'That's what Denise said.'
'You've discussed this with the children?'
'Superficially.'
'Helpless and fearful people are drawn to magical figures, mythic figures, epic men who intimidate and darkly loom.'
'You're talking about Hitler, I take it.'
'Some people are larger than life. Hitler is larger than death. You thought he would protect you. I understand completely.'
'Do you? Because I wish I did.'
'It's totally obvious. You wanted to be helped and sheltered. The overwhelming horror would leave no room for your own death. 'Submerge me,' you said. 'Absorb my fear.' On one level you wanted to conceal yourself in Hitler and his works. On another level you wanted to use him to grow in significance and strength.
I sense a confusion of means. Not that I'm criticizing. It was a daring thing you did, a daring thrust.
'The whole huge nameless thing.' 'Yes, absolutely.' 'The massive darkness.' 'Certainly, certainly.' 'The whole terrible endless hugeness.' 'I know exactly what you mean.'
He tapped the fender of a diagonally parked car, half smiling. 'Why have you failed, Jack?' 'A confusion of means.'
'Correct. There are numerous ways to get around death. You tried to employ two of them at once. You stood out on the one hand and tried to hide on the other. What is the name we give to this attempt?' 'Dumb.'
I followed him into the supermarket. Blasts of color, layers of oceanic sound. We walked under a bright banner announcing a raffle to raise money for some incurable disease. The wording seemed to indicate that the winner would get the disease. Murray likened the banner to a Tibetan prayer flag.
'Why have I had this fear so long, so consistently?' 'It's obvious. You don't know how to repress. We're all aware there's no escape from death. How do we deal with this crushing knowledge? We repress, we disguise, we bury, we exclude. Some people do it better than others, that's all.' 'How can I improve?' 'You can't. Some people just don't have the unconscious tools to perform the necessary disguising operations.'
'How do we know repression exists if the tools are unconscious and the thing we're repressing is so cleverly disguised?'
'Freud said so. Speaking of looming figures.'
He picked up a box of Handi-Wrap II, reading the display type, studying the colors. He smelled a packet of dehydrated soup. The data was strong today.
'Do you think I'm somehow healthier because I don't know how to repress? Is it possible that constant fear is the natural state of man and that by living close to my fear I am actually doing something heroic, Murray?'
'Do you feel heroic?'
'No.'
'Then you probably aren't.'
'But isn't repression unnatural?'
'Fear is unnatural. Lightning and thunder are unnatural. Pain, death, reality, these are all unnatural. We can't bear these things as they are. We know too much. So we resort to repression, compromise and disguise. This is how we survive in the universe. This is the natural language of the species.'
I looked at him carefully.
'I exercise. I take care of my body.'
'No, you don't,' he said.
He helped an old man read the date on a loaf of raisin bread. Children sailed by in silver carts.
'Tegrin, Denorex, Selsun Blue.'
Murray wrote something in his little book. I watched him step deftly around a dozen fallen eggs oozing yolky matter from a busted carton.
'Why do I feel so good when I'm with Wilder? It's not like being with the other kids,' I said.
'You sense his total ego, his freedom from limits.'
'In what way is he free from limits?'
'He doesn't know he's going to die. He doesn't know death at all. You cherish this simpleton blessing of his, this exemption from harm. You want to get close to him, touch him, look at him, breathe him in. How lucky he is. A cloud of unknowing, an omnipotent little person. The child is everything, the adult nothing. Think about it. A person's entire life is the unraveling of this conflict. No wonder we're bewildered, staggered, shattered.'
'Aren't you going too far?'
'I'm from New York.'
'We create beautiful and lasting things, build vast civilizations.'
'Gorgeous evasions,' he said. 'Great escapes.'
The doors parted photoelectronically. We went outside, walking past the dry cleaner, the hairstylist, the optician. Murray relighted his pipe, sucking impressively at the mouthpiece.
'We have talked about ways to get around death,' he said. 'We have discussed how you've already tried two such ways, each cancelling the other. We have mentioned technology, train wrecks, belief in an afterlife. There are other methods as well and I would like to talk about one such approach.'
We crossed the street.
'I believe, Jack, there are two kinds of people in the world. Killers and diers. Most of us are diers. We don't have the disposition, the rage or whatever it takes to be a killer. We let death happen. We lie down and die. But think what it's like to be a killer. Think how exciting it is, in theory, to kill a person in direct confrontation. If he dies, you cannot. To kill him is to gain life-credit. The more people you kill, the more credit you store up. It explains any number of massacres, wars, executions.'
'Are you saying that men have tried throughout history to cure themselves of death by killing others?'
'It's obvious.'
'And you call this exciting?'
'I'm talking theory. In theory, violence is a form of rebirth. The dier passively succumbs. The killer lives on. What a marvelous equation. As a marauding band amasses dead bodies, it gathers strength. Strength accumulates like a favor from the gods.'
'What does this have to do with me?'
'This is theory. We're a couple of academics taking a walk. But imagine the visceral jolt, seeing your opponent bleeding in the dust.'
'You think it adds to a person's store of credit, like a bank transaction.'
'Nothingness is staring you in the face. Utter and permanent oblivion. You will cease to be.
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.'
