The Way Through Doors (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Jesse Ball

  —Yes, said the municipal inspector, thus the business of subterfuge.

  Three moments later it was evening. The table had been cleared, the visitors had been shown where they would sleep, and then Kleb had taken the municipal inspector out to the field where the horses graze to sit upon a hill and talk. The guess artist remained with Corina, who was in the midst of baking a sort of sausage bread that the two would take with them on the morrow.

  Selah sat on the hill’s crest. Kleb sat beside him and placed between his own two feet the unlit lantern. The last light came from the mirrored vents, and darkness descended.

  —I don’t mean to be rude, said Selah. But we are in a bit of a hurry. We’re looking for a girl named Mora Klein. I need to get upstairs, but it seemed like going downstairs was the right way. At least, someone told us so.

  Kleb thought about that for a minute.

  —I don’t know exactly what you mean, he said. But perhaps after I’ve explained about what I’m set on explaining, it’ll have helped?

  —I hope so, said Selah.

  —It was a long time ago, said Kleb, that a man named Norburn was digging a well on his property. The year was 1863. The Civil War was on. People were angry. Mobs rioted in the streets. But Norburn began to dig a well. Everyone told him that it was idiotic to try to dig a well through the bedrock in Manhattan, and yet he persevered. Norburn dug down seventy-five feet, which was an extraordinary depth for the time. The digging of the well killed him, for he attempted it in summer, and the heat was too much. He never found water. However, his son, also named Norburn, continued the work. At ninety feet, Norburn struck not water, but an empty passage. The rock fell out beneath him, and he was left clinging to the side of the well. Luckily, there was a rope ladder that he had been using in the first place to get in and out. He climbed back up, fetched a longer rope ladder, and descended. But this got him no farther, for the darkness below was immense, and the space into which he had channeled was huge. He made rope ladder after rope ladder and strung them together, but as far down as he went, the hole went still farther. Finally, his making of ladders, and the business of this well (which was concealed now within a small shelter so that the neighbors would not suspect any strange business) attracted the attention of a federal agent, a man by the name of Bascomb Lefferts.

  —How did he find out about it? asked Selah.

  —That I don’t know, said Kleb, but find out about it he did. Lefferts was a man of some learning, and of great acuity. He saw immediately that there was something here that needed the highest degree of caution. He would brook no interference from local authorities, and so, after examining the hole and descending as far as was possible (a herculean task, since it involved first gaining the strength of arm to pull oneself up and down a several-hundred-foot rope ladder), he set out for Washington. Now, as we have said, the war had been going on some time. Washington was an armed fortress, and Lincoln’s ear was not easy to get. Yet Lefferts had a certain reputation himself, and one day he was put into Lincoln’s company.

  —Sir, he said. Might we speak alone?

  Lincoln gestured that the many strange and impetuous avatars and incarnations that accompanied him in the form of bespectacled clerks should be off for a moment about some putative business. They left Lincoln and Lefferts in a pronounced globe of quiet.

  —Speak, said Lincoln.

  Then Lefferts explained to the great man what it was that he had found. He explained that he had dropped enormous rocks down into the hole, and that no sound had ever been returned up out of it. He explained that one could scale down into the hole for hundreds of feet and be no nearer the bottom. He explained also that lamps lit and dropped also disappeared from sight.

  Lincoln then set Bascomb Lefferts at the head of a special task force. He commissioned him with the finding of the bottom of the hole, using any means necessary.

  —This may be a godsend in pitiful disguise, he said.

  Lefferts never forgot that. He had the phrase engraved on a small metal plaque, and wore the plaque about his wrist as a constant reminder of his mission. Over the next two years he worked day and night, building rope ladders and lowering himself deeper and still deeper into the hole. So long did the rope ladders become that he began to build hammocks that would accompany the rope ladder in order to provide rest for the tired climber. Finally he despaired even of this, and he had a huge cable made, such as was used to bind clipper ships to trading docks. To the end of this he attached the basket from a balloon. He had a massive winch set inside the now formidable enclosure that surrounded Six Quince Street, and down into the hole he had himself lowered, lanterns in tow.

