Claude said: “It’s not nostalgia. I’m not stuck in the past.
In fact I hardly even think about the times we had together. I don’t want to
rewind. I want the future to hold her. I just want to see her again. Everything
has become tainted with her absence. Everything—a ringing telephone, a
lampshade, the economy, lima beans, plumbing, lions, capitalism, Brahms,
hydrogen, clairvoyance, grammar, James Joyce, circular logic, shoelaces,
Yugoslavia, public transit, algebra, ballet, sodomy, Episcopalianism,
architecture, evolution, oakum, loose change, dentistry, taupe, the immune
system, hot jazz, cotton, spelling bees—everything is permeated with
not-herness. I just want to see her again.”
Dr. Mayer-Edelmann said: “The trajectory of your
mourning-arc is shallower than I quite frankly would like. Your grief index is
falling at what I feel compelled to describe as a less than wholly satisfactory
velocity. Your SSHQ—the Stanford Standardized Heartache Questionnaire—scores
are manifesting an erraticness that professional propriety demands I consider
to be not altogether reassuring. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’m going to
refer you to Dr. Grohmuller, a very good oneirologist. She should be able to
see you sometime in early autumn.”
Dr. Grohmuller said: “Keeping in mind that this is all a
gross oversimplification, the neocortex has two distinct modules which, roughly
speaking, are localized in complementary hemispheres in the majority of
individuals. In general terms, one could say that the first of these modules
specializes in what Grohmuller (1989), Grohmuller (1994), and Grohmuller and
Kandinsky (1999) have referred to as
narrative or seriatim consciousness,
while the second module operates in what
the same authors have called an iconic or parallel fashion.
Others (Grohmuller & Fitch-Bass, 2003) have posited that the iconic
consciousness is, broadly speaking, most intimately involved in the production
of the REM dream state. Neurophysiological support for this theory has been
steadily accumulating, and it is now believed by many that the recently
synthesized chemical berylpotassiumdioxethylmonoamide—or ‘Vitamin G2’—is in
fact a naturally occurring neurotransmitter which plays a central role in
suppressing certain high-level functioning of the narrative consciousness at
the onset of stage four sleep (Grohmuller, Davis, Fitch-Bass, Robins,
Triptree-Loeb & Caton, in press). So-called G2 Blockers, which are believed
to inhibit the reuptake of Vitamin G2 at dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex
receptor sites, have lent support to this theory as a result of their observed
effect in clinical trials—namely, the drastically increased triggering of lucid
dreaming states.”
Claude said: “I think I’m getting déjà vu.”
Dr. Grohmuller said: “That’s because we’ve already had this
conversation. It was earlier today. At the end of our consultation I gave you a
prescription for a Vitamin G2 analogue, trade name Lukoxamine, commonly
referred to as simply ‘Lukes.’ As I explained to you then, it is my belief that
patients demonstrating irregularities in their bereavement behavior—or what
Roberts and Reid-Ambrose (1974) have, rather puckishly, called ‘grief paralysis’—may
benefit from short-term lucid dreaming treatment. In short, abreaction may be
attainable if the patient can direct her or his dream towards a reunion with
the beloved departed.”
Claude said: “So this is a dream? I’m dreaming right now?
But this looks exactly like your office, your real office.”
Dr. Grohmuller said: “What about that penguin?”
Claude said: “You just put that there.”
The penguin said: “It’s
your dream, man.”
Claude said: “Then why am I dreaming this? Why aren’t I
dreaming of Margaret? If this is my dream, why can’t I just make her appear?”
Dr. Grohmuller said: “The narrative consciousness has
virtually no direct authority over the iconic consciousness. To anyone but a
layperson it would be obvious that this arrangement is to the organism’s
advantage. If the narrative consciousness could interfere with its
world-creation, people would sit around daydreaming instead of getting any work
done. They’d imagine they were well-fed instead of searching for food. They’d
make believe they were good-looking and universally admired instead of writing
scholarly articles for peer-reviewed journals
(Grohmuller & Grohmuller, 2002).”
The penguin said: “Most of the dead
I know live in the City of the Dead.”
Dr. Grohmuller said: “It’s a subterranean city. The dead
don’t decay as quickly underground.”
Claude said: “So I’ve got to go to this City of the Dead if
I want to see my Magpie?”
The penguin said: “Yeah, but they won’t let you in unless
you’ve got a pass.”
Dr. Grohmuller said: “You can get a pass from your
physician. Or your coroner.”
Dr. Aloy said: “You look terrible. Lift your shirt. You’ve
put on weight. No, don’t say anything, I don’t want to hear it. Hold your
breath. No, breathe in first.
