The Book of Skulls

  Then I became aware that someone had entered my room. The door, opening, closing. Footsteps. This, too, I accepted as part of the fantasy. Without looking around, I decided that Oliver must have come to me, and in a dreamy acid-high way I became convinced that it was Oliver, it necessarily had to be Oliver, so that I was thrown into confusion for an instant when eventually I turned and saw Eli. He was sitting quietly against the far wall. He had merely appeared depressed on his earlier visit, but now—ten minutes later? half an hour?—he seemed utterly disintegrated. Downcast eyes, slumping shoulders. “I don’t understand,” he said hollowly, “how this confessional thing can have any value, real, symbolic, metaphorical, or otherwise. I thought I understood it when Frater Javier first spoke to us, but now I can’t dig it. Is this what we must do in order to deliver ourselves from death? Why? Why?”

  “Because they ask it,” I said.

  “What of that?”

  “It’s a matter of obedience. Out of obedience grows discipline, out of discipline grows control, out of control grows the power to conquer the forces of decay. Obedience is anti-entropic. Entropy is our enemy.”

  “How glib you are,” he said.

  “Glibness isn’t a sin.”

  He laughed and made no reply. I could see that he was on the thin edge, walking the razor-sharp line between sanity and madness, and I, who had teetered on that edge all my life, was not going to be the one to nudge him. Time passed. My vision of myself and Oliver receded and became unreal. I bore no grudge against Eli for that; this night belonged to him. Ultimately he started to tell me about an essay he had written when he was sixteen, in his senior year in high school, an essay on the moral collapse of the Western Roman Empire as reflected in the degeneration of Latin into the various Romance languages. He remembered a good deal of what he had written even now, quoting lengthy chunks of it, and I listened with half an ear, giving him the polite pretense of attention but nothing more, for although the essay sounded brilliant to me, a remarkable performance for a scholar of any age and certainly astonishing for a boy of sixteen to have written, I did not at that particular moment have any vast desire to hear about the subtle ethical implications to be found in the patterns of evolution of French, Spanish, and Italian. But gradually I comprehended Eli’s motives for telling me this story and paid closer heed: he was, in fact, making confession to me. For he had written that essay for submission to a contest sponsored by some prestigious learned society and had won, receiving thereby a valuable scholarship that had underwritten his college tuition. Indeed, he had built his entire academic career on that piece, for it had been reprinted in a major philological journal and had made him a celebrity in that small scholastic realm. Though only a freshman, he was mentioned admiringly in the footnotes of other scholars; the gates of all libraries were open to him; he would not have had the opportunity to find the very manuscript that had led us to the House of Skulls had he not written the masterly essay on which his fame depended. And—so he told me in the same expressionless tone with which, moments before, he had been expounding on irregular verbs—the essential concept of that thesis had not been his own work. He had stolen it.

