The Keep

by Jennifer Egan

  Going so soon? Too bad! We had such fun the last time, Danny…you especially, I think!

  Danny’s legs shook so spastically that he worried he’d collapse trying to get down the rest of the stairs. He was cold and soaked with sweat. When they got back to the hall, Ann stopped. She pushed the hair out of her face and held the baby’s head in her hands. Danny saw the terror in her. She kissed the soft hair on her baby’s scalp.

  Benjy was moaning. The baroness’s words were caught in his ears, Danny could tell. He needed to erase them, keep them from tunneling into the boy’s brain. He started whispering into his hair as they followed the endless hall: It’ll be fine, you’ll see, you’ll grow up and you won’t even remember this stuff, it’ll all be so long ago, just a funny thing you’ll tell your friends and they’ll say: What? No way! And you’ll say: Yeah, it’s true, I promise, that stuff really happened but I was a brave kid and I got through it, I kept my cool because that’s the kind of kid I am….

  Where was this shit coming from? Danny had no idea. He whispered to the kid and meanwhile the whispering voices kept piping their weird language into Danny’s ears until he wondered if he was translating, if the voices were actually telling him what to say. And it worked. Or at least Benjy stopped moaning. They passed the wine cellar, and a while later Danny saw a patch of light and heard Howard’s voice and the graduate students’, a back-and-forth of breathless sound that shook Danny. They were happy. They had no idea what was coming. The panic rose back up in him like bile.

  He followed Ann into the torture room. Howard was standing on one of the machines. When he saw Ann and Danny he dropped to the ground. What? What happened?

  Ann was moving toward him. Danny followed behind her.

  Ann: We can’t get out that way. The stairs are blocked off.

  She didn’t scream or cry, none of the things Danny would’ve expected. She said it gently.

  Howard: Blocked off?

  Ann: That door? In the stairs? It’s shut now. So we’ll have to find another way out.

  She took Howard’s hand. It was incredible—like she’d forgiven him for getting them into this thing, when they weren’t even out yet. Might never get out. Danny was still holding the kid. Benjy’s weight had gone very solid in the last few minutes, and Danny thought he might be asleep.

  Howard: I—I don’t understand. Say that again.

  Ann: The door. We can’t go that way. We have to go another way.

  Who says there is another way?

  Danny watched the panic he’d felt in himself roar over Howard and swallow him whole. The guy didn’t have a chance.

  Howard: The door—no! It has to—

  It’ll be fine, honey. We just have to find another way.

  No! There’s—no! Oh my God!

  Relax, sweetheart. Ann put her hand on Howard’s head, but he twisted away.

  No. No! We have to—oh my God, please!

  His voice raked the walls. Everyone stared at him. Howard shut his eyes and jackknifed over so his head was near the floor. Ann leaned over him, trying to straighten him up without letting the baby slide out of the pouch on her chest. She must have seen this coming, known how he’d react. But she couldn’t pull Howard back up. He’d started to scream, and every scream tore through Danny and seemed to take some of his blood away with it. He felt on the verge of passing out. That current of panic moved through the group again: there were cries and flashlights swung around, making the room wild with light. A bunch of people ran back into the hall and headed for the stairs. Danny thought of the baroness waiting there.

  Howard had left his body completely—he was somewhere else. No, no, please! Please! Oh my God, I can’t breathe. Help!

  The room was starting to spin. Danny felt like all the oxygen had run out. The harder he tried to breathe the dizzier he got. The kid stirred in his arms and he thought, I can’t pass out while I’m holding this kid.

  Ann: Howard, stop. You’ve got to stop. Stop! We’ve got the kids here and a lot of other people who need to get out.

  But Howard couldn’t stop. His body went suddenly rigid, his eyes wide and blind. He clawed at the air and then, in a terrible guttural voice, he screamed Danny’s name, dragging it out so it filled the torture space with one long howl.

  Howard: Danny! Danny! Danny help me, please let me out.

  Danny please, I’ll do anything—please let me out. I’ll give you anything you want. Wait, Danny, don’t go! Don’t leave me here!