  The winch ran out of rope four times, and had to be restrung. Each time the rope was separated, tied off, then strung together with the new rope and lowered. Finally Lefferts reached the bottom, where we now stand.

  At that time it was only bare stone, a wide cavern of bare stone, with a stream running through it.

  Lefferts cried with joy and laid himself down upon the cavern floor and spoke once more the words that Lincoln had said: This may be a godsend in pitiful disguise.

  However, the disguise was no longer pitiful.

  Lefferts had himself winched back up out of the hole, and he went immediately again to Washington. He sat with Lincoln and told him all that he had found. Said Lincoln:

  —I have thought often of your hole, and of what might lie at the bottom. I am best pleased by this that you have found. Here are my plans for what should be done.

  Lincoln had set up a special government branch, sealed from the rest and with only this single purpose in mind: to build a passage down through the hole, and place at the bottom a replica of a meadow and cottage that he had seen once in a dream.

  This was the plan that Lincoln had drawn:

  Lefferts returned, now flush with cash, and began the work in earnest. He had to keep the proceedings secret, and so the entire area had to be sealed. A large building was built over the hole, and the work went on underneath, done by workers whose children were kept as hostages in a separate federal camp near the Canadian border.

  The building is architecturally unique, because none of its weight relies upon that which is beneath it. All the weight is supported by the stone to either side. The staircase was literally built one step at a time, proceeding down. The workers would stand on the step above, and build the step that would come next, while the building materials hung in the central space supported by the winch far above. Last of all were built the landings, for they prohibited the use of the winch to carry up and down supplies of timber and metal beams.

  To import the grass and the trees was no easy task. An ecosystem had to be created where there was none. Perhaps most amazing was the creation of the series of mirrors that enabled the sun to shine upon the meadow just as it shines above. The complication of this mirror system has never been matched by any lens or mirror system built elsewhere at any time in the history of man.

  Lefferts himself took up residence in the cottage. He brought his wife down and lived happily to old age. Lincoln passed away during the first year of the work, when the stairs scarcely descended a hundred steps into the ground, and over the next years presidents came and went. No president until Theodore Roosevelt betook himself to see just what the Department of Deep Core Agriculture was accomplishing. When he did, Roosevelt found the existence of the hole. The covering structure had long been removed. A small shack stood on the site, covered around by a stone wall with a locked gate. Within the shack was the malachite plug that you yourself have seen.

  Roosevelt descended and spoke with Lefferts, who had gone then into extreme old age. They conversed over the future of the place. Roosevelt decided that eventually, if it were continued to be allowed to manage the place, the federal government would eventually mismanage it. Thus he created an endowment, complete with a board of directors and charter, to see in complete discretion and privacy to the continuation of the hole. He named it Lincoln’s
Folly, and saw to it that every document pertaining to its existence or creation was destroyed. One more thing he saw to also, and that was to the marrying off of Lefferts’s son to a bright-eyed woman named Nancy Rourke. She moved down into Lincoln’s Folly, and life continued with no one the wiser.

  The Lincoln’s Folly Foundation endured through the Depression. Always they blended the site with the architecture that was around it, so that even down to this day it mirrors the surrounding buildings. The Chinese man who sits outside the door is an employee of the foundation, and is paid quite well for his services. His own discretion is unimpeachable.

  —But, said Selah, all this is really not why I came down here.

  Kleb lit the lantern and peered in Selah’s face.

  —Why ever did you come down here, if not to learn the secret of Lincoln’s Folly?

  His voice was thick and strange, as is anyone’s who has just told such a long and involved tale, only to learn the person listening was not really listening.

  —Why, because I want to get upstairs, and I don’t know how to get there in the first place, and I was told that perhaps you knew something about it. Or rather, I was told that here I might find out some information that might help me. Whether from you or another, I do not know.