  Aha! The sin of Eli Steinfeld! No trifling sexual peccadillo, no boyhood adventure in buggery or mutual masturbation, no incestuous snuggling with his mildly protesting mother, but rather an intellectual crime, the most damning of all. Little wonder he had held back from admitting it. Now, though, he poured forth the incriminating truth. His father, he said, lunching one afternoon in an Automat on Sixth Avenue, had happened to notice a small, gray, faded man sitting by himself, exploring a thick, unwieldy book. It was an arcane volume on linguistic analysis, Sommerfelt’s Diachronic and Synchronic Aspects of Language, a title that would have meant nothing whatever to the elder Steinfeld had he not just a short while before forked out $16.50, no trivial sum in that family, to buy a copy for Eli, who felt he could not live much longer without it. The shock of recognition, then, at the sight of that bulky quarto. Upwelling of parental pride: my son the philologist. An introduction follows. Conversation. Immediate rapport; one middle-aged refugee in an Automat has nothing to fear from another. “My son,” says Mr. Steinfeld, “he’s reading that same book!” Expressions of delight. The other is a native of Rumania, formerly professor of linguistics at the University of Cluj; he had fled that land in 1939, hoping to enter Palestine but arriving instead, by a roundabout route through the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Canada, in the United States. Unable to secure an academic appointment anywhere, he lives in quiet poverty on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, holding whatever jobs he can find: dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant, proofreader for a short-lived Rumanian newspaper, mimeograph operator for a displaced-persons information service, and so on. All the while he is diligently preparing his life’s work, a structural and philosophical analysis of the decay of Latin in early medieval times. The manuscript now is virtually complete in Rumanian, he tells Eli’s father, and he has begun the necessary translation into English, but the work goes very slowly for him, since even now he is not at home in English, his head being so thoroughly stuffed with other languages. He dreams of finishing the book, finding a publisher for it, and retiring to Israel on the proceeds. “I should like to meet your boy,” the Rumanian says abruptly. Instant emanations of suspicion from Eli’s father. Is this some kind of pervert? A molester, a fondler? No! This is a decent Jewish man, a scholar, a melamed, a member of the international fellowship of victims; how could he mean any harm to Eli? Telephone numbers are exchanged. A meeting is negotiated. Eli goes to the Rumanian’s apartment: one tiny room, crammed with books, manuscripts, learned periodicals in a dozen languages. Here, read this, the worthy man says, this and this and this, my essays, my theories; and he thrusts papers into Eli’s hands, onionskin sheets closely typed, single spaced, no margins. Eli goes home, he reads, his mind expands. Far out! This little old man has it all together! Inflamed, Eli vows to learn Rumanian, to be his new friend’s amanuensis, to help him translate his masterwork as quickly as possible. Feverishly the two, the boy and the old man, plan collaborations. They build castles in Rumania. Eli, out of his own money, has the manuscripts Xeroxed, so that some goy in the next apartment, falling asleep over a cigarette, does not wipe out this lifetime of scholarship in a mindless conflagration. Every day after school Eli hurries to the little cluttered room. Then one afternoon no one answers his knock. Calamity! The janitor is summoned, grumbling, whiskey-breathed; he uses his master key to open the door; within lies the Rumanian, yellow-faced, stiff. A society of refugees pays for the funeral. A nephew, mysteriously unmentioned previously, materializes and carts off every book, every manuscript, to a fate unknown. Eli is left with the Xeroxes. What now? How can he be the vehicle through which this work is made known to mankind? Ah! The essay contest for the scholarship! He sits possessed at his typewriter, hour after hour. The distinction in his own mind between himself and his departed acquaintance becomes uncertain. They are collaborators now; through me, Eli thinks, this great man speaks from the grave. The essay is finished and there is no doubt in Eli’s mind of its worth; it is plainly a masterpiece. Moreover he has the special pleasure of knowing that he has salvaged the life’s work of an unjustly neglected scholar. He submits the required six copies to the contest committee; in the spring the registered letter comes, notifying him he has won; he is summoned into marble halls to receive a scroll, a check for more money than he can imagine, and the excited congratulations of a panel of distinguished academics. Shortly afterward comes the first request from a professional journal for a contribution. His career is launched. Only later does Eli realize that in his triumphant essay he has, somehow, forgotten entirely to credit the author of the work on which his ideas are based. Not an acknowledgment, not a footnote, not a single citation anywhere.

  This error of omission abashes him, but he feels it is too late to remedy the oversight, nor does the giving of proper credit become any easier for him as the months pass, as his essay
gets into print, as the scholarly discussion of it begins. He lives in terror of the moment when some elderly Rumanian will arise, clutching a parcel of obscure journals published in prewar Bucharest, and cry out that this impudent young man has shamelessly rifled the thought of his late and distinguished colleague, the unfortunate Dr. Nicolescu. But no accusing Rumanian arises. Years have gone by; the essay is universally accepted as Eli’s own; as the end of his undergraduate days approaches, several major universities vie for the honor of having him do advanced study on their faculty.

  And this sordid episode, Eli said in conclusion, could serve as metaphor of his whole intellectual life—all of it fake, no depth, the key ideas borrowed. He had gone a long way on a knack for making synthesis masquerade as originality, plus a certain undeniable skill in assimilating the syntax of archaic languages, but he had made no real contribution to mankind’s store of knowledge, none, which at his age would be pardonable had he not fraudulently gained a premature reputation as the most penetrating thinker to enter the field of linguistics since Benjamin Whorf. And what was he, in truth? A golem, a construct, a walking Potemkin Village of philology. Miracles of insight now were expected of him, and what could he give? He had nothing left to offer, he told me bitterly. He had long ago used up the last of the Rumanian’s manuscripts.

