Chapter 34 Section 32

Murray and I walked across campus in our traditional European posture: a gait that seemed to be in serene contemplation, heads bowed as we talked.Sometimes, one of us grabs the other's elbow—a gesture of intimacy and mutual support.Sometimes we walked a little apart, Murray with his hands behind his back, and Gherardini with his hands crossed on his stomach like a monk, looking slightly sad. "You can speak German again?" "I still speak badly. I'm having trouble with words. Howard and I are working on opening remarks for the seminar." "You call him Howard?"

"Not in person. I don't call him when I meet him, and he doesn't call me when I meet him. It's that kind of relationship. Have you met him? You live in the same house after all." "There were a few quick interviews. Other residents seemed to prefer to meet like this. We felt that he was almost non-existent." "There's something special about him. I'm not sure what it is." "His skin was flesh-colored," Murray said. "Yeah, but that's not something that bothers me." "Soft hands." "Is that right?"

"It gives me a second to see a man with limp hands. That usual soft skin, baby skin. I don't think he shaved." "What else?" I said. "There are always bits and pieces of dry spittle hanging from the corner of his mouth." "You're right," I said excitedly. "Spit. When he leaned forward to talk, I felt the spit spray on my face." "And the habit of looking over people's shoulders." "It's amazing that you've seen all of this in just a few quick encounters. What else?" I urged him. "Stiffness, which seemed out of proportion to his shuffling habits."

"Yeah, he doesn't move his arms when he walks. What else? What else?" "It's something else, something above and beyond all this, something weird and terrible." "Indeed. But what is it? Something I'm not sure of." "There was something strange about him, some particular mood, some awareness, some presence, some effusion." "But what is that?" I said.I am amazed at how deeply I cared personally.Colored dots of light dance around the edge of my field of vision. We had barely walked the thirty or so paces when Murray started shaking his head sleepily.As we walked, I studied his face.He crossed the street shaking his head, and he kept shaking his head as we walked past the music library.I grabbed his elbow and walked step by step with him, I watched his face and waited for him to speak; he led me to irrelevant places, and I didn't care anymore.He was still shaking his head as we walked all the way to the edge of campus, to the entrance of the Wilmot Grange Building, a renovated 19th-century building.

"But what is that?" I said, "But what is that?" His answer was four days later at one o'clock in the morning, when he called my home and told me.His whispered words reached my ears and answered my question: "He looks like a guy who gets aroused when he sees a dead body." I went to my last class.Walls and windows were obscured by the accumulation; the accumulation now seemed to be expanding toward the center of the room.The bland-faced man in front of me closed his eyes and began to recite the usual tourist phrases: "Where am I?" "Can you help me?" "It's night and I'm lost again." I sat there It was simply unbearable.Murray's comments forever anchor him to an identity that seems certain.What was incomprehensible about Howard Dunlop is now clear.There was something strange and slightly creepy about him that now seems morbid.A hideous sensuality escaped from him and seemed to permeate the overcrowded room.

In fact, I would miss these classes.I'll miss those dogs too, those German Shepherds.One day they are gone, perhaps needed elsewhere, or sent back to the desert to enhance their skills.Still, the men in the Milex suits stayed around, measuring and probing with instruments, and groups of six or eight drove around the city in what looked like low toy stakes. I stood by Wilder's bed and watched him sleep.The voice in the next room said, "On the shores of the $400,000 Nabisco Dinah." On this very night, the madhouse was destroyed by fire.Heinrich and I got in the car and went out to watch.There were other men with their half-grown boys.Clearly, father and son seek partnership in such events.Fire brings them together and provides grounds for conversation: firefighting equipment can be evaluated, firefighters' skills can be discussed and critiqued.The masculinity of fighting a fire—one might say the masculinity of a fire—befits such brief conversations between father and son without causing embarrassment and embarrassment.

