The Silence: A Novel by Don DeLillo

Author:Don DeLillo [DeLillo, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2020-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

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Counting down by sevens in the future that takes shape too soon.

There were six candles placed around the living room and Diane had just put a match to the last of them.

She said, “Is this a situation where we have to think about what we’re going to say before we say it?”

“The semi-darkness. It’s somewhere in the mass mind,” Martin said. “The pause, the sense of having experienced this before. Some kind of natural breakdown or foreign intrusion. A cautionary sense that we inherit from our grandparents or great-grandparents or back beyond. People in the grip of serious threat.”

“Is that who we are?”

“I’m talking too much,” he said. “I’m grinding out theories and speculations.”

The young man was standing at the window and Diane wondered if he planned to head home to the Bronx. She imagined that he might have to walk all the way, up through East Harlem to one of the bridges. Were pedestrians allowed to cross or were the bridges for cars and buses only? Was anything operating normally out there?

The thought softened her, made her think that she might offer to accommodate him for the night. The sofa, a blanket, not so complicated.

Stove dead, refrigerator dead. Heat beginning to fade into the walls. Max Stenner was in his chair, eyes on the blank screen. It seemed to be his turn to speak. She sensed it, nodded and waited.

He said, “Let’s eat now. Or the food will go hard or soft or warm or cold or whatever.”

They thought about this. But nobody moved in the direction of the kitchen.

Then Martin said, “Football.”

A reminder of how the long afternoon had started. He made a gesture, strange for such an individual, the action in slow motion of a player throwing a football, body poised, left arm thrust forward, providing balance, right arm set back, hand gripping football.

Here was Martin Dekker and there was Diane Lucas standing across the room, puzzled by the apparition.

He seemed lost in the pose but returned eventually to a natural stance. Max was back to his blank screen. The pauses were turning into silences and beginning to feel like the wrong kind of normal. Diane waited for her husband to pour more whiskey but he showed no interest, at least for now. Everything that was simple and declarative, where did it go?

Martin said, “Are we living in a makeshift reality? Have I already said this? A future that isn’t supposed to take form just yet?”

“A power station failed. That’s all,” she said. “Consider the situation in those terms. A facility along the Hudson River.”

“Artificial intelligence that betrays who we are and how we live and think.”

“Lights back on, heat back on, our collective mind back where it was, more or less, in a day or two.”

“The artificial future. The neural interface.”

They seemed determined not to look at each other.

Martin, speaking to no one in particular, raised the subject of his students. Global origins, assorted accents, all smart, specially selected for his course, ready for anything he

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