Suicide Club: A Novel About Living by Rachel Heng (2018)
Suicide Club: A Novel About Living by Rachel Heng (2018)
Chapter 10
Memory worked in strange ways when you had lived to a hundred and beyond. For the most part, the things that had happened in her early childhood were the ones that could be counted on to stay put. They were the permanent fixtures, firmly lodged into the architecture of the mind, screwed to the baseboards.
*
The things she forgot were those that happened in the broad expanse of adulthood. The older she got, the faster the years sped by, and the less of an impression anything made. The facts of her adult life were couched in general truths rather than in details. She knew where she had worked, whom she had dated, what she had done in the last seventy years or so. But she knew them as abstract facts, not as the acrid smell of a lover’s breath or the sting of humiliation upon losing a client for the first time. She had once forgotten a friend entirely, someone she had known in university and remained close with for two decades after.
Sometimes it scared her that so much was lost, but she knew it was normal, that most people she knew forgot most of their lives, too. But her childhood-that was always there, safe, neatly arranged, chronological. From her childhood she could remember a million details.
Chapter 13
The diner where Anja worked was a bright, boisterous place, filled with movement and shouting and the smell of stale oil. She kept her distance from the rest of the staff, content to immerse herself in the carrying of steaming plates and metal jugs, the mopping of sticky floors and wiping of crusty tabletops. All the others who worked there respected Anja’s silence, automatically excluding her from the daily flow of gossip and banter, defaulting to a detached professionalism whenever they had to speak to her.
*
Anja had been twelve when her father died. The questions from neighbors, teachers, people at the grocery store were endless. What was her favorite memory of him? Had they traveled much together? Did he take his morning coffee black or white? The questions had made her cry. She remembered breaking down in public places, convulsing in embarrassing sobs. She had felt aggrieved, attacked even. It seemed a cruel thing to do to a twelve-year-old girl who had just lost her father.
But here, in this country, where there was only silence around death, Anja finally understood the purpose of those questions. Back home they would have asked about her mother, kind yet direct. They would have posed questions about her illness, bedsores, siblings, favorite food, all unabashedly. Perhaps they would have made Anja cry. But at least her mother would exist, would be a human being once again. She would be more than an inconvenient body to hide or handle, more than a statistic warning against the dangers of black-market extensions, more than Anja’s responsibility, Anja’s burden, Anja’s life.
Chapter 14
Lea hadn’t been on the subway in decades. Part of it was wealth and status-as she rose in her job, she began taking expensive carshares wherever she went. Part of it was the advisory against being sedentary, which meant she, like most lifers, walked wherever she could. But the other part was simply that, without Lea really noticing, the radius of her life had shrunk over the years, become confined to the most central of the Central Boroughs, so most days she was able to get where she needed just by walking.
Chapter 18
”Someone once said death was the best invention life had to offer, and I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but I think it always bears remembering.”
Chapter 20
She looked back at them with mild interest, as if through a screen. When Lea was a child, the things and people around her sometimes felt part of an elaborate show, put on for someone else’s benefit, with an invisible logic that she could not quite grasp. This was one of those moments.
Chapter 30
The noise of Manhattan hit her like a brick wall, a solid slap in the face. A thick cloud of sound, woven tightly of individual threads-the roar of conversation, the thumping footfalls of the walking throngs, the dull gratings and booms of various construction sites, sirens, helicopter blades, music, the great soft whoosh of the Hudson.
There was something comforting about being slapped in the face, Anja thought as she plunged into the moving crowd on the sidewalk. Something satisfying about being hit hard, to emerge ears ringing and nose bleeding, tendons throbbing, alive. How strange it was that it was a city like this that first produced lifers, those smooth-skinned, long-limbed islands, whose entire beings were dedicated to only ever skimming the surface. How could they do it, she wondered, in a place like this?
She wondered what they would do if they got back to Sweden. Perhaps there, she’d find a doctor who would be willing to put an end to her mother’s suffering, have a proper funeral. She’d asked her mother once where she wanted her ashes to be scattered, for Anja had thought it would be nice to have them thrown in the Baltic Sea, next to their home. Her mother had said it didn’t matter. She didn’t believe in symbolism or rituals or afterlife, and she thought it was a silly, sentimental question. She didn’t see how it would affect her, for she would already be gone. She didn’t see that it wasn’t for her.
Nevertheless, Anja would scatter her mother’s ashes in the sea. As she pushed through the afternoon sidewalk traffic, Anja imagined carrying an urn to the beach. She would do it in the morning, just after sunrise. She’d stand on the surf, weak waves caressing her feet, sand shifting under her heels. The water would be so cold it burned, and the jellyfish, harmless and luminescent, would be plentiful. Some would already be stranded and dying on the sand as the tide went out, inert half-spheres of solid water, fat droplets of morning dew studding the shoreline.
She’d lift the top off the urn, dig her fingers in, marvel at how light the grains were, more like dust than sand. Then she’d fling one hand out toward the rising sun and the waking sea. Her mother would be taken by the wind.
Chapter 35
He told her about his daughter. About how she was smart and strong and different, how she thought there was something wrong with her because she sought the messy, sprawling innards of life, the flesh beneath the skin, the breakages. That she felt, deep within her, the violence of what it meant to live forever. He told her that she was not wrong; no, she was right. She had been right all along.
