I thought.
I told Lude. He told me to call her at once.
I waited.
Then I re-considered, then I postponed.
Finally, at exactly twenty-two past three in the morning, I dialed. It was a beeper. I punched in my number.
She's a stripper I reasoned. Strippers live late.
An hour passed. I started drinking. I'm still drinking. She hasn't called. She isn't going to call.
I feel dead. Hillary and Mallory, I suddenly envy them. I wonder if Navidson did too. I bet Zampano envied them. I need to get away. Zampano liked animals. Far away. All those cats he would talk to in that weedy courtyard. At dawn. At night. So many shades slinking out from under that dusty place like years, his years, could they be like my years too? though certainly not so many, not like him, years and years of them, always rubbing up against his legs, and I see it all so clearly now, static announcements that yes! hmmm, how shocking, they still are there, disconnected but vital, the way memories reveal their life by simply appearing, sprinting out from under the shadows, paws!-patterpaws-pawsi, pausing then to rub against our legs, zap! senile sparks perhaps but ah yes still there, and I'm thinking, has another missing year resolved in song?- though let me not get too far from myself, they were after all only cats, quadruped mice-devouring mote-chasing shades, Felis catus, with very little to remind them of themselves or their past or even their tomorrows, especially when the present burns hot with play, their pursuits and their fear, a bright flash to pursue (sun a star on a nothing's back), a dark slash to escape (there are always predators ...), the spry interplay of hidden things and visible wings flung upon that great black sail of rods and cones, thin and fractionary, a covenant of light, ark for the instant, echoing out the dark and the Other, harmonizing with the crack-brack-crisp-tricks of every broken leaf of grass or displaced stick, and so thrust by shadow and the vague hope of color into a rhapsody of motion and meaning, albeit momentary, pupil pulling wider, wider still, and darker, receiving all of it, and even more of it, though still only beholding some of it, until in the frenzy of reception, this mote-clawing hawk- fearing shade loses itself in temporary madness, leaping, springing, flinging itself after it all, as if it were possessed (and it is); as if that kind of physical response could approximate the witnessed world, which it can't, though very little matters enough to prevent the try-all of which is to say, in the end, they are only cats but cats to talk to just the same before in their own weaving and wending, they Kilkenny-disappear, just as they first appeared, out of nowhere, vanishing back into the nowhere, tales from some great story we will never see but one day just might imagine (which in the gray of gentler eves will prove far more than any of us could ever need; "enough," we will shout, "enough!" our bellies full, our hearts full, our ages full; fullness and greater fullness and even more fullness; how then we will laugh and forget how the imagining has already left us) slinking back into that place of urban barley, grass, fennel and wheat, or just plain hay, golden hay, where-Hey! Hey! Hey-hey! Hay days gone by, bye-bye, gone way way away. And what of dogs you ask? Well, there are no dogs except for the Pekinese but that's another story, one I won't, I cannot tell. It's too dark and difficult and without whim, and if you didn't notice I'm in a whimsical (inconsequential) frame of mind right now, talking (scribbling?) aimlessly and strangely about cats, enjoying all the rules in this School of Whim, the play of it,-Where Have I Moved? What Have I Muttered? Who Have I Met?-the frolic and the drift, as I go thinking now, tripping really, over the notion of eighty or more of Zampano's dusty cats (for no particular/relevant reason) which must implicitly mean that no, it cannot be raining cats and dogs, due to the dust, so much of it, on the ground, about the weeds, in the air, so therefore! ergo! thus (..): no dogs, no Pekinese, just the courtyard, Zampano's courtyard, on a mad lost-noon day, wild with years and pounce and sun, even if another day would find Zampano elsewhere, far from the sun, this sun, flung face down on his ill-swept floor, without so much as a clue, "No trauma, just old age" the paramedics would say, though they could never explain-no one could-what they found near where he lay, four of them, six or seven inches long and half an inch deep, splintering the wood, left by some terrible awe-full thing, signature in script of steel or claws, though not Santa, Zampano died after Christmas after all, but no myth either, for I saw the impossible marks near the trunk, touched them, even caught some splinters in my fingertips, some of their unexpected sadness and mourning, which though dug out later with a safety pin, I swear still fester beneath my skin, reminding me in a peculiar way of him, just like other splinters I still carry, though these much much deeper, having never been worked out by the body but quite the contrary worked into the body, by now long since buried, calcified and fused to my very bones, taking me further from the warm frolic of years, reminding me of much colder days, Where I Left Death, or thought I had-I am tripping-overcast in tones December gray, recalling names,-I have tripped-swept in Ohio sleet and rain, ruled by a man with a beard rougher than horse hide and