The fact that Wilson treated his wife badly, both before and after marriage, and that his grief was contaminated by justified guilt, is what gives this stream of mourning consciousness its power. The animating paradox of Wilson’s condition is that he has been released into feeling by the death of the person who accused him of lack of feeling. And the line that has never left my memory is this: “After she was dead, I loved her.”
It doesn’t matter that Bunny Wilson was a cold, fishy, leprous person. It doesn’t matter that their relationship was a mistake and their marriage a disaster. It only matters that Wilson was telling the truth, and that the authentic voice of remorse is sounded in those words: “After she was dead, I loved her.”
Chapter 41
We may always choose knowledge over ignorance; we may wish to be conscious of our dying; we may hope for a best-case scenario in which a calm mind observes a gradual decline, perhaps with a Voltairean finger on the ebbing pulse. We may get all this; but even so, we should consider the evidence of Arthur Koestler. In Dialogue with Death he recorded his experiences in the Francoist prisons of Malaga and Seville during the Spanish Civil War. Admittedly, there is a difference between young men facing immediate execution by political opponents, and older men and women, most of their lives behind them, contemplating quieter extinctions. But Koestler observed many of those about to die—including, as he was assured, himself—and came to the following conclusions. First, that no one, even in the condemned cell, even hearing the sound of their friends and comrades being shot, can ever truly believe in his own death; indeed, Koestler thought this fact could be expressed quasi-mathematically—“One’s disbelief in death grows in proportion to its approach.” Secondly, the mind has recourse to various tricks when it finds itself in the presence of death: it produces “merciful narcotics or ecstatic stimulants” to deceive us. In particular, Koestler thought, it is capable of splitting consciousness in two, so that one half is examining coolly what the other half is experiencing. In this way, “the consciousness sees to it that its complete annihilation is never experienced.” Two decades previously, in “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death,” Freud had written: “It is indeed impossible to imagine our own death; and whenever we attempt to do so, we can perceive that we are in fact still present as spectators.”
Koestler also casts doubt on the authenticity of deathbed self-observation, however apparently lucid and rational the mind. “I don’t believe that since the world began a human being has ever died consciously. When Socrates, sitting in the midst of his pupils, reached out for the goblet of hemlock, he must have been at least half convinced that he was merely showing off . . . Of course he knew that theoretically the draining of the goblet would prove fatal; but he must have had a feeling that the whole thing was quite different from what his perfervid, humourless pupils imagined it; that there was some clever dodge behind it all known only to himself.”
Koestler ends Dialogue with Death with a scene so cinematic, so neat and so implausible that he cannot possibly have made it up. He has been released from prison in exchange for the wife of a Francoist fighter ace, who is given the job of flying Koestler to the rendezvous. As their plane hovers over a vast white plateau, the black-shirted pilot takes his hand off the joystick and engages his political enemy in a shouted conversation about life and death, Left and Right, courage and cowardice. “Before we were alive,” the writer bellows at the aviator at one point, “we were all dead.” The pilot agrees, and asks, “But why, then, is one afraid of death?” “I have never been afraid of death,” Koestler replies, “but only of dying.” “With me, it’s exactly the opposite,” shouts back the man in the black shirt.
Except that they were, presumably, shouting in Spanish. Fear of death or fear of dying, would you rather? Are you with the Communist or the Fascist, the writer or the flyer? Almost everyone fears one to the exclusion of the other; it’s as if there isn’t enough room for the mind to contain both. If you fear death, you don’t fear dying; if you fear dying, you don’t fear death. But there’s no logical reason why one should block out the other; no reason why the mind, with a little training, cannot stretch to encompass both. As one who wouldn’t mind dying as long as I didn’t end up dead afterwards, I can certainly make a start on elaborating what my fears about dying might be. I fear being my father as he sat in a chair by his hospital bed and with quite uncharacteristic irateness rebuked me—“You said you were coming yesterday”—before working out from my embarrassment that it was he who had got things confused. I fear being my mother imagining that she still played tennis. I fear being the friend who, longing for death, would repeatedly confide that he had managed to acquire and swallow enough pills to kill himself, but was now seethingly anxious that his actions might get a nurse into trouble. I fear being the innately courteous literary man I knew who, as senility took hold, began spouting at his wife the most extreme sexual fantasies, as if they were what he had always secretly wanted to do to her. I fear being the octogenarian Somerset Maugham, dropping his trousers behind the sofa and shitting on the rug (even if the moment might happily recall my childhood). I fear being the elderly friend, a man of both refinement and squeamishness, whose eyes showed animal panic when the nurse in the residential home announced in front of visitors that it was time to change his nappy. I fear the nervous laugh I shall give when I don’t quite get an allusion or have forgotten a shared memory, or a familiar face, and then begin to mistrust much of what I think I know, and finally mistrust all of it. I fear the catheter and the stairlift, the oozing body and the wasting brain. I fear the Chabrier/Ravel fate of not knowing who I have been and what I have made. Perhaps Stravinsky, in extreme old age, had their endings in mind when he used to call out from his room for his wife or a member of the household. “What is it you need?” they would ask. “To be reassured of my own existence,” he would reply. And the confirmation might come in the form of a handclasp, a kiss, or the playing of a favourite record.
