Authors: Mark Z. Danielewski

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BOOK: House of Leaves

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We stopped talking about Zampanô then. She paged her friend Christina who took less than twenty minutes to come over. There were no introductions. We just sat down on the floor and snorted lines of coke off a CD case, gulped down a bottle of wine and then used it to play spin the bottle. They kissed each other first, then they both kissed me, and then we forgot about the bottle, and I even managed to forget about
Zampanô
, about this, and about how much that attack in the tattoo shop had put me on edge. Two kisses in one kiss was all it took, a comfort, a warmth, perhaps temporary, perhaps false, but reassuring nonetheless, and mine, and theirs, ours, all three of us giggling, insane giggles and laughter with still more kisses on the way, and I remember a brief instant then, out of the blue, when I suddenly glimpsed my own father, a rare but oddly peaceful recollection, as if he actually approved of my play in the way he himself had always laughed and played, always laughing, surrendering to its ease, especially when he soared in great updrafts of light, burning off distant plateaus of bistre & sage, throwing him up like an angel, high above the red earth, deep into the sparkling blank, the tender sky that never once let him down, preserving his attachment to youth, propriety and kindness, his plane almost, but never quite, outracing his whoops of joy, trailing him in his sudden turn to the wind, followed then by a near vertical climb up to the angles of the sun, and I was barely eight and still with him and yes, that the thought that flickered madly through me, a brief instant of communion, possessing me with warmth and ageless ease, causing me to smile again and relax as if memory alone could lift the heart like the wind lifts a wing, and so I renewed my kisses with even greater enthusiasm, caressing and in turn devouring their dark lips, dark with wine and fleeting love, an ancient memory love had promised but finally never gave, until there were too many kisses to count or remember, and the memory of love proved not love at all and needed a replacement, which our bodies found, and then the giggles subsided, and the laughter dimmed, and darkness enfolded all of us and we gave away our childhood for nothing and we died and condoms littered the floor and Christina
threw up in the sink and Amber chuckled a little and kissed me a little more, but in a way that told me it was time to leave.

And so only now, days later, as I give these moments shape here, do I re—encounter what my high briefly withheld; the covering memory permanently hitched to everything preceding it and so prohibiting all of it, those memories, the good ones, no matter how different, how blissful, eclipsed by the jack-knifed trailer across the highway, the tractor truck lodged in the stony ditch
Off
the shoulder, oily smoke billowing up into the night, and hardly deterred by the pin prick drizzle, the fire itself crawling up from the punctured fuel tanks, stripping the paint, melting the tires and blackening the shattered glass, the windshield struck from within, each jagged line telling the story of a broken heart which no ten year old boy should ever have to recollect let alone see, even if it is only in half—tone, the ink, all of it, over and over again, finally gathered on his delicate finger tips, as if by tracing the picture printed in the newspaper, he could in some way retract the details of death, smooth away the cab where the man he saw and loved like a god, agonized and died with no word of his own, illegible or otherwise, no god at all, and so by dissolving the black sky bring back the blue. But he never did. He only wore through one newspaper after another which was when the officials responsible for the custody of parentless children decided something was gravely wrong with him and sent him away, making sure he had no more clippings and all the ink, all that remained of his father, was washed from my hands
.

Karen’s project is one mechanism against the uncanny or that which is “un-home-like.” She remains watchful and willing to let the bizarre dimensions of her house gestate within her. She challenges its irregularity by introducing normalcy: her friend’s presence, bookshelves, peaceful conversation. In this respect, Karen acts as the quintessential gatherer. She keeps close to the homestead and while she may not forage for berries and mushrooms she does accumulate tiny bits of sense.