  Kleb nodded, and the lantern moved slightly in his hand.

  —It’s not so easy, he said, to get upstairs. But if you must…

  —I must, said Selah. There is a girl. She has lost her memory.

  —Don’t tell me, said Kleb. Listen now. Go into the kitchen of the house. Look at the small painting on the wall beside the spice cabinet.

  Selah rose and, taking the lantern from Kleb, descended the hill. The grass felt good upon his feet. A breeze moved, and he could hear in the night the whinnying of the horses. He felt them close by in the darkness, and through it he guided his little light toward the larger light of the house. Soon he came to it. I am so far, he thought, so very far from the world I began in. He thought of Mora, and of his hunt, his long hunt. Around him this small pastoral beauty—to be out-of-doors but indoors. It was a grave and unanswerable pleasure. Somewhere, he felt, there must be a cost paid for a wonder such as this. And also, did Mora come here, and why?

  The door was unlocked. He entered. Morris and the guess artist were playing chess. Corina was watching.

  —Don’t let him cheat, said Selah to Morris.

  —When it’s his turn, said Morris, I think of all sorts of bad moves that he might do.

  —He’s very clever, said the guess artist. As I said earlier.

  Selah passed through the first room into the kitchen. Corina came after him. Clutching at his hand, she whispered:

  —The branch will not break.

  Selah looked her carefully in the eyes and saw a few things there that he wished he could remember but knew he never would.

  Bread was baking in the oven, and the smell enfolded the house in what seemed like a gentle trembling of longing. Upon the wall beside a cabinet there was indeed a painting. Selah came closer to it. It was very old, a painting of a town as seen from a hill beyond.

  —Guess artist, said Selah in a definite you-had-better-come-here voice. Leaned in the corner of the room was a baseball bat. Selah took it up in his hands. Mora, he thought. I will find you soon.

  The guess artist came into the room and saw Selah, intent on the painting. He pressed up next to him and peered into the painting.

  —Oh, Lord, he said. Here we go.

  And the two were standing no longer in a saltbox house at the foot of a great stair, but instead upon a hill in broad daylight. Ahead of them was a signpost. It said:

  SOM—>

  Selah looked at the guess artist. The guess artist looked at Selah. The road was rather rough, and they were both now barefoot.

  —This is a bad business, said Selah. You should never leave your shoes in the midst of a staircase. I knew it was the wrong thing to do.

  They started to walk in the direction of the town. The weather was broad, and the clouds were very puffy, while behind, the sky was a deep blue. Ahead upon the road, the town looked fine as well, its roofs and steeples shining in the sun. They made their way down into it, past towns-people laboring in the sun at this task or that, and soon came to an inn.

  —This is the inn, said the guess artist.

  —Wait here a moment, said Selah.

  He burst in through the door. The room was empty. No one was there. Certainly it was the common room of the inn, but the proprietor was elsewhere. All the better, thought Selah.

  He proceeded up the stairway that stood on the left. It was a winding stair, but a simple matter for the now experienced stairsman that Selah had become. Up the stair he went and burst into the first chamber at the top.

  —Mora! he shouted.

  But there was no one there. This room too was empty. In turn Selah went into every room upon the second floor. There was no one anywhere.

  Selah returned to the common room.

  —Hey, he shouted.

  The guess artist came in.

  —I don’t think there’s anyone here, said the guess artist.

  —It’s all very wrong, said Selah. I know she’s here.

  —What’s that? asked the guess artist.

  The edge of something was sticking out from beneath a table. Selah went around the table. It was a fiddle. He picked it up.

  —Let me see that, said the guess artist.

  Selah handed him the fiddle. The guess artist took it and with a violent motion broke it loudly across his knee. The fiddle let out a violent twang.

  Out of the broken fiddle there fell a letter, rolled up and tied with a string.

  Selah knelt and picked it up.

  It said,

  WHO WAS THE GIRL IN THE MOTORCAR?

