Mark Z Danielewski

by House Of Leaves (pdf)

  October 31, 1998

  Back here again. These pages are a mess. Stuck together with honey from all my tea making. Stuck together with blood. No idea what to make of those last few entries either. What's the difference, especially in differance, what's read what's left in what's left out what's invented what's remembered what's forgotten what's written what's found what's lost what's done?

  What's not done?

  What's the difference?

  October 31, 1998 (Later)

  I just completed the intro when I heard them coming for me, a whole chorus, cursing my name, all those footfalls and then the bang of their fists on my door.

  I'm sure it's the clerk. I'm sure it's the police. I'm sure there are others. A host of others. Accusing me for what I've done.

  The loaded guns lie on my bed.

  What will I do?

  There are no more guns. There are no more voices.

  There is no one at my door.

  There's not even a door anymore. Like a child, I gather up the finished book in my arms and climb out the window.

  Memories soon follow.

  Gdansk Man's blood is smeared on my fingers, but even as I prepare to murder him there on the sidewalk and carry Kyrie away to another there—some unspeakable place—, something darker, perhaps darkest of all, arrests my hand, and in the whispers of a strange wind banishes my fury.

  I throw the bottle away, pick up Gdansk Man and whatever I say, something to do with Lude, something to do with her, he mumbles apologies. For some reason, his hands are cut and bleeding. Kyrie takes his keys, slips behind the wheel and retreats into the bellowing of the day, their departure echoing in my head, resonant with incomplete meaning, ancient and epic, as if to say that whatever had come to mean us was dissuaded by something else that had come to meet us. Confirming in this resolution that while the dead may still hunt their young, the young can still turn and in that turning learn how the very definition of whim prevents the killing.

  Or is that not it at all?

  I start to run, trying to find a way to something new, something safe, darting from the sight of others, the clamor of living.

  There is something stronger here. Beyond my imagination. It terrifies me. But what is it? And why has it retained me? Wasn't darkness nothingness? Wasn't that Navidson's discovery? Wasn't it Zampano's? Or have I misconstrued it all? Missed the obvious, something still undiscovered waiting there deep within me, outside of me, powerful and extremely patient, unafraid to remain, even though it is and always has been free.

  I've wandered as far west as I can go. Sitting now on the sand, I watch the sun blur into an aftermath. Reds finally marrying blues. Soon night will enfold us all.

  But the light is still not gone, not yet, and by it I can dimly see here my own dark hallway, or maybe it was just a foyer and maybe not dark at all, but in fact brightly lit, an afternoon sun blazing through the lead panes, now detected amidst what amounts to a long column of my yesterdays, towards the end, though

  not the very end of course, where I had stood at the age of seven, gripping my mother's wrists, trying as hard as I could to keep her from going.

  Her eyes, I recall, melting with tenderness and confusion, as she continued muttering strange, unwieldy words: "My little eye sack. My little Brahma lamb. Mommy's going to be okay. Don't worry."

  But even though my father had his hands on her shoulders, trying as gently as he could to lead her away, I couldn't let go. So she knelt down in front of me and kissed my cheeks and my forehead and then stroked my face.

  She hadn't tried to strangle me and my father had never made a sound.

  I can see this now. I can hear it too. Perfectly.

  Her letter was hopelessly wrong. Maybe an invention to make it easier for me to dismiss her. Or maybe something else. I've no idea. But I do know her fingers never closed around my throat. They only tried to wipe the tears from my face.

  I couldn't stop crying.

  I'd never cried that much before.

  I'm crying now.

  All these years and now I can't stop.

  I can't see.

  I couldn't see then.

  Of course she was lost in a blur. My poor father taking her from me, forced to grab hold of her, especially when they got to the foyer and she started to scream, screaming for me, not wanting to go at all but crying out my name—and there it was the roar, the one I've been remembering, in the end not a roar, but the saddest call of all—reaching for me, her voice sounding as if it would shatter the world, fill it with thunder and darkness, which I guess it finally did.

  I stopped talking for a long while after that. It didn't matter. She was lost, swallowed by The Whale where authorities thought it unwise to let me see her. They weren't wrong. She was more than bad off and I was far too young and wrecked to understand what was happening to her. Compassion being a long journey I was years away from undertaking. Besides, I learned pretty quickly how to resent her, licking away my hurt with the dangerous language of blame. I no longer wanted to see her. I had ceased to mind. In fact I grew to insist on her absence, which was how I finally learned what it meant to be numb. Really numb. And then one day, I don't know when, I forgot the whole thing. Like a bad dream, the details of those five and a half minutes just went and left me to my future.

  Only they hadn't been a dream.

  That much—that little much—I now know.

  The book is burning. At last. A strange light scans each page, memorizing all of it even as each character twists into ash. At least the fire is warm, warming my hands, warming my face, parting the darkest waters of the deepest eye, even if at the same time it casts long shadows on the world, the cost of any pyre, finally heated beyond recovery, shattered into specters of dust, stolen by the sky, flung to sea and sand.