Now hold
it. Let it out. Just as I thought. You’ve been smoking again, haven’t you?
Let’s see your tongue. Oh my God. Ever heard of ‘halitosis’? Never mind. Hold
out your arms. No, to the side. Not been getting any exercise, I see. Does it
hurt when I do this? Well it should. How’s your diet? No, forget I asked. Look
over my shoulder. My other shoulder.
Can’t say I care for the rate of pupil contraction. Follow this pen with your
eyes. Without moving your head.
Just as I thought. We’d better schedule you for an MRI. I’d tell you not to
panic but it might do you some good. I wish you could see yourself. If my
patients saw what I see they’d take my advice instead of turning themselves
into walking pastries. Here, feel this. Hard as a rock, isn’t it? That’s called
a latissimus dorsi muscle. But then you wouldn’t know anything about that,
would you? It breaks my heart to look at you. Or it would, if I didn’t run
eight miles a day. I’ve got a heart like a freight engine. Put on this
stethoscope. In your ears. You
hear that? That’s not just pumping blood, that’s blasting it into orbit. Now
listen to yours. It’s squeezing that blood out like a little girl handling
somebody’s used hankie. It brings tears to my eyes. Tears as clean and clear as
mountain spring water.”
Claude said: “I need a pass to the City of the Dead.”
Dr. Aloy said: “Can’t do it. You’re not dead. You
look dead but you’re not. Not quite. What’s the hurry?
You’re headed there soon enough.”
Claude said: “My girlfriend is there. I want to see her.”
Dr. Aloy said: “Sorry to hear that. But I could lose my
license. You come back to me when you’re dead and I’ll see what I can do.”
Claude said: “This is all just a dream of mine anyway. Can’t
you break the rules?”
Dr. Aloy said: “Now let me give you a piece of advice, free
of charge. Don’t go around saying that this is all just a dream of yours, okay?
People don’t like being told they’re a figment of somebody else’s imagination.
Now if you’re serious about this pass, you go out there and get yourself
killed, come on back and I’ll get you straightened away. Of course that’s not
my
professional advice. Excuse me.
Hello? Oh. It’s for you.”
Dr. Grohmuller said: “I wouldn’t jump out Dr. Aloy’s window
if I were you. The fall might frighten you and the fear might wake you.”
Claude said: “I wasn’t going to jump. I have no desire to
die in public. Of course I don’t exactly want Gary or Lila to see my brains
dripping down the bathroom walls or Helen slipping in a pool of my blood,
either. Not that I own a gun. And I don’t know anything about poison. I guess
enough of anything toxic would do the trick, but I don’t really relish the idea
of writhing around in agony while bleach eats away my innards—even if this is
just a dream. I’ve always thought freezing to death, curling up drunk in some
snowbank, would be best. But of course it’s summer. I suppose I could hang
myself. There’s that oak in our back yard. The kids won’t be home from school
for a few hours yet.”
Lila said: “Mom, Dad’s stuck in the tree out back.”
Helen said: “Mommy knows, dear. Finish your roast beef and
you can call the ambulance.”
The ambulance driver said: “Stop your squirming back there
or I’ll have my partner strap you down until the trial.”
Claude said: “What trial?”
The ambulance driver said: “You think with that welt around
your neck they’re not going to know it was suicide?”
Claude said: “Since when is suicide a crime?”
The ambulance driver said: “It’s always been a crime. It’s
the one thing the living can’t abide. You kill someone else, that shows a
healthy respect for life. Shows you think it’s the most valuable possession you
can take away from them. But you off yourself? Oh boy. That’s like being
invited to a sumptuous banquet and shitting in the pâté de foie gras. You leave
a note?”
Claude said: “I couldn’t think of anything to say.”
The ambulance driver said: “That’s in your favor.”
Claude said: “Anyway, I didn’t really hang myself. I’m just
trying to get a pass to visit my girlfriend in the City of the Dead.”
The coroner said: “I can give you one just as soon as we’re
done with the autopsy. Can you hold on to this for a second?”
Claude said: “What is it?”
The coroner said: “Your stomach. Oh, that’s just great.
Right on the floor. Last time I ask you to hold anything. That reminds me. Did
you fill out your organ donor card?”
Claude said: “It’s in my wallet.”
The coroner said: “Won’t be needing this back then, will
you? Or this. Or this. Or this.”
Claude said: “What do you need that for?”
The coroner said: “A colleague of mine is writing a
dissertation on the effects of defenestration on the exsanguinated human
kidney.”