hands harder than horn, who called me beast because I was his boy though he wasn't my father, which is another story, another place I'm here to avoid, as I'm certain there are places you too have sought to avoid, just as one of Zampano's early readers also found a story she wanted to avoid, though she finally told me it, or at least some of it, how she'd departed from the old man's apartment at nightfall, having just endured hours of speech on comfort, death and legend, not to speak of mothers & daughters and birds & bees and fathers & Sons and cats & dogs, all of it distressing her, saddening her, confusing her, and thus leaving her completely unprepared for the memory she was about to find, abruptly returning from her childhood in Santa Cruz, even as she was trying to reorient herself in a familiar setting and the comforting routine of a long walk back to her car,-it had been raining there; pouring in fact; though not on Franklin & Whitley-suddenly noticing the unnatural heaviness of a shadow slipping free from the burnt dusk, though not a shadow at all, later translating this as the sight of an enormous creature trespassing on the curve of a Northern California night, like the shadow she saw hiding in the bottom turn of Zampano's stairwell, moving too, towards her, and so causing her to panic and scramble into the comforts offered by a local bar-or that night scramble through the gate of Zampano's building-away from all that gloom, until only many hours and many drinks later could she finally fall asleep, her hangover the following day leaving her-"gratefully," she said-with only a fleeting memory of something white with ropes of sea smoke and one terrifying flash of blue, which was more, she told me, than she could usually share even if-which she wouldn't share-she knew it still wasn't even the half of it.
And so now, in the shadow of unspoken events, I watch Zampano's courtyard darken.
Everything whimsical has left.
I try to study the light-going carefully. From my room. In the glass of my memory. In the moonstream of my imagination. The weeds, the windows, every bench.
But the old man is not there, and the cats are all gone.
Something else has taken their place. Something I am unable to see. Waiting.
I'm afraid.
It is hungry. It is immortal.
Worse, it knows nothing of whim.
VII.
But all this-the mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all-made no impression on the man. It was not because he was long used to it. He was a newcomer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination.
- Jack London "To Build A Fire"
Holloway Roberts arrives carrying a rifle. In fact in the very first shot we see of him, he emerges from a truck holding a Weatherby .300 magnum.
Even without weapons though, Holloway would still be an intimidating man. He is broad and powerful with a thick beard and deeply creased brow. Dissatisfaction motivates him, and at forty-eight, he still drives himself harder than any man half his age. Consequently, when he steps onto Navidson's front lawn, arms folded, eyes scrutinizing the house, bees flying near his boots, he looks less like a guest and more like some conquistador landing on new shores, preparing for war.
Born in Menomonie, Wisconsin, Holloway Roberts has made a career as a professional hunter and explorer. As travel writer Aramis Garcia Pineda commented: "He is confident, leads well, and possesses a remarkable amount of brassball courage. Over the past some have resented his strength and drive but most agree the sense of security one feels in his presence-especially in life-threatening situations-makes tolerating the irritating sides of his character well worth it." [83-See Aramis Garcia Pineda's "More Than Meets The Eye" in Field and Stream, v. 100, January 1996, p. 39-47.]
When Navidson told Reston how Karen had explicitly asked him not to explore the hallway-and presumably Navidson described the discoveries he made during Exploration A-the first person Reston called was Holloway.
Reston had met Holloway four years earlier at a symposium on arctic gear design held at Northwestern University. Holloway was one of the speakers invited to represent explorers. Not only did he clearly articulate the problems with current equipment, he also focused on what was needed to correct the problems. Though a fairly humorless speech, its conciseness impressed many people there, especially Reston who bought the man a drink. A sort of friendship soon developed. [84-Leeze1 Brant's "Billy Reston's Friends For Life" in Backpacker, v. 23, February 1995, p. 7.] "I always thought he was rock solid," Reston said much later in The Reston Interview. "Just look at his C.V. Never for a moment did I suspect he was capable of that." [85-See Exhibit Four for the complete transcript of The Reston Interview.]
As it turned out, as soon as Holloway saw the tape of "The Five and Half Minute Hallway", which Reston had sent him, he was more than willing to participate in an investigation. [Gabriel Reller in his book Beyond The Grasp of Commercial Media (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1995) suggests that the appearance of the first short entitled "The Five and a Half Minute Hallway" originated here: "Holloway probably copied the tape, gave it to a couple of friends, who in turn passed it along to others. Eventually it found its way to the academic set" (p. 252).] Within a week he had arrived at the house, along with two employees: Jed Leeder and Kirby "Wax" Hook.
