The Keep

by Jennifer Egan

  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.

  Danny: Why did they leave?

  Howard: Well, their kids died was the immediate reason. But money was a factor, I’m sure. It’s hard to
conceive what it costs to run a place this size, but I’m learning fast.

  Compared with the medieval antiques of next door, the stuff in these abandoned rooms was actually modern—not modern like today, but in that ballpark. Danny saw a typewriter and a sewing machine, old ones without plugs, but still. It gave him a weird impression that the long-ago past was in perfect shape, but the closer you got to today the more things collapsed into this ruined state.

  The hall was practically dark, so Danny didn’t see the old phone dangling off a wall until he’d almost passed it. The earpiece was a black cone on a hook—Danny bolted over and grabbed the cone and stuck it next to his ear and listened with his eyes shut. Was that a flicker of life, some echoey spark of connection? Or was it nothing? And that little taste, that flicker that maybe wasn’t even a flicker made Danny realize he’d run out of time. He needed to be back in touch now, or something terrible would happen: his head would explode, a room would fill up with water, a big spinning blade would start sawing away at his spine. For maybe thirty seconds Danny was frantic—all he wanted was to get away from Howard and set up his dish.

  Howard: What’s up?

  Danny carefully hung up the cone. Nothing. I’m cool. And he forced himself to calm down. Eighteen years in New York had taught him that much.

  There were holes in the roof at the end of the hall, which let in some sun and warmed things up. And then a room with no roof, just open sky over a pinkish lump that once upon a time had been a bed. Now it was a fern patch. The room was somewhere between indoors and out: a tree had shoved through a wall, and squirrels dive-bombed across a rotten rug. They wrestled over what looked like a lump of papier-mâché, and little wood bits went flying. One hit Danny’s boot, and he picked it up. It was faded red, the board piece from a Parcheesi game.

  Danny: What a monster job, trying to get this place into shape.

  Howard: Tell me. Although I’ll probably leave some of it like this.

  Danny turned. Are you serious?

  Absolutely. It’s evocative. It’s…history. You know?

  Danny didn’t know. So when do you start bringing in the construction crews?

  Howard laughed. You sound like the kids. Or not kids, but you know, students. My staff. They want everything to happen now. I used to be like that, too, but I’ve become more long haul.

  Danny: Meaning what?

  Howard: Meaning you bide your time. Wait for the right moment. I spent years doing the most shitty, meaningless work you can imagine, money making money making money into a giant fucking tower of bullshit. I’m not saying there weren’t highs—where there’s money there are always highs—but a thug can trade bonds. I did it for one reason: to make so much dough I could walk away at thirty-five and do whatever the hell I wanted for the rest of my life.

  Danny: Sounds nice.

  Howard: And I did it. This (he waved his arm at the dead light fixtures dangling by their wires, the wallpaper coils on the buckled floor), this is what I filled up my head with shit for all those years. And I’m not going to get rushed through it by a bunch of kids.

  Danny: This hotel.

  Yes.

  Danny: But it’s more than a hotel.

  Howard smiled. I’m glad you picked up on that.

  Birds were squabbling in the trees over their heads, knocking twigs and leaves onto the ferny pink lump where someone used to lie down and pull up the covers and shut his eyes.

  Howard: Anyway, let’s get outside. I want to show you the garden.

  Danny was only too happy to get out. He followed Howard back through the dark hall and down a curved staircase like the one he’d been stuck inside last night, except this one had no light and reeked of sooty water. Howard had a flashlight, and they took the steps slowly. Toward the bottom there was graffiti on the walls in a language Danny didn’t recognize. Also beer cans, condoms, crud left over from fires.

  Danny: Who did all this?

  Howard: Local kids, partying over the years. They stripped some of the rooms down here, but I think they were scared to get in too deep. Lucky for us.

  At the bottom there was finally some light. The stairs fed into a room that was under construction: scaffolding on the walls, a wood floor partially laid. A pair of old glass doors faced outside.

  Howard: Here’s where the Germans were when the dough ran out. He wrenched the doors open, glass shards pinging the floor, and Danny went first, stepping into that cool green ocean of leaves he’d been looking down at all morning.

  Howard: Back when this was a working castle there was a bakery out here, stables, a garrison where the knights slept. Later on they ripped out the paving and made it all a big garden: landscaping, orchards, fountains, the whole bit. A lot of that is still buried under here if you look.