Claude said: “What are you going to do with
that?”
The coroner said: “My brother’s a chef. Alright, here’s your
pass. Take that to your funeral director. And here’s a sewing kit. Good luck.”
The funeral director said: “Dear friends and family of the
dearly departed Claude R. Talleurien. I’m not sure what the ‘R’ stands for but
it is always a sad occasion when someone we know dies. It is less sad for those
of us—such as myself, today—who did not know the dead person in question. But
it is still sad. It is always sad. For whom the bell tolls and all that. The
fact of the matter is, no one knows a whole hell of a lot about it. Death, I
mean. I can’t possibly imagine what it’s like, and neither can you. Oh, you’ve
got your ideas, and so have I. For me, I suppose it’s a sort of infinite
succession of intense and always novel joys; an endless concatenation of
unbearable euphorias, each one obliterating the last with its impossible
brilliance, until my soul is suffused with a pure and unadulterated beatitude
that would make falling in love or heroin high or being fellated by a circle of
dancing pixies for all eternity seem like excruciating agony in comparison. But
maybe that’s just me. Now, since we’re running a bit late, I will limit myself
to only one or two items of parish business. As many of you know, we usually
hold a Bingo For Charity night on Fridays at seven, but for reasons that I will
not elaborate upon at the moment because I do not know what they are, that function
has been moved ahead an hour, to six p.m. If you would like to write that down,
here is a pen that I will pass around, starting at this end and proceeding
counter-clockwise. If you do not have a piece of paper, you might want to write
on the back of your hand, assuming of course that you are not allergic to blue
ink. Now, would anyone like to stand up and say a few words by which to
remember our dear friend and father and brother and son and nephew and
coworker, Claude?”
Claude’s father said: “Truth to tell, I never really wanted
no kids. Guessat’s why I up’n left town when Claude here was borned. Came back
for a visit once. Claude here wanted to know where I’d been at all them years,
kept askin’ why I wasn’t around when he was a-growin’ up. ‘Well hell,’ I says,
‘fair is fair. You wasn’t around when
I was
a kid, was you?’ Left town again pretty soon after that. Couldn’t hack it, I
guess. Some just isn’t cut out to be dads is all. Ain’t nobody’s fault.”
Wendy said: “I didn’t know Claude very well, but what I did
know of him I liked a lot. I don’t know what kind of a father he was, or
husband, or friend, or employee, but he used to come into the store maybe once
or twice a week and I could tell he was an alright person. He was always
polite. One thing I remember is he often had exact change. He may not have done
anything noteworthy or particularly memorable but I will always remember him.
And so, in a small way, I guess he’ll live on in my memory. And maybe someday
I’ll tell my children, if I ever have children, though God knows the way things
are going ... Or I’ll tell someone else about him, and then he’ll live on a
little bit in their memory, but not very much, I guess, because I probably
won’t be able to explain what it was about Claude that made him special or
unique or whatever. But at least I will remember him, and so he’ll live on, at
least until I die. And then Claude will die too. But if you look at it another
way, he’s already dead, so what’s the difference.”
Jack said: “Claude was a
valuable asset around the office. Now that he’s dead I’ve got Collier breathing
down my neck for his Moss-Maple folio, plus the Werner-Fellinger article that
Claude was supposed to have on Gernwald’s desk Monday has fallen into my lap,
and my guys are doing the work on the Horace-Witt summary that his guys were
supposed to be doing for the big Thurington-Levy merger presentation on Friday
but none of them can do anything without that Kimberley-Woodrow file that
Claude was appending to Jenkins’ Ruprecht-Smith file but no one knows where it
is and his office is a disaster area let me tell you and we were a man short
for the interoffice league game last night and that’s our third forfeit and one
more and we’re out of the semis so yeah, he’ll be missed.”
Helen said: “Claude was a good father, I guess. But he
always left the discipline to me, so I always ended up looking like the bad
guy. And he was an alright husband. Neither the best nor the worst I’ve had. As
for performance in bed, I’d say he was somewhere in the thirtieth, thirty-fifth
percentile. Also while we’re here I might as well announce that Jack and I were
having an affair and now that Claude is dead we can get married and you’re all
invited to the wedding which is tomorrow and as far as gifts go, considering the
short notice, cash is just super.”
Gary said: “He was a nice dud. I mean dead. I mean dad. But
he never let us stay up late or watch rated-R movies. I hated him.”
The gravedigger said: “How you doing down there? Need
anything? Hungry? Thirsty? How’s your bladder? Any last words? No? Here we go
then. Hope you aren’t claustrophobic. That’s a little joke.”