As we learn in The Navidson Record, Jed Leeder lives in Seattle, though he was originally from Vineland, New Jersey. He had actually been on his way to becoming a career truck driver when a trans-continental job took him all the way to Washington. It was there that he discovered the great outdoors was not just some myth conjured up in a magazine. He was twenty-seven when he first saw the Cascades. One look was all he needed. Love at first sight. He quit his job on the spot and started selling camping gear. Six years later he is still a long way from Vineland, and as we can see for ourselves, his passion for the Pacific Northwest and the great outdoors only seems to have grown more intense.
Consummately shy, almost to the point of frailty, Jed possesses an uncanny sense of direction and remarkable endurance. Even Holloway concedes that Jed would probably out distance him in a packless climb. When he is not trekking, Jed loves drinking coffee, watching the tide turn, and listening to Lyle Lovett with his fiancee. "She's from Texas," he tells us very softly. "I think that's where we're going to get married." [86-See also Susan Wright's "Leeder of the Pack" in Outdoor Life, v. 195, June 1995, p. 28.]
Wax Hook could not be more different. At twenty-six, he is the youngest member of the Holloway team. Born in Aspen, Colorado, he grew up on mountain faces and in cave shafts. Before he could walk he knew where to drive a piton and before he could talk he had a whole vocabulary of knots under his fmgers. If there is such a thing as a climbing prodigy, Wax is it. By the time he dropped out of high school, he had climbed more peaks than most climbers have claimed in a lifetime. In one clip, he tells us how he plans to eventually make a solo ascent of Everest's North Face: "And I'll tell you this, more than a few people are bettin' I'll do it."
When Wax was twenty-three, Holloway hired him as a guide. For the next three years, Wax helped Holloway and Jed lead teams up Mt. McKinley, down into Ellison's Cave in Georgia, or across some Nepalese cwm. The pay was not much to brag about but the experience was worth plenty.
Wax sometimes gets a little out of hand. He likes to drink, get laid, and most of all boast about how much he drank and how many times he got laid. But he never brags about climbing. Booze and women are one thing but "a rocky face is always better than you and if you make it down alive you're grateful you had a good trip." [87-Bentley Harper's "Hook, Line and Sinker" in Sierra, v. 81, July/August 1996, p. 42.]
"This though has to be the weirdest," Wax later tells Navidson, right before making his last foray down the hallway. "When Holloway asked me if I wanted to explore a house I thought he was cracked. But whatever Holloway does is interesting to me, so sure I went for it, and sure enough this is the weirdest!"
On the day Holloway and his team arrive at Ash Tree Lane, Navidson and Tom are there to greet them at the door. Karen says a brief hello and leaves to pick the children up from school. Reston makes the necessary introductions and then after everyone has gathered in the living room, Navidson begins to explain what he knows about the hallway.
He shows them a map he drew based on his first visit. Tellingly, this hardly strikes Tom as news. While Navidson does his best to impress upon everyone the dangers posed by the tremendous size of that place as well as the need to record in detail every part of the exploration, Tom passes out xerox copies of his brother's diagram.
Jed finds it difficult to stop smiling while Wax finds it difficult to stop laughing. Holloway keeps throwing glances at Reston. In spite of the tape he saw, Holloway seems convinced that Navidson has more than a few loose wing nuts jangling around in his cerebral cortex. But when the four dead bolts are at last unlocked and the hallway door drawn open, the icy darkness instantly slaughters every smile and glance.
Newt Kuelister suspects the first view of that place irreparably altered something in Holloway: "His face loses color, something even close to panic suffuses his system. Suddenly he sees what fortune has plopped on his plate and how famous and rich it could make him, and he wants it. He wants all of it, immediately, no matter the cost." [88-See Newt Kuellster's "The Five and a Half Minutc Holloway" in The Holloway Quesrion (San Francisco: Metalambino Inc., 1996), p. 532; as well as Tiffany Baiter's "Gone Away" in People, V. 43, May 15, 1995, p. 89.] Studying Holloway's reaction, it is almost impossible to deny how serious he gets staring down the hallway. "How far back does it go?" he finally asks.
"You're about to find out," Navidson replies, sizing up the man, a half-smile on his lips. "Just be careful of the shifts."
From the first time they shake hands on the doorstep, it is obvious to us Navidson and Holloway dislike each other. Neither one says anything critical but both men bristle in each other's presence. Holloway is probably a little unnerved by Navidson's distinguished career. Navidson, no doubt, is privately incensed that he must ask another man to explore his own house. Holloway does not make this intrusion any easier. He is cocky and following Navidson's little introduction immediately starts calling the shots.
