The Keep (5 page)

Howard turned to look at Mick. Diffuse how?

The room went quiet, listening. Mick seemed to struggle. In the sense that we’re doing little things, a lot of little things, but nothing really big.

He was breaking a basic rule of dealing with powerful people: you didn’t cross them in public. Danny had learned that one a few times.

Howard walked to the table, holding his spatula. His eyes moved over the group in a way that seemed uneasy, and Danny felt a flicker of something—a connection between this Howard and the Howie he remembered.

Howard: What big things would you like to be doing, Mick?

Mick: I can think of fifty. We could start renovating the north wing. We could drain the pool and get to work on the marble around it. We could excavate the chapel—we’ve done some clearing around the gravestones, but the thing is still half underground. And then there’s the keep—

Howard: We can’t touch the keep.

I know we can’t go
in
it, but we could work on the outside. We could clear around the bottom, we could—

We can’t touch the keep, Mick.

Benjy’s high, worried voice cut through: Dad, are you having a fight?

Mick: I’m thinking about morale, Howard.

Daddy, are you—

Howard: Whose morale? Yours?

Daddy—

Ann: Shhh. There was pain in her face. Danny felt responsible, like he’d started this thing. He noticed he was sweating.

Howard: Okay, look. Let’s get this on the table, everyone. How’s your morale?

There was a pause—too long, Danny thought.

Finally Steve, next to Danny, spoke up: It’s good.

Good,
said someone at the other table, followed by a
very good
and then
great
and
excellent
and pretty soon it was a whole happy chorus, because it felt so good to say these things that they wanted to keep on saying them, especially when it gave Howard such a look of relief.

Howard: I think this is your problem, Mick.

Mick: Okay.

No one moved. Howard stood there like he was waiting.

Finally Ann spoke up: Still, I mean, isn’t the goal for everyone to be satisfied?

Howard: Only one person
isn’t
satisfied.

Did he really believe it? Danny couldn’t tell. Power was lonely—that was a universal rule. Which was why the number two was so important.

Mick stood up. He looked whipped. He carried his dishes to a giant dishwasher, loaded them in and left the room through the swinging door. Some kind of tension went out with him, and people started talking again.

Benjy: Mommy, is he sad? Is Uncle Mick sad?

Ann: I don’t know.

Is he angry?

I don’t know.

I want to find him.

Ann: Fine. Go.

The kid bolted out of the room, forgetting his sword. His voice echoed down the hall,
Uncle Miiiiiiiiiiiiick,
and then there was some kind of answer.

The graduate students were gathering at the stove with Howard, refilling on eggs. They agreed with Mick, but Howard had the power.

Finally, Howard brought a plate to the table and sat. After all that cooking he knuckled down the food like it had no taste and was nothing but a way to fill up. He kept one arm curled around his plate, as if someone might yank it away. Danny watched his cousin, disturbed. He felt he was seeing an earlier version of Howard, a part that didn’t mesh with what he was now. Ann slid along the bench toward Howard and put her arm around him. He finished eating and shoved his plate away.

People were starting to leave. Danny carried his plate to the dishwasher and stood there, wondering if it would be rude to walk out of the room. He didn’t want to be alone with Howard, but he had nowhere really to go—wasn’t even sure how to find his way back through the halls and doorways and turns to the room where he’d slept.

Howard: Danny, wait.

Danny came back to the table slowly. Ann was still there, and Nora, and four or five graduate students. The baby was using the bench to hold herself in a standing position. The knees of her pink pajamas were dirty.

Danny sat down across from Howard.

Howard: How’re your folks, Danny? The argument with Mick had taken something out of him, and his voice was dull and flat.

Danny: They’re good, I guess. I don’t see a lot of them.

Howard: I always liked your dad.

Danny: Yeah. I’m not too high on his list these days.

Howard looked up: How so?

Shit, why had he even said it? Why try to explain to Howard, of all people, how he’d broken his pop’s heart not just one time but again and again, starting when he refused to go to Michigan (Pop’s alma mater) and went to NYU instead, which was challenging and thrilling and all that crap but also dangerous, because “self-exploration” is always dangerous for that nice outline you thought was you. And Danny’s outline turned out to be fainter than most people’s—it looked as pointless in New York City as the Polo shirts he unfolded from his suitcase in a dorm room off Washington Square and never wore again. And when his parents came to visit, his pop had stood in that dorm room in his light green sweater, holding Danny’s soccer balls in their netted bag, and said: Our hotel’s right by Central Park. We could knock these around on Sunday morning.

Danny: Okay. He was pulling on his new boots.

There was a long pause.

Pop: We don’t have to.

Danny: Yeah. Maybe not.

Pop: Really?

He turned to Danny, startled, like someone had bumped him hard in the street. Pop’s hair was already white, his skin shaved so clean it looked like a five-year-old’s. And he stayed like that, in a state of constant surprise through Danny’s first years in New York, until Danny dropped out of NYU in his junior year, at which point his pop’s surprise turned into deep, sick disappointment. Danny didn’t know what it would take to surprise him now.

Howard: It always seemed like you and your dad were close.

Danny: Yeah. We were.

He used to think they’d be close again, but he’d stopped. Because all the things Danny had achieved in his life—the alto, the connections, the access to power, the knowing how to get a cab in a rainstorm, and the mechanics of bribing maître d’s, and where to find good shoes in the outer boroughs (it was the equivalent of a PhD, all the stuff Danny knew, on top of which he was
known,
widely known, so when he walked on lower Broadway it wasn’t abnormal for him to recognize
every single face—
that’s what happened when you’d been a front man for clubs and restaurants as long as Danny had. At times it tired him out, having to nod or say hey all those times, and he’d decide he was only going to greet the people he actually knew, which was practically no one, but Danny couldn’t do that, shun people, the sight of a face turning his way was something he couldn’t refuse)—all that, so much! everything, it seemed to Danny on a good day, everything in the world you could ever want or need to know, added up to nothing—literally
nothing—
in his pop’s eyes. It didn’t exist. A blank page. And Danny couldn’t be around that. That kind of thinking let in the worm, and the worm ate people alive.

