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chapter two
Ned
The fascinating part, the challenging part, what is for me the esthetically rewarding part, is that two of us must perish if the other two are to be exempted from mortality. Such are the terms offered by the Keepers of the Skulls, always assuming, first, that Eli’s translation of the manuscript is accurate, and, second, that there’s any substance to what he’s told us. I think the translation must be correct — he’s terribly precise in philological matters — but one must always allow for the possibility of a hoax, perhaps engineered by Eli himself. Or that it is all nonsense. Is Eli playing some baroque game with us? He’s capable of anything, of course, a wily Hebrew, full of tricky ghetto lore, concocting an elaborate fiction so that he might inveigle three hapless goyim to their dooms, a ritual bloodbath in the desert. Do the ski
chapter three
Timothy
Eli takes all this much more seriously than the rest of as. I suppose that’s fair; he was the one who found out about it and organized the whole operation. And anyway he’s got the half-mystic quality, that smouldering Eastern European wildness, that permits a man to get worked up really big over something that in the last analysis you know is imaginary. I suppose it’s a Jewish trait, tied in with the kabbala and whatnot. At least I think of it as a Jewish trait, along with high intelligence, physical cowardice, and a love of making money, but what the crap do I know about Jews, anyway? Look at us in this car. Oliver’s got the highest intelligence, no doubt about that. Ned’s the physical coward; you just look at him and he cringes. I’m the one with the money, although Christ knows I had nothing to do with the making of it. There are your so-called Jewish traits. And the mysticism? Is Eli a mystic? Maybe he just doesn’t want to die. Is there anything so mystic about that?
No, not about that. But when it comes to believing that there’s this cult of exiled Babylonian or Egyptian or whatever immortals living in the desert, believing that if you go to them and say the right words they’ll confer the privilege of immortality on you — oh, lordy! Who could buy that? Eli can. Oliver too, maybe. Ned? No, not Ned. Ned doesn’t believe in anything, not even himself. And not me. You bet your ass, not me.
Why am I going, then?
Like I told Eli: it’s warmer in Arizona this time of year. And I like to travel. Also I think it might be an amusing experience, watching all this unfold, watching my roommates scrabbling around looking for their destiny on the mesas. Why go to college at all if not to have interesting experiences and increase your knowledge of human nature, along with having a good time? I didn’t go there to learn astronomy and geology. But to watch other human beings making pricks of themselves — now, there’s education, there’s entertainment! As my father said when he sent me off as a freshman, after reminding me that I represented the eighth generation of male Winchesters to attend our grand old school, “Never forget one thing, Timothy: the proper study of mankind is man. Socrates said that three thousand years ago, and it’s never lost its eternal truth.” As a matter of fact it was Pope who said it in the eighteenth century, as I discovered in sophomore English, but let that pass. You learn by watching others, especially if you’ve forfeited your own chance to build character through adversity by having picked your great-great-great-grandparents a little too well. The old man should see me now, driving around with a queer, a Jew, and a farm boy. I suppose he’d approve, so long as I remember I’m better than they are.
Ned was the first one Eli told. I saw them huddling and whispering a lot. Ned was laughing. “Don’t put me on, man,” he kept saying, and Eli got red in the face. Ned and Eli are very close, I suppose because they’re both scrawny and weak and belong to oppressed minorities. It’s been clear from the begi