Claude’s Uncle Wilbert said: “And this is the fourth circle,
where the people who left refrigerator doors open stay. And this is the fifth
circle, where the people who amended STOP signs with the word ‘Driving’ stay.”
Claude said: “That doesn’t seem so bad.”
Claude’s Uncle Wilbert said: “It’s ambiguous. Is their
purpose politico-environmental—do they want you to start biking to work?—or are
they just being waggishly pedantic? And this is the sixth circle, where Larry
stays. Larry was the guy who called escalators ‘escalators,’ even though they
also go down. Hi Larry.”
Larry said: “What was I supposed to call them,
‘de-escalators’?”
Claude’s Uncle Wilbert said: “And this is the seventh
circle, where Hank stays. Hi Hank.”
Hank said: “What was I supposed to call them,
‘de-elevators’?
Claude’s Uncle Wilbert said: “And this is the eighth circle,
where the people who ran crooked lemonade stands stay. Hi there, Gwenda.”
Claude said: “Well aren’t you adorable. How much is
lemonade?”
Gwenda said: “For a quarter you get one chance to win a
glass, or three chances for fifty cents.”
Claude said: “Here’s a quarter.”
Gwenda said: “Sorry. Please try again.”
Claude said: “I didn’t win?”
Gwenda said: “Sorry. Please try again.”
Claude said: “Here’s a dollar.”
Gwenda said: “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Please try
again.”
Claude said: “That’s only five.”
Gwenda said: “You win!”
Claude said: “I won a lemonade?”
Gwenda said: “You won a free play!”
Claude said: “Well, did that one win?”
Gwenda said: “Sorry. Please try again.”
Claude’s Uncle Wilbert said: “And this is the ninth circle,
where all the people who make things worse by trying to make them better stay.
And this is the gate to the City of the Dead, where everyone else stays. You’ve
got your pass, right?”
Claude said: “Where’s Maggie?”
Claude’s Uncle Wilbert said: “Check the telephone
directory.”
Claude said: “She’s not in it.”
Claude’s Uncle Wilbert said: “Then she’s not here.”
Claude said: “But she’s dead.”
Claude’s Uncle Wilbert said: “You should talk to Mr. Rogobo.
He’s the mayor.”
Mr. Rogobo said: “She’s not here.”
Claude said: “But she’s dead.”
Mr. Rogobo said: “She’s not on the books. If she’s not on
the books, she’s not dead.”
Claude said: “The books must be wrong. I went to her
funeral. I watched them lower her coffin into the ground.”
Mr. Rogobo said: “The books are not wrong. The books are
never wrong. At least the books are
very very rarely wrong. To my knowledge, and my knowledge is
comprehensive, the books have only been wrong on seven occasions. But the
bookkeepers learn from these errors. So, as you can imagine, the art of keeping
the books is much more advanced now than it was in the golden age of
bookkeeping, before the books ever went wrong, so that now the books are, in
effect, never wrong. For all intents and purposes, the books are perfectly all
right.”
Claude said: “But the books were wrong seven times in the
past. Maybe they’re wrong now.”
Mr. Rogobo said: “No. With each new error the books become
ever more right. With each wrongness the overall rightness becomes more
certain. So the chances of the books being wrong are infinitesimal. Ergo, your
girlfriend is not dead.”
Claude said: “Then where is she?”
Mr. Rogobo said: “Still above-ground, I’d imagine. But no
one is ever allowed to go back above-ground. Never has anyone gone back. At
least
almost never ever has anyone gone
back. To my knowledge only six people have ever gone back and in all of those
cases with the exception of one it was due to errors of bookkeeping and as you
know that never happens. The other I permitted to go back because he thought
his girlfriend had died and so he killed himself but it turned out that she was
living after all and the guy felt like a real schmuck as you can imagine so I
let him go back but only on the condition that he would never be allowed to
return to the City of the Dead again unless he brought his girlfriend with him.
Now before you go I’ll need to take that pass back.”
The bailiff said: “All rise. The honorable Sharon T. Smith
presiding, in case number FDS-276-5854, The People
v. Claude R. Talleurien, alleged suicide and revenant.
Court is now in session.”
The people said: “We are born with brains not yet wired for
memory. None of us remembers being a baby, being born, coming into existence.
Each of us finds himself
in medias res,
an amnesiac, an unmoved mover. We therefore possess at every age a full sense
of a past, one which seems all the richer for fading gradually into obscurity.
