The Book of Skulls

chapter three Timothy

Eli takes all this much more seriously than the rest of as. I suppose that’s fair; he was the one who found out about it and organized the whole operation. And anyway he’s got the half-mystic quality, that smouldering Eastern European wildness, that permits a man to get worked up really big over something that in the last analysis you know is imaginary. I suppose it’s a Jewish trait, tied in with the kabbala and whatnot. At least I think of it as a Jewish trait, along with high intelligence, physical cowardice, and a love of making money, but what the crap do I know about Jews, anyway? Look at us in this car. Oliver’s got the highest intelligence, no doubt about that. Ned’s the physical coward; you just look at him and he cringes. I’m the one with the money, although Christ knows I had nothing to do with the making of it. There are your so-called Jewish traits. And the mysticism? Is Eli a mystic? Maybe he just doesn’t want to die. Is there anything so mystic about that?

No, not about that. But when it comes to believing that there’s this cult of exiled Babylonian or Egyptian or whatever immortals living in the desert, believing that if you go to them and say the right words they’ll confer the privilege of immortality on you — oh, lordy! Who could buy that? Eli can. Oliver too, maybe. Ned? No, not Ned. Ned doesn’t believe in anything, not even himself. And not me. You bet your ass, not me.

Why am I going, then?

Like I told Eli: it’s warmer in Arizona this time of year. And I like to travel. Also I think it might be an amusing experience, watching all this unfold, watching my roommates scrabbling around looking for their destiny on the mesas. Why go to college at all if not to have interesting experiences and increase your knowledge of human nature, along with having a good time? I didn’t go there to learn astronomy and geology. But to watch other human beings making pricks of themselves — now, there’s education, there’s entertainment! As my father said when he sent me off as a freshman, after reminding me that I represented the eighth generation of male Winchesters to attend our grand old school, “Never forget one thing, Timothy: the proper study of mankind is man. Socrates said that three thousand years ago, and it’s never lost its eternal truth.” As a matter of fact it was Pope who said it in the eighteenth century, as I discovered in sophomore English, but let that pass. You learn by watching others, especially if you’ve forfeited your own chance to build character through adversity by having picked your great-great-great-grandparents a little too well. The old man should see me now, driving around with a queer, a Jew, and a farm boy. I suppose he’d approve, so long as I remember I’m better than they are.

Ned was the first one Eli told. I saw them huddling and whispering a lot. Ned was laughing. “Don’t put me on, man,” he kept saying, and Eli got red in the face. Ned and Eli are very close, I suppose because they’re both scrawny and weak and belong to oppressed minorities. It’s been clear from the beginning that in any grouping of the four of us, it’s the two of them against Oliver and me. The two intellectuals versus the two jocks, to put it in the crudest way. The two queers against the two — well, no, Eli isn’t queer, despite Uncle Clark who insists that all Jews are fundamentally homosexual whether ,they know it or not But Eli seems queer, with his lisp and his way of walking. Seems queerer than Ned, as a matter of fact. Does Eli chase girls so hard because he wants to camouflage something? Anyway, Eli and Ned, shuffling papers and whispering. And then they brought Oliver into it. “Do you mind telling me,” I asked, “what the crap you’re discussing among yourselves?” I think they enjoyed excluding me, giving me a taste of what it’s like to be a second-class citizen. Or maybe they just figured I’d laugh in their faces. But at last they broke it to me. Oliver serving as their ambassador. “What are you doing over Easter?” he asked.

“Bermuda, maybe. Florida. Nassau.” Actually I hadn’t thought about it much.

“What about Arizona?” he asked.

“What’s there?”

He took a deep breath. “Eli was examining some rare manuscripts in the library,” he said, looking sheepish and uneasy, “and came upon something called the Book of Skulls, which apparently has been here for fifty years and nobody’s translated it, and he’s done some further research now and he thinks—”

That the Keepers of the Skulls actually exist and will let us in on what they’ve got. Hi and Ned and Oliver are willing to go out there and look around, anyway. And I’m invited. Why? For my money? For my charm? Well, matter of fact, it’s because candidates are accepted only in groups of four, and since we’re all roommates anyway, it seemed logical that -

And so on. I said I would, for the hell of it. When Dad was my age, he went searching for uranium mines in the Belgian Congo. Didn’t find them, but he had a ball. I’m entitled to some wild geese too. I’ll go, I said. And put the whole matter out of my mind until after exams. It wasn’t until later on that Eli filled me in on some of the rules of the game. Out of every four candidates, two at best get to live forever, and two have to die. A neat little touch of melodrama. He looked me straight in the eyes. “Now that you know the risks,” he said, “you can back out if you like.” Putting me on the spot, searching for the yellow streaks in the blue blood. I laughed at him. “Those aren’t bad odds,” I said.