it continued his aircraft had not gone missing … Then it was the blip of an auto-lighthouse: beware the rocks, beware the rocks … He flipped Input but continued to stare at the green diamond. Maybe it was designed to have some hypnotic effect. No, that was too paranoid.

  To his surprise, after a couple of silent minutes, input was overridden by output. Letters unrolled across the screen.

  WHY DON’T YOU TELL ME ALL ABOUT IT?

  Gregory nearly left at that point. He had obviously expected TAT to have a psycho-function; but nothing as crass as this. What a disappointment. He wondered if he’d been assigned some piece of antique equipment—a fin-de-siècle psychotherapy computer, for instance. In which case he might as well sit down with an old-fashioned human being.

  But there were other possibilities. That first question might have a specific function. It could be intended as a relaxing joke (the idea that computers were unable to generate humour had long since been disproved) or as an irritant designed to make him blurt out whatever was in the front, or preferably the back, of his mind. Yet again, it
might be a randomly selected opening gambit. That chess computer he’d had back in the late seventies: you could open a king’s pawn and receive one of several possible replies. Gregory decided it was silly to get cross with TAT and answered the question (now flashing a reminder sign) as directly as he had planned.

  “I am afraid of death.”

  EXPAND.

  Well, at least it hadn’t replied “Aren’t we all?” and given a Viennese chuckle.

  “Expand in what direction?” If he was going to be precise, he was going to insist on TAT’s being precise as well.

  WHEN? HOW OFTEN? SINCE WHEN? DESCRIBE FEAR.

  Gregory typed in his answers carefully, and spaced them neatly, even though he knew this was irrelevant to the machine’s understanding.

  1. In the late afternoon, the early evening, and when I am in bed; when I am driving up a hill; at the end of physical exercise; when I listen to certain pieces of jazz; in the middle of sex; when I look at the stars; when I think of my childhood; when I look at a happy pill in the middle of someone else’s palm; when I think of the dead; when I think of the living.

  2. Every day of my life.

  3. Ten years, perhaps, in the way described. Before that, as an adolescent, with the same frequency and terror, but with less elaboration.

  4. It is a combination of physical fear, self-pity, anger and disappointment.

  IS IT DEATH YOU FEAR OR OBLIVION?

  “Both.”

  WHICH MORE?

  “I do not distinguish them.”

  BUT EVERYONE DIES. EVERYONE IN THE PAST, AND EVERYONE IN THE FUTURE.

  “I find that no consolation.”

  DESCRIBE YOUR PHYSICAL TERROR.

  “It’s not the fear of pain, it’s the fear of the inevitability of non-pain. It’s the sense of having a heat-seeking missile locked in on your path, and that however fast you run it will always overtake you. It’s …” But his input was subject to an Interrupt.

  THE HARE NEVER OVERTAKES THE TORTOISE IN THEORY.

  What? Gregory could scarcely believe this. The cheek. Quickly, he replied,

  “1. Zeno is dead, as you may or may not have noticed. 2. Don’t make fucking jokes about it.”

  SORRY.

  Gregory was then quizzed with courtesy and even—if you could say this about a machine—with sensitivity about his childhood, his parents, his career, his experience of people dying, the funerals he had been to, his future expectations. Some of this information, he guessed, was to cross-check his record. During these exchanges, he began to get the feel of talking to TAT; it seemed to understand shortcuts in expression and to follow modulations of tone without difficulty. The session was drawing to a close.

  IS IT DEATH YOU COMPLAIN. ABOUT OR LIFE?

  “That’s not a real question. Both, of course; because both are one.”

  AND WHAT DO YOU WANT DONE ABOUT IT?

  “I don’t know. Is the fear of death an ineradicable human instinct?”

  NOT ANYMORE. BY NO MEANS. IMAGINE A DENTAL NERVE BEING REMOVED.

  “I haven’t come for the happy pills. That’s not what I mean.”

  OF COURSE NOT. THAT WOULD BE INSULTING. THERE ARE MORE SERIOUS METHODS. DO YOU KNOW ABOUT NDE?

  “No.”

  PLEASE REQUEST A 16B ON THE WAY OUT. BUT DON’T FORGET TO ASK YOURSELF IF YOU REALLY DO WANT NOT TO FEAR DEATH. I HAVE ENJOYED OUR LITTLE CHAT. KINDLY STORE BEFORE DEPARTURE. ARRIVEDERCI.

  Christ, this machine could be irritating. Arrivederci? Had it misread his surname or something? Unless it was just a random sign-off. In which case perhaps he should repay it in kind, with a random greeting in Eskimo or Maori or something. Rub his nose from side to side on the screen: that might shake the brute up.

  At the desk the receptionist who had given him the will form handed him a 16b as if she knew he was going to ask for one. She shouldn’t have done that, he thought. Nor should she have smiled and said, “See you again soon, I expect.” Maybe he’d go and kill himself just to confound her expectations. Push out to sea in an open boat, jump off a church tower flapping his wings, or whatever the modern equivalent might be. Something with an aeroplane and no parachute, he suspected.