  A monstrous silence descended. I could not bear to look at him. This had been more than a confession; it had been hara-kiri. Eli had destroyed himself in front of me. I had always been a little suspicious, yes, of Eli’s supposed profundity, for though he undoubtedly had a fine mind his perceptions all struck me in an odd way as having come to him at second hand; yet I had never imagined this of him, this theft, this imposture. What could I say to him now? Cluck my tongue, priestlike, and tell him, Yes, my child, you have sinned grievously? He knew that. Tell him that God would forgive him, for God is love? I didn’t believe that myself. Perhaps I might try a dose of Goethe, saying, Redemption from sin through good works is still available, Eli, go forth and drain marshes and build hospitals and write some brilliant essays that aren’t stolen and all will be well for you. He sat there, waiting for absolution, waiting for The Word that would lift the yoke from him. His face was blank, his eyes devastated. I wished he had confessed some meaningless fleshly sin. Oliver had plugged his playmate, nothing more, a sin that to me was no sin at all, only jolly good fun; Oliver’s anguish thus was unreal, a product of the conflict between his body’s natural desires and the conditioning society had imposed. In the Athens of Pericles he would have had nothing to confess. Timothy’s sin, whatever it was, had surely been something equally shallow, sprouting not from moral absolutes but from local tribal taboos: perhaps he had slept with a serving wench, perhaps he had spied on his parents’ copulations. My own was a more complex transgression, for I had taken joy in the doom of others, I perhaps had even engineered the doom of others, but even that was a subtle Jamesian sort of thing, in the last analysis fairly insubstantial. Not this. If plagiarism lay at the core of Eli’s glittering scholastic attainments, then nothing lay at the core of Eli: he was hollow, he was empty, and what absolution could anyone offer him for that? Well, Eli had had his cop-out earlier in the evening, and now I had mine. I rose, I went to him, I took his hands in mine and lifted him to his feet, and I said magic words to him: contrition, atonement, forgiveness, redemption. Strive ever toward the light, Eli. No soul is damned for all eternity. Work hard, apply yourself, persevere, seek self-understanding, and there will be divine mercy for you, because your weakness comes from Him and He will not chastise you for it if you show Him you are able to transcend it. He nodded remotely and left me. I thought of the Ninth Mystery and wondered if I would ever see him again.

  I paced my room a long while, brooding. Then Satan inflamed me and I went to call on Oliver.

  thirty-nine

  oliver

  “I know the story,” Ned said. “I know the whole bit.” Smiling shyly at me. Soft eyes, cow eyes, looking into mine. “You don’t need to be afraid of being what you are, Oliver. You mustn’t ever be afraid of what you are. Can’t you see how important it is to get to know yourself, to get into your head as far as you can go, and then to act on what you find in there? But instead so many people set up dumb walls between themselves and themselves, walls made out of useless abstractions. A lot of Thou Shalt Nots and Thou Dost Not Dares. Why? What good is any of that?” His face was glowing. A tempter, a devil. Eli must have told him everything. Karl and me, me and Karl. I wanted to smash Eli’s head for him. Ned circled around me, grinning, moving like a cat, like a wrestler about to spring. He kept his voice low, almost a crooning tone. “Come on, Ol. Loosen up. LuAnn won’t find out. I don’t play kiss and tell. Let’s go, Ol, let’s do it, let’s do it. We’re not strangers. We’ve kept apart long enough. This is you, Oliver, this is the real you in there who wants to get out, and this is the moment for you to let him come out. Will you, Ol? Will you? Now? Here’s your chance. Here I am.” And he came close to me. Looked up at me. Short little Ned, chest-high to me. His fingers lightly running along my forearm. “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t touch me, Ned.” He continued to smile. To stroke me. “Don’t refuse me,” he whispered. “Don’t deny me. Because if you do, you’ll be denying yourself, you’ll be refusing to accept the reality of your own existence, and you can’t do that, Oliver, can you? Not if you want to live forever. I’m a station you’ve got to pass through on your journey. We’ve both known that for years, down deep. Now it surfaces, Ol. Now everything surfaces, everything converges, all time runs to now, Ol, this place, this room, this night. Yes? Yes? Say yes. Oliver. Say yes!”