Chapter 10
Memory worked in strange ways when you had lived to a hundred and beyond. For the most part, the things that had happened in her early childhood were the ones that could be counted on to stay put. They were the permanent fixtures, firmly lodged into the architecture of the mind, screwed to the baseboards.
*
The things she forgot were those that happened in the broad expanse of adulthood. The older she got, the faster the years sped by, and the less of an impression anything made. The facts of her adult life were couched in general truths rather than in details. She knew where she had worked, whom she had dated, what she had done in the last seventy years or so. But she knew them as abstract facts, not as the acrid smell of a lover’s breath or the sting of humiliation upon losing a client for the first time. She had once forgotten a friend entirely, someone she had known in university and remained close with for two decades after.
Sometimes it scared her that so much was lost, but she knew it was normal, that most people she knew forgot most of their lives, too. But her childhood-that was always there, safe, neatly arranged, chronological. From her childhood she could remember a million details.
Chapter 13
The diner where Anja worked was a bright, boisterous place, filled with movement and shouting and the smell of stale oil. She kept her distance from the rest of the staff, content to immerse herself in the carrying of steaming plates and metal jugs, the mopping of sticky floors and wiping of crusty tabletops. All the others who worked there respected Anja’s silence, automatically excluding her from the daily flow of gossip and banter, defaulting to a detached professionalism whenever they had to speak to her.
*
Anja had been twelve when her father died. The questions from neighbors, teachers, people at the grocery store were endless. What was her favorite memory of him? Had they traveled much together? Did he take his morning coffee black or white? The questions had made her cry. She remembered breaking down in public places, convulsing in embarrassing sobs. She had felt aggrieved, attacked even. It seemed a cruel thing to do to a twelve-year-old girl who had just lost her father.
But here, in this country, where there was only silence around death, Anja finally understood the purpose of those questions. Back home they would have asked about her mother, kind yet direct. They would have posed questions about her illness, bedsores, siblings, favorite food, all unabashedly. Perhaps they would have made Anja cry. But at least her mother would exist, would be a human being once again. She would be more than an inconvenient body to hide or handle, more than a statistic warning against the dangers of black-market extensions, more than Anja’s responsibility, Anja’s burden, Anja’s life.
Chapter 14
Lea hadn’t been on the subway in decades. Part of it was wealth and status-as she rose in her job, she began taking expensive carshares wherever she went. Part of it was the advisory against being sedentary, which meant she, like most lifers, walked wherever she could. But the other part was simply that, without Lea really noticing, the radius of her life had shrunk over the years, become confined to the most central of the Central Boroughs, so most days she was able to get where she needed just by walking.
Chapter 18
”Someone once said death was the best invention life had to offer, and I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but I think it always bears remembering.”
Chapter 20
She looked back at them with mild interest, as if through a screen. When Lea was a child, the things and people around her sometimes felt part of an elaborate show, put on for someone else’s benefit, with an invisible logic that she could not quite grasp. This was one of those moments.
Chapter 30
The noise of Manhattan hit her like a brick wall, a solid slap in the face. A thick cloud of sound, woven tightly of individual threads-the roar of conversation, the thumping footfalls of the walking throngs, the dull gratings and booms of various construction sites, sirens, helicopter blades, music, the great soft whoosh of the Hudson.
There was something comforting about being slapped in the face, Anja thought as she plunged into the moving crowd on the sidewalk. Something satisfying about being hit hard, to emerge ears ringing and nose bleeding, tendons throbbing, alive. How strange it was that it was a city like this that first produced lifers, those smooth-skinned, long-limbed islands, whose entire beings were dedicated to only ever skimming the surface. How could they do it, she wondered, in a place like this?
She wondered what they would do if they got back to Sweden. Perhaps there, she’d find a doctor who would be willing to put an end to her mother’s suffering, have a proper funeral. She’d asked her mother once where she wanted her ashes to be scattered, for Anja had thought it would be nice to have them thrown in the Baltic Sea, next to their home. Her mother had said it didn’t matter. She didn’t believe in symbolism or rituals or afterlife, and she thought it was a silly, sentimental question. She didn’t see how it would affect her, for she would already be gone. She didn’t see that it wasn’t for her.
Nevertheless, Anja would scatter her mother’s ashes in the sea. As she pushed through the afternoon sidewalk traffic, Anja imagined carrying an urn to the beach. She would do it in the morning, just after sunrise. She’d stand on the surf, weak waves caressing her feet, sand shifting under her heels. The water would be so cold it burned, and the jellyfish, harmless and luminescent, would be plentiful. Some would already be stranded and dying on the sand as the tide went out, inert half-spheres of solid water, fat droplets of morning dew studding the shoreline.
She’d lift the top off the urn, dig her fingers in, marvel at how light the grains were, more like dust than sand. Then she’d fling one hand out toward the rising sun and the waking sea. Her mother would be taken by the wind.
Chapter 35
He told her about his daughter. About how she was smart and strong and different, how she thought there was something wrong with her because she sought the messy, sprawling innards of life, the flesh beneath the skin, the breakages. That she felt, deep within her, the violence of what it meant to live forever. He told her that she was not wrong; no, she was right. She had been right all along.