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The Suicide

WHEN HE NEXT OPENED THE DOOR, the owner saw at the foot of the steps a man kneeling, bent over with his head upon his knees and his arms grasping the back of his head, crying full-throated like a heartbroken child.

"I can't stand it! I can't stand it!" he kept crying, between bursts of inarticulate wailing.

The owner went down the steps and sat down beside him.

Eventually, he became aware of another presence and glanced up; but this only threw him into another paroxysm of grief. The owner sat without speaking.

"Well go ahead!" screamed the man--who looked quite young, but possibly because of a serious program of weight lifting. "Get it over with! It can't be any worse than I've had to go through all these years! I can't stand it! I can't stand it!" He stared defiantly at the owner, the tears soaking his whole face, making his rebellious expression more ridiculous than tragic.

"You are still alive," said the owner.

"Oh, you noticed!" he shrieked. "God curse the moment I was born! --But you won't, will you? You're going to preach to me about how great a gift this 'life' you gave me is! Well, I don't want your gift! Fuck your gift! But you won't let me give it back to you, will you? I have to keep living and living and living! I can't stand it! I can't stand it!"

"I could annihilate you, you know," said the owner gently. "But think. How would that give you satisfaction? There would be nothing to be satisfied."

"Oh, shut up! I don't give one sweet shit whether there's anything to be satisfied or not! I want out! I don't want to live! --And now there's nothing I can do about it! And you won't annihilate me, because it's against your law!"

A thought struck him, and he suddenly looked up into the owner's face. "Would you? If I really wanted it?"

"No. You are right, because I created you immortal, and I don't contradict myself. And I certainly wouldn't do it before you had a chance to see your room."

The man turned over from his kneeling position and sat on the lowest step, his forearms on his knees and his hands dangling limply in space, his head bowed over his chest. He was silent for a long time, except for an occasional sobbing gasp as his breath came back to him.

"Well," he said at last, "I took my chance, and why should it have turned out any different from anything else I've tried? --Oh God! Forever and ever and ever!" He closed his eyes and buried his head in his hands and wept again, but now with the more silent agony of exhaustion.

"You failed in everything," said the owner.

The man, who one could now see was probably well into middle age, turned angrily on the owner. "You know that! Or at least you're supposed to! Not one thing I ever tried worked!"

"Well that's not true, you know. But it is true that the things you really cared about failed."

"What, are you going to hold up all my little 'successes' that don't amount to a hill of beans and tell me, 'See how wonderful life is? You built a model plane when you were twelve! You were the only one to solve a math problem in your junior year in high school! A girl actually cared about you once for a couple of hours!"

"A wife still cares about you."

"She doesn't care about me! She cares about her idea of me! She's the greatest failure of my life, if anything. God knows I tried, but I couldn't satisfy her. --Of course, how could I, being what I am? What should I have expected? I should never have asked her to marry me.

"--There it is. I knew it wouldn't work--or I should have, so I can't blame anybody but myself. But I was just stupid enough to think that it was barely possible that with her help, I could change. Ha. What right did I have to subject her to all she went through?"

"It was her choice too."

"Yes, but she was much more self-deluded than I was--she still is, for that matter. Of course, maybe now her eyes have been opened a little. She's free anyway. If only I were! How is she?"

"Well, she resents bitterly what you just did to her by killing yourself. She hasn't got over that yet."

"And she's probably feeling guilty that she should have found a way to stop me, that she didn't really believe I'd do it after all these years of saying I would."

"That too."

"So I failed again. Story of my life. You know, once I called the suicide prevention hotline, and got talking to a poor lady, who was trying to get me to promise not to do it. 'Why should I?' I said. She said, 'You hurt those you care about so deeply. I care. I don't want you to destroy yourself.' 'Look, lady,' I said. 'I'm going to kill myself because my life is so horrible that I'd rather face the prospect of hell than go on'--I actually said that--'and you want me to reconsider because you might be disappointed if I do it. You don't even know me! Why should how you feel make any difference to me?'

