White Noise - Don Delillo [85]
“What if death is nothing but sound?”
“Electrical noise.”
“You hear it forever. Sound all around. How awful.”
“Uniform, white.”
“Sometimes it sweeps over me,” she said. “Sometimes it insinuates itself into my mind, little by little. I try to talk to it. ‘Not now, Death.’ ”
“I lie in the dark looking at the clock. Always odd numbers. One thirty-seven in the morning. Three fifty-nine in the morning.”
“Death is odd-numbered. That’s what the Sikh told me. The holy man in Iron City.”
“You’re my strength, my life-force. How can I persuade you that this is a terrible mistake? I’ve watched you bathe Wilder, iron my gown. These deep and simple pleasures are lost to me now. Don’t you see the enormity of what you’ve done?”
“Sometimes it hits me like a blow,” she said. “I almost physically want to reel.”
“Is this why I married Babette? So she would conceal the truth from me, conceal objects from me, join in a sexual conspiracy at my expense? All plots move in one direction,” I told her grimly.
We held each other tightly for a long time, our bodies clenched in an embrace that included elements of love, grief, tenderness, sex and struggle. How subtly we shifted emotions, found shadings, using the scantest movement of our arms, our loins, the slightest intake of breath, to reach agreement on our fear, to advance our competition, to assert our root desires against the chaos in our souls.
Leaded, unleaded, super unleaded.
We lay naked after love, wet and gleaming. I pulled the covers up over us. We spoke in drowsy whispers for a while. The radio came on.
“I’m right here,” I said. “Whatever you want or need, however difficult, tell me and it’s done.”
“A drink of water.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said.
“Stay, rest.”
“I don’t want to be alone.”
We put on our robes, went to the bathroom for water. She drank while I pissed. On our way back to the bedroom I put my arm around her and we walked half toppling toward each other, like adolescents on a beach. I waited by the side of the bed as she rearranged the sheets neatly, put the pillows in place. She curled up immediately for sleep but there were still things I wanted to know, things I had to say.
“Precisely what was accomplished by the people at Gray Research?”
“They isolated the fear-of-death part of the brain. Dylar speeds relief to that sector.”
“Incredible.”
“It’s not just a powerful tranquilizer. The drug specifically interacts with neurotransmitters in the brain that are related to the fear of death. Every emotion or sensation has its own neurotransmitters. Mr. Gray found fear of death and then went to work on finding the chemicals that would induce the brain to make its own inhibitors.”
“Amazing and frightening.”
“Everything that goes on in your whole life is a result of molecules rushing around somewhere in your brain.”
“Heinrich’s brain theories. They’re all true. We’re the sum of our chemical impulses. Don’t tell me this. It’s unbearable to think about.”
“They can trace everything you say, do and feel to the number of molecules in a certain region.”
“What happens to good and evil in this system? Passion, envy and hate? Do they become a tangle of neurons? Are you telling me that a whole tradition of human failings is now at an end, that cowardice, sadism, molestation are meaningless terms? Are we being asked to regard these things nostalgically? What about murderous rage? A murderer used to have a certain fearsome size to him. His crime was large. What happens when we reduce it to cells and molecules? My son plays chess with a murderer. He told me all this. I didn’t want to listen.”
“Can I sleep now?”
“Wait. If Dylar speeds relief, why have you been so sad these past days, staring into space?”
“Simple. The drug’s not working.”
Her voice broke when she said these words. She raised the comforter over her head. I could only stare at the hilly terrain. A man on talk radio said: “I was getting mixed messages about my sexuality.” I stroked her head and body over the quilted bedspread.
“Can you elaborate, Baba?