Whether eight or eighty, we feel ourselves to be without origin. And from this
feeling we fashion, when we are young, the complementary one: that we must
surely live forever. But as we age, and watch others cease to exist, we arrive
at the inevitable induction: all men are mortal. And though we still feel every
bit as beginningless as we did when children, we become disabused of the notion
of our endlessness. Life, as a result, seems tragically short. And yet death
is, at least, democratic. In depriving us not of a spectral and uncertain
future but of an unfathomable past, it takes from each of us the same priceless
possession, a treasure that is literally invaluable, because none of us can know
its scope. Death takes from us our story. Claude Talleurien has, in trying to
write the conclusion to his own story, acted as death’s accomplice. What is
worse, he has, in returning to this world, blurred the boundary between life
and death. We put people in the ground to forget about them—to forget, to the
best of our ability, about death itself. What else do we put in the ground?
Garbage. And if garbage were to one day emerge from its appointed resting place
we would not hesitate to rise up in retaliation, to crush it beneath the full
weight of our legal system, to send it back to hell where it belongs. Let us
show no more pity for this man.”
The inexpensive lawyer said: “Good gosh, that was nice. I
don’t know how I’m going to follow that. I guess I could call somebody to the
what’s it called, the
stand—incidentally,
why is it called that, I wonder, if you sit in it? I would like to call to the stand, well,
basically anyone who might be able to say something nice about my client, the
guy defending himself, Mr. ... this guy here that I’m pointing at. Anybody?
Your honor, I would like to request a recess on the grounds that I am having a
panic attack. I left my medication in my locker at the Y. Oh God, I’m seeing
lights.”
The expensive lawyer said: “Mr. Talleurien? I saw you on
television and you look much more emaciated in person. I’d like to represent
you but unfortunately I’m very expensive and you don’t look like someone who
can afford me. However your case is getting a lot of media attention and my heart
goes out to you so I’ll tell you what I’ll do. For five thousand dollars down
I’ll give you financing on my legal services at only 11.9% interest compounded
biweekly with minimum monthly payments of let’s say one thousand one hundred
and fifty-five dollars.”
The private investigator said: “Sure, I can find her. I can
find anyone. I once found a man who’d done a runner on his wife. He took his
kids, their kids,
and her kids from a
previous marriage. There were seventeen of them altogether, ages from two-and-a-half
to thirty-one years old, sleeping in a six-by-ten-foot roach-infested motel
room in Yagé, Mexico. The thirty-one-year-old was a podiatrist in Baltimore.
He’d never even met his step-father. Figured he was being held for some kind of
ransom. So he called his mom and asked her what the hell was going on and what
did she do? She sent me down there to ship them all home. Another time I found
a woman who’d skipped out on her husband twenty years before. They were still
married. She still had the ring somewhere, she said. So while she slept I crept
into the next room and called one of my assistants at directory assistance and
in no time flat I’d tracked down the phone number of the husband. Once the old
guy figured out who I was talking about he claimed he wasn’t even looking for her, but I was able to
convince him to buy her latest address and phone number for twenty bucks. Not
that the cheque ever came through, mind you, but you know what the postal
service is like. So yeah, I can find your girlie. I’ll need about eleven
hunnies up front for my day-to-day expenses.”
Jack said: “You can’t stay here. We’re on our honeymoon.”
Helen said: “Go away. We’re in love.”