"Well, she went on and on and in the course of it mentioned that crap about how people use threats of suicide to control others. That really pisses me off! It's true I was playing with her, and that I'd called in the first place to find out what these pricks think they can actually do besides make themselves feel good that they at least tried.

"But I threatened to kill myself because I couldn't stand life, not so I could get something from my wife or whatever. As far as I'm concerned, she can be whatever she wants to be, and if I can help, I'll do it."

"You did want to open her eyes as to how blind she was about you, though."

"I won't deny it. But I knew it wouldn't work. And frankly, I didn't care, when push came to shove. She is what she is, just like I am what I am, however much she wanted me to be somebody else. I just wanted out. But no psychologist can believe that; you've got to be nuts if you want to end it all. Why, if life is positive hell? Why, if there's no hope that the things that make life worth living are out of reach? Hanging there in front of you as if you could actually get them, when you know you can't--and when you do get a taste of them, you know you've got to spit it out!

"I finally hung up on her. That was five years ago. I didn't bother calling this time."

"That was when James Levine sent back your opera."

"Right. --Say, you do know everything, don't you? I mean, this is all real, what they always said. I never believed it."

"It's real. And you didn't quite disbelieve it either, did you? You half meant what you said when you told that woman you were ready to face the prospect of hell."

"I guess maybe I did--at least, I was afraid it just might be true! And it is! Oh, God!"

"Well, part of what you believed isn't. You don't see me standing over you with a lightning bolt in my hand ready to zap you."

"What difference does it make? You can't give me a worse hell than my whole life has been up to now anyway. Take that rejection. The damn thing got that far! All the way up to Levine himself! And he actually read it! I saw some notes he made in the margin. --But when all was said and done, it 'didn't fit the needs of the Metropolitan Opera at this time. We hope you will find success placing it elsewhere.' Just like all the rest of the 'elsewheres.' I said to myself, 'Why do you bother? Why do you work your ass off? Nobody's actually going to hear any of this crap!'"

"He told you he liked it; he thought it was well-written and had some outstanding parts."

"Big deal. I didn't write it for somebody to tell me it was well-written. You write music so it'll be heard, for God's sake! What the hell do I care what his opinion of it was? I had something I wanted to tell him, and you have to hear it for it to mean anything. --But you wouldn't understand that. For you, music is just music."

"You forget who you're talking to. I know exactly what you were trying to say with that opera; and that it was true. I could hear it as well as you. Better."

"I suppose I ought to take that as some consolation. But I don't. I wasn't talking to you; I was talking to people, telling them something they needed to hear. But they just weren't interested. 'It's too melodic,' they told me. Right! And it actually dares to use major triads! In the twentieth century! Why the hell should music or anything else be a celebration of a garbage dump? Levine liked what I did with the melody and the major triads, because it hasn't been done before; what he couldn't take was that he saw that it actually sounded pleasant! Beauty for some reason nowadays is supposed to set your teeth on edge! --Oh, it's okay if it comes from the 1800's; because we can look down on how 'undeveloped' everyone was. We love to listen to Tschaikowsky, but at the same time we sneer at him for being superficial and not daring enough. But look at that 5/4 movement in--what symphony was it? I forget at the moment, but you know what I mean. If you get over your contempt for what sounds nice, there's all kinds of stuff there to sink your teeth into. --But you don't want to hear all this."

"You and Tschaikowsky have a lot in common, actually."

"A lot more now, I suppose, now that I killed myself. Except the way I hear it, he had to because he was caught 'in a compromising situation with a man,' and would have gone to prison in disgrace. At least nowadays that's not something you have to worry about. Not prison, anyway."

"It's interesting, considering who you are, that all your music is about hope and rationality, and how life makes sense and happiness is possible."

"Yeah, I used to think about that a lot. But when I tried to write stuff about futility and absurdity, it all came out just stupid imitations of Berg and Webern and that bunch, and it wouldn't work. Not for me, anyway. They apparently believed it. I just lived it."

"Why was that, do you suppose?"

"I don't know. I've never been able to figure it out." He looked at the owner. "Do you know?"