"Most of these types of fires in older buildings start with the wiring of the electrical wires," Heinrich said. "You don't hear the word that the wiring is faulty for a while longer." "Most people don't burn," I said, "they die from smoke inhalation." "That's another common saying." Tall flames burst from the dormer windows.We stood across the street watching as part of the roof gave way and a tall chimney slowly bent and sank.Fire trucks kept coming from other towns, and men got off lumbering in rubber boots and old-fashioned hats.Aiming with the water dragon, a figure emerges from the glowing roof, grabbing a retractable escalator.We watched as the columned portico began to crumble and a chimney in the distance tipped.A woman walks across the grass, her dressing gown catches fire.We were almost breathless with admiration.She is white-haired, thin, and steaming; we can see that she is mad, so lost in nightmares and rage that the fire around her head seems to her purely accidental.No one said a word.Amidst the heat and crackle of the burning wood, she brought silence.How powerful and true!What a deep thing madness is!A fire chief walked up to her quickly, then backed away a little embarrassedly, as if she wasn't the one he was expecting to find here after all.She uttered a frightful cry and fell to the ground like a teacup shattered.There are now four people around her, beating the flames with helmets and hats.

The difficult work of containing the fire, a labor as old and lost as the building of churches, continued, inspired by the noble spirit of public enterprise.One is also sitting in the cab of the ladder fire truck. "It's funny how people can watch it forever," Heinrich said. "It's like watching a fire in a fireplace." "Are you saying that both types of fire are equally obsessive?" "I'm just saying people can watch forever." "'Man has always been fascinated by fire'—are you saying that?" "This is the first time I've seen a building on fire. Give me a chance," he said.

Fathers and sons huddled on the sidewalk, pointing at this part or that of the half-destroyed interior.Murray—his boarding house was not far away—sneaked up to us and shook our hands without saying a word.Windows were blown out by the raging fire.We saw another chimney fall under the roof, and a few scattered bricks tumbled onto the grass.Murray shook our hand again, then disappeared. After a while there was a choking smell.It could be that the insulation -- the polystyrene used for pipe and wire sheathing, or one or more other substances -- is burning.A pungent and bitter stench filled the air, overpowering the smell of smoke and char.It spoils the mood of the people crowded on the sidewalk.Some covered their faces with handkerchiefs, while others hurried away in disgust.Whatever is causing the smell, I realize it makes people feel hurt.An old, expansive, terrible theatrical scene was being marred by something unnatural, some little malevolent intrusion.Our eyes start to ache.The crowd dispersed.It seems as though we have to admit that there is a second form of death.One is real and the other is imaginary.The smell drives us away.But beneath it, and worse, is the sense that death comes in two separate ways, sometimes in one; and how it enters your mouth and nose, and what it smells like, Anything can make a difference in your soul.

We hurried back to our cars, thinking about the homeless, the lunatics, the dead, but now also ourselves.It was caused by the smell of that burning thing.It compounds our worries and brings us closer to the secret of our own ultimate undoing. When I got home, I warmed up two glasses of milk for both of us.I watched him drink in amazement.He grabs the mug with both hands, talking about the sound of the fire, the rush of air rushing in and making it burn violently, like a ramjet pumping.I almost expected him to thank me for the wonderful fire.We sat there drinking milk.After a while, he went into his inner room to do pull-ups.

I sat up late thinking of Mr. Gray: a body as gray as his own name, lifeless and not yet fully formed.The picture trembled and rolled, the edges of his body deforming at will, flickering and flickering.Lately, I've found myself thinking of him a lot.Sometimes Mr. Gray comes to mind as a composite: four or more gray-skinned figures—scientists, visionaries—working on an avant-garde project.Their wavelike undulations penetrated each other, blending, blending, merging, a little alien.They are smarter than the rest of us, egoless, genderless, and bent on directing us from our fears.But when their bodies merged, I faced one person, the project manager, a vague, gray-skinned seducer, rippling through the motel room toward the bed , to realize the conspiracy.I saw my wife's obscenely plump body leaning to one side, the so-called "eternal waiting nudity".I see her as clearly as he does.Dependent, submissive, emotionally captive.I feel his mastery and control.The dominance of his position.He's occupying my mind, this man I've never seen, this half-figured, barely visible speck of light in my head.His pale hands held a rose-white breast.There are a few russet spots all around the teat, how vivid and alive it is!What a tactile pleasure!I also experienced auditory torture, hearing their playful rolls, love words, and physical rubbing before sex.There was the sound of their smacking and kissing, the squeak of wet mouths, the crunch of the springs of the bed.A grunt that paused and shifted positions.Later, the dark night fell around the bed covered with gray sheets, forming a circle that slowly closed. Full sonic.

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Notes: It could even serve as an alternative title for the book, said the monograph critic Tom Leclerc. (Tom LeClair. In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.)