THE COURSE I HAD instituted that was causing me so much trouble was called Actualities of Death. It was a simple, natural conclusion to come to. Only a Gilliatt could see any partiality in it. What it comes down to is this: no one envisions his own moment of death. The moment before—yes! The moment after—ah, delicious! Other people’s grief. One’s own rest—and mysterious ability to observe the mourners. But the agonizing instant—never!
What it is, of course, is violence. I mean, let’s admit the unpleasant fact: blood vessels rupture. Tissues deprived of air do not stay at their best very long. Lungs become choked with fluid. And a man isn’t a fish, no matter how clever or how adaptable he may have been during his lifetime. Even those who use pills or perish of a “quiet” heart attack in their sleep—who knows what the very last spasm communicates in the way of horror, fear, panic and agony? How can breath leave a body peacefully? Maybe it’s my own rebellious nature, but I simply cannot buy that. It’s a terrifying, painful and violent business. And that is what people persist in hiding from themselves.
And that, precisely, is what my course consists of. No Grand Guignol. Just a simple discussion, with slides. Research has shown us that visual aids are very effective. In this case black-and-white slides. Color—that would have given Gilliatt a weapon. Blood and guts to create panic. I was too careful for him. But there it is. How can you honestly claim to guide people, objectively, through the one crucial day when you ignore their blindness on such a point. What we’re after here is real choice. Not compulsive plunging. And I, for one, cannot believe that ignorance is better than knowledge, no matter what the circumstances. (“You Jews,” Gilliatt had said to me, “use knowledge to fight off anxiety, the way we goyim use tranquilizers. As soon as you know something, you feel you can control it. And you’re so damned afraid of everything, you have to know everything. There’s no end to your search for knowledge, because there’s no end to your fear.”)
The course had been in effect since November. Two months—and the graphs showed no particular fluctuation. The percentage of authentic, bedrock suicides remained approximately constant. What gimmick did Gilliatt have hidden up his sleeve that he felt he could get away with bringing me up on charges before the Board? It was true one girl had fainted during the very first lecture. If the expected had happened, things might have gone differently with the course—and perhaps even with Gilliatt and myself. But, oddly, the girl who fainted was dead by the following day. She was the real McCoy. I forget the details of her case—I think it was a rather banal one, postpartum depression. But you have to respect someone with such determination. Even her madness must be respected, if it could survive the shock of a potential violent death so real that it caused a total blackout. And if her madness thrived on such a shock—still, in its extreme logic of persistence it compels my admiration. If that is partiality to death—then I am convicted. Of course, it was precisely the opposite bias I was being accused of.
I was not the first Director to institute changes in the curriculum. Each one had left his individual mark on the place. The founders of the Academy had made sure, however, that the contributions would remain anonymous. No one could pinpoint, for example, the particular Director who was responsible for the advent of the rest period toward the end of the day when men and women—and homosexuals of both persuasions—having either mixed or stayed aloof from each other, were allowed to choose a partner and spend an hour alone together. They might choose a stranger or someone they had come with. They might make love, read, play chess or just sleep or rest. The statistical guess is that the hour had a fifty-fifty chance of turning out well or badly from an emotional point of view. This concept of a temporary relief from the enforced group-life was one of the more brilliant innovations and I wish I knew who had been responsible for it. But he was as anonymous as the author of “Blow, blow thou winter wind.” In the Academy library there is a book of legends about the founders. In one of them the insistence on anonymity is explained by the fact that the founders were a group of men who did not believe in a God, but who desired to rival the God who did not exist by improving on one of the basic situations of His human beings: the tendency toward self-destruction. Obviously no individual credit could be allowed. The goal was to create a group-God who would shame the non-existent deity by handling suicide more justly and more intelligently than He.
The inscription to this book reads: Suicide is not to be undertaken lightly. At its best it is a life-long endeavor.