"Of course. Music was the area of your life where you were least capable of being dishonest."

The man thought about this for a few moments. "What does that mean?" he asked.

"Don't you see? Your music wouldn't let you say that life is fundamentally absurd and that success is impossible. No matter what actually happened in your life, you knew that it couldn't be that way and that somehow it all made sense--that it can't make sense that nothing makes sense. And since you couldn't lie in your music, your music makes sense."

The man gave a little, almost silent laugh through closed lips, which came out as a faint snort through his nose. "Which shows how stupid I was."

"Does it?"

"Doesn't it?"

"You're here, aren't you? Not nothing, and not in some flaming pit. And I'm talking to you, trying to get you to face reality, not denouncing you."

"What do you mean, 'face reality'?"

"You know perfectly well that the reason you jumped out of that window was not that you wanted to be nothing, but that the circumstances of your life contradicted so blatantly what you knew life had to be like that it was just too much for you."

The man just sat, silent.

The owner remarked, "I heard you say 'God forgive me!' on the way down."

"Hell, I didn't even really believe you existed."

"It was just to be on the safe side."

"Something like that, I guess."

"Like your music. You knew. You had trouble facing reality--the reality you knew. It's time to face it."

"Ha! I've been facing it all my life! Look at me!"

"No you haven't. You've been facing the considerable difficulties I put in front of you--because you asked me to--as if they were the reality, instead of the underlying truth you couldn't deny in your music--and ultimately in your conduct, if you look at it realistically."

"Oh, I asked you for all this? One thing I never asked. I never asked to be gay!"

"Did you want to be a great composer, whose works would be heard and understood for generations after you? Did you want to be able to find the truth in music, or just write stuff that people would buy?"

"What has that got to do with being homosexual?"

"It turns out that in your case, your homosexuality and the struggle you had your whole life long against the pretense that because it felt good it was the right thing to do was the least painful way to get you able to see through the sophistries and general subjectivism music is plagued with like everything else in your time. There were others, but believe me, you'd have been here a lot earlier if I'd given them to you--without that opera and all the symphonies and all the rest of it."

"So I was right. All the gay people I ever met kept telling me that it was my nature, but I still couldn't get over the fact that the asshole is not a sexual organ, and cum isn't milk. And obviously, when you're sucking somebody, what's nice about it--aside from the fact that he likes it--is that it's some kind of an imitation of suckling your mother. But I saw all that, and I didn't really want that. What was it I wanted so desperately with these guys?"

"Oh, the answer to that is easy. Acceptance."

The man sat, looking at his hands. "I suppose you're right. You know, I told Paula that I had these homosexual tendencies--she had a right to know, after all--and that's what I thought they were at the time, and she always thought that eventually I'd get rid of them--that they weren't the 'real me.' Well, it turned out that they were. So part of it was that at least gay people wouldn't have a problem accepting me for what I really was.

"But the trouble was that I was gay, but I didn't want to actually have sex. I just wanted--something or other. Somebody to hug me, I guess, and tell me it was all right. But even if somebody had, we'd have gone to bed together, I suppose. But of course, nobody ever just wanted to be my friend, at least not a friend who'd just hold hands and maybe kiss me and that would be as far as it went. None of the straight people I knew could ever accept that I was gay, and none of the gay people could ever accept the fact that what I wanted wasn't really sexual intercourse. Especially when that's what it always led to--and in spite of myself, it was beautiful. I've never understood it."

"There are a lot of beautiful things that aren't right. A lot of your friends have found the beauty of crack and heroin."

"Thank God I was able to keep away from that!"

"You're welcome. That, as it happens, is another side-effect of your homosexuality, that threw you completely back on yourself. It enabled you to look at the facts, not just believe what other people said or what you wanted to believe."

"Which is why, I suppose, I kept writing even though I couldn't see any way it'd get published. I hate being rejected! I hate it!"

"And yet you kept producing things that people rejected, because you knew they were good."

"I hoped they were. But who was I to say that I was right and everyone else was wrong?"

"You know that that's not the right question to ask. Who are you? Nobody. It's what facts do you see--what evidence you have. Even in music. You can understand that."

