I'm Not Stiller (20 page)

Back at the ranch they swore.

It was difficult to tell Jim what I had seen, impossible with my rudimentary knowledge of geology. I explained to him: they are limestone rocks, strong enough to span amazing distances. Jim didn't trust my estimates, and yet later examination of these caves (tourists now get to them by bus from Carlsbad, New Mexico) produced quite different measurements: the great hall is six hundred feet across; three hundred and fifty feet high, it lies seven hundred feet below the surface and is far from being the lowest cavern. At some point in time the underground river that hollowed out this mountain range dried up; why, I don't know. It must have been a mighty river, several times larger than the Rio Grande that flows peacefully through the nearby valleys. Whether it vanished into ever greater depths as a result of hollowing out the rock, or whether the climate changed and no longer fed it, I don't know; in any case, the underground river dried up and the caverns it had washed out in the course of hundreds of thousands of years were left empty. Rock falls enlarged the caverns, falls that went on until a particular stratum proved capable of bearing the load above it; the debris from these rock falls is no longer to be seen, the points of fracture have been covered over by stalactites. The little rainwater that filtered
in from the green surface through small cracks and fissures dripped into the empty caves and evaporated and set the second phase in motion: as the water evaporated, the ex-crescences on the rock walls, including the limestone itself, came away to form stalactites hanging from the roof and stalagmites rising from the floor, formations which are so large that geologists estimate they took fifty to sixty million years to come into being. Eons, we call that, time spans which man, though he can calculate them, cannot comprehend with his time sense, cannot even picture with his imagination. It isn't easy to describe the things that have formed in those caverns and are still forming, drop by drop, but oceans of water have dripped and a human liftetime is just enough to measure this stone growth millimetre by millimetre. In any case, Jim didn't believe me, and yet to begin with I only told him about the upper cave. The deeper you go the more wonderful and improbable, the richer become these formations that hang from the roof like alabaster veils, whitish, yellowish, glistening in the light of our lanterns, but not only veils, whole cathedrals hang down, Gothic stood, on its head, then again cataracts of ivory, mute and rigid, as though time had suddenly stopped. Then again you see sharks' teeth, chandeliers, bears, elsewhere there's a hall filled with flags, a museum of timeless history, all with fabric folds like those on Greek statues, and interspersed among them the tails of Nordic dragons. All the shapes the human soul ever dreamed up are repeated here in stone and preserved, it seems, for eternity. And the deeper you descend the more luxuriant the shapes that rise from the floors of the caves, like coral; you tramp through forests of snow-covered firs, then again you see a pagoda, a goblin or an extinct fountain from Versailles, according to the angle at which you look at it, a strange Arcadia of the dead, a Hades such as Orpheus entered; there is no lack of stone ladies who, it seems, are slowly being swallowed up by their pleated veils, by veils of amber, never to be freed again by any human love, and in a greenish pool something like waterlilies are blossoming, but they too are stone of course, everything is stone. Again and again there are dark fissures that a lantern cannot light up; you drop a stone into them and shiver with horror long after its bouncing has stopped, knowing there is no end to the labyrinth, even if you could cross the abyss. And yet you are drawn on and on. Ducking under the bundle of spears you enter the room of a queen who never lived; her throne is dripping with marble tassels and above it are a cloud of glimmering canopies. You can see everything here: there are monuments to the phallus, towering hugely, row upon row, and between them you walk on something like cauliflowers and grasp slender necks that might belong to a bird or a bottle; plants and animals and human dreams, everything is gathered together here as in a subterranean arsenal of metaphors. The last cavern I came to is different again: filigree, a sarcophagus decorated with porcelain lilies, and here you couldn't even guess at the presence of rock, let alone see it; nothing but stalactites and stalagmites, smooth and glassy, not in the form of ornament, not even as ornament more intricate than anything Arabian; it has all grown together, from above and below, the hanging and the rising embrace each other, a jungle of marble that is devouring itself, soundless and breathless as the cosmos and yet not timeless. Even this work of the eons, you can see, has to fulfil itself and become extinct; there is transience even here.

The next time I went with Jim.