Arthur Koestler, in old age, was proud of a conundrum he had formulated: “Is it better for a writer to be forgotten before he dies, or to die before he is forgotten?” (Jules Renard knew his answer: “Poil de Carotte and I live together, and I hope that I die before him.”) But it is a would-you-rather porous enough to allow a third possibility to sneak in: the writer, before dying, may have lost all memory of having been a writer.
When Dodie Smith was asked if she remembered having been a famous playwright, and replied, “Yes, I think so,” she said it in exactly the same way—with a kind of frowning concentration, morally conscious that truth was required—as I had seen her answer dozens of questions over the years. In other words, she at least remained in character. Beyond those nearer fears of mental and physical slippage, this is what we hope and hold to for ourselves. We want people to say, “He was himself right to the end, you know, even if he couldn’t speak/see/hear.” Though science and self-knowledge have led us to doubt what our individuality consists of, we still want to remain in that character which we have perhaps deceived ourselves into believing is ours, and ours alone.
Memory is identity. I have believed this since—oh, since I can remember. You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you are; when you forget your life you cease to be, even before your death. I once spent many years failing to save a friend from a long alcoholic decline. I watched her, from close at hand, lose her short-term memory, and then her long-term, and with them most of everything in between. It was a terrifying example of what Lawrence Durrell in a poem called “the slow disgracing of the mind”: the mind’s fall from grace. And with that fall—the loss of specific and general memories being patched over by absurd feats of fabulation, as the mind reassured itself and her but no one else—there was a comparable fall for those who knew and loved her. We were trying to hold on to our memories of her—and thus, quite simply, to her—telling ourselves that “she” was still there, clouded over but occasionally visible in sudden
moments of truth and clarity. Protestingly, I would repeat, in an attempt to convince myself as much as those I was addressing, “She’s just the same underneath.” Later I realized that I had always been fooling myself, and the “underneath” was being—had been—destroyed at the same rate as the visible surface. She had gone, was off in a world that convinced only herself—except that, from her panic, it was clear that such conviction was only occasional. Identity is memory, I told myself; memory is identity.
Chapter 42
Dying in character: an instructive case. Eugene O’Kelly was a fifty-three-year-old chairman and CEO of a top American accountancy firm. By his own description, he was a paradigmatic success story: a “type A” personality with 20,000 employees under him, a frenetic schedule, children he didn’t see enough of, and a devoted wife he referred to as “my own personal Sherpa.” Here is O’Kelly’s account of what he termed “My Perfect Day”:
I have a couple of face-to-face client meetings, my favourite thing of all. I’d meet with at least one member of my inner team. I’d speak on the phone with partners, in New York and in offices around the country, to see how I could help them. I’d put out some fires. Sometimes I’d have a discussion with one of our competitors about how we could work together towards one of our professional common goals. I’d complete lots of items listed in my electronic calendar. And I’d move ahead in at least one of three areas I’d resolved to improve when I was elected to the top spot by the partners of the firm three years earlier: growing our business . . . enhancing quality and reducing risk; and, most vital to me and the long-term health of the firm, making our firm an even better place to work, indeed a great place to work, one that allowed our people to live more balanced lives.
In the spring of 2005, O’Kelly was “one of 50 CEOs invited to participate at a White House business roundtable with President Bush. Was anyone luckier in his job than I?”
But just at that moment, O’Kelly’s luck ran out. What he thought was temporary tiredness after an especially tough schedule turned into a slightly drooping cheek muscle, then into a suspicion of Bell’s palsy, and then—suddenly, irreversibly—into a diagnosis of inoperable brain cancer. This was one fire that could not be put out. All the most expensive experts could not divert the onrushing truth: three months and barely a day longer.
O’Kelly responds to this news like the “goal-driven person” and ultimate corporate competitor that he is. “Just as a successful executive is driven to be as strategic and prepared as possible to ‘win’ at everything, so I was now driven to be as methodical as possible during my last hundred days.” He plans to apply “the skill set of a CEO” to his predicament. He realizes that he must “come up with new goals. Fast.” He tries to “figure out how I as an individual needed to reposition swiftly to adjust to the new circumstances of my life.” He draws up “the final and most important to-do list of my life.”
Priorities, methods, targets. He gets his business and financial affairs in order. He decides how he is going to “unwind” his relationships by creating “perfect moments” and “perfect days.” He begins “transition to the next state.” He plans his own funeral. Ever competitive, he wants to make his death “the best death possible,” and after completing his to-do list, concludes: “Now, I was motivated to ‘succeed’ at death.”
For those who think that any Hundred Days inevitably leads to Waterloo, the notion of “succeeding at death” may seem grotesque, even comic. But then everyone’s death will be comic to someone. (Do you know what O’Kelly did shortly after learning that he had only three months to live? He wrote a short story! As if the world needed another one . . .) And then, with the help of what must inevitably be called a ghost, he put together the book you decide to write—the one about dying—when faced with your final delivery date.
O’Kelly lists and categorizes the friendships he needs to unwind. Even before he gets to his inner circle there are, astonishingly, a thousand names in his book. But with the speed and attack of one used to closing deals, he completes the job in three weeks flat: sometimes with a note or phone call, occasionally with a brief meeting which might perhaps contain a “perfect moment.” When it comes to unwinding closer friendships there is some sporadic human resistance. One or two friends don’t want to be fobbed off with a single farewell, a stroll round the park while shared memories are evoked. But like a true CEO, O’Kelly overrides such clinging sentimentalists. He says firmly, “I’d like this to be it. I set this up specifically so we could unwind. And we made a perfect moment out of this. Let’s take that and go forward. Let’s not schedule another one. Trying to improve on a perfect moment never works.”
No, I don’t think I’d put it like that either. But then, I doubt I’ve met anyone quite like O’Kelly. The “unwinding” he plans for his teenage daughter involves a trip to Prague, Rome, and Venice. “We would fly by private jet, which would require us to refuel somewhere in the far, far north, and that would give Gina an opportunity to meet and trade with the Inuits.” This is not so much dying in character as dying in caricature. You say goodbye to your daughter, but you also build in for her an opportunity to trade with the Inuits? And do you inform the Inuits what their privileged function is to be on this occasion?
Such moments may provoke a satirical and disbelieving gawp. But O’Kelly was surely dying as he had lived, and we should all be so lucky. Whether or not he cheated a little is another matter. The CEO had not previously had much truck with God, because of the tightness of his schedule; though he did use Him as a kind of emergency breakdown service. Some years previously, the prospective Inuit-trader had been diagnosed with juvenile arthritis, and her father remembered that “You could find me in church often that year.” Now, with his own final deal shortly to be closed, O’Kelly again refers things upwards, to the transnational HQ in the sky. He prays, and learns to meditate. He feels supported from “the other side” and reports that “there is no pain between this side and the other side.” His wife explains that “If you conquer fear, you conquer death”—though you don’t, of course, end up not dead. When O’Kelly expires it is, according to his own personal Sherpa, “in a state of tranquil acceptance and genuine hope.”
Psychoanalysts tell us that those who are most attached to their own personalities have the most difficulty in dying. Given O’Kelly’s A-typeness, his age, and the swiftness of his end, his behaviour is highly impressive. And perhaps God doesn’t mind being addressed only in emergency. It may seem to bystanders that any sensible deity ought to be offended by such spotty, self-interested attention. But He might view things differently. He might, modestly, not want to be a daily, occluding presence in our lives. He might enjoy being a breakdown specialist, an insurance company, a longstop.
O’Kelly didn’t want organ music at his funeral; he specified flute and harp. I gave my mother Mozart; she gave my father Bach. We spend time thinking about our funeral music; less about what music we wish to do our dying with. I remember the literary editor Terence Kilmartin, one of my early encouragers, lying on a bed downstairs when he was too weak to climb a stair, listening to late Beethoven string quartets on a portable boom box. Dying popes and emperors could summon their own choirs and instrumentalists to help them sample the glory to come. But modern technology has made popes and emperors of us all; and though you may reject the Christian heaven, you can have the Bach Magnificat, Mozart’s Requiem or Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater lighting up the inside of your skull as your body fades. Sydney Smith thought of heaven as eating foie gras to the sound of trumpets—which has always felt to me like a clash rather than a concord. Still, you could have the rousing massed brass of Gounod’s St. Cecilia Mass thundering in your ears while a tube bubbles sugary feed into your arm.
I suspect that if I get any sort of decent dying time, I shall want music rather than books. Will there be space—head-space—for the wonderful trudgery of fiction, the work involved: plot, characters, situation . . .? No, I think I’m going to need music, fittingly
intravenous: straight to the bloodstream, straight to the heart. “The best means we have of digesting time” will perhaps help us digest the beginnings of death. Music is also associated for me with optimism. I had an instant sense of fellow-feeling when I read that one of the pleasures of Isaiah Berlin’s old age was booking concert tickets for months ahead (I often used to spot him, up in the same box at the Festival Hall). Getting the tickets somehow guarantees that you will hear the music, prolongs your life at least until the last echo of the final chords you have paid to hear dies away. Somehow, this wouldn’t work with the theatre.
It would, however, depend upon successfully remaining in character. When first considering my best-case death scenario (x months, time for 200–250 pages), I took this matter for granted. I assumed that I would remain myself to the end, also instinctively insist on being a writer, keen to describe and define the world even as I was leaving it. But the character may be subjected to sudden jolts, magnifications, and distortions in its final stages. A friend of Bruce Chatwin’s first realized that the writer must be seriously ill when he paid for lunch, an action hitherto quite untypical of him. Who can predict the mind’s response to its own short-dated termination?
Chapter 43
Montaigne didn’t die, as he had dreamed, while planting out his cabbage patch. Death came for the sceptic and epicurean, the tolerant deist, the writer of boundless curiosity and learning, while mass was being celebrated in his bedroom: at the exact moment (or so they said) of the elevation of the host. An exemplary death for the Catholic Church—which nevertheless put Montaigne’s works on the Index within a century.