  Had I meant to say memorializing?

  Of course there always will be darkness but I realize now something inhabits it. Historical or not. Sometimes it seems like a cat, the panther with its moon mad gait or a tiger with stripes of ash and eyes as wild as winter oceans. Sometimes it's the curve of a wrist or what's left of romance, still hiding in the drawer of some long lost nightstand or carefully drawn in the margins of an old discarded calendar. Sometimes it's even just a vapor trail speeding west, prophetic, over clouds aglow with dangerous light. Of course these are only images, my images, and in the end they're born out of something much more akin to a Voice, which though invisible to the eye and frequently unheard by even the ear still continues, day and night, year after year, to sweep through us all.

  Just as you have swept through me.

  Just as I now sweep through you.

  I'm sorry, I have nothing left.

  Except this story, what—I'm remembering now, too long from the surface of any dawn, the one Doc told me when I was up in Seattle —

  It begins with the birth of a baby, though not a healthy baby. Born with holes in its brain and "showing an absence of grey/white differentiation"—as Doc put it. So bad that when the child first emerges into this world, he's not even breathing.

  "Kid's cyanotic," Dr. Nowell shouts and everywhere heart rates leap. The baby goes onto the

  Ohio, a small 2x2 foot bed, about chest high, with a heater and examination lights mounted above.

  Dr. Nowell tracks the pulse on the umbilical cord while using a bulb syringe at the same time to suck out the mouth, trying to stimulate breath.

  "Dry, dry, dry. Suck, suck, suck. Stim, stim, stim."

  He's not always successful. There are times when these measures fail. This, however, is not one of those times.

  Dr. Nowell's team immediately follows up, intubating the baby and providing bag mask ventilation, all of it coming together in under a minute as they rush him to an ICU where he's plugged into life support, in this case a Siemens Servo 300, loaded with red lights and green lights and plenty of bells and whistles.

  Life it seems will continue but it's no easy march. Monitors record EKG activity, respiratory functi
ons, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, as well as end tidal CO2. There's a ventilator. There are also IV pumps and miles of IV lines.

  As expected, nurses, a respiratory therapist and a multitude of doctors crowd the room, all of them there simply because they are the ones able to read the situation.

  The red and green lights follow the baby's every breath. Red numbers display the exact amount of pressure needed to fill his fragile lungs. A few minutes pass and the SAT (oxygen saturation) monitor, running off the SAT probe, begins to register a decline. Dr. Nowell quickly responds by turning the infant's PEEP (Positive End Expiratory Pressure) up by 10 to compensate for the failing oxygenation, this happening while the EKG faithfully tracks every heart beat, the curve of each P wave or in this case normal QRS, while also on the monitor, the central line and art line, drawn straight from the very source, a catheter placed in the bellybutton, records continuous blood pressure as well as blood gasses.

  The mother, of course, sees none of this. She sees only her baby boy, barely breathing, his tiny fingers curled like sea shells still daring to clutch a world.

  Later, Dr. Nowell and other experts will explain to her that her son has holes in his brain. He will not make it. He can only survive on machines. She will have to let him go.

  But the mother resists. She sits with him all day. And then she sits with him through the night. She never sleeps. The nurses hear her whispering to him. They hear her sing to him. A second day passes. A second night. Still she doesn't sleep, words

  pouring out of her, melodies caressing him, tending her little boy.

  The charge nurse starts to believe they are witnessing a miracle. When her shift ends, she refuses to leave. Word spreads. More and more people start drifting by the ICU. Is this remarkable mother still awake? Is she still talking to him? What is she singing?

  One doctor swears he heard her murmur "Etch a Poo air" which everyone translates quickly enough into something about an etching of Pooh Bear.

  When the third day passes without the mother even closing her eyes, more than a handful of people openly suggest the baby will heal. The baby will grow up, grow old, grow wise. Attendants bring the mother food and drink. Except for a few sips of water, she touches none of it.

  Soon even Dr. Nowell finds himself caught up in this whispered hysteria. He has his own family, his own children, he should go home but he can't. Perhaps something about this scene stings his own memories. All night long he works with the other preemies, keeping a distant eye on mother and child caught in a tangle of cable and tubing, sharing a private language he can hear but never quite make out.

  Finally on the morning of the fourth day, the mother rises and walks over to Dr. Nowell.

  "I think it's time to unplug him," she says quietly, never lifting her gaze from the floor.

  Dr. Nowell is completely unprepared for this and has absolutely no idea how to respond.

  "Of course," he eventually stammers.

  More than the normal number of doctors and nurses assemble around the boy, and though they are careful to guard their feelings, quite a few believe this child will live.

  Dr. Nowell gently explains the procedure to the mother. First he will disconnect all the nonessential IV's and remove the nasogastric tube. Then even though her son's brain is badly damaged, he will adminster a little medicine to ensure that there is no pain. Lastly, he and his team will cap the IV, turn off the monitors, the ventilator and remove the endotracheal tube.