  Back at home, he felt the pamphlet warm and shameful in his pocket, like a piece of specially targeted pornography. He saved it until Jean had gone to bed, squirted himself a sodawhisk from the dispenser, and settled down. NDEs, it transpired, were Near Death Experiences, the lulling dreams—or spiritual visions—enjoyed by coma victims before they swayed back from extinction. Failed suicides, car-crash survivors, patients who suffered routine mishaps on the operating table—all reported that a form of consciousness, rarefied but tenacious, had been maintained. That inert body in the hospital bed was no more than a blacked-out house; inside, coherent life continued.

  Researchers began collating testimony in the seventies and soon established that the key stages of a Near Death Experience could be charted like the Stations of the Cross. The NDE would typically begin with a release from pain and a flooding sense of calm. This was followed by weightlessness, heightened perception and a detachment from the physical body. Quietly, and without anguish, the self would slip away from its straitjacket of flesh; it would float upwards, rest against the ceiling and peer down with a distant curiosity at the comatose, discarded husk below. After a while the freed self would embark on a symbolic journey, through the Dark Tunnel and towards the Country of Light. This passage was a period of joy and optimism, feelings which would continue until the traveller arrived at the Border—a river it was forbidden to cross, a door that would not open. Here the hopeful voyager realized with dismay that the Country of Light was inaccessible—on this visit, at least—and that a return to the abandoned body was inevitable. This enforced reentry into the world of flesh and pain and time would always be marked by a seeping disappointment.

  There was, though, a surprise benefit: patients emerged from their NDE with no trace of fear about their own subsequent death. However their vision of the Country of Light might be interpreted (to some it confirmed the truth of religion; to others, just mankind’s tireless capacity for wishful thinking), its practical effect was to expunge mortal terror. Coma, that facsimile of death, was the key factor; control groups—those who had merely endured agonies of pain, kidnap victims sentenced to death and unexpectedly released—offered much more haphazard findings. Researchers had followed up a number of NDE survivors and interviewed them on their deathbeds; here the figures slipped a little, but the expungement-of-fear rate remained at over 90 percent.

  From this discovery emerged in the mid-nineties a small pioneer programme designed to cure deep neurosis by temporarily inducing coma. It was, of course, a risky procedure, both socially and medically; indeed, a couple of small miscalculations had the effect of stalling the project for almost a decade. But once the final wrinkle—that of actually killing the patient by mistake—had been eliminated, the programme received central funding. The delicacy and expense of the surgery involved (plus the fear of democratic abuse) meant that information about induced NDEs was restricted. However, pamphlet 16b (which had to be signed for and returned) could promise that, where the patient was deemed suitable for treatment, the surgical technique was 99.9 percent safe, and the long-term cure rate consistently above 90 percent.

  IMAGINE A DENTAL NERVE BEING REMOVED … As simple as that, Gregory thought. Drill through the pulp and burn out the nerve. No more sleepless nights.

  He spent the next two days in his room. Sometimes, as he sat listening to jazz a clarinet would detach itself, rise and wail briefly above an inert body of sound; at which Gregory would be reminded—briefly, as if from an angle—of the question he had been set. But his answer didn’t really come from a process of thought. It was too easy for that, too instinctive. It was like flicking a switch, or kicking a rudder, or pressing a button.

  When he returned to the blue-green cubicle the screen was in a cheery mood, one early riser greeting another with the morning mist
still on the ground and the birds excitedly discussing the light.

  HI THERE. NICE TO SEE YOU. DIDN’T EXPECT YOU BACK SO SOON.

  “Hullo.”

  WELL, AND DID WE READ OUR 16B?

  “Yes.”

  AND WOULD WE LIKE OUR FEAR OF DEATH CLINICALLY REMOVED?

  “No.”

  OH! That was what it said. The machine actually said: OH! There was a pause: perhaps Gregory was meant to feel guilty about the rebuff he had administered. Then: MIND TELLING US WHY?

  “No.”

  OH!

  For once, Gregory felt he was the boss. “What we would like removed,” he typed slowly, as if he could be patronizing with his fingertips, “is not the fear of death, but death itself.”

  THE IMPOSSIBLE ALWAYS TAKES A LITTLE LONGER.

  The machine had recovered its jauntiness; unless tone was also a random factor. Gregory got up and wandered down the corridor for some coffee. When he returned, the screen was covered in brisk encouragements, COME ON THEN and YOUR GO SQUIRE and ENTER WHILE RATES LAST and YOU HAVE NOW BEEN SITTING THERE FOR TWO AND A HALF MINUTES. Gregory wiped them all away with a brisk stab at Input and moved the blinking cursor into the enquiry field. He entered Religion.

  WHICH RELIGION?

  “Religion generally.”

  PROCEED.

  Gregory wasn’t sure how to phrase it. But presumably TAT could feed off GPC’s information bank.

  “What is the current state of religious belief?”

  CENSUS OF 2016: ANGLOPOPE CHURCH 23%, MUSLOHIND 8% …

  Interrupt. That wasn’t what he was after.

  “How strong is the belief of those who believe?”

  VARIES FROM WEAK TO FERVENT. SUGGEST PAMPHLET 34C.

  He didn’t think he’d ask for that one. Well, since TAT was in a back-slapping mood this morning, why not be chummy and personal back?