  He wasn’t looking at Danny, but everyone else was. Mick and Ann and the graduate students who were still in the room gaped at him in confusion. Each time Howard screamed his name seemed to push Danny’s skull one step closer to exploding. Unbelievably, the kid in his arms was still asleep. Danny noticed himself squeezing Benjy, clutching onto him like the kid was holding him up.

  Howard: Danny! Don’t do this to me, please. Please come back! Ple—ee—ee—Big gasping sobs broke up his screams. Howard was crying like a little kid cries, his face slick with snot and tears. It was something no one should see.

  The graduate students who had run to the stairs stampeded back in, frantic. It’s locked, the door’s locked, we’re trapped down here, we’re going to die. Now the room seized up with real hysteria for the first time. At the beginning it was aimless, swerving terror, but when Howard shouted Danny’s name again the group pulled in around it in desperation. A panicked mass of people closed in on Danny, crazed and wailing: Danny, help!

  If I pass out I’ll drop the kid.

  Danny, Danny, please let us out please help us please….

  Danny: Okay. Okay!

  But no one heard him. He couldn’t hear himself. Their cries ricocheted off the stone walls: Danny please. Please help us please help us please….

  Danny: Okay. Shut up.

  He said it loudly, and the people closest to him piped down. Pretty soon the other ones did, too. Everyone stood there, waiting for Danny to do something. What should he do? He had no idea what to do. Howard had crumpled to the ground and was hunched there, sobbing. Ann knelt next to him, her arms around his neck, the sleeping baby still hanging from her chest.

  Danny: Okay. I—uh…Nora, where are you? He was stalling.

  Nora came forward with wet, jumpy eyes.

  Danny: Take this kid. When Nora didn’t move, he said, Do your fucking job for once and take this kid.

  Nora jumped like he’d slapped her. Fuck you.

  Fuck you, too.

  She lifted Benjy gently from Danny’s arms, then elbowed him away.

  Danny: Mick, where are you? Mick? He was buying time, trying to make the cringing feeling he had go away. Danny was a follower, not a leader. You could even say that as a follower, Danny was a leader. But not on his own.

  Mick came forward. He was still holding the map. Danny reached for it now, putting off by another minute or two the time when they would all find out he had no plan, no solution of any kind.

  Danny: Let’s look at that map.

  Mick lifted up the map and Danny pointed his flashlight at it, but the glass bounced the light right into his eyes. Mick broke the map over his knee and the glass dropped away. He was holding parchment. Danny stared at the map, his eyes not even focused. He was faking it—stealing one second, then another second, then one more second before the crying would start up again.

  Mick: It looks like…

  Danny: If you go down…

  Mick: Or maybe that way?

  In the background Howard sobbed: the saddest, most hopeless sound Danny had ever heard. He’d never cried that way, never in his life.

  Danny: All right, let’s just go. We’ll figure it out.

  He waited while Ann helped Howard off the ground. The guy was shivering, his wet face covered with dirt.

  Danny: Mick, can you go last and make sure we don’t lose anyone?

  Mick: Sure thing. He seemed glad to get away.

  Danny led them out of the torture room, following his flashlight beam into the dark.
It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. Danny had no impulses, no hunches about what to do. He had one goal: to protect these people from the fact that he couldn’t help them, pretend to lead them so they’d believe they were going somewhere and not cry and call out his name. Danny couldn’t take any more of that. He thought it would kill him.

  So he led the way through nowhere, into nothing, grateful for the quiet, the sounds of all those shoes behind him. He led them down, at an angle, deeper into the earth. Then left, then up a little, then down again. Danny moved fast—the fact that he was pretending, leading them nowhere, was waiting to jump him if he hesitated. As they all walked deeper, a kind of rhythm set in. They were moving, and after they’d been moving for a long enough time there was a feeling that they must be moving toward something. Danny felt it, too. Like faking it for long enough had made it true.