The landlady said: “I hope you don’t have any heart or
respiratory problems because this mold you see all over the walls and ceiling
and along the floor there, it’s called
stachybotrys atra and it’s toxic as hell, that’s why I’ve got this
breathing apparatus on, though to be honest I sometimes wear it around just for
fun, but if you haven’t got like TB or Fragile Lung Syndrome it shouldn’t pose
too much of a problem, at least not in the short term, that reminds me, how
long are you planning on staying, because I’ll require an eighteen-month lease
and six months rent up front plus of course the damage deposit and the security
deposit and a lease-processing fee and a lease-processing-fee fee which is
nonrefundable, I see you jumping out of the way of that caravan of bugs there,
that’s good to see, those are the bad bugs, you want to keep your distance from
those suckers, but these ones over here, these are the good bugs, they’re ugly
as sin but they eat the bad bugs so I feed them chocolate and coffee to keep
them vicious, but it also keeps them awake all night, so I’d recommend ear
plugs and maybe some kind of mosquito netting over your bed, not that that will
keep them out if they have half a mind to get in but it might give them pause,
now you’ve got four appliances and two of them still work, the padlock on the
fridge was put there by the municipal health authority so I don’t have a key
for that, and these bars on the windows are for your own protection, unless
we’re talking about a fire, in which case you’re pretty much shit-O.L. if you
know what I mean, and this here is Saul, Saul this is the guy who might be
moving in, Saul’s alright, as long as he gets fed he’s happy, his favorite
foods are Cheerios and tuna, but I’d recommend you just buy the Discount
Honey-Nut O’s which now come with U’s and C’s, the other day I was almost able
to spell ‘couch,’ and instead of tuna I’d recommend you just get the Flakes of
Negative Entropy in a Can, Saul can’t tell the difference, he won’t give you
any trouble, he just sits there and watches TV, you might have to help him to
the toilet a couple times a week, that’s what this trolley here is for, the
back wheel squeaks like crazy but basically it’s structurally sound, I know you
were looking for a suite to yourself but technically speaking he’s not really a
roommate since he’s not paying rent, the fact is that after his lease ran out
we couldn’t get him out through the door, so I’ll need you to provide me with
post-dated certified cheques for the duration of your lease, and the rent
before utilities comes to eleven hundred and change which I know sounds like a
lot considering the neighborhood and the size and condition of the place and
the mold and the bugs and Saul here but I’ll be honest with you since you seem
like a nice guy, I’m gouging you unmercifully because you’re dead and you’ll
never find a landlord in this city who’d do any different and that’s a fact. So
what do you say?”
The prosecutor said: “Objection, your honor. The defense is
stroking your hand in what I can only describe as a lascivious manner, and
furthermore I can only speculate as to what is going on behind the bench where
my vision cannot penetrate.”
The expensive lawyer said: “Counter-objection, your honor.
Firstly, I am stroking your hand—as you yourself could attest, if you were not
nibbling on the fingers of my other hand—in an expression of strictly
professional admiration for your renowned jurisprudence; and secondly, what
goes on behind this or any other bench between the lower moieties of two
consenting adults is nobody’s business but their own. Now, if that is the end
of the prosecution’s fatuous maunderings and pettifogging quibblings, I am
prepared to outline the arguments I will present over the course of this trial;
arguments which will prove, beyond a penumbra of a shadow of a doubt, my
client’s innocence of the outrageous charges laid against him.”
The television said: “Oh, that’s too bad. Not a single Q.
Debbie, that means it’s your spin. Come on big money, big money! Two thousand
dollars. I’d like to buy a vowel. I’d like to buy a Y. I’m sorry, there aren’t
any Y’s. Oh well. Also, Y is not a vowel. Oh that’s right, I forgot. Excuse me,
but isn’t it sometimes a vowel? Not for the purposes of this game, no. Can I
buy a different vowel then? No, I’m afraid not. Maurice, it’s your spin. Come
on big money! Five thousand dollars! What would you like to do? Are there any
... X’s? No, I guess not. You’re up, Bob. I’d like to solve the puzzle. I’m
afraid you have to spin first, Bob. Oh right. Big money, big money! Fifty
thousand dollars! Are you still going to solve the puzzle? Is it ‘Every Which
Way To Go?’ I’m sorry Bob, I think you’re thinking of the puzzle we had before
the break. Perhaps you’ll have better luck if you wait until some letters
appear on the board next time. Debbie, it’s your go. Big money! Two hundred
thousand dollars! Holy cow! For two hundred thousand dollars, Debbie, what are
you going to do? Let’s see ... Are there any sevens?”
Saul said: “Change the channel.”
The television
said: “These decorative plates are simply irresistible to the serious
collector. Unlike other so-called handmade items, each one of these plates is
completely unique and unlike any other in the collection. That’s because we
don’t take an assembly-line approach to our craft. We believe individuality is
the soul of art. With this maxim in mind, our plate designers are instructed
from birth in the art of decorative plate design, and nothing but the art of
decorative plate design—our state-of-the-art isolation facility ensures it. And
to guarantee that your hand-crafted plate is a truly one-of-a-kind item, each
of our dedicated plate designers is permitted to hand-craft only one
plate—ever. That’s right: your beautiful decorative plate is one person’s
unique life’s work. Not only that, but once your plate is completed, and deemed
to be up to our high standards of quality and aesthetic value, the designer of
your plate is shot in the back of the head, execution-style, so as to ensure
the perpetual uniqueness of your purchase.”
Saul said: “Change the channel.”
The private investigator said: “Well, I could tell you where
she’s
not. She’s not in the cafeteria
downstairs. She’s not in the third stall from the left in the men’s washroom on
the fourth floor. She’s not in the lobby of my apartment building. She’s not in
the coffee shop across the street. She’s not in the bar down the street from my
ex-wife’s place. She’s not hiding behind the dumpster in the back alley outside
my ex-girlfriend’s place. She’s not in the waiting room of the VD clinic. She’s
not on the number 28 bus. She’s not at my mechanic’s. She’s not under my desk.