Now that there were two of us, so that we could back each other up, and better equipped than before (two lanterns, fuel for a hundred and twenty hours, provisions for almost a week, mutton in particular but also apples and liquor, as well as two lassoes, a piece of chalk to make white marks with and a watch, which is important), we ventured far beyond the skeleton of my predecessor and reached the so-called Dome Room, where the accident happened. This was in the sixty-seventh hour of our joint adventure, that's to say on the third day, if we had experienced days as up on earth, not seconds and eons, and it wasn't far from the place where nowadays tourists are given lunch before going up in the lift back to the sunlight. Jim had slipped and landed a few yards lower down, he was groaning and immediately accused me of not making him fast with the lasso, which is rubbish; because I was walking in front, in no less danger than my friend and it was entirely his business to make fast the lasso. Our nerves were on edge, hence the cursing. Of course we immediately made up. It seemed Jim had probably broken
his left ankle. What now? I consoled him, gave him some liquor and silently wondered what to do. I could only carry my friend as far as I could go without having to climb, that is to say not upwards, not up to the surface. I also took a drink and said: Just play it cool, Jim, we'll get you up to the top somehow. We examined his ankle and treated it too with alcohol; perhaps it wasn't broken but only sprained. Despite his pain and my commonsense, Jim insisted on immediately putting on his boot again. Was he seriously afraid I should suddenly leave him in the lurch? We had both hardly slept up to now; the rest and the liquor made us feel it. My plan was pure commonsense: to put out the lanterns in order to save fuel, and sleep for a few hours, then set off with fresh strength on the return journey, which would be painful for Jim, to be sure, and exhausting for me. We had food left for three days, the light would be more of a problem. Our second argument began when Jim refused to put out his lantern. Every hour's fuel might cost us dear! I said: If you're not sensible now we're done for. Jim said: You want to fill me with liquor and then make off, while I'm alseep, that's what you call sensible. I laughed, because I didn't deserve this distrust, not yet. After a few hours, since neither of us was sleeping, but only shivering, I said: Okay, let's go! With his arm round my neck, doggedly and determined to stick out the pain, he hobbled along, but without giving up his load, his lantern, his knapsack, his lasso. We got along better than I had expected; where we couldn't walk side by side Jim followed on all fours; later, because of his constant fear that I might go off and leave him, I let him crawl along ahead of me. The chalk marks proved pretty successful; occasionally we had to admit that we had gone astray and retrace our steps, getting even more lost in the process, so that we drew a sigh of relief when a few hours later we had at least got back to the last mark we had seen; and we also had to admit silently that hobbling and crawling were a long way from climbing. But (as we know today) we were seven hundred feet below the surface! I confess I was afraid of the moment when it became clear that I couldn't pull my friend up the rock face, which in places was almost vertical. What then? We had light left for about fifty hours, if Jim wasn't lying to me: he had the watch. I said: Show me! Jim grinned and showed
me the watch face only at a distance: There you are! I wondered if he had perhaps turned the hands back. What good could it do him? A lie won't make light. I felt sorry for him, of course, with his painful ankle; but this was less and less the point. The point was time. Did I know how many hours'it would take me to get to the surface on my own? Since the accident we had eaten nothing. The place where the remains of our friendship were wiped out is called today the Rock of Ages. Jim suddenly began to wail: I'll never get out. I said: Nonsense, nonsense. After two unsuccessful attempts to hoist Jim up on the lasso—he was terrified I would simply climb up ahead and then untie the rope, a perhaps understandable fear—we were not only both exhausted but both injured. I had gashed my forehead. I don't know whether Jim had suddenly tugged the rope for fear I should untie it or whether he had slipped on the glassy stalagmite, especially as he could only stand on one leg; anyhow, the jerk had been enough to pull me down. He denied having done it on purpose. Worse than the gash, the blood from which ran into my left eye, were my torn hands. I was in utter despair. Jim said: Nonsense, nonsense. His confidence only made me distrustful, as wide-awake as an animal waiting to pounce despite my exhaustion, as Jim bandaged my hands, even sacrificing his own shirt-sleeve. He was touching, but what use was that? One of us, in fact Was always very touching, at one moment Jim, at another me. It was like a seesaw. Meanwhile time was passing. When I once again broke the terrible silence to ask: What time is it now? Jim refused to show me the watch, which I took as a sign that we were now openly at war; aid or no aid. Jim said: Why do you keep watching me like that? I said the same thing to him. Once, when I had stopped watching him for a while, he began secretly to eat the last of his mutton. What we have in our stomachs, he probably thought, the other can't snatch from us, and in fact the moment was gradually approaching when the mutton in our pockets would be just enough for one of us, the stronger. A broken ankle, sure, and two torn hands, so what? Pain, but in the last resort you can climb even with pain, or at least try to reach daylight, to reach life, while you still have your strength. But that's just the point: you must try while you do still have your strength and while you still have fuel,
at least enough for one lantern. Jim asked: What's on your mind? I asked: What are we waiting for? For my part, in spite of my hunger, I was saving my mutton, a tactic that would enable me to wait for him to be exhausted by hunger and