Navidson and Tom, on the other hand, are classic hunters. They select weapons (tools; reason) and they track their prey (a solution). Billy Reston is the one they hope will help them achieve their goal. He is a gruff man, frequently caustic and more like a drill sergeant than a tenured professor. He is also a paraplegic who has spent almost half his life in an aluminum wheelchair. Navidson was barely twenty-seven when he first met Reston. Actually it was a photograph that brought them together. Navidson had been on assignment in India, taking pictures of trains, rail workers, engineers, whatever caught his attention. The piece was supposed to capture the clamor of industry outside of Hyderabad. What ended up plastered on the pages of more than a few newspapers, however, was a photograph of a black American engineer desperately trying to out run a falling high voltage wire. The cable had been cut when an inexperienced crane operator had swung wide of a freight car and accidentally collided with an electrical pole. The wood had instantly splintered, tearing in half one of the power cables which descended toward the helpless Billy Reston, spitting sparks,
and
lashing the
air
like Nag or Nagaina.
[
43
—
Nag and Nagaina were the names of the two cobras
iii
Rudyard Kipling’s
The Jungle Book.
Eventually both were defeated by the mongoose Rikki
-Tikki-
Tavi.
]

That very photograph hangs on Reston’s office wall. It captures the mixture of fear and disbelief on Reston’s. face as he suddenly finds himself running for his life. One moment he was casually scanning the yard, thinking about lunch, and in the next he was about to die. His stride is stretched, back toes trying to push him out of the way, hands reaching for something, anything, to pull him out of the way. But he is too late. That serpentine shape surrounds him, moving much too fast for any last ditch effort at escape. As Fred de Stabenrath remarked in April
1954, “L
es jeux sontfait. Nous sommes fu
cked.”
[44—Fred
de Stabenrath purportedly exclaimed this right before he
was
ki[
xxxxxx part missing xxxxxxxx]
[45—
Zampanô
left the rest of this footnote buried beneath a particularly dark spill of ink. At least I’m assuming it’s ink. Maybe it’s not. Maybe
it’s something else. But then that’s not really important.. In
some cases, I’ve managed to recover the lost text (see Chapter Nine). Here, however,
I
failed. Five lines gone along with the rest of Mr. Stabenrath.]

Tom takes a hard look at this remarkable 11
x
14 black and white print. “That was the last time I had legs,” Reston tells him. “Right before that ugly snake bit ‘em off. I used to hate the picture and then I sort of became grateful for it. Now when anyone walks into my office they don’t have to think about asking me how I ended up in this here chariot. They can see for themselves. Thank you Navy. You bastard. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi with a Nikon.”

Eventually the chat subsides and the three men get down to business. Reston’s response is simple, rational, and exactly what both brothers came to hear: “There’s no question the problem’s with your equipment. I’d have to check out Tom’s stuff myself but I’m willing to bet university money there’s something a little outta whack with it. I’ve got a few things you can borrow: a Stanley Beacon level and a laser distance meter.” He grins at Navidson. “The meter’s even a Leica. That should put this ghost in the grave fast. But if it doesn’t, I’ll come out and measure your place myself and I’ll charge you for my time too.”

Both Will and Tom chuckle, perhaps feeling a little foolish. Reston shakes his head.

“If you ask me Navy, you’ve got a little too much time on your hands. You’d probably be better off if you just took your family for a nice long drive.”

On their way back, Navidson points the Hi 8 toward the darkening horizon.

For a while neither brother says a word.

Will breaks the silence first: “Funny how all it took was a fraction of an inch to get us in a car together.”

“Pretty strange.”

“Thanks for coming Tom.”

“Like there was really a chance I’d say no.”

A pause. Again Navidson speaks up.

“I almost wonder if I got tangled up in all this measuring stuff just so I’d have some pretext to call you.”

Despite his best efforts, Tom cannot hold back a laugh: “You know I hate to tell you this but there are simpler reasons you could of come up with.”

“You’re telling me,” Navidson says, shaking his head.

Rain starts splashing down on the windshield and lightning cracks across the sky. Another pause follows.

This time, Tom breaks the silence: “Did you hear the one about the guy on the tightrope?”

Navidson grins: “I’m glad to see some things never change.”

“Hey this one’s true. There was this twenty-five year old guy walking a tightrope across a deep river gorge while half way around the world another twenty-five year old guy was getting a blow job from a seventy year old woman, but get this, at the exact same moment both men were thinking the exact same thought. You know what it was?”

“No clue.”

Tom gives his brother a wink.

“Don’t look down.”

And thus as one storm begins to ravage the Virginias, another one just as easily dissipates and vanishes in a flood of bad jokes and old stories.

When confronting the spatial disparity in the house, Karen set her mind on familiar things while Navidson went in search of a solution. The children, however, just accepted it. They raced through the closet. They played in it. They inhabited it. They denied the paradox by swallowing it whole. Paradox, after all, is two irreconcilable truths. But children do not know the laws of the world well enough yet to fear the ramifications of the irreconcilable. There are certainly no primal associations with spatial anomalies.

Similar to the ingenuous opening sequence of
The Navidson Record
,
seeing these two giddy children romp around is an equally unsettling experience, perhaps because their state of naïveté is so appealing to us, even seductive, offering such a simple resolution to an enigma. Unfortunately, denial also means ignoring the possibility of peril.

That possibility, however, seems at least momentarily irrelevant when we cut to Will and Tom hauling Billy Reston’s equipment upstairs, the authority of their tools quickly subduing any sense of threat.

Just watching the two brothers use the Stanley Beacon level to establish the distance they will need to measure communicates comfort. When they then turn their attention to the Leica meter it is nearly impossible not to at last expect some kind of resolution to this confounding problem. In fact Tom’s crossed fingers as the Class 2 laser finally fires a tiny red dot across the width of the house manages to succinctly represent our own sympathies.

As the results are not immediate, we wait along with the whole family as the internal computer calibrates the dimension. Navidson captures these seconds in 16mm. His Arriflex, already pre-focused and left running, spools in 24 frames per second as Daisy and Chad sit on their beds in the background, Hillary and Mallory linger in the foreground near Tom, while Karen and Audrie stand off to the right near the newly created bookshelves.

Suddenly Navidson lets out a hoot. It appears the discrepancy has finally been eliminated.

Tom peers over his shoulder, “Good-bye Mr. Fraction.”

“One more time” Navidson says. “One more time. Just to make sure.”

Oddly enough, a slight draft keeps easing one of the closet doors shut. It has an eerie effect because each time the door closes we lose sight of the children.

“Hey would you mind propping that open with something?’ Navidson asks his brother.

Tom turns to Karen’s shelves and reaches for the largest volume he can find. A novel. Just as with Karen, its removal causes an immediate domino effect. Only this time, as the books topple into each other, the last few do not stop at the wall as they had previously done but fall instead to the
floor,
revealing at least a foot between the end of the shelf and the plaster.

Tom thinks nothing of it.

“Sorry,” he mumbles and leans over to pick up the scattered books. Which is exactly when Karen screams.

Raju welcomed the intrusion—something to

relieve the loneliness of the place.

—R.K.Narayan

It
is impossible to appreciate the importance of space in
The Navidson Record
without first taking into account the significance of echoes. However, before even beginning a cursory examination of their literal and thematic presence in the film, echoes reverberating within the word itself need to be distinguished.

Generally speaking, echo has two coextensive histories: the mythological one and the scientific one. [46—David Eric Katz argues for a third: the epistemological one. Of course, the implication that the current categories of myth and science ignore the reverberation of knowledge itself is not true. Katz’s treatment of repetition, however, is still highly rewarding. His list of examples in Table iii are particularly impressive. See
The Third Beside You: An Analysis of the Epistemological
Echo
by David Eric Katz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).] Each provides a slightly different perspective on the inherent meaning of recurrence, especially when that repetition is imperfect.

To illustrate the multiple resonances found in an echo, the Greeks conjured up the story of a beautiful mountain nymph. Her name was Echo and she made the mistake of helping Zeus succeed in one of his sexual conquests. Hera found out and punished Echo, making it impossible for her to say anything except the last words spoken to her. Soon after, Echo fell in love with Narcissus whose obsession with himself caused her to pine away until only her voice remained. Another lesser known version of this myth has Pan falling in love with Echo. Echo, however, rejects his amorous offers and Pan, being the god of civility and restraint, tears her to pieces, burying all of her except her voice.
Adonta ta mete.
[
*—Adonta ta…
=
“Her still singing limbs.”] [47—Note
that luckily in this chapter,
Zampanô
penciled many of the translations for these Greek and Latin quotations into the margins. I’ve gone ahead and turned them into footnotes.]
In both cases, unfulfilled love results in the total negation of Echo’s body and the near negation of her voice.
[48—Ivan
Largo
Stilets,
Greek Mythology Again
(Boston: Biloquist Press, 1995), p.
343-497; as well as
Ovid’s
Metamorphoses,
ifi.
356-410.]

