The Keep

by Jennifer Egan

  And in one of the windows—was it? Danny sat up and rubbed his eyes, thinking he saw the girl again. Yes! He could barely make her out at this distance, but there she was, sun on her face, her gold hair shining. Then she moved away.

  The jet lag was hitting him hard, or that was how Danny thought of it. But it wasn’t just the jet lag, it was the fact that in the last half hour he’d lost:

  1. His satellite dish

  2. His girlfriend

  3. His link to anyone outside this castle

  4. His level-three happiness

  5. His connection to Nora

  6. The chance of ever possibly being at home in this weird place

  7. His credit

  8. The sun

  All of which made Danny feel like his legs had been cut off, to the point where he didn’t even have the juice to sit on a bench with no back, or to sit period. He lay belly-down on the marble, head on his arms, and looked at the water. Where it wasn’t covered in scum it had a dark wet picture of trees and sky. Bugs zinged over it on hair legs. Danny lay there zoning out, drifting in the direction of a snooze, when the pool rippled like something had fallen into it, and he caught some reflection of movement on the water. He lay there, waiting for the reason to show itself without his having to move, but when no one came into view or said hello he scrambled into a sitting position. He looked across the pool at where the movement had been, by the Medusa head, but there was no one. Nothing. Danny ran his eyes slowly over the wall of cypress, watching for someone hiding behind it, inside it, and when he was looking the other way it happened again—some quick motion right across the pool from where he was sitting. And then the water moved, like a big mass had dropped into it or was coming up from under the surface.

  What the fuck?

  Somewhere in Danny’s gut, the worm stretched awake. Who was fucking with him? He stood up and turned around very slowly, three hundred and sixty degrees, looking at the black ring of cypress around him but even more, listening: for a crunch, a crack, a step. The wind was picking up, and dry leaves rattled over the marble and dropped in the pool, resting on the scum awhile before they started to sink. But there were no sounds of people.

  And then, when his eyes were pointed near the Medusa head but not directly at it, Danny saw it again, from the corner of his eye: two shapes that might have been people or shadows of people, right near the edge of the pool. They started out apart and then sort of merged into one. Or else one disappeared. They weren’t real people; it was a head trick, an eye trick, like the trails his fingers made in the air when he was coming on to E.

  Danny circled the pool to the Medusa head and stood listening, but he knew that no one was fucking with him. He was fucking with himself. It always amazed Danny how much sleep deprivation was like being high, with the one big difference that being tired was never fun. Danny felt like shit, loose in the knees, sweaty, but also cold. And something else, too: prickling. On his arms, the back of his neck, all the way over his scalp so he felt the hair lift up from his head. On the streets of New York, this prickling would make Danny perch on a stoop or lean against a wall and open up his laptop, because nine out of ten times—no, nineteen out of twenty, ninety-nine out of a hundred—wireless Internet service was what he was picking up. It was an awareness in the air, a possibility. Danny felt this now. Very carefully, not wanting to disturb it or move out of range, he took the phone out of his pocket. He dialed Martha’s number with some words in his head that were like praying. Danny felt the world out there like one of those phantom limbs—it tingled, it itched, it hurt to be reattached to him. But the phone just searched. It searched and searched and Danny waited, thinking (praying) that maybe all that searching would lead to something, a gap in this blankness. He waited, watching the phone, until his hope dried up. The loss hit Danny all over again, except this time without the release of yelling or kicking—just that feeling of wanting something so badly you can’t believe the force of your wanting won’t make it be there, won’t make it come back.

  That’s what death is, Danny thought: wanting to talk to someone and not being able to.

  He put the phone away. He rubbed his face and rubbed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair. He wanted to get away—from the dark pool, the prickling, all of it.

  Danny climbed out through the cypress back into the garden, which closed over him like a lid. Under there it was like night, and he tripped on a root and barely stopped himself from falling. He let his eyes adjust and kept going, but not in the direction of the castle. He was headed for the keep.

  As Danny got close, he saw the girl again. It was getting near sunset, and the light on top of the long stone tower was going pink. She stood in one of the pointy windows, and she was gorgeous the way any blonde is if you look at her from far enough back.

  That was the baroness at fifty feet.

  Closer in, Danny realized the girl was no girl: she was a woman, which didn’t mean someone Danny’s own age (those were girls)—it meant someone who looked the way his friends’ moms used to look when he was a kid (in other words, his own age). She wore a sleeveless blue-green dress and her arms were long and white and a little soft toward the shoulders, and her blond hair swayed down from her head in a way that seemed styled. And she was waving, that was the best part. Inviting him in.

  That was the baroness at thirty feet.

  It wasn’t obvious how to get inside the keep. There was no door at the bottom—just a narrow stone staircase wrapping the building’s outside, no railing, the wind picking up as Danny climbed out of the trees. It happened quickly, like an airplane shooting above cloud cover. And there was the sunset, stewy pink on the horizon.