  "We'll leave the rest up to . . ."Dr. Nowell doesn't know how to finish the sentence, so he just says "Well."

  The mother nods and requests one more moment with her child.

  "Please," Dr. Nowell says as kindly as he can.

  The staff takes a step back. The mother returns to her boy, gently drawing her fingers over the top of his head. For a moment everyone there swears she has stopped breathing, her eyes no longer blinking,

  focusing deeply within him. Then she leans forward and kisses him on the forehead.

  "You can go now," she says tenderly.

  And right before everyone's eyes, long before Dr. Nowell or anyone else can turn a dial or touch a switch, the EKG flatlines. Asystole.

  The child is gone.

  Truth transcends the telling.

  — Ino

  nothing more now than the mere dark. The tape is blank. Finally when Karen does turn around to discover the real emptiness waiting behind her, she does not scream. Instead her chest heaves, powerless for a moment to take anything in or expel anything out. Oddly enough as she starts to retreat from the children's bedroom, it almost looks as if something catches her attention. A few minutes later, she returns with a halogen flashlight and steps toward the edge.

  Hanan Jabara suggests Karen heard something, though there is nothing even remotely like a sound on the Hi 8.[205] Carlos Ellsberg agrees with Jabara: "Karen stops because of something she hears." Only he qualifies this statement by adding, "the sound is obviously imagined. Another example of how the mind, any mind, consistently seeks to impose itself upon the abyss."[206]

  As everyone knows, Karen stands there on the brink for several minutes, pointing her flashlight into the darkness and calling out for Navidson.[207] When she finally does step inside, she takes no deep breath and makes no announcement. She just steps forward and disappears behind the black curtain. A second later that cold hollow disappears too, replaced by the wall, exactly as it was before, except for one thing: all the children's drawings are gone.

  Karen's action inspired Paul Auster to conjure up a short internal monologue tracing the directions of her thoughts.422 Donna Tartt also wrote an inventive portrayal of Karen's dilemma. Except in Tartt's version, instead of stepping into darkness, Karen returns to New York and marries a wealthy magazine publisher.[208] Purportedly there even exists an opera based on The Navidson Record, written from Karen's perspective, with this last step into the void serving as the subject for the final aria.

  Whatever ultimately allows Karen to overcome her fears, there is little doubt her love for Navidson is the primary catalyst. Her desire to embrace him as she has never done before defeats the memories of that dark well, the molestations carried out by a stepfather or whatever shadows her childhood truly conceals. In this moment, she displays the restorative power

  of what Erich Fromm terms the development of "symbiotic relationships" through personal courage.

  Critic Guyon Keller argues that the role of vision is integral to Karen's success:

  I believe Karen could never have crossed that line had she not first made those two remarkable cinematic moments: What Some Have Thought and A Brief History Of Who I Love. By releaming to see Navidson, she saw what he wasn't and consequently began to see herself much more clearly.[209]

  Esteemed Italian translator Sophia Blynn takes Keller's comments a little further:

  The most important light Karen carried into that place was the memory of Navidson. And Navidson was no different. Though it's commonly assumed his last word was "care" or the start of "careful." I would argue differently. I believe this utterance is really just the first syllable of the very name on which his mind and heart had finally come to rest. His only hope, his only meaning: "Karen."425

  Regardless of what finally enabled her to walk across that threshold, forty-nine minutes later a neighbor saw Karen crying on the front lawn, a pink ribbon in her hair, Navidson cradled in her lap.

  An ambulance soon arrived. Reston caught up with them at the hospital. Navidson's core temperature had dropped to a frighteningly low 83.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Lacking a cardiopulmonary bypass machine which could have pumped out Navidson's cold blood and replaced it with warm oxygenated blood, doctors instead had to cut into Navidson's abdominal cavity, insert catheters, and proceed to irrigate his internal organs with warm fluid. Though his core temperature rose to 85.3 degrees, the EKG continued to produce the peculiar J wave indicative of hypothermia. Still more liters of saline were added to the IV. Doctors kept close watch. One
hour passed. Most there believed he would not live through another.

  He did.

  Karen stayed at his side that night and through the nights and days which followed, reading to him, singing to him, and when she was tired sleeping on the floor by his bed.

  As hours slipped into weeks, Navidson began to recover, but the price he paid for living was not cheap. Frostbite claimed his right hand and clipped the top portion of one ear. Patches of skin on his face were also removed as well as his left eye. Furthermore his hip had inexplicably shattered and had to be replaced. Doctors said he would need a crutch for the rest of his life.

  He did.

  Still he survived. Furthermore, the film and tapes he made during his journey also survived.

  As to what happened after Karen disappeared from view, the only existing account comes from a short interview conducted by a college journalist from William Mary:

  Karen: As soon as I walked in there, I started shivering. It was so cold and dark. I turned around to see where I was but where I'd come from was gone. I started hyperventilating. I couldn't breathe. I was going to die. But somehow I managed to keep moving. I kept putting one foot in front of the other until I found him.