  Selah gave the guess artist a puzzled look.

  —There are more, said the guess artist.

  And indeed, poking out from beneath many of the tables were other fiddles. The guess artist went to the nearest table, picked up a fiddle, and broke it too over his knee. Another letter fell out. He picked it up and showed it to Selah.

  UNFORTUNATELY MY FOOLISH LITTLE BIRDS, YOU’VE COME TO THE RIGHT INN AT THE WRONG TIME, OR THE WRONG INN AT THE RIGHT TIME. OR THE RIGHT INN AT THE RIGHT TIME, BUT IN THE WRONG WAY. THAT’S THE TROUBLE.

  The guess artist whistled a long, low whistle.

  —The wrong way, eh? he said.

  Both men looked at each other. Selah’s face looked a little strained. He was desperately unhappy, but trying not to show it. The search for Mora Klein had become long and involved, and he wanted very much for her to be found, and soon. He reached into his pocket and took out the map. He unfolded it.

  —What’s next? asked the guess artist.

  —Let’s see, said Selah.

  He looked over the map, quietly mumbling to himself.

  —Nothing about this, he said.

  —Nothing? asked the guess artist. If I had made a map, then I would certainly have put in something to help us out right now.

  —But you didn’t, Selah pointed out. I was the one who made the map. And sometimes I wish I hadn’t.

  He folded it up and put it away. There was a little clock on the wall. It struck nine. Was it nine in the morning or nine in the evening? They couldn’t really tell. It was sunny outside of the inn, but that didn’t mean anything.

  —Let’s look at another, said Selah. He grabbed a fiddle and tried to break it over his knee, but he couldn’t. For some reason it wouldn’t break. He handed it to the guess artist without a word. The guess artist broke it neatly across his knee.

  —I used to be in vaudeville, he said with a gentle postvaudevillian smile, and picked up the piece of paper that had fallen.

  It said,

  TWO MEN descend a stair quite deliberately into the ground. They are guided not by a human being but by a fox that is pretending to be a human being. At the bottom in the den proper they meet a family of foxes. The
den is only slightly beneath the ground, under a finely grown oak tree with massive roots. However, the men are persuaded that they have traveled far below the ground. How pleased they are by the den! How happy are their joyous struttings about, how kind their greetings to the fox-man and the fox-wife. A table is set for them, at which they eat not human food, but raw chicken, raw duck, stolen from a farmer’s pen. They eat this with relish, are pleased by it, and ask for more. They listen to the stories told by the fox and his wife, and by the dear fox-child for whom they have developed a kind affection. How grand it is that foxes are masters of such secret wishes as this, how grand that they can take men beneath the ground into their dens and guest them as even the greatest kings of Persia could not. Long live the world of foxes and their taking of a thousand shapes. Long live such rascalry, with its quick and supple hand!

  —So that’s what happened, said Selah. I thought perhaps…

  —I as well, said the municipal inspector. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise.

  —Well, they were awfully nice, said Selah.

  —Yes, they were, said the municipal inspector, certainly very nice. And the fox-wife, Corina. Certainly she cooked a fine meal, raw duck or no raw duck.

  —Let’s read another, said Selah. He looked under a few tables and returned after a moment with two more fiddles.

  The guess artist broke the first, and Selah recovered the paper.

  THE DOG THAT PLAYS THE FIDDLE WANTED VERY MUCH TO BE A CHARACTER IN THE PAMPHLETEER’S LATEST WORK: WORLD’S FAIR 7 JUNE 1978. BUT IT WAS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. ALTHOUGH THE DOG CAME TO VISIT THE PAMPHLETEER, AND ALTHOUGH HE REVEALED HIMSELF EVEN IN DREAMS, THE PAMPHLETEER WOULD HAVE NONE OF IT. THEREFORE, THE LITTLE DOG BETOOK HIMSELF TO BE A PART OF THE WF. IN THIS HE WAS SUCCESSFUL. HERE IS HIS SECTION: