starkness is a fantastic collection of bizarre pre-Columbian (I guess) masks and statuettes, mounted on walls, standing in corners, set into recessed niches — terrifying faces, all angles and harsh planes, gorgeous in their monstrosity. The imagery of the skull is ubiquitous. I have no idea what led that newspaper reporter to think that this place was occupied by “monks” practicing Christianity; the clipping Eli has speaks of the decor as “a combination of medieval Christian style and what seems to be Aztec motifs,” but, though the Aztec influence is obvious enough, where is the Christian? I see no crosses, no stained glass windows, no images of the saints or the Holy Family, none of the proper paraphernalia. The whole texture of the place is pagan, primitive, prehistoric; this could be a temple to some ancient Mexican god, even to a Neanderthal deity, but Jesus simply isn’t on the premises, or I’m not Boston Irish. Perhaps the clean cold austere refinement of the place gave the newspaperman the feel of a medieval monastery — the echoes, the hint of Gregorian chant in the silent hallways — but without the symbolism of Christianity there can’t be Christianity, and such symbols as are on display here are alien ones. The total effect of the place is one of strange luxury combined with immense stylistic restraint: they have understated everything, but a sense of power and grandeur bursts from the walls, the floors, the endlessly receding corridors, the bare rooms, the sparse and lean furnishings. Cleanliness is evidently important here. The plumbing arrangements are extraordinary, with bubbling fountains everywhere in the public rooms and the larger halls. My own room has a capacious sunken tub lined with rich green slate, which looks suitable for a maharajah or a Renaissance Pope. As he delivered me to my room, Frater Antony suggested that I might like to take a bath, and his polite statement had the force of an order. Not that I needed much urging, for the hike through the desert had coated me miserably with grime. I treated myself to a long voluptuous soaking, wriggling on the glossy slate, and when I came out I discovered that my filthy, sweaty clothing had disappeared, every scrap, shoes and all. To replace it I found on my cot a pair of worn-looking but clean blue shorts of the sort Frater Antony was wearing. Very well: the philosophy here seems to be that less is more. Good riddance to shirts and sweaters; I’ll settle for shorts over my naked loins. We have come to an interesting place.
The question of the moment is, Does this place have any connection with Eli’s medieval manuscript and with the supposed cult of immortality? I think it does, but I can’t yet be sure of that. It was impossible not to admire the frater’s sense of theatricality, his wondrously ambiguous handling of the moment when Eli sprang the Book of Skulls on him a few hours ago. His delicious, reverberating curtain line:
chapter twenty-four
Timothy
Creepier and creepier. That mile-long hallway. Those skulls all over the place, the Mexican-looking death- masks. Figures who’ve been flayed and still can grin, faces with skewers jabbed through their tongues and cheeks, bodies with flesh below and skulls on top. Lovely. And that weird old man, speaking to us in a voice that could have come out of a machine. I almost think he’s some kind of robot. He can’t be real, with that smooth tight skin of his, that bald head that looks as if it’s never had any hair, those peculiar glossy eyes — sheesh!
At least the bath was good. Although they’ve taken my clothes. My wallet, my credit cards, everything. I don’t like that angle much, though I suppose there isn’t much they can do with my things here. Maybe they just mean to launder them. I don’t mind wearing these shorts instead. A little tight around the ass, maybe — I guess I’m bigger than their usual run of guests — but in this heat it’s all right to cut down on clothes.
What I do mind is being locked in my room. That bit reminds me of too many horror movies out of TV. Now a secret panel opens in the floor, yeah, and the sacred cobra comes slithering up, hissing and spitting. Or the poison gas enters by way of a hidden vent. Well, I don’t mean that seriously. I don’t think any harm’s going to come to us. Still, it’s offensive to be locked up, if you’re a guest. Is this the hour for some very special prayer that they don’t want us to interrupt? Could be. I’ll wait an hour, and then I’ll try to force the door. Looks pretty fucking solid, though, a big burly slab of wood. No television set in this motel. Nothing much to read, except this booklet they’ve left on the floor next to my cot. And that’s something I’ve read before. The Book of Skulls, no less. Typewritten, in three languages, Latin, Spanish, English. Cheerful decoration on the front cover: skull and crossbones. Hi ho for the Jolly Roger! But I’m really not amused. And inside the booklet, there’s all the stuff Eli read us, that melodramatic crap about the eighteen Mysteries. The phrasing’s different from his translation, but the meaning’s the same. Much talk of eternal life, but much talk of death, too. Too much.
I’d like to get out of this place, if they ever unlock the door. A gag is a gag is a gag, and maybe it seemed a fun idea last month to go tear-assing out west on Eli’s say-so, but now that I’m here I can’t understand what could have led me to get into this. If they’re for real, which I continue to doubt, I don’t want any part of them, and if they’re just a bunch of ritual-happy fanatics, which seems quite likely, I still don’t want any part of them. I’ve had two hours here and I think that’s about enough. All these skulls blow my mind. The locked-door number, too. The weird old man. Okay, boys, that’ll do. Timothy’s ready to go home.
chapter twenty-five
Eli
No matter how many times I replayed the little exchange with Frater Antony, I couldn’t come to terms with it. Was he putting me on? Pretending ignorance? Pretending knowledge that he doesn’t in fact have? Was that a sly smile of-the initiate, or a dumb smile of bluffing?
It was possible, I told myself, that they might know the Book of Skulls under some other name. Or that in the course of their migration from Spain to Mexico to Arizona they had undergone some fundamental reshuffling of their theological symbology. I was convinced, despite the frater’s oblique reply, that this place had to be the direct successor to the Catalonian monastery in which the manuscript I had discovered had been written.
I took a bath. The finest bath of my life, the ultimate in baths, the acme. I emerged from the splendiferous tub to discover that my clothes had disappeared and my door was locked. I put on the pair of faded, frayed, tight shorts they had left for me. (
The hallway seemed to grow longer as we traversed it. Onward we plodded, Frater Bernard leading the way, my eyes fixed for the most part on the oddly conspicuous ridge of his backbone. Bare feet against the smooth stone floor, a good feeling. Mysterious doors of sumptuous wood standing shut along both sides of the corridor: rooms, rooms, rooms, rooms. A million dollars worth of grotesque Mexican artifacts mounted on the walls. All the gods of nightmare peered owlishly down at me. The lights had been turned on, and a soft yellow glow streamed from widely spaced skull-shaped sconces, another little melodramatic touch. As we neared the front section of the building, the crossbar of the U, I glanced past Frater Bernard’s right shoulder and had a quick, startling glimpse of an unmistakably female figure some forty or fifty feet ahead of me. I saw her step out of the last room in this dormitory wing, unhurriedly cross my path — she seemed to be floating — and vanish into the main section: a short, slender
