Susan Sontag - Death Kit

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Contents

FOR DIANA KEMENY

with love,
gratefully

DIDDY the Good was taking a business trip. The Diddy, his family nickname, was used (now) only by his brother and a few friends left over from schooldays. Hi, Diddy! Paul sang out every time he came into town, dropping by the office without warning or turning up unannounced at Diddys apartment at three in the morning. Diddy the Good is how he, Diddy, embellished the nickname, sometimes, in his mocking self-appraisals. Also: Good Diddy, Goody Did, and Done-Done. Himself and childhood friends apart, the right name was Dalton.

Dalton Harron, in full: a mild fellow, gently reared in a middle-sized city in Pennsylvania and expensively educated. A good-natured child, the older son of civilized parents who had quietly died. (Now) a rather handsome man of thirty-three. Quieter than he once was. A little fussy, perhaps; somewhat sententious. Used to getting an answer when he spoke politely to someone, and never reconciled to the brutal manners of the metropolis in which (now) he lived. But unresentful. The sort of man who doesnt mistreat women, never loses his credit cards or breaks a plate while washing up, works conscientiously at his job, lends money to friends graciously, walks his dog each midnight no matter how tired he feels. The sort of man its hard to dislike, and whom disaster avoids.

Diddy, not really alive, had a life. Hardly the same. Some people are their lives. Others, like Diddy, merely inhabit their lives. Like insecure tenants, never knowing exactly the extent of their property or when the lease will expire. Like unskilled cartographers, drawing and redrawing erroneous maps of an exotic continent.

Eventually, for such a person, everything is bound to run down. The walls sag. Empty spaces bulge between objects. The surfaces of objects sweat, thin out, buckle. The hysterical fluids of fear deposited at the core of objects ooze out along the seams. Deploying things and navigating through space become laborious. Too much effort to amble from kitchen to living room, serving drinks, turning on the hi-fi, pretending to be cheerful. But Diddys difficulties cant be solved by making a bigger effort. Stepped-up effort wont repair his ingenious sense of incapacity, which proceeds from a hallucinated erasure of the present as it becomes past. To supplement effort, Diddy needs faith. Which he lacks (now). Making everything unpredictable. Showing up promptly at ten oclock at the Lexington Avenue offices of Watkins & Company must be accomplished five times a week in the face of Diddys suspicion, each morning, that its never been done before. Each morning he does it. Thats a miracle. Yet, lacking faith, Diddy is unable to conclude that the occurrence of miracles guarantees a world in which such miracles take place. Concludes, instead, that to perform something one sets out to perform isnt really a miracle. More like a gross rupture of the inert, fragile, sticky fabric of things. Or a silly accident; as when somebody carelessly brandishes a pair of scissors and makes an ugly rent in the fabric, or inadvertently burns holes in it with a cigarette.

Everything running down: suffusing the whole of Diddys well-tended life. Like a house powered by one large generator in the basement. Diddy has an almost palpable sense of the decline of the generators energy. Or, of the monstrous malfunctioning of that generator, gone amok. Sending forth a torrent of refuse that climbs up into Diddys life, cluttering all his floor space and overwhelming his pleasant furnishings, so that hes forced to take refuge. Huddle in a narrow corner. But however small the space Diddy means to keep free for himself, it wont remain safe. If solid material cant invade it, then the offensive discharge of the failing or rebellious generator will liquefy; so that it can travel everywhere, spread like a skin. The generator will spew forth a stream of crude oil, grimy and malodorous, that coats all things and persons and objects, the vulgar as well as the precious, the ugly as well as what little still remains beautiful. Befouling Diddys world and rendering it unusable. Uninhabitable.

This deliquescent running-down of everything becomes coexistent with Diddys entire span of consciousness, undermines his most minimal acts. Getting out of bed is an agony unpromising as the struggles of a fish cast up on the beach, trying to extract life from the meaningless air. Persons who merely have-a-life customarily move in a dense fluid. Thats how theyre able to conduct their lives at all. Their living depends on not seeing. But when this fluid evaporates, an uncensored, fetid, appalling underlife is disclosed. Lost continents are brought to view, bearing the ruins of doomed cities, the sparsely fleshed skeletons of ancient creatures immobilized in their death throes, a landscape of unparalleled savagery. One can redeem skeletons and abandoned cities as human. But not a lost, dehumanized nature. Having been freed for so long from human regard, from the scrutiny and aspirations of people, the barren mountains of Tyrrhenia cannot resemble any known mountains on the planet. How they would shudder and sweat in the unsubstantial air.

So Diddys life, since the customary opaque medium has begun leaking away. The soft interconnected tissuelike days are unstrung. The watery plenum is dehydrated, and what protrudes are jagged, inhuman units. The medium steadily evaporates; the teeming interlocked plenitude is drained of its sustenance. Dies. All thats left is arbitrary and incomprehensible. Including human speech, which declines into mere sound. Yet, Diddy observes, nobody has yet discovered, or at least dared to admit publicly, the gruesome fall of the water level, the drying up of vital lubricants, the erosion of the littoral of human-scale sense. Shall Diddy be the first to proclaim it? Presumptuous Diddy. Though hes always tried to be honest, he never claimed to be wise. Perhaps theres some wisdom embedded in the lie about life everybody mouths that Diddy doesnt understand (now), if perhaps he once did. So Diddy goes on speaking, just like everyone else. Words like acrid chalk-colored cubes spill out of a rotating cage. After scooping them up, Diddy lays out one implausible word after another, creating the plausible semblance of a line. Signifying ordinary intentions, promises, opinions, requests and denials, agreements and disagreements. Though he no longer understands why. And though its hard enough just to exhale and inhale, without expending the little breath he retains on speech.

As the water line sinks, mere events loom upmonstrous, discontinuous. Diddy gasps for breath and, wherever he moves, bruises himself. Diddy, a failed amphibian. For whom all tasks have become senseless, all space inhospitable, virtually all people grotesque, all climates unseasonable, and all situations dangerous.

For whom all tasks have become senseless. Diddys actions take longer and longer, and still never seem properly performed.

For whom all space appears inhospitable. And, more and more, untraversable. Having moved his body from one place to another, Diddy suffers from the knowledge that he hasnt taken a single step. And even if it could be established that some small displacement was effected, theres no telling how much. Suppose someone says, Go over there. Or, more amiably, Please, if you dont mind, go over there. Where is over there? How would Diddy know when hed reached the right place? His companion might say, Thats right. Perfect! Stay where you are. But perhaps the person giving the directions is mistaken, or wishes to deceive him.