But Echo is an insurgent. Despite the divine constraints imposed upon her, she still manages to subvert the gods’ ruling. After all, her repetitions are far from digital, much closer to analog. Echo colours the words with faint traces of sorrow (The Narcissus myth) or accusation (The Pan myth) never present in the original. As Ovid recognized in his
Metamorphoses:

Spreta latet silvis pudibundaque frondibus

ora protegit et solis ex jib vivit in antris; sed

tamen haeret amor crescitque dolore repulsae;

extenuant vigiles corpus miserabile curae adducitque

cutem macies et in aera sucus

corporis omnis abit; vox tantum atque ossa

supersunt: vox manet, ossa ferunt lapidis

traxisse figuram. Inde latet silvis nulloque in

monte videtur, omnibus auditur: sonus est,

qui vivit in i11a.

[*—Eloquently translated by Horace Gregory as: “So she was turned away! To hide her face, her lips, her guilt among the trees) Even their leaves, to haunt caves of the forest,! To feed her love on melancholy sormw/ Which, sleepless, turned her body to a shade) First pale and wrinkled, then a sheet of air) Then bones, which some say turned to thin-worn rocks; / And last her voice remained. Vanished in forest) Far from her usual walks on hills and valleys,! She’s heard by all who call; her voice has
life.” The Metamorphoses
by Ovid. (New York: A Mentor Book,
1958),
p. 97.]

To repeat: her voice has life. It possesses a quality not present in the original, revealing how a nymph can return a different and more meaningful story, in spite of telling the same story. [49—Literary marvel Miguel de Cervantes set down this compelling passage in his
Don Quixote
(Part One, Chapter Nine):

Ia verdad, cuya madre es la historia, émula del tiempo, depdsito

de las acciones, testigo de lo pasado, ejemplo y aviso de lo presente,

advertencia de lo por venir. [51—Which Anthony Bonner translates as”.. . truth, whose mother Is history, who is the rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future.” — Ed.]

Much later, a yet untried disciple of arms had the rare pleasure of meeting the extraordinary Pierre Menard in a Paris café following the second world war. Reportedly Menard expounded on his distinct distaste for Madelines but never mentioned the passage (and echo of
Don Quixote )
he had penned before the war which had subsequently earned him a fair amount of literary fame:

la verdad, cuya madre es Ia historia, émula del tiempo, depOsito

de las acciones, testigo de lo pasado, ejemplo y aviso de lo presente,

advertencia de lo por venir.

This exquisite variation on the passage by the “ingenious layman” is far too dense to unpack here. Suffice it to say Menard’s nuances are so fine they are nearly undetectable, though talk with the Framer and you will immediately see how haunted they are by sorrow, accusation, and sarcasm.]

[50—Exactly How the fuck do you write about “exquisite variation” when both passages are exactly the same?

I’m sure the late hour has helped, add to that the dim light in my room, or how poorly I’ve been sleeping, going to sleep but not really resting, if that’s possible, though let me tell you, sitting alone, awake to nothing else but this odd murmuring, like listening to the penitent pray—you know it’s a prayer but you miss the words—or better yet listening to a bitter curse, realizing a whole lot wrong’s being ushered into the world but still missing the words, me like that, listening in my way by comparing in his way both Spanish fragments, both written out on brown leaves of paper, or no, that’s not right, not
brown, more
like, oh
I don’t know, yes brown but
in the failing light appearing almost colored or the memory of a color, somehow violent, or close to that, or not at all, as I just kept reading both pieces over and over again, trying to detect at least one differing accent or
letter,
wanting
to detect at least one differing accent
or letter,
getting almost desperate in that pursuit, only to repeatedly discover perfect similitude, though how can that be, right? if it were perfect it wouldn’t be similar it would be identical, and you know what? I’ve lost this sentence, I can’t even finish it, don’t know how—

Here’s the point: the more I focused in on the words the farther I seemed from my room. No sense where either, until all of a sudden along the edges of my tongue, towards the back of my mouth, I started to taste something extremely bitter, almost metallic. I began to gag. I didn’t gag, but I was certain I would. Then I got a whiff of that same something awful I’d detected outside of the Shop in the hail. Faint as hell at first until I knew I’d smelled it and then it wasn’t faint at all. A whole lot of rot was suddenly packed up my nose, slowly creeping down my throat, closing it off. I started to throw up, watery chunks of vomit flying everywhere, sluicing out of me onto the floor, splashing onto the wall, even onto this. Except I only coughed. I didn’t cough. I lightly cleared my throat and then the smell was gone and so was the taste. I was back in my room again, looking around in the
dim
light, jittery, disoriented but hardly fooled.