  No one had spoken since they’d left the torture room. Even Howard was finally quiet, and the sound of just their footsteps in the tunnels brought back the whispering voices to Danny. He wondered if the voices were telling him where to go. Sometimes he caught himself muttering: Right or left, I don’t know. Down, I think. Over there looks better than straight. Nope, I don’t like this—gotta go back. The tunnels were endless, a world of tunnels under the earth. The air went from dusty to dank. Eventually there was the sound of water dripping. Danny had no idea how much time had passed.

  They came to a stairway. They’d passed other stairs along the way, but those had all led down. This one went straight up, and the stairs were tiny, too small to hold even half of one of Danny’s boots. Tiny and wet—impossible to climb! But something to try, to keep the group distracted. The tunnel went on past the steps, but Danny stopped.

  The sound of a voice—his own voice—was strange after so much silent walking.

  Danny: Okay, look. I’m going to climb these stairs and see where they go. Don’t follow me, because if I slip and fall I’ll knock everyone down. Point your beams up so I can see the way.

  He felt the jump of their hope, their panic, barely under control. But Danny was calm. Weirdly calm, like he was having a dream.

  Slowly, carefully, he started to climb. There were iron rings every few feet along the sides of the stairwell, which was what made climbing possible. Danny held a flashlight in his mouth, half gagging on it, grabbed an iron ring with one hand and used the other hand to claw at the slippery steps. It was the longest flight of stairs he’d ever climbed. At one point they shifted direction, and then he was beyond the reach of all the beams. He was starting to smell earth, not the gut of it where they’d been but the part that touches air: trees, grass, all those smells of life. And those smells kicked something alive in Danny—desire, an appetite. He started scrambling like a spider, throwing back his head every few feet to point his flashlight up and see what was above him. More stairs. More stairs. And finally he saw something flat: the underside of a door. Danny’s arms and legs were shaking when he got there. He pushed the door with his hand: sealed, of course. He hunched there, the flashlight in his mouth, panting and sweating, thinking he might puke.

  Danny yelled down around the flashlight: There’s a door, okay? I’m going to try to open it, and I’ll make some noise. Stand away, in case I fall.

  A dim sound came back up.

  There was an iron ring on each side of the door. Danny grabbed one ring in each hand and walked his feet over his head until they were braced against the underside of the door. He was upside down, scrunched to the size of a tire, his head full of blood. He tapped the door with the heel of his boot: stone, it felt like.

  Then he started to kick. He kicked and pushed like a madman, like it was the one thing he was made to do on earth. He kicked until he had nothing left in him, until he was gasping, gagging, veins pounding in his temples and neck. But the door didn’t move.

  He called out: Mick! and the flashlight slipped out of his mouth and whacked its way down the stairs. Watch out, Danny yelled. Stand back, something’s falling. He couldn’t even hear the thing land. Then he called, Mick, can you come up? He was absolutely spent. He clutched the rings and hung there, breathing hard in the total dark.

  It wasn’t long before he saw a light. By the time Mick was fully in view, flashlight between his teeth, Danny had recovered a little. Mick’s shirt was off, and sweat poured down his torso and ropy arms with their scarred-up hash of old track marks.

  Danny: We’ve gotta kick open this door.

  Mick: Let’s do it.

  They coiled side by side like Danny did before, each holding an iron ring and bracing his loose arm around the other one’s neck. They started to kick. It made a lot of noise, but that was it.

  Mick: Wait, wait. We’ve got to count. One, two…three.

  They pushed and groaned.

  Mick: Again. One, two…three!

  They pushed together. Again. Again. Again. Danny thought the door gave just a little. Again. No, nothing. Again. Again. And then Danny felt a jerk under his feet. The door was starting to move. It’s moving, they both muttered. Again. Again. And even after being so long upside down, veins popping, eyes running, lips hanging, sweat making his hand slip on the ring, Danny felt a jolt of strength rock through him from his head to his boots. His lucky boots.

  Mick was panting almost too hard to speak: One more time. This is it, one, two, three! They pushed, groaning, and the door moved—it slid up just a little. One, two, three! Danny assaulted the thing with his boots, mashed and thrust and pounded, Mick doing the same until the door lifted away like the top coming off a grave.