  Buried was right. Danny could feel sun trying to push its way down through the layers of shade but the dirt was cold and black, marked with dregs of paths made out of something white. Broken seashells, it looked like. Danny followed Howard down one of these paths, past fossil trees and broken statues greened with slime, a bench swallowed up by gray flowers.

  Howard: Coming up is the thing that just knocked me out. When I saw it I thought, I have to buy this place.

  They’d reached a sort of wall made out of cypress. It was tall and solid and once upon a time it was probably smooth, but now it looked like a giant cushion with its stuffing popping out. Danny followed Howard through an opening in the cypress that looked like it had been recently cut, and when he squeezed out the other side he felt sun on his face. He was standing in a clearing paved with blotchy marble. In the middle was a round swimming pool maybe forty feet across. Its water was black and thick with scum. At first Danny didn’t smell it, but the stink came on fast: a smell of something from deep inside the earth meeting open air, full of metal and protein and blood.

  Mick was across the pool on his hands and knees, rubbing at the marble with some kind of long brush. He didn’t look up.

  Howard: There used to be a tower right where that pool is. Round—see those broken stones around the edges? It had a well, so after the tower collapsed they built a pool in the ruin. Nifty, eh? Anyhow, this is where they drowned.

  Danny: Who drowned? The smell was making his nose run.

  The von Ausblinker twins. A boy and a girl, ten years old. No one really knows what happened. He looked Danny over. Allergies?

  The smell.

  I have a lousy sense of smell. Sometimes I think it’s a blessing.

  They were drifting toward Mick. The guy was bare-chested, scrubbing so hard his torso ran with sweat. And what a torso. A hundred years of personal training wouldn’t have made Danny look like that, or even close. Mick squinted up at them.

  Howard: That brush is working better than the liquid.

  Mick: Yeah, check this out. He stood up, showing them a patch of glowing spotless white.

  Howard: Whoa.

  Mick: Picture the whole thing like that.

  Howard: Just don’t try to do it all yourself. Get some help.

  There was no hint of the conflict in the kitchen, not a trace. Danny wondered if his edgy state had made him exaggerate the thing. Or did they do that every day?

  Howard: I was telling Danny about the twins.

  Mick glanced at Danny—a cold, empty look that unnerved him, like whatever was wrong was his fault. What the fuck? Danny tried to catch the guy’s eye and stare him down, but Mick was back to his sanding.

  Danny: You know about these twins from the Germans?

  Howard: A little. But most of it—Howard took a long breath and looked away—there’s a family member still on the property. You could say I inherited her. A baroness. She lives in that tower—the keep, it’s called. It’s the oldest part of the castle.

  Danny followed Howard’s eyes and there it was, the keep. Rising over the trees, almost white in the midday sun.

  Danny: I’d love to go up there. He was thinking about his satellite dish.

  Howard let out
a thump of laughter. You catch that, Mick?

  Mick nodded.

  Howard: I wish I could take you up there, Danny. Unfortunately the baroness is—how should I say this?—not entirely supportive of our project.

  Danny: She’s young, right? Pretty?

  Mick and Howard looked at each other and started to laugh.

  Howard: What made you think that?

  Danny didn’t answer. Their laughing pissed him off.

  Howard: She’s, uh…

  Mick: Really really old.

  Howard: C’mon, numbers man, cough it up.

  Mick: Ninety-eight. We think.

  Howard: But she doesn’t look a day over ninety. The two of them cracked up over that one. Danny looked at the keep and thought about the girl he’d seen in the window. Obviously Howard and Mick didn’t know about her, and he sure as hell wasn’t telling them.

  Finally Howard pulled himself together and rubbed his wet eyes. I’m sorry, Danny. But if you could see what this broad has put us through—

  Mick: And it’s not over yet.

  Howard: No, it’s not. The laughter fizzled in him, and he ran his hands through his hair.

  Mick: I still say we should start working on the keep. Just the outside. Why let her call the shots?

  Howard: You could be right. Come to think of it.

  Mick started scraping again, moving his brush on the marble.

  Howard turned to Danny. So. Are you starting to get the idea?

  Danny: The idea…?

  About this place.

  I—I guess I’m just taking it in.

  Howard: Not the stuff, not the buildings, the rooms, all that, but the feel of it. All this…history pushing up from underneath.

  He was looking hard at Danny. And what Danny felt wasn’t the pushing of history but the feeling he always had when a powerful person’s attention was on him alone—like a towel snapping near his face.