minimal acceptable spillage exposure?'
Why was I speaking in this stilted fashion?
'The magnetic scanner is pretty clear,' he said.
What had happened to our tacit agreement to advance smartly through the program without time-consuming and controversial delving?
'What happens when someone has traces of this material in his or her blood?'
'They get a nebulous mass,' he said.
'But I thought no one knew for sure what Nyodene D. did to humans. Rats, yes.'
'You just told me you'd never heard of it. How do you know what it does or doesn't do?'
He had me there. I felt I'd been tricked, carried along, taken for a fool.
'Knowledge changes every day,' he said. 'We have some conflicting data that says exposure to this substance can definitely lead to a mass.'
His confidence was soaring.
'Good. Let's get on to the next topic. I'm in something of a hurry.'
'This is where I hand over the sealed envelope.'
'Is exercise next? The answer is none. Hate it, refuse to do it.'
'Good. I am handing over the envelope.'
'What is a nebulous mass, just out of idle curiosity?'
'A possible growth in the body.'
'And it's called nebulous because you can't get a clear picture of it.'
'We get very clear pictures. The imaging block takes the clearest pictures humanly possible. It's called a nebulous mass because it has no definite shape, form or limits.'
'What can it do in terms of worst-case scenario contingencies?'
'Cause a person to die.'
'Speak English, for God's sake. I despise this modern jargon.'
He took insults well. The angrier I got, the better he liked it. He radiated energy and health.
'Now is where I tell you to pay in the outer office.'
'What about potassium? I came here in the first place because my potassium was way above normal limits.'
'We don't do potassium.'
'Good.'
'Good. The last thing I'm supposed to tell you is take the envelope to your doctor. Your doctor knows the symbols.'
'So that's it then. Good.'
'Good,' he said.
I found myself shaking his hand warmly. Minutes later I was out on the street. A boy walked splay-footed across a public lawn, nudging a soccer ball before him. A second kid sat on the grass, taking off his socks by grabbing the heels and yanking. How literary, I thought peevishly. Streets thick with the details of impulsive life as the hero ponders the latest phase in his dying. It was a partially cloudy day with winds diminishing toward sunset.
That night I walked the streets of Blacksmith. The glow of blue-eyed TVs. The voices on the touch-tone phones. Far away the grandparents huddle in a chair, eagerly sharing the receiver as carrier waves modulate into audible signals. It is the voice of their grandson, the growing boy whose face appears in the snapshots set around the phone. Joy rushes to their eyes but it is misted over, infused with a sad and complex knowing. What is the young- • ster saying to them? His wretched complexion makes him unhappy? He wants to leave school and work full-time at Foodland, bagging groceries? He tells them he
37
The long walk started at noon. I didn't know it would turn into a long walk. I thought it would be a miscellaneous meditation, Murray and Jack, half an hour's campus meander. But it became a major afternoon, a serious looping Socratic walk, with practical consequences.
I met Murray after his car crash seminar and we wandered along the fringes of the campus, past the cedar- shingled condominiums set in the trees in their familiar defensive posture-a cluster of dwellings blending so well with the environment that birds kept flying into the plate-glass windows.
'You're smoking a pipe,' I said.
Murray smiled sneakily.
'It looks good. I like it. It works.'
He lowered his eyes, smiling. The pipe had a long narrow stem and cubical bowl. It was pale brown and resembled a highly disciplined household implement, perhaps an Amish or Shaker antique. I wondered if he'd chosen it to match his somewhat severe chin whiskers. A tradition of stern virtue seemed to hover about his gestures and expressions.
'Why can't we be intelligent about death?' I said.
'It's obvious.'
'It is?'
'Ivan Ilyich screamed for three days. That's about as intelligent as we get. Tolstoy himself struggled to understand. He feared it terribly.'
'It's almost as though our fear is what brings it on. If we could learn not to be afraid, we could live forever.'
'We talk ourselves into it. Is that what you mean?'
'I don't know what I mean. I only know I'm just going through the motions of living. I'm technically dead. My body is growing a nebulous mass. They track these things like satellites. All this as a result of a byproduct of insecticide. There's something artificial about my death. It's shallow, unfulfilling. I don't belong to the earth or sky. They ought to carve an aerosol can on my tombstone.'
'Well said.'
What did he mean, well said? I vanted him to argue with me, raise my dying to a higher level, make me feel better.
'Do you think it's unfair?' he said.
'Of course I do. Or is that a trite answer?'
He seemed to shrug.
'Look how I've lived. Has my life been a mad dash for pleasure? Have I been hellbent on self-destruction, using illegal drugs, driving fast cars, drinking to excess? A little dry sherry at faculty parties. I eat bland foods.'
'No, you don't.'
He puffed seriously on his pipe, his cheeks going hollow. We walked in silence for a while.
'Do you think your death is premature?' he said.
'Every death is premature. There's no scientific reason why we can't live a hundred and fifty years. Some people actually do it, according to a headline I saw at the supermarket.'