In earlier years, Navidson would have probably paid little attention to Karen and headed down those corridors by himself-danger be damned. Yet as has already been discussed, the move to Virginia was about repairing their crumbling relationship. Karen would refrain from relying on other men to mollify her insecurities if Navidson curbed his own risk-lust and gave domesticity a real shot. After all, as Karen later intimated, their home was supposed to bring them closer together. [89-See Chapter XIII.] The appearance of the hallway, however, tests those informal vows. Navidson finds himself constantly itching to leave his family for that place just as Karen discovers old patterns surfacing in herself.
Later that evening, Holloway places his hand on Karen's back and makes her laugh with a line the camera never hears. Navidson immediately bumps Holloway aside with his shoulder, revealing, for one thing, his own easily underestimated strength. Navidson, however, reserves his glare for Karen. She laughs it off but the uneasy energy released recalls Leslie Buckman and Dale Corrdigan's accusations. [90-Refer to footnotes 19 and 20 concerning Karen's infidelities. Perhaps it also should be noted here that for all his wanderings Navidson was pointedly not promiscuous. Good looks, intelligence, and fan did not combine to create an adulterous lifestyle. Jona Panofsky in "Saints, Sinners, and Photojoumalists" Fortune, v. 111, March 18, 1985, p. 20, attributes Navidson's genius to his "monk-like existence." However, Australian native, Ryan Murray in his book Wilder Ways (Sydney: Outback Works, 1996) calls Navidson' s monastic habits "a sure sign of unresolved oedipal anxieties, repressed homosexuality, and a disturbed sense of self. Considering the time he spent away from home coupled with the kind of offers he got from the most exotic and tantalizing women (not even including those from his numerous female assistants), his refusal proves a nauseating absence of character. Make no mistake about it: over here his kind enter a bar with a smile and leave with a barstool for a hat." An odd thing to say considering Navidson drank freely in every Australian bar he ever visited and on the one occasion when he was attacked by two drunks, purportedly angry over all the attention the waitresses were lavishing on him, both inebriates left bruised and bleeding. (The Wall Street Journal, March 29, 1985, p. 31, column 3.)]
Yet even after Navidson's interjection, Holloway still finds it difficult to keep his eyes off of Karen. Her flirting hardly helps. She is bright, extremely sexual, and just as Navidson has always enjoyed danger, she has always thrived on attention.
Karen brings the men beers and they go outside with her and light her cigarettes. It matters very little what they say, her eyes always flash, she gives them that famous smile, and sure enough soon they are all doting on her.
Navidson confides to his Hi 8," I can't tell you how much I'd like to deviate that fucker's [Holloway's] septum." And then later on mutters somewhat enigmatically: "For that I should throw her out." Still aside from these comments and the strong nudge he gave Holloway, Navidson refrains from openly displaying any other signs of jealousy or rage.
Unfortunately he also refrains from openly considering the significance of these feelings. The closest he comes appears in a Hi 8 journal entry spliced in following his encounter with Holloway. On camera, Navidson treats what he refers to as "his rotten feet." As we can clearly see, the tops are puffy and in some places as red as clay. Furthermore, all his toe nails are horribly cracked, disfigured, and yellow. "Perpetuated," Navidson informs us. "By a nasty fungus two decades worth of doctors finally ended up calling S-T-R-E-S-S." Sitting by himself on the edge of the tub, blood stained socks draped over the edge, he carefully spreads a silky ointment around what he glibly calls his "light fantastic toe." It is one of the more naked moments of Navidson, and especially considering its placement in the sequence, seems to reveal in a non-verbal way some of the anxiety Karen's flirtation with Holloway has provoked in him.
All of which becomes pretty irrelevant as Holloway soon spends most of his hours leading his team down that lightless hallway.
Frequently treatment of the first three explorations has concentrated on the physical aspects of the house. Florencia Calzatti, however, has shown in her compelling book The Fraying of the American Family (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1995)-no longer in print-how these invasions begin to strip the Navidsons of any existing cohesion. It is an interesting examination of the complex variables implicit in any intrusion. Unfortunately understanding Caizatti's work is not at all easy, as she makes her case using a peculiar idiom no reader will find readily comprehensible (e.g. She never refers to Holloway as anything but "the stranger"; Jed and Wax appear as only "the instruments"; and the house is encoded as "the patient"). No doubt inspired by Caizatti, a small group of other writers, including the poet Elfor O'Halloran, have continued to mull over the dynamics brought on by Holloway's arrival. [91-Consider Bingham Arzumanian's "Stranger in a Hall" Journal of Psychoanalysis, v.14 April 12, 1996, p. 142; Yvonne Hunsucker's "Counseling, Relief, and Introjection" Medicine, v.2 July 18, 1996, p. 56; Curtis Meichor's "The Surgical Hand" Internal Medicine, vR September 30, 1996, p. 93; and Pifor O'Halloran's "Invasive Cures" Homeopathic Alternatives, October 31, 1996, p. 28.]