  The stairs kept turning around the outside of the keep, but eventually Danny hit a carved door that opened into a small dark space with narrow stone steps leading up and down. It smelled of dust and standing water. Another door was straight ahead, heavy and thick like it was left over from centuries ago. Danny pushed that open into a square room full of heavy draperies and lighted candles and a lot of the color gold—gold all over the place, so the room looked like some fantastical king’s chamber. Walking in there, Danny felt a swell of excitement that half lifted him off his feet.

  There were four windows, one in the middle of each wall. In front of one, the woman was standing on a chair. Sunset was all around her, making her hard to see, but Danny could tell she was older than he’d thought—some of what he’d taken to be her features turned out to be makeup arranged in the shapes her features should have had and maybe did have once, a long time ago, when she was one of those ages he’d thought from outside.

  She said: I have some troubles with this window. Her voice was like a man’s—a man who smoked too much and shouted a lot and came from a foreign country that maybe was Germany, although Danny had never been great with accents.

  That was the baroness at fifteen feet.

  With every step Danny took, the lady aged—her blond hair whitened out and her skin kind of liquefied and the dress paunched and drooped like a time-lapse picture of a flower dying. By the time he got to her side he couldn’t believe she was on her feet. But she was, in high heels, fighting with a curtain rod.

  That was the baroness at two feet.

  Danny: Hey, watch it! If that window popped open, she’d drop like a flowerpot.

  Baroness (chuckling): I’m stronger than you think. You’re very tall. I think you can fix this without even the chair.

  Danny helped her down. The feel of her hand made him shudder: twigs and wire floating around in the softest pouch of skin he’d ever touched—like a rabbit’s ear or a rabbit’s belly or some even softer rabbit place. She had angry black eyes and a long full mouth that was unusual for an old lady. She had a high forehead, a chin with a dimple, and some pale yellow still left in her thick white hair. Her way of moving was jerky, impatient, like she was shaking off a person she was sick of. Her sleeves were long, it turned out—all he could see were those hands.


  Danny didn’t need the chair. He looked at the curtain rod and saw that the brackets holding it up were barely attached to the wall, old screws slipping in and out of their holes. Danny had no talent for home repair, but even he could handle this.

  Danny: Have you got a screwdriver? And a hammer?

  Baroness: Of course not. You should have brought the tools you needed.

  Danny turned to her. What the fuck? he almost said.

  Baroness: What sort of handyman doesn’t carry tools?

  Danny was a foot taller than she was, maybe more. He pulled himself very straight and looked down. Her eyes pointed back at him like a pair of darts.

  Danny: Do I look like a handyman to you?

  Baroness: Everyone looks like a handyman to me. And then she laughed, one of those soupy laughs that could stay a laugh or else turn into a coughing fit. And Danny got it: she was playing herself. A character. He liked these types because they pretty much told you what reactions they wanted you to have, and they liked Danny because he went ahead and had them.

  Danny: If there’s an opposite of a handyman, I’m it.

  The baroness reached out her tender, bony hand. Danny was nervous to touch it again. He didn’t squeeze it or shake it but more just held it for a second, like it was a fragile thing he’d found that was barely alive. He wondered if all her skin could be this soft. The idea made him a little sick.

  Baroness: I am the Baroness von Ausblinker. This castle is mine, and all the land around it in every direction you can see. She glanced out the window, sunset reaching out over miles of black trees.

  Danny: Including the town? He was playing along.

  Of course including the town. The town and the castle have served each other for hundreds of years. And your name?

  Danny. Danny King. Cousin of Howard King, who’s got the nutty idea he owns this place.

  Well, he paid for it. And now he lives in my house. It’s the American way.

  Danny: What do you know about that?

  The baroness narrowed her eyes. I was married to an American for forty-three years: Al Chandler—she squawked out the name in a way that made her start to cough, and then she choked around the coughing—he was a champion golfer.

  Al Chandler, Al Chandler…. Danny muttered the name likehe was trying to place it, but this was pure theater. He could tell in under a second if he’d heard a name before. He’d never heard of Al Chandler.

  All this time they were standing by the window. Danny could see the edges of the castle buildings to the left, lights coming on in the windows.

  Danny: Did you and Al Chandler live in America?

  We certainly did. On and off for forty-three years while my husband was alive. My children are there today: Tucson, Gainesville, and Atlanta. They’re more American than you are. My sons wear shorts in summertime. You would never see a European man in shorts—never! A man’s legs out in the open like that, it’s…it’s miserably low-class.

  Danny: I’ve seen plenty of European guys in shorts.

  Not real men, obviously.

  What the hell does that mean?

  The baroness smiled. Here, sit. She beckoned Danny with a finger toward a pair of soft chairs by a corner fireplace that took up a big chunk of the small room. Two logs were burning in it. Danny sat, and dust and some old body smell leaked up around him. The baroness leaned forward, elbows on her sharp kneecaps, and gored Danny’s face with her eyes. She said: You’re homosexual. Pronouncing it homosex-sual.

  I am?

