It was the hill where they placed the dead.
The old, the young, the sick and maimed—it didn’t matter to
the hill. Its only obligation was to receive them, soak in the putrid fluids
from their wounds, and finally watch as the carrion descended. A hill can do
all of that quite coldly. Death, after all, is the answer to life’s question.
It was as well, I thought, since there is nothing personal
in death—and isn’t an individual personality a tyranny? How many of us long to
be in a mob, a part of a raging riot that has a mind of its own? To sweep
through the streets towards the Bastille, sure that nothing can stop it. At
last, having the ‘I’ become ‘it.’
And so I came across the body, in my first steps up the
hill. I sat beside it, for a while, since it seemed somehow lonely.
“Well, I was so in life, as well,” it said.
“Excuse me?”
“Lonely, I mean. It’s the price of success. And I was
successful, very much so….”
“That wasn’t what you wished?”
“Very much so, and not, in the end. But yes, I spent a lot
of time and energy upon that success. In my youth, I had looks. Later, I had
money. And at the end, I had no one. My wife had left me, emotionally, years
ago, though she never moved out. But there was no companionship, nothing sweet
between us. And my children? They hovered around me, waiting for me to die,
wondering who would get how much. I very nearly left them nothing….”
“You were that angry?”
“I had gone past anger. I was tired. And I wasn’t sure that
I cared enough to do anything at all. But I was a man of business, and knew
that if I did nothing, the lawyers would descend and grab as much of the goods as
they could. And so I died, and was happy to do so.”
“Was there nothing good in your life?”
“Good? There were many things good, I suppose. You forget them,.
You know, as you get older. Or rather, you stop seeking them. It was a
pleasure, yes, to be young. I was strong, I was handsome, and I had drive. But
then, I began to treasure my age. The body worked less well, yes, but that
didn’t much matter. I was clearer, then, than I had been when I was young. And
it was easier….”
“And so you lived….”
“I suppose. It wasn’t much of a life, really. I spent most
of it building my business, and I did very well. But something happened—in the
days when my wife and I had had nothing, we had each other, and that had been
something. Everything, really. We used to joke that we had houseguests—referring
to the roaches that we could never get rid of. And then, one day, we got our
first house, and we made love that first night. I’ll never forget, making love
that night. The bliss of being in a place of our own—a place we could make our
own. I went to the bathroom, later, and I touched the walls, marveling, and
saying ‘this is mine.’ Yes, happy—I think I was happy then….”
“You think? Didn’t you know?”
“Whoever knows when one is happy? And when you think that
you are…well, should you be? Happiness is a sort of artifact. It’s the
byproduct of a reaction, but just the byproduct. It means nothing, by itself…”
“Yet most people seek it.”
“Most people seek the things they should not. I did, for too
many years. And then I was old, and quite tired, and did it make sense, really,
to throw out everything I had worked for? So I played golf, and went to the
clubs, and saw the same people and said the same things. I was bored, in the
end….”
“Why didn’t you change?”
“Change? What would have been the point? Go off to Tahiti,
and paint nudes under the tropical sun? At the end of my life, I could have bought
Tahiti, and somehow, that alters things. Only a young, and poor, man can live
on the beach, and paint the nudes. We older men pine for soft beds, drinks by
the pool, and well-cooked food. More men have died in comfort than have ever
died in prison….”
“And so you went on?”
“Yes. Because always there was the hope that the next day
would be different. I would wake up, energized, and do…”
“Do?”
“I don’t know what. But I knew it was something. Something
with meaning—something that would challenge me and stir me and lead me to a
place I hadn’t been before.”
“And that place was?”
“To the center, perhaps. To the core of decisions. To the
place where I could stop and rest. It had been an effort, all those years, to
keep up the pretense.”
“What was the pretense?”
“My success. Because to succeed in business is easy, for
most men. We’re built that way, just as we’re built for sports. But the
terrible moment in business comes when you start to believe it. Your
corporation, or your business, defines you. You believe the money and the
success is you. And then it stops being fun, and you stop seeing the
purpose of it all, and somehow, you keep working harder and harder, like a
junkie, seeking a lost high. And then it’s eleven o’clock at night, and you’re
checking emails and worrying about the foreign markets—what is the yen doing
now? And you hear your wife stirring in the other room, and you know that she’s
going down to make herself a drink, because she’s been doing that more and
more. And at dinner, she has that glassy look, and she’s speaking too carefully,
and you think, ‘oh God, not again.’ You should go out, you should confront her,
and then you get angry, and you think, ‘oh, just let her drink to death. To
hell with her!’ And then you remember when having a bottle of wine was a
rarity, a special moment, an occasion. How you savored it, and made it last! We
would both be a little tipsy, and I would be amorous, and the sex would seem
special, hallowed. But now you have a wine cellar, and spend more for a bottle
than you could ever have imagined, and in the end, it means nothing. Your wife
gets up, the maid clears the table, and you both go into the library. She
reads, perhaps, and you watch a game on television. It is another night in your
life together.”
“That is what it had come to?”
“That is what it comes to.”
“For everybody?”
“I suspect. Good, in a way. Who could keep up that youthful
passion? A tenement apartment filled with roaches is where a young man should
be. But at 75? 80? You want space, a cleanliness, and a maid to take away the
dishes and clean up. And deal with the roaches.”
“And so you were happy?”
“That word again! It has no place, you know. It means
nothing, and to have it or to seek it, or even to value it enough to think
about it—well, all that is a mistake.”
“Joy, then?”
“Ah, joy. There may be a place in the lexicon for joy. It
is, at least, the consequence of something real, as happiness is so often not.”
“Sorrow?”
“I certainly knew it. I tried neither to avoid it nor wallow
in it.“
“And so, what did you learn? What was your life about in the
end?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I was born naked, and I died
well-clothed, but little changed for all that. I lived a straightforward life,
and I did well. My children didn’t have to struggle in quite the way I had to,
and that was a good thing, I suppose. No, I have nothing to complain of.”
The vultures had been circling all during the conversation.
Suddenly, he flung open his arms and
embraced them.