Without focusing too closely on the fine filigree of detail presented in these pieces-a book in itself-it is worthwhile, however briefly, to track the narrative events of the three explorations and recite to some degree how they effect the Navidsons.
For Exploration #1, Holloway, Jed and Wax enter the hallway equipped with Hi 8s, down parkas, hats, Gortex gloves, powerful halogen lamps, extra batteries, and a radio to keep in contact with Navidson, Tom and Reston. Navidson ties one end of some fishing line to the hallway door and then hands the spool to Holloway.
"There's almost two miles of line here," he tells him. "Don't let go of it,"
Karen says nothing when she hears Navidson make this comment, though she does get up abruptly to go out to the backyard and smoke a cigarette. It is particularly eerie to watch Holloway and his team disappear down the long hallway, while just outside Karen paces back and forth in the light of a September day, oblivious of the space she repeatedly crosses though for whatever reason cannot penetrate. [92-Jeffrey Neblett's "The Illusion of Intimacy and Depth" Ladies' Home Journal, V. 111, January 1994, p. 90-93.]
An hour later, Holloway, Jed, and Wax return. When their Hi 8 tapes are replayed in the living room, we watch along with everyone else how a series of lefts eventually leads them to the apparently endless corridor which, again to the left, offers entrance into that huge space where Navidson almost got lost. Though Holloway's ability to shoot this trip hardly compares to the expertise evident in Navidson's Exploration A, it is still thrilling to follow the trio as they investigate the darkness.
As they quickly discover, the void above them is not infinite. Their flashlights, much more powerful than Navidson's, illuminate a ceiling at least two hundred feet high. A little later, at least fifteen hundred feet away, they discover an opposing wall. What no one is prepared for, however, is the even larger entrance waiting for them, opening into an even greater void.
Two things keep them from proceeding further. One-Holloway runs out of fishing line. In fact, he briefly considers setting the spool down, when two-he hears the growl Navidson had warned them about. A little rattled by the sound, Holloway decides to turn back in order to better consider their next move. As Navidson foretold, they soon see for themselves how all the walls have shifted (though not as severely as they had for Navidson). Fortunately, the changes have not severed the fishing line and the three men find their way back to the living room with relative ease.
Exploration #2 takes place the following day. This time Holloway carries with him four spools of fishing line, several flares, and some neon markers. He virtually ignores Navidson, putting Wax in charge of a 35mm camera and instructing Jed on how to collect scratchings from all the walls they pass along the way. Reston provides the dozen or so sample jars.
Though Exploration #2 ends up lasting over eight hours, Holloway, Jed, Wax only hear the growl once and the resulting shifts are negligible. The first hallway seems narrower, the ceiling a little lower, and while some of the rooms they pass look larger, for the most part everything has remained the same. It is almost as if continued use deters the growl and preserves the path they walk.
Aside from feeling generally incensed by what he perceives as Holloway's postured authority, Navidson almost goes berserk listening to the discoveries on the radio. Reston and Tom try to cheer him up and to Navidson's credit he tries to act cheerful, but when Jed announces they have crossed what he names the Anteroom and entered what Holloway starts calling the Great Hall, Navidson finds it increasingly more difficult to conjure even a smile.
Radio psychologist Fannie Lamkins believes this is a clear cut example of the classic male struggle for dominance: It's bad enough to hear the Great Hall has a ceiling at least five hundred feet high with a span that may approach a mile, but when Holloway radios that they've found a staircase in the center which is over two hundred feet in diameter and spirals down into nothing, Navidson has to hand Reston the radio, unable to muster another word of support.
He has been deprived of the right to name what he inherently understands as his own. [93-Fannie Lamkins' "Eleven Minute Shrink," KLAT, Buffalo, New York, June 24, 1994.]
Lamkins sees Navidson's willingness to obey Karen's injunction as a sacrifice on par with scarification, "though invisible to Karen." [94-Ibid. Florencia Caizatti also sees Karen's edict as violent, though she ultimately considers it of great value: "A needed rite to reinvigorate and strengthen the couple's personal bonds." The Fraying of the American Family, p. 249.]
After Holloway's team returns, Jed tries to describe the staircase: "It was enormous. We dropped a few flares down it but never heard them hit bottom. I mean in that place, it being so empty and cold and still and all, you really can hear a pin drop, but the darkness just swallowed the flares right up." Wax nods, and then adds with a shake of his head: "It's so deep, man, it's like it's almost dream like."
