White Noise - Don Delillo [125]
I looked at him, amazed. He drew contentedly on his pipe, making hollow sounds.
“It’s a way of controlling death. A way of gaining the ultimate upper hand. Be the killer for a change. Let someone else be the dier. Let him replace you, theoretically, in that role. You can’t die if he does. He dies, you live. See how marvelously simple.”
“You say this is what people have been doing for centuries.”
“They’re still doing it. They do it on a small intimate scale, they do it in groups and crowds and masses. Kill to live.”
“Sounds pretty awful.”
He seemed to shrug. “Slaughter is never random. The more people you kill, the more power you gain over your own death. There is a secret precision at work in the most savage and indiscriminate killings. To speak about this is not to do public relations for murder. We’re two academics in an intellectual environment. It’s our duty to examine currents of thought, investigate the meaning of human behavior. But think how exciting, to come out a winner in a deathly struggle, to watch the bastard bleed.”
“Plot a murder, you’re saying. But every plot is a murder in effect. To plot is to die, whether we know it or not.”
“To plot is to live,” he said.
I looked at him. I studied his face, his hands.
“We start our lives in chaos, in babble. As we surge up into the world, we try to devise a shape, a plan. There is dignity in this. Your whole life is a plot, a scheme, a diagram. It is a failed scheme but that’s not the point. To plot is to affirm life, to seek shape and control. Even after death, most particularly after death, the search continues. Burial rites are an attempt to complete the scheme, in ritual. Picture a state funeral, Jack. It is all precision, detail, order, design. The nation holds its breath. The efforts of a huge and powerful government are brought to bear on a ceremony that will shed the last trace of chaos. If all goes well, if they bring it off, some natural law of perfection is obeyed. The nation is delivered from anxiety, the deceased’s life is redeemed, life itself is strengthened, reaffirmed.”
“Are you sure?” I said.
“To plot, to take aim at something, to shape time and space. This is how we advance the art of human consciousness.”
We moved in a wide arc back toward campus. Streets in deep and soundless shade, garbage bags set out for collection. We crossed the sunset overpass, pausing briefly to watch the cars shoot by. Sunlight bouncing off the glass and chrome.
“Are you a killer or a dier, Jack?”
“You know the answer to that. I’ve been a dier all my life.”
“What can you do about it?”
“What can any dier do? Isn’t it implicit in his makeup that he can’t cross over?”
“Let’s think about that. Let’s examine the nature of the beast, so to speak. The male animal. Isn’t there a fund, a pool, a reservoir of potential violence in the male psyche?”
“In theory I suppose there is.”
“We’re talking theory. That’s exactly what we’re talking. Two friends on a tree-shaded street. What else but theory? Isn’t there a deep field, a sort of crude oil deposit that one might tap if and when the occasion warrants? A great dark lake of male rage.”
“That’s what Babette says. Homicidal rage. You sound like her.”
“Amazing lady. Is she right or wrong?”
“In theory? She’s probably right.”
“Isn’t there a sludgy region you’d rather not know about? A remnant of some prehistoric period when dinosaurs roamed the earth and men fought with flint tools? When to kill was to live?”
“Babette talks about male biology. Is it biology or geology?”
“Does it matter, Jack? We only want to know whether it is there, buried in the most prudent and unassuming soul.”
“I suppose so. It can be. It depends.”
“Is it or isn’t it there?”
“It’s there, Murray. So what?”
“I only want to hear you say it. That’s all. I only want to elicit truths you