  forty

  eli

  I no longer knew who I was or where I was. I was in a trance, a daze, a coma. Like my own ghost I haunted the halls of the House of Skulls, drifting through the chilly night-darkened corridors. The stone images of skulls looked out from the walls, grinning at me. I grinned at them. I winked, I blew them kisses. I stared at the row of massive oaken doors receding toward infinity, every door tightly shut, and mysterious names crossed my consciousness: this is Timothy’s room, this is Ned’s, this is Oliver’s. Who are they? And this is the room of Eli Steinfeld. Who? Eli Steinfeld. Who? E. Li. Stein. Feld. A series of incomprehensible sounds. An agglomeration of dead syllables. E. Li. Stein. Feld. Let us proceed. This room belongs to Frater Antony, and in here one may find Frater Bernard, and here Frater Javier, and here Frater Claude, and Frater Miklos, and Frater Maurice, and Frater Leon, and Frater This and Frater That, and who are these fraters, what do their names mean? Here are more doors. The women must sleep here. I opened a door at random. Four cots, four fleshy women, naked, sprawling in a tangle of rumpled sheets. Nothing hidden. Thighs, buttocks, breasts, loins. The slack-mouthed faces of sleepers. I could go to them, I could enter their bodies, I could possess them, all four of them, each in turn. But no. Onward, to a place where there is no roof, where the glistening stars shine through the bare beams. Colder, here. Skulls on the walls. A fountain, bubbling. I passed through the public rooms. Here we take instruction in the Eighteen Mysteries. Here we perform the sacred gymnastics. This is where we eat our special foods. And here—this opening in the floor, this omphalos, the navel of the universe is here, the gateway to the Pit. I must go down. Down, then. A musty smell. No light here. The angle of descent flattens; this is no abyss, but only a tunnel, and I remember it. I have been through here before, coming the other way. A barrier now, a stone slab. It yields, it yields! The tunnel continues. Forward, forward, forward. Trombones and basset horns, a chorus of basses, the words of the Requiem trembling in the air: Rex tremendae majestatis, qui salvandos salvas gratis, salva me, fons pietatis. Out! I emerged into the clearing through which I had first entered the House of Skulls. Before me, barren wastes, a prickly desert. Behind me, the House of Skulls. Above me the stars, the full moon, the vault of the heavens. What now? I made my way uncertainly across the clearing, past the row of basketball-sized stone skulls that bord
ered it, and down the narrow path running into the desert. I had no goal in mind. My feet took me. I walked for hours or days or weeks. Then, on my right, I saw a huge chunky boulder, coarse in texture, dark in color, the road marker, the giant stone skull. By moonlight the deep-set features were stark and sharp, black recesses holding pools of night. Brothers, let us meditate here. Let us contemplate the skull beneath the face. And so I knelt. And so, using the techniques taught me by the pious Frater Antony, I sent forth my soul and engulfed the great stone skull, and purged myself of all vulnerability to death. Skull, I know you! Skull, I fear you not! Skull, I carry your brother behind my skin! And I laughed at the skull, and I amused myself by transforming it, first into a smooth white egg, then into a globe of pink alabaster streaked and veined with yellow, then into a crystal sphere, the depths of which I explored. The sphere showed me the golden towers of lost Atlantis. It showed me shaggy men in woolly furs, capering by torchlight before painted bulls on the walls of a smoky cave. It showed me Oliver lying numb and exhausted in Ned’s arms. I transformed the sphere into a rough skull rudely carved of black rock, and, satisfied, went back up the thorny path toward the House of Skulls. I did not enter the subterranean passage but instead walked around the side of the building and along the face of the lengthy wing in which we took instruction from the fraters, until I came to the building’s end, where the path began that gave access to the cultivated fields. By moonlight I searched for weeds and found none. I caressed the little pepper plants. I blessed the berries and the roots. This is the holy food, this is the pure food, this is the food of life eternal. I knelt between the rows, on the cold wet muddy ground, and prayed that forgiveness be extended to me for my sins. I went next to the hillock west of the skullhouse. I ascended it and removed my shorts and, naked to the night, performed the sacred breathing exercises, squatting, sucking in the darkness, mingling it with the inner breath, drawing power from it, diverting that power to my vital organs. My body dissolved. I was without mass or weight. I floated, dancing, on a column of air. I held my breath for centuries. I soared for eons. I approached the true state of grace. Now it was proper to perform the rite of the gymnastics, which I then did, moving with grace and an agility I had never attained before. I bent, I pivoted, I twisted, I leaped. I flung myself aloft; I clapped hands; I tested every muscle. I tested myself to my limits.