She’s not in Baltimore. Okay, alright, she might be in Baltimore. I confess, I haven’t had a chance to
look into Baltimore yet, but I’ll get on it right away. I’ve got a wedding to
attend there this weekend anyway. So I’ll need another thousand bucks for
expenses. And I should probably give the newlyweds a little something, a card
and maybe a hundred clams should do it. Will you need a receipt? There’s a
receipt fee of fifty-five bucks.”
The expensive lawyer said: “Even if my client
did kill himself, which I am by no means admitting, he
cannot be held responsible for that or any other misdeed, however despicable,
however heinous. Because whether our characters are the result of our
experiences, our environment, our upbringing, or our genes, whether we are
shaped by nature, nurture, or some combination of both, the fact remains that we
ourselves do not choose what we become.
Whether my client was abused as a child, mocked as a teenager, or simply
inherited a wonky strand of DNA, he can no more be blamed for who he is, for
what he has become, than the sun can be held accountable for shining or the
river for flowing.”
The woman on the phone said: “Hello, I’m calling on behalf
of the local chapter of Mothers Against Death. You may have seen our
commercial: ‘We’re MAD and we’re not going to take it anymore’? I must say, Mr.
Talleurien, that MAD strongly disapproves of the cavalier manner in which you
have returned to the land of the living from that of the dead. We have taken
pains over the millennia to impress upon the younger generation that death is a
very serious business indeed, not something to be experimented with, and we
cannot help but feel that the message you are implicitly sending our children
is that death is not so bad after all. Why, just the other day one of our
members found her thirteen-year-old son chewing razorblades. His excuse was
that supposedly no one at school liked him. But I think you and I both know the
real reason for his deplorable behavior: the glamorization of death by the
liberal media today! And, Mr. Talleurien, we at MAD consider you to be one of
the principal offenders. You serve, perhaps inadvertently, perhaps unwittingly,
as a role model for all the impressionable children out there who don’t know
any better. That thirteen-year-old boy chewing razorblades looks
up to you, Mr. Talleurien, even if he himself doesn’t realize
it, even if he claims to be unaware of your existence. It is our opinion that
only you can undo the damage you have done, Mr. Talleurien. We think it would
be in everyone’s best interest if you were to visit the Moribund Ward at St.
Anthony’s this afternoon and say a few words to the children, a little
something to restore their natural and healthy fear of that damnable scourge of
precious human life, death.”
Claude said: “What I don’t like about death is not that it
ends life, but spoils it. I’m not talking about awareness of your own mortality
or the anxiety that causes. I’m talking about what being mortal does to what
you do and who you are. The fact that you’re born to die makes patience
impossible, desire unquenchable, joy fleeting, creeping boredom the only status
quo. Because you must die, you must hurry, must fight tooth and nail, must
forever ask yourself, ‘What now? What next?’ Even at my happiest, in those
tranquil moments alone with Maggie, I was restless. If it was morning I was
thinking about what we’d do that afternoon; if it was afternoon, I’d be
thinking about that evening. I was always looking forward to the
next happiness, as though simply lying there, watching
the heart-pulse in her warm neck, was a sort of sentence, something to be
waited out, lived through instead
of in. When you get on an
elevator it feels, after you’ve moved a floor or two, like you’re already
slowing down; the end of the increase in velocity feels like a stop. We need to go faster and faster to not
feel like we’re standing still. Immortality would be insufferable as we are.
But if we were immortal, we would not be as we are.”
The MAD woman said: “Something a little more ... concrete,
perhaps, for the children.”
Claude said: “Death seems to be a lot like living, only
there’s less candy.”
The children said: “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to
die!”
The private investigator said: “Well, she’s not in a jail
cell in a little backwater town outside of Atlantic City, I can tell you that
much. How close are you to a Western Union?”
Saul said: “Somebody called for you. They said it was
important and that you should call them back. They left their number but I
wrote it on my hand and it came off when I was masturbating. They left their
name but I forget what it was. I think they called a couple of days ago. Maybe
Tuesday. The day had a Tuesday feel about it. Anyway, you should probably give
them a ring.”
The expensive lawyer said: “And finally, your honor, I
maintain that ‘Claude Talleurien’ cannot be punished for a crime that ‘he’
allegedly committed because ‘he’ does not exist—the concept of selfhood,
personality, or individual identity being a pernicious myth perpetuated by
lassitude, fuzzy thinking, habit, arrogance, and in the furtherance of
inequality, discrimination, and organized team sport.”
