'Do you think it's a sense of incompleteness that causes you the deepest regret? There are things you still hope to accomplish. Work to be done, intellectual challenges to be faced.'
'The deepest regret is death. The only thing to face is death. This is all I think about. There's only one issue here. I want to live.'
'From the Robert Wise film of the same name, with Susan Hayward as Barbara Graham, a convicted murderess. Aggressive jazz score by Johnny Mandel.'
I looked at him.
'So you're saying, Jack, that death would be just as threatening even if you'd accomplished all you'd ever hoped to accomplish in your life and work.'
'Are you crazy? Of course. That's an elitist idea. Would you ask a man who bags groceries if he fears death not because it is death but because there are still some interesting groceries he would like to bag?'
'Well said.'
'This is death. I don't want it to tarry awhile so I can write a monograph. I want it to go away for seventy or eighty years.'
'Your status as a doomed man lends your words a certain prestige and authority. I like that. As the time nears, I think you'll find that people will be eager to hear what you have to say. They will seek you out.'
'Are you saying this is a wonderful opportunity for me to win friends?'
'I'm saying you can't let down the living by slipping into self-pity and despair. People will depend on you to be brave. What people look for in a dying friend is a stubborn kind of gravel-voiced nobility, a refusal to give in, with moments of indomitable humor. You're growing in prestige even as we speak. You're creating a hazy light about your own body. I have to like it.'
We walked down the middle of a steep and winding street. There was no one around. The houses here were old and looming, set above narrow stone stairways in partial disrepair.
'Do you believe love is stronger than death?'
'Not in a million years.'
'Good,' he said. 'Nothing is stronger than death. Do you believe the only people who fear death are those who are afraid of life?'
'That's crazy. Completely stupid.'
'Right. We all fear death to some extent. Those who claim otherwise are lying to themselves. Shallow people.'
'People with their nicknames on their license plates.'
'Excellent, Jack. Do you believe life without death is somehow incomplete?'
'How could it be incomplete? Death is what makes it incomplete.'
'Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?'
'What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing.'
'True. The most deeply precious things are those we feel secure about. A wife, a child. Does the specter of death make a child more precious?'
'No.'
'No. There is no reason to believe life is more precious because it is fleeting. Here is a statement. A person has to be told he is going to die before he can begin to live life to the fullest. True or false?'
'False. Once your death is established, it becomes impossible to live a satisfying life.'
'Would you prefer to know the exact date and time of your death?'
'Absolutely not. It's bad enough to fear the unknown. Faced with the unknown, we can pretend it isn't there. Exact dates would drive many to suicide, if only to beat the system.'
We crossed an old highway bridge, screened in, littered with sad and faded objects. We followed a footpath along a creek, approached the edge of the high school playing field. Women brought small children here to play in the long-jump pits.
'How do I get around it?' I said.
'You could put your faith in technology. It got you here, it can get you out. This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature.'
'It is?'
'It's what we invented to conceal the terrible secret of our decaying bodies. But it's also life, isn't it? It prolongs life, it provides new organs for those that wear out. New devices, new techniques every day. Lasers, masers, ultrasound. Give yourself up to it, Jack. Believe in it. They'll insert you in a gleaming tube, irradiate your body with the basic stuff of the universe. Light, energy, dreams. God's own goodness.'
'I don't think I want to see any doctors for a while, Murray, thanks.'
'In that case you can always get around death by concentrating on the life beyond.'
'How do I do that?'
'It's obvious. Read up on reincarnation, transmigration, hyperspace, the resurrection of the dead and so on. Some gorgeous systems have evolved from these beliefs. Study them.'
'Do you believe in any of these things?'
'Millions of people have believed for thousands of years. Throw in with them. Belief in a second birth, a second life, is practically universal. This must mean something.'
'But these gorgeous systems are all so different.'
'Pick one you like.'
'But you make it sound like a convenient fantasy, the worst kind of self-delusion.'
Again he seemed to shrug. 'Think of the great poetry, the music and dance and ritual that spring forth from our aspiring to a life beyond death. Maybe these things are justification enough for our hopes and dreams, although I wouldn't say that to a dying man.'
He poked me with an elbow. We walked toward the commercial part of town. Murray paused, raised one foot behind him, reached back to knock some ashes from his pipe. Then he pocketed the thing expertly, inserting it bowl-first in his corduroy jacket.
'Seriously, you can find a great deal of long-range solace in the idea of an afterlife.'
'But don't I have to believe? Don't I have to feel in my heart that there is something, genuinely, beyond this life, out there, looming, in the dark?'
'What do you think the afterlife is, a body of facts just waiting to be uncovered? Do you think the U.S. Air Force is secretly gathering data on the afterlife and keeping it under wraps because we're not mature enough to accept the findings? The findings would cause panic? No. I'll tell you what the afterlife is. It's a sweet and terribly touching idea. You can take it or leave it. In the meantime what you have to do is survive an assassination attempt. That would be an instant tonic. You would feel specially favored, you would grow in charisma.'
'You said earlier that death was making me grow in charisma. Besides, who would want to kill me?'
Once more he shrugged. Survive a train wreck in which a hundred die. Get thrown clear when your single- engine Cessna crashes on a golf course after striking a power line in heavy rain just minutes after takeoff. It doesn't have to be assassination. The point is you're standing at the edge of a smoldering ruin where others lie inert and twisted. This can counteract the effect of any number of nebulous masses, at least for a time.'
We window-shopped a while, then went into a shoe store. Murray looked at Weejuns, Wallabees, Hush Puppies. We wandered out into the sun. Children in strollers squinted up at us, appearing to think we were something strange.
'Has your German helped?'
'I can't say it has.'
'Has it ever helped?'
'I can't say. I don't know. Who knows these things?'
'What have you been trying to do all these years?'
'Put myself under a spell, I guess.'
'Correct. Nothing to be ashamed of, Jack. It's only your fear that makes you act this way.'
'We shouldn't be surprised at your lack of success. How powerful did the Germans prove to be? They lost the war, after all.'