This last comment is actually not uncommon, especially for individuals who find themselves confronting vast tenebrific spaces. Back in the mid-60s, American cavers tackled the Sotano de las Golondrinas, an incredible l,092 ft hole in Mexico's Sierra Madre Oriental. They used rope, rappel racks, and mechanical ascenders to make the descent. Later on, one of the cavers described his experience: "I was suspended in a giant dome with thousands of birds circling in small groups near the vague blackcloth of the far walls. Moving slowly down the rope, I had the feeling that I was descending into an illusion and would soon become part of it as the distances became unrelatable and entirely unreal." [95-Planet Earth: Underground Worlds by Donald Dale Jackson and The Editors of Time-Life Books (Alexandra, Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1982), p. 149.]
When Holloway plays back the Hi 8s for everyone, Navidson's frustrations get the best of him. He leaves the room. It hardly helps that Karen stays, entirely engrossed in Holloway's presentation and the ghostly if inadequate images of a banister frozen on the monitor. Tom, actually, pulls her aside and tries to convince her to let Navidson lead the next exploration.
"Tom," she replies defensively. "Nothing's stopping Navy. If he wants to go, he can go. But then I go too. That's our deal. He knows that. You know that."
Tom seems a little shocked by her anger, until Karen directs his attention to Chad and Daisy, sitting in the kitchen, working hard at not doing their homework.
"Look at them," she whispers. "Navy's had a lifetime of wandering and danger. He can let someone else take over now. It won't kill him, but losing him would kill them. It would kill me too. I want to grow old, Tom. I want to grow old with him. Is that such an awful thing?"
Her words clearly register with Tom, who perhaps also perceives what a great toll his brother's death would have on him as well. [96-Both Bingham Arzumanian and Curtis Meichor's pieces have offered valuable insight into the nature of Tom's alignment with Karen. Also see Chapter XI.]
When he sees Navidson next, Tom tells him to go find his son.
Based on what we can tell from The Navidson Record, it appears Chad soon got fed up with his class assignment and took off down the street with Hillary, determined to explore his own dark. Navidson had to look for almost an hour before he finally found him. Chad it turned out was in the park filling a jar full of fireflies. Instead of scolding him, Navidson helped out.
By ten, they had returned home with jars full of light and hands sticky with ice cream.
Exploration #3 ends up lasting almost twenty hours. Relying primarily on the team's radio transmissions interspersed with a few clips from the Hi 8s, Navidson relates how Holloway, Jed, and Wax take forty- five minutes to reach the Spiral Staircase only to spend the next seven hours walking down it. When they at last stop, a dropped flare still does not illuminate or sound a bottom. Jed notes that the diameter has also increased from two hundred feet to well over five hundred feet. It takes them over eleven hours to return.
Unlike the two previous explorations, this intrusion brings them face to face with the consequences of the immensity of that place. All three men come back cold, depleted, their muscles aching, their enthusiasm gone.
"I got some vertigo," Jed confesses. "I had to step way back from the edge and sit down. That was a first for me." Wax is more cavalier, claiming to have felt no fear, though for some reason he is more exhausted than the rest. Holloway remains the most stoic, keeping any doubts to himself, adding only that the experience is beyond the power of any Hi 8 or 35mm camera: "It's impossible to photograph what we saw." [97-Marjorie Preece uses this one line to launch into her powerfully observed essay "The Loss of Authority: Holloway's Challenge" Kaos Journal, v. 32, September, 1996, p. 44. Preece wonderfully shows how Holloway's assertion that the camera is impotent within the house "helps establish him-at least for a little while-as the tribe's head."]
Even after seeing Navidson's accomplished shots, it is hard to disagree with Holloway. The darkness recreated in a lab or television set does not begin to tell the true story. Whether chemical clots determining black or video grey approximating absence, the images still remain two dimensional. In order to have a third dimension, depth cues are required, which in the case of the stairway means more light. The flares, however, barely illuminate the size of that bore. In fact they are easily extinguished by the very thing they are supposed to expose. Only knowledge illuminates that bottomless place, disclosing the deep ultimately absent in all the tapes and stills-those strange cartes de visites. It is unfortunate that Holloway's images cannot even be counted as approximations of that vast abrupt, where as Rilke wrote, "aber da, an diesem schwarzen Fellel wird dein starkstes Schauen aufgelost."
[98-No idea. Actually, Lude had a German friend named Kyrie, a tall blonde haired beauty who spoke Chinese, Japanese and French, drank beer by the quart, trained for triathions when she wasn't playing competitive squash, made six figures a year as a corporate consultant and loved to fuck. Lude took heed when I told him I needed a German translation and introduced us.
As it turned out, I'd met her before, about five or so months ago. It had actually been a little tricky. I was leering about, pretty obliterated in the arms of drink, hours of drink actually, feeling like days of drink, when this monstrous guy loomed up in front of me, grumbling insensibly about bad behavior, something concerning too much talk with too much gesture, gestures towards her, that much of the grumble, the "her" bit, I understood. He meant Kyrie of course who even back then was a blonde haired beauty, writing my name in Japanese and assigning all sorts of portentous things to it, things I was hoping to lead or was it follow? elsewhere, when this prehistoric shithead, reeking of money and ignorance, interposed himself, cursing, spitting and threatening, in fact so loud & mean Kyrie had to interpose herself, which only made matters worse. He reached over her and hit me in the forehead with the heel of his hand. Not hard, more like a shove, but a strong enough shove to push me back a few feet.
"Well look at that," I remember hollering. "He has an opposable thumb."
The monster wasn't amused. It didn't matter. The alcohol in me had already quickened and fled. I stood there tingling all over, a dangerous clarity returning to me, ancient bloodlines colluding under what I imagine now must of been the very aegis of Mars, my fingers itching to weld into themselves, while directly beneath my sternum a hammer struck the timeless bell of war, a call to arms, though all of it still held back by what? words I guess, or rather a voice, though whose I have no clue.
He was twice my size, bigger and stronger. That should of mattered. For some reason it didn't. Odds were he'd rip me to pieces, probably even try to stomp me, and yet part of me still wanted to find out for sure. Luckily, the alcohol returned. I got wobbly and then I got scared.
Lude was yelling at me.
"You got a death wish Truant?"
Which was the thing that scared me.
'Cause maybe I did.
Five months or so later, Lude arranged for me to meet Kyrie at Union. I was late by an hour. I had an excuse. Every time I tried to open my door, my heart started racing for a bypass. I had to sit down and wait for the thumping to calm. This went on for almost fifty minutes, until I finally just gave up, gritted my teeth and charged out into the night.
Of course I recognized Kyrie immediately and she recognized me. She was getting ready to leave when I arrived. I apologized and begged her to stay, making up some lame excuse about police trying to save a guy in my building who'd stuck his head in a microwave. She looked wonderful and her voice was soft and offered me something Thumper had taken away when she hadn't called me back. She even wrote down on a napkin the glyph she'd created for me half a year ago to reflect my name and nature.
Before I could order a drink, a Jack and Coke, she told me her boyfriend was out of town, working on some construction site in Poland, single handedly dislodging supertankers stuck in dry dock in Gdansk or something. It was a dirty job but someone had to do it, and what's more he wasn't going to be back for a few more weeks. Before I even took a sip of my drink, Kyrie was complaining about all the people filtering in around us and then as I finished my drink in one long gulp, she suggested we go for a drive in her new 2 door BMW Coupe.
"Sure" I said, feeling vaguely uneasy about wandering too far from where I lived, which I realized, as I took a second to think that out, was absolutely absurd. What the fuck was happening to me? My apartment's a dump. There's nothing there for me. Not even sleep. Cat naps are fine but for some reason deep REM is getting more and more difficult to achieve. Definitely not a good thing.
Fortunately, I was falling under the spell of Kyrie's blue eyes, like sea ice, almost inhuman, reminding me again-as she herself had already pointed out-that she was alone, Gdansk Man more than half a world spinning world away.
In the parking lot, we slipped into her bucket seats and quickly swallowed two tabs of Ecstasy.
Kyrie took over from there.
At nearly ninety miles per hour, she zipped us up to that windy edge known to some as Mulholland, a sinuous road running the ridge of the Santa Monica mountains, where she then proceeded to pump her vehicle in and out of turns, sometimes dropping down to fifty miles per hour only to immediately gun it back up to ninety again, fast, slow, fast- fast, slow, sometimes a wide turn, sometimes a quick one. She preferred the tighter ones, the sharp controlled jerks, swinging left to right, before driving back to the right, only so she could do it all over again, until after enough speed and enough wind and more distance than I'd been prepared to expect, taking me to parts of this city I rarely think of and never visit, she dipped down into some slower offshoot, a lane of lightless coves, not stopping there either, but pushing further on until she finally found the secluded spot she'd been heading for all along, overlooking the city, far from anyone, pedestrian or home, and yet directly beneath a street lamp, which as far as I could tell, was the only Street lamp around for miles.
Seems all that twittering light flooding down through the sunroof really turned her on.
I can't remember the inane things I started babbling about then. I know it didn't really matter. She wasn't listening. She just yanked up on the emergency brake, dropped her seat back and told me to lie on top of her, on top of those leather pants of hers, extremely expensive leather pants mind you, her hands immediately guiding mine over those soft slightly oily folds, positioning my fingers on the shiny metal tab, small and round like a tear, then murmuring a murmur so inaudible that even though I could feel her lips tremble against my ear, she seemed far, far away-"pinch it" she'd said, which I did, lightly, until she also said "pull it" which I also did, gently, parting the teeth, one at a time, down, under and beneath, the longest unzipping of my life, all the way from right beneath her perfectly oval navel to the tiny tattoo, a Japanese sign, the meaning of which I never guessed, marking her lower back, and not a stitch of underwear to get in the way, the rest very guessable though don't underestimate the danger which I guess really wasn't so dangerous after all.
We never even kissed or looked into each other's eyes. Our lips just trespassed on those inner labyrinths hidden deep within our ears, filled them with the private music of wicked words, hers in many languages, mine in the off color of my only tongue, until as our tones shifted, and our consonants spun and squealed, rattled faster, hesitated, raced harder, syllables soon melting with groans, or moans finding purchase in new words, or old words, or made-up words, until we gathered up our heat and refused to release it, enjoying too much the dark language we had suddenly stumbled upon, craved to, carved to, not a communication really but a channeling of our rumored desires, hers for all I know gone to Black Forests and wolves, mine banging back to a familiar form, that great revenant mystery I still could only hear the shape of, which in spite of our separate lusts and individual cries still continued to drive us deeper into stranger tones, our mutual desire to keep gripping the burn fueled by sound, hers screeching, mine-I didn't hear mine-only hers, probably counter-pointing mine, a high-pitched cry, then a whisper dropping unexpectedly to practically a bark, a grunt, whatever, no sense any more, and suddenly no more curves either, just the straight away, some line crossed, where every fractured sound already spoken finally compacts into one long agonizing word, easily exceeding a hundred letters, even thunder, anticipating the inevitable letting go, when the heat is ultimately too much to bear, threatening to burn, scar, tear it all apart, yet tempting enough to hold onto for even one second more, to extend it all, if we can, as if by getting that much closer to the heat, that much more enveloped, would prove . . .-which when we did clutch, hold, postpone, did in fact prove too much after all, seconds too much, and impossible to refuse, so blowing all of everything apart, shivers and shakes and deep in her throat a thousand letters crashing in a long unmodulated fall, resonating deep within my cochlea and down the cochlear nerve, a last fit of fury describing in lasting detail the shape of things already come.
Too bad dark languages rarely survive.
As quickly as they're invented, they die, unable to penetrate much, explore anything or even connect. Terribly beautiful but more often than not inadequate. So I guess it's no surprise that what I recall now with the most clarity is actually pretty odd.
When Kyrie dropped me off, she burped.
At the time I thought it was kind of cute but I guess "man eater" did cross my mind. Then as I opened the door, she burst into tears. All she was in that $85,000 car could not exclude the little girl. She said something about Gdansk Man's disinterest in her, in fucking her, in even touching her, running away to Poland, and then she apologized, blamed the drugs still roaming around in her veins and told me to get out.
She was still crying when she drove off.
In the end, the whole thing had been so frantic and fast and strange and even sad in some ways, I completely forgot to ask her about the German phrase. [99-"But here within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze will be absorbed and utterly disappear." As translated by Stephen Mitchell. - Ed.] I suppose I could call her (Lude has her number) but for some reason these days dialing seven let alone eleven numbers feels like an infinite stretch. The phone's right in front of me but it's out of reach. When it rings at four AM I don't answer it. All I have to do is extend my hand but I can't run that far. Sleep never really arrives. Not even rest. There's no satisfaction anymore. Morning shrinks space but leaves no message.
Resistance to representation, however, is not the only difficulty posed by those replicating chambers and corridors. As Karen discovers, the whole house defies any normal means of determining direction.
Apparently while Karen had been struggling with the explorers' invasion of her home, her mother had managed to acquire the number of a Feng Shui master in Manhattan. After a long conversation with this expert, Karen is relieved to learn she has been putting all the ceramic animals, crystals, and plants in the wrong places. She is still told to use the Pau Kua table, I Ching, and the Lo Shu magic square, but to do so with the assistance of a compass. Since much of Feng Shui, especially in the Compass School, relies on auspicious and inauspicious directions, it is crucial to get an accurate reading on how the house sits in relationship to points north, south, east, and west.