Gary’s kindergarten teacher said: “Once upon a time, an
unhappy man tied a rope around his neck. The other end he tied to the branch of
a tree in his back yard. Then he knocked over the chair he was standing on. The
man was unhappy because his girlfriend had died and he would never get to see
her again. When people die, we usually put them in boxes called coffins and
lower them down into holes dug in the ground. Then we cover them up with dirt
and grass and try to forget about them. Sometimes when people die we burn them
up in a hot furnace until they are nothing more than cinders and ashes. Then,
after the ashes have cooled, we put them inside an urn. Sometimes we take the
urn full of ashes and scatter the ashes in a scenic location—the sea shore, for
example, or the heart of the forest. No one knows why we do these things.
Sometimes we don’t burn or bury a person at all. Sometimes we freeze them so
that far in the future, when we believe we will know more than we do today, we
(or whoever comes along to replace us) might be able to bring them back to
life. Sometimes we give them to scientists who take them apart to try to
understand how their bodies work. (This isn’t often helpful because one thing
that dead bodies don’t do is work.) And sometimes we just let them rot. We only
do this to people we dislike or disapprove of. You see, we consider burning,
freezing, burial, and dissection to be signs of respect. The unhappy man had
not turned his girlfriend into ashes. He had buried her beneath the ground. His
girlfriend, whose name was Margaret, had died in a car crash. The back of her
head had been crushed and her face had been torn by glass shards. It had cost
the unhappy man $1,155 to have his girlfriend’s head and face fixed so that he
could look at her one last time before putting her in the ground. His friends
clasped his shoulder and said things like: Time heals all wounds, and This too
shall pass. But the unhappy man did not want this too to pass. He did not want
time to heal his wound. His grief was all that remained to remind him of
Margaret, and losing it would feel like losing her all over again. For three months
and three weeks he held on to his pain. In the fourth week of the third month
after his girlfriend’s death he went to a rather silly movie. He enjoyed
himself. He laughed. And when he came out of the theatre he felt awful. He felt
as though he had laughed at his girlfriend’s death. He felt that he had joined
the conspiracy to forget her. He realized that life is nothing but a protracted
death, a plodding procession of little cessations. Maggie had died, and now his
grief was dying too. Nothing, not even misery, was immortal. That’s why he
decided to get it over with. That’s why he decided to get all his dying out of
the way in one sweep.”
Dr. Mayer-Edelmann said: “You feel guilty. That’s not
unusual. But Margaret’s death was not your fault. Or wait. Yes it was. Sorry,
wrong file.”
The judge said: “Has the jury reached a verdict?”
The jury said: “We have, your honor. For the crimes of
dying, of self-murder, of belated burial, of reckless resurrection, of
polluting the minds of the youth, of egregious failure to pay his legal bills,
of grief paralysis, of putrescence, of ingratitude, of boundary dissolution, of
failure to achieve abreaction, of sluggish pupil dilation, of weakness of
character, of—”
The prosecutor said: “One moment, your honor. I would like
to call to the stand one Margaret Reynolds.”
Margaret said: “Claude was driving but it wasn’t his fault.
It was raining. It was early in the morning. We’d been on the road all night. I
asked if he wanted to rest. I should have insisted. I’m sure he only closed his
eyes for a moment or two. There were no other vehicles. I think the car flipped
six times but I’m not sure. My spine was broken in two places. My skull was
crushed. It didn’t hurt. I continued to breathe for three or four minutes. No
one came along the road for half an hour. He had a concussion and a sprained
wrist. He was conscious but his mind wasn’t working. He was confused. It was
raining lightly. The rain fell on his face through the shattered windshield. He
felt free, light, unencumbered. He was thinking, for the first time in many
months, nothing more than how good it felt to be alive. I think he forgot that
I was in the car next to him. I’m sure it was delayed shock. I don’t blame him.
It wasn’t his fault. I only wanted him to say my name. I wished he would say my
name, just once, before I had to go.”
Claude said: “Margaret! Margaret! Margaret! Margaret!
Margaret! Margaret!”
Dr. Mayer-Edelmann said: “I cannot without qualm say that
I’m altogether in love with your mourning-arc. Though it pains me, I have no
choice but to say that your latest grief index results show no trends that I
can consider to be promising. And your SSHQ scores are giving me what I think,
in the name of scientific precision, I have no choice but to call the willies.
But I’ll tell you what I’ll do.”