I put the fragments back in the trunk. Walked the perimeter of my room. Glass of bourbon. A toke on a blunt. There we go. Bring on the haze. But who am I kidding? I can still see what’s happening. My line of defense has not only failed, it failed long ago. Don’t ask me to define the line either or why exactly it’s needed or even what it stands in defense against. I haven’t the foggiest idea.

This much though I’m sure of: I’m alone in hostile territories with no clue why they’re hostile or how to get back to safe havens, an Old Haven, a lost haven, the temperature dropping, the hour heaving
&
pitching towards a profound darkness, while before me my idiotic amaurotic Guide laughs, actually cackles is more like it, lost in his own litany of inside jokes, completely out of his head, out of focus too, zonules of Zinn, among other things, having snapped long ago like piano wires, leaving me with absolutely no Sound way to determine where the hell I’m going, though right now going to hell seems like a pretty sound bet.

In his own befuddled way, John Hollander has given the world a beautiful and strange reflection on love and longing. To read his marvelous dialogue on echo [52—See John Hollander’s
The Figure of Echo
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). ] is to find its author standing perfectly still in the middle of the sidewalk, eyes wild with a cascade of internal reckonings, lips acting out some unintelligible discourse, inaudible to the numerous students who race by him, noting his mad appearance and quite rightly offering him a wide berth as they escape into someone else’s class.
[53—Kelly Chamotto makes mention of Hollander in her essay “Mid-Sentence, Mid-Stream” in
Glorious Garrulous Graphomania
ed. T. N Joseph Truslow (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989), p.
345.]

Hollander begins with a virtual catalogue of literal echoes. For example, the Latin
“decem lam annos aetatem trivi in Cicerone”
echoed by the Greek
“one
!” [“I’ve spent ten years on Cicero” “Ass!”] Or
“Musarum studia”
(Latin) described by the echo as
“dia”
(Greek). [“The Muses’ studies” “divine ones.”] Or Narcissus’ rejection
“Emoriar, quam sit tibi copia nostri”
to which Echo responds
“sit tibi copia nostri.”
[Narcissus: “May I die before I give you power over me.” Echo: “I give you power over me.”] On page 4, he even provides a woodcut from Athanasius Kircher’s
Neue Hall -und Thonkunst
(Nordlingen, 1684) illustrating an artificial echo machine designed to exchange
“
clamore”
for four echoes:”
amore,” “more,” “ore,”
and finally
“re.”
[“O
outcry” returns as “love,” “delays,” “hours” and “king.”] Nor does Hollander stop there. His slim volume abounds with examples of textual transfiguration, though in an effort to keep from repeating the entire book, let this heart-wrenching interchange serve as a final example:

Chi dara fine a! gran dolore?

L’ore.

[
“Who will put an end to this great sadness?” “The hours passing”]

While
The Figure of Echo
takes special delight in clever word games, Hollander knows better than to limit his examination there. Echo may live in metaphors, puns and the
suffix—solis ex jib vivit in antris
[“Literatures rocky caves”] [54—“From that time
on she
lived in
lonely
caves.”
—
Ed.]
—
but her range extends far beyond those literal walls. For instance, the rabbinical
bat kol
means “daughter of a voice” which in modern Hebrew serves as a rough equivalent for the word “echo.” Milton knew it “God so commanded, and left that Command! Sole Daughter of his voice.”
[55—John Milton’s
Paradise Lost,
IX,
653-54.]
So did Wordsworth: “stern Daughter of the Voice of God.” Quoting from Henry Reynold’s
Mythomystes
(1632), Hollander evidences religious appropriation of the ancient myth (page 16):