Howard: So look. Obviously last night was a drag for you, and I apologize. We left the gate unlocked, but the problem is there’s no light out there and no wiring yet for a light.

Danny: Hey, forget it.

Howard: But I’d—I’d still like to get your impressions. Just, what you saw, coming up here for the first time.

Danny: Sure.

Howard leaned toward Danny across the table and Danny had to fight the urge to move away.

Howard: Just…seeing the castle. How did it look?

And right then, for the first time, Danny felt a link between this new guy and the kid he remembered. It was Howard’s expression that did it. His eyes weren’t closed like they used to be when he’d make Danny tell about an ice castle on Pluto where a band of pirates lived. But wanting to be told a story, entertained, however that looks on a person’s face—Danny saw this now and remembered it. It filled him with relief.

So he laid it out for Howard: waiting for the bus in that crummy town, then looking up. Seeing the castle black against the purple sky.

Howard was sucking in every word. And then what? You walked. What did you see?

He’d taken a yellow notebook out of his shorts and started to write. Danny covered it all: Hike. Hill. Gate. Trees. Wall. View. It felt easy, like they’d done it before. They’d done it for years. Which made Danny wonder if this whole castle project was another kind of game for Howard. Maybe you didn’t have to make things up when you had this much cash, you just went ahead and bought them.

The last person to leave the kitchen was Nora, holding the baby. Danny felt their going physically. Now he and Howard were alone.

Howard: So you climbed in through an arrow loop—incredible! And what was it like in there?

Danny: Arches, dripping water. I think it might’ve been a sewer. He left out the part about being afraid.

Howard: Why, did it stink?

Danny: Not especially. It smelled like a cave.

He knew maybe a half second before he said the word that it was the last word he wanted to use. And by then it was out:
cave.

Danny’s face went hot. He made himself look at Howard, but his cousin was watching the window. Light hit his face and brought out deep lines, like someone had scratched them with a pencil. And right then, for the first time, Danny recognized his cousin physically. The eyes gave him away, those same sad brown eyes. It was Howie.

Danny waited. What else could he do?

Howard: What the hell does a cave smell like?

And he looked at Danny and grinned and it was gone, all that. Gone like it never happened. Howard let it go, and Danny felt a rush of relief so intense it was like an oxygen burst to his head. He actually laughed.

Howard: Keep it coming, buddy. I want to hear the rest.

Danny tried to get away after breakfast to set up his satellite dish. The need to be back in touch was getting uncomfortable, distracting, like a headache or a sore toe or some other low-grade physical thing that after a while starts to blot out everything else. But Howard wanted to give him a tour of the castle, and in the end Danny did what he usually ended up doing when he was dealing with powerful people: he went along.

The first part of the tour looked the way you’d expect a medieval castle to look if you gave that kind of thing any thought. Suits of armor. Burn marks on the walls from old lamps. A little churchy room with a stained-glass window. The great hall made the biggest impression on Danny: it had a long carved table and gold ceiling beams and chandeliers full of bulbs shaped like candle flames. It looked like you’d walked in on another century, but none of it was real—the Germans had renovated these rooms and stuffed them full of antiques. Danny would have known that just from the smells: new carpet, fresh paint. Danny always paid attention to smells because they told the truth even when people were lying.

Howard: This is all what the Germans did. Now we’ll see what it looked like before.

From the great hall he led Danny outside onto a short outdoor walkway, plunging views on both sides, and used a key to open up another door. He motioned Danny through, and Danny stepped into a cold dark place where everything seemed to be trashed: broken walls, missing doors, piles of decaying crap everywhere like some kind of violence had happened. And the smells: rust, mold, rot. It looked and felt so different from everything they’d seen that it took Danny a minute to realize the dimensions were identical: windows, arches, halls, doors—it was a mirror image of the hall where Danny’s room was, but at a different time.

Danny: Wow.

Howard was grinning, rocking on his feet. No one’s touched this part of the castle in eighty-eight years. Amazing, no?

Danny pushed open what doors were still hanging and went into rooms where wind blew through empty window holes and the furniture had been ripped apart by animals. In one room, hundreds of white birds were nesting together with a sound like panting, the air thick with their sulfur smell. Towers of shit everywhere, feathers drifting. They looked like pigeons, but not the ones you saw in New York. These were purple-white, feathers ruffled around their feet.

Howard: We’re pretty sure they’re descended from carriers. For sending messages during wartime.

Howard’s anxious, gloomy mood was gone. More than gone, it was edging into something like a high. The castle had done it. Every sight and sound of the place seemed to excite and thrill Howard: he was in love with it, he couldn’t get enough. But the ruined rooms dragged Danny down. He felt it right off, a sort of thud in his gut. There were little things left over from all those years ago: a man’s hat still hanging on a stand, a glass jar sitting open by a cloudy mirror, a glove dangling out of a drawer. A bottle of wine on a tray with a glass, brown flakes curling off its insides. Danny could almost hear the worm underneath, devouring all of it.

Danny: Who lived here?

Howard: One family, the von Ausblinkers. They held on to this place for nine hundred years. Think about that for a second,
nine hundred.
It’s beyond what the mind can grasp.