  You’re wearing makeup.

  Oh. He laughed. That’s just a style thing.

  Don’t people assume you’re homosexual if you wear makeup?

  Some, I guess.

  Any normal man wouldn’t stand for it.

  Any normal man being Al Chandler? For some reason he liked saying that name.

  Al disliked homosexuals, but he hid it perfectly. He was a gentleman. Not that you’d know what that means.

  You’re right, I have no idea.

  It doesn’t exist in America.

  Actually, I think homosexuals are the gentlemen in America.

  The baroness smiled, that beautiful mouth coming apart in a way that must’ve knocked people out when she was young. It gave Danny a funny shiver, because imagining that was like seeing it, in a way.

  Baroness: You’re confident. So you must be successful at something.

  Working on it.

  Hmmt. Then maybe you’re stupid.

  You and my pop would have plenty to talk about.

  I doubt that.

  Danny looked at his watch. He kept having the feeling he should go, but then he’d remember he had no place to go except back to the castle, and that made him feel like he’d been kicked. Then it was a relief to see this old lady sitting near him. She sat perfectly straight, her spine like a pole, watching him.

  Danny: What do you mean, the castle is yours?

  I mean I was born here. I know every cupboard and drawer and stone, every hall and every door. I mean that before my time there were eighty generations of von Ausblinkers whose blood now runs in my veins, and they built this castle and lived and fought and died in it. Now their bodies are dust—they’re part of the soil and the trees and even the air we’re breathing this very minute, and I am all of those people. They’re inside me. They are me. There is no separation between us.

  Danny: You were born here?

  I said that clearly, did I not?

  You did, I just…. He was surprised Howard hadn’t mentioned that part. So you know what all this looked like—before.

  Not like the miserable wreck it is now, I can tell you that. It was beautiful. It was perfect.

  And then you came back after all those years.

  Naturally I came back. It was the obvious thing to do after Al Chandler passed away.

  You—what—just showed up one day?

  With laborers, yes. The castle was abandoned. I spent a pack getting set up in here. And a few years later the Germans came to make their hotel and they asked me to go. And I told them, I will never leave this place. I am this place. I am every person who has lived here for nine hundred years. It’s beyond ownership. It simply is.

  The idea caught in Danny, all those generations. At times he had trouble even believing that one chain of days connected his first day in New York to this day, right now—that so many years could have passed in such a thin stream, day by day by day. And that amount of time was nothing compared to what the baroness was talking about. Centuries! It thrilled him to think about it.

  Danny: So what did the Germans do?

  Well, of course they tried to make me go. They sent summonses and all this sort of nonsense, they called the police. I stopped letting them in. I was afraid they would drag me into the forest and slit my throat. But I spoke to them from the window, that one right there.

  She staggered up from the couch and Danny followed her to another window. The baroness unlatched it and pushed it open.

  Look outside, she said, and Danny leaned through. The burned-out sunset had left an orange stain low in the sky. The garden looked like a black ocean tossing around the bottom of the keep. It smelled rotten and sweet, but that smell was mixed with a freshness the wind brought in from somewhere. Next to the window, on the outside wall of the keep, a white rope was looped around a hook. It ran down the length of the tower and disappeared into the trees.

  Danny (calling back): What’s the rope for?

  Baroness: It’s attached to a basket. People from the town come and bring me food and things I need. The older ones still remember my family. If I leave a request in the basket, they bring it the next time.

  When he pulled himself back inside, Danny felt like he’d washed his face. So you talked to the Germans from up here?

  Baroness: They stood in a group underneath those trees. And I said to them—she stuck her head out the window and then her whole torso, and before Danny knew it she was cawing into the night—I’m still a baroness. This may be
meaningless to you, but it’s real. The title is real. It survives hundreds of years of history.

  The baroness’s feet had no contact with the floor: her legs bent from the effort of shouting and her shoes dangled from her bony heels. Danny moved closer, ready to grab her hips if she started to tip.

  Baroness (hoarse): I told them, You’re not dealing with one old lady, you’re dealing with all the people who have made me, kings and counts, Charlemagne and William the Conqueror and King Ferdinand and Louis the Fourteenth—she swiveled to look at Danny and he jumped back, not wanting her to see how close he’d been standing—Of course this means nothing to you. There’s no such thing as noble blood in America, you’re all mongrels. The oldest thing in your family closet is a tennis racket from 1955, whereas I have a thirteenth-century sarcophagus in my basement. But a European understands these things. My point was simply that I outranked them.

  Danny couldn’t keep the smile off his face. Not just because the baroness was a kook and he liked kooks but because what she was saying did something to him, filled up his brain with kings and knights and guys fighting battles on horses. That stuff had always seemed unreal to Danny, like it only existed in books or games, but here was a lady who was linked to all of it by one thin chain of years and days and hours and minutes. This excited Danny in a way that felt like hunger. It was physical. He had to know more, had to keep her talking.

  So what did the Germans do? Just stand down there while you yelled?