The Book of Skulls

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. (They?)And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. Nothing to read, nothing to look at except a fine stone mask of a goggle-eyed skull, mosaic work, an infinity of bits of jade and shell and obsidian and turquoise, a treasure, a masterpiece. I considered taking a second bath just to consume the time. Then my door opened — I heard no key, no click of a lock — and someone who at first glance seemed to be Frater Antony entered. Second glance told me he was someone else: a shade taller, a shade narrower through the shoulders, a shade lighter of skin, but otherwise the same sun-burnished sturdy stocky pseudo-Picassoid physique. In a curious quiet voice, furry-sounding, a Peter Lorre voice, he said, “I am Frater Bernard. Please accompany 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 woman wearing a kind of clinging minidress, barely thigh-length, of some soft, pleated white fabric. Her hair was dark and glossy, Latin hair, and hung well below her shoulders. Her skin was deeply tanned, offering a strong contrast to her white garment. Her breasts jutted forward spectacularly; I was in no doubt about her sex. I did not clearly see her face. It surprised me that there should be sorors as well as fraters in this House of Skulls, but perhaps she was a servant, for the place was impeccably clean. I knew there was no point in asking Frater Bernard about her; he wore silence as others might wear armor.

He ushered me into a large room of ceremonial nature, apparently not the same one in which Frater Antony had greeted us, for I saw no sign of a trapdoor leading to the tunnel. The fountain appeared to be of a different shape here, taller, more tulip-shaped, though the figure from which the water flowed looked much like the one in the other room’s fountain. Through the openwork beams of the ceiling I saw the slanting light of very late afternoon. The air was hot but not so stifling as it had been before.

Ned, Oliver, and Timothy were already present, each clad only in shorts, all three looking tense and uncertain. Oliver had that peculiar glazed expression that comes over him at moments of great stress. Timothy was trying to look blase, and was failing at it. Ned gave me a quick hard wink, perhaps congratulatory, perhaps in scorn.

There were about a dozen fraters also in the room.

They seemed all to have been stamped from one mold: if not in literal truth brothers, they must at least be cousins. Not one of them was taller than five feet seven, and some were five feet four or less. Bald. Deep-chested. Tanned. Durable-looking. Naked except for those shorts. One, who I thought I recognized to be Frater Antony — he was — wore a small green pendant on his breast; three of the others had similar pendants, but of a darker stone, perhaps onyx. The woman who had crossed my path was not in the room.

Frater Antony indicated that I should stand with my companions. I took up a position next to Ned. Silence. Tension. An impulse to burst out laughing, which I barely choked back. How absurd all this was! Who did these pompous little men think they were? Why this rigmarole of skulls, this ritual of confrontations? Solemnly Frater Antony studied us, as if judging us. There was no sound but that of our breathing and the merry dribble of the fountain. A little serious music in the background, please, maestro. Mors stupebit et natura, cum resurget creatura, judicanti responsura. Death and Nature stand amazed, when all Creation rises again, to answer the Judge. To answer the Judge. And are you our Judge, Frater Antony? Quando Judex est venturus, cuncta stride discussurus! Will he never speak? Must we remain eternally suspended between birth and death, womb and grave? Ah! They’re following the script! One of the lesser fraters, pendantless, goes to a niche in the wall and takes out a slender book, elaborately bound in glittering red morocco, which he hands to Frater Antony. Without needing to be told, I know what the book must be. Liber scriptus proferetur, in quo totum continetur. The written book will be brought forth, in which all is contained. Unde mundus judicetur. Whence the world is to be judged. What can I say? King of tremendous majesty, who saves freely those to be saved, save me, O fount of mercy! Frater Antony now was looking directly at me. “The Book of Skulls,” he said, gently, quietly, resonantly, “has few readers these days. How did it come to pass that you encountered it?”

“An old manuscript,” I said. “Hidden and forgotten in a university library. My studies — an accidental discovery — curiosity led me to translate—”

The frater nodded. “And then to come to us? How was this?”