  They crawled through the opening and collapsed. It was a while before Danny looked up and saw stars. Trees. He knew where he was: by the pool. He could smell it. And the smell was so welcome to Danny it almost seemed sweet.

  They’d lifted off one of the marble panels around the pool. A perfect square. Heavy as hell. Who knew when the thing had last moved.

  When he could breathe again, Danny leaned over the hole and yelled down: Okay, we’re out. I’ll come back down. It’s gonna take awhile, but we’re done. It’s all fine.

  There was a second of silence. Then a cheer came up.

  Danny helped Ann get up that long flight of stairs with the baby girl on her chest. She hooked one arm around Danny’s neck so if she slipped (which she did, twice) he’d be holding her, and the baby would be safe.

  He carried Benjy one-armed, climbing the stairs on two legs and a hand. As far as Danny knew, the kid slept through all of it.

  He and Mick hauled Howard up between them, one of Howard’s arms around each of their necks. Near the top, Howard started coming back a little. By the end he was doing some of the climbing himself.

  Each one of these climbs took at least fifteen minutes, so getting everyone out of the ground was a project of hours. By the time it was finally done and they were all outside, every last graduate student lying on the marble around the pool sucking in that fresh air, the sun was up.

  That was Phase One.

  Phase Two was a lot of hugging. Everyone started hugging Danny, sometimes more than one person at a time, most of them laughing or crying or else laughing and crying. The only thing like it Danny could remember was high school graduation. He’d almost forgotten it, but the feeling came back: We’ve been through something huge and now the rest of our lives are about to start up but we don’t want to leave this behind, we can’t, it’s too big.

  Ann hugged Danny so hard that the baby on her chest let out a cry. Danny felt how physically strong Ann was, and it gave him an idea of what Mick must feel for her—how after all that strength had pulled in around you even just once, you’d feel stripped down to nothing without it.

  Nora hugged Danny lightly, then kissed his cheek. And since Nora wasn’t the kissy type, plus her lips were unbelievably soft, it was a sensual thing. Danny smelled her for the first time, and the smell surprised him: it wasn’t like cigarettes or patchouli or BO, which is what he expected from a heavily pierced girl with dreads.
She smelled like—what? Danny asked himself that while Nora walked away. And then she turned back and Danny saw her smile for the first time, saw the pretty girl Nora never wanted to be again. And then he knew what she smelled like—that fresh, delicate, complicated smell: lawn.

  Nora: Thanks.

  Danny: She said….

  Nora didn’t get it at first. Then she laughed: Actually, that sentence was adverb-free.

  Danny: Just, thanks?

  Nora: That’s it. Thanks. Or maybe, Thanks, Danny. Are you disappointed?

  Danny: Not at all. You’re welcome.

  They looked at each other and started to laugh.

  Benjy put his arms around Danny’s legs. And this was the hug that walloped Danny, because the kid’s arms were so small, and he was short enough that Danny couldn’t even really hug him back, he just put his hands on the kid’s head and felt the warm round skull under the thick hair. Howard’s son.

  The graduate students hugged Danny with shaking arms and wet cheeks, sometimes a few at once so it was a hug pileup with Danny in the middle like some kind of hero. A couple of times they almost knocked him down, everyone calling Whoa—oh—oh—oh while they stabilized. And Danny would’ve thought these hugs would be his favorites because they reminded him of scoring in the last seconds of a game, everyone rushing the field. But they actually made him feel shaky, guilty. Like he was getting credit for something he hadn’t done.

  In Phase Three it got quiet. Ann and Nora headed back to the castle with the kids, who were hungry. They waved, then slipped out through the cypress. Everyone else stayed behind, sticking close to the pool like they were waiting. Danny felt it too, a wanting to stay near the experience and the people he’d had it with. Because the closer he was to the time when he’d thought he would die, the more impossibly sweet it felt to be out here breathing in air, feeling sun on his face, all that stuff you never really think about.

  Howard sat on the ground, leaning against the Medusa head spigot where Danny had seen the moving figures back when he was wigging out. His elbows were on his knees, his head on his fists. Something had gone out of Howard. Maybe Howard had gone out of Howard.