"That's what kept me going. I didn't think anybody else understood it but me. You know, if you don't mind my saying so, it's really nice that you understand it."

"So you were right after all."

"Much good it did."

"Oh, listen. There's something else that you're not facing. You read the life of Mozart and Bach and all kinds of other musicians. Did anybody understand them until after they died?"

"That's true. I used to imagine the people coming into the Thomaskirche on Good Friday, saying to themselves, 'That organist probably has another four-hour oratorio we have to sit through!' And there's poor Bach, with his little choir half of whom probably couldn't even carry a tune, and his organ and a pick-up orchestra, doing his best with this magnificent music that didn't sound anything like what he knew it should sound like, with all the congregation grumbling about having to listen to this stuff!

"You know, I had a reading of a string quartet I wrote once. What a shock! It wasn't anything like what I thought it'd be. They suggested a whole bunch of changes, and I made them and gave it back. But they never played it."

"You ruined it with the changes. You were right the first time."

"I kind of half believed that. I kept the first version, because I couldn't believe it actually sounded that bad. And the second one turned out to be not what I wanted to say anyway."

"They weren't playing what you wrote. How could they, reading it at sight like that."

"Well, that's what I hoped, at least."

The owner rose to his feet. "Well," he said. "Do you think you'd like to see your room now?"

"You mean I have one?"

"Oh yes. In one sense, no thanks to you. You'll have to accept the fact that the reason it's there--or at least, the reason you'll actually enter this door to take a look at it is because of the prayers of your wife."

"Paula? But she's an atheist!"

"She was. But your suicide shocked her into seeing a priest. And he told her that he believed that, since God is eternal and there's no time with him, her prayers for you after you died could give you a moment to ask forgiveness that you wouldn't have had if she hadn't prayed. He was right."

"But how can the future change the past? The past is already done."

"The future can't change what the past actually was. What is is what it is. But it can change what the past would have been if the future event hadn't happened. How else would prophesy make sense? David's psalm didn't cause me to be crucified; it was my crucifixion that caused David to write the psalm he wrote."

"I don't understand it."

"You don't have to. It's true, though. But it's not all that difficult, if you put your mind to it. You know that you can't change what the future actually will be, because it will be what it will be. But you can change what it would be if you had made a different choice. That's what choices do; they change what the future would be. Well, the same applies to the past."

"It still doesn't make sense. But who cares? If you say so, then so be it."

As they talked, they proceeded down a corridor with marble walls and floors, with doorways framed with Corinthian columns. "This is the artists' wing," said the owner. "At least, most of the people here are artists, though there are some others. We have a fairly complex way of classifying things that you wouldn't be interested in."

He stopped in front of a very ornate door. "This?" said the composer.

"Well, you did say you struggled a lot. That makes your room that much more intricate. You'll see the pattern as time goes on."

"I don't know what to say."

"It makes sense, don't you think? That the temporary setbacks you had would turn out to be eternal benefits?"

"Well, yes, I suppose. --I mean, of course, when you think about it. It'd have to be that way if the world actually did make sense."

"Let's go in, shall we?"

It was a lovely room--not perfect, but lovely, with a window overlooking the mountain off in the distance. But the main feature was on the left wall: an enormous three-dimensional television set, running.

"That's King Lear!" cried the composer.

"It's the performance in La Scala on November 21, 2347," replied the owner. That's the best of them, I thought, although the production in 2170 at the Metropolitan comes really close--except that the interpretation is a bit different from what you had in mind when you wrote it. It's a valid one, though; there was more in it than you realized when you composed it."

The composer's eyes were riveted on the set, even though he could not see through the tears of joy that now streamed down his face. The singers came to a climax, and he cried "Yes!" and hit his fist into his hand. "Damn, that's good! I knew it!"

The first-act curtain went down to thunderous applause. "See?" said, looking over at the owner. "They like it! It is good!"

"Of course it is. You knew that all along. Now everybody does."

The composer rushed over to the owner, and impulsively hugged him. The owner put his arms around him and held him.