“A newspaper account,” I replied. “Something about the imagery, the symbolism — we chanced it, we were on holiday and we thought we’d come to see if — if—”

“Yes,” said Frater Antony. No question implied. A serene smile. He faced me squarely, obviously waiting for me to say what came next. There were four of us. We had read the Book of Skulls, and there were four of us. A formal application seemingly was now in order. Exaudi orationem meant, ad te omnis caro veniet. I could not speak. I stood mute in the infinite blast of silence, hoping that Ned would utter the words that would not pass my lips, that Oliver would say them, even Timothy. Frater Antony waited. He was waiting for me, he would wait to the last trump if need be, to the clamor of the final music. Speak. Speak. Speak.

I said, hearing my own voice from outside my body as though I were listening to the playback of a tape, “We four — having read and comprehended the Book of Skulls — having read and comprehended — wish to submit — wish to undergo the Trial. We four — we four offer ourselves — as candidates — we four offer ourselves as—” I faltered. Was my translation correct? Would he understand my choice of language? “As a Receptacle,” I said.

“As a Receptacle,” said Frater Antony.

“A Receptacle. A Receptacle. A Receptacle,” said the fraters in chorus.

How very operatic the scene had become! Yes, suddenly I was singing tenor in Turandot, crying out to be asked the fatal riddles. It seemed preposterously stagy, a fatuous and overblown bit of histrionics, taking place against all reason in a world in which signals bounced off orbiting satellites, long-haired boys foraged for pot, and the billy-dubs of the staatspolizei shattered the heads of demonstrators in fifty American cities. How could we be standing here chanting of skulls and receptacles? But stranger strangenesses lay ahead. Portentously Frater Antony beckoned to the one who had brought him the book, and again the other frater went to the niche. From it now he took a massive, carefully polished stone mask; he gave it to Frater Antony, who clapped it over his face, as one of the other fraters with pendants came forward to fasten a thong in the rear. The mask covered Frater Antony from the upper lip to the top of his head. It gave him the aspect of a living skull; his cool bright eyes glistened at me through deep stony sockets. Of course.

He said, “You four are aware of the conditions imposed under the Ninth Mystery?”

“Yes,” I said. Frater Antony waited: he got a yes apiece from Ned, Oliver, and, distantly, Timothy.

“You undertake this Trial in no frivolous spirit, then, cognizant of the perils as well as of the rewards. You offer yourselves fully and without inner reservations. You have come here to partake of a sacrament, not to play a game. You yield yourselves fully to the Brotherhood and especially to the Keepers. Are these things understood?”

Yes, yes, yes, and — eventually — yes.

“Come to me. Your hands to my mask.” We touched it, delicately, as if fearing electricity from the cold gray stone. “Not in many years has a Receptacle entered our company,” Frater Antony said. “We value your presence and extend to you our gratitude for your coming among us. But I must tell you now, if your motives in coming to us were trifling ones, that you may not leave this House until the completion of your candidacy. Our rule is one of secrecy. Once the Trial commences, your lives are ours, and we forbid any departure from these grounds. This is the Nineteenth Mystery, of which you cannot have read: if one of you leaves, the three who remain are forfeit to us. Is this fully understood? We can permit no second thoughts, and you will be each other’s guardians, knowing that if there is one renegade among you, the rest perish without exception. This is the moment for withdrawal. If the terms are too stringent, take your hands from my mask, and we will let the four of you go in peace.”

I wavered. This was something I hadn’t expected: death the penalty for pulling out in mid-Trial! Were they serious? What if we found, after a couple of days, that they had nothing of value to give us? Were we bound, then, to remain heie, month upon month upon month, until they told us at last that our Trial was ended and we were again free? Those terms seemed impossible; I nearly pulled my hand away. But I remembered that I had come here to make an act of faith, that I was surrendering a meaningless life in the hope of gaining a meaningful one. Yes. I am yours, Frater Antony, no matter what. I kept my hand to his mask. In any case, how could these little men harm us if we decided to walk out? This was merely more stage-ritual, like the mask, like the choral chanting. Thus I reconciled myself. Ned, too, seemed to have his doubts; warily I watched him and saw his fingers flicker momentarily, but they stayed. Oliver’s hand never budged from the rim of the mask. Timothy seemed the most hesitant; he scowled, glared at us and at the frater, burst into a sweat, actually lifted his fingers for perhaps three seconds, and then, with a what-the-hell gesture, clamped them to the mask so vehemently that Frater Antony nearly stumbled from the impact. Done. We were pledged. Frater Antony removed his mask. “You will dine with us now,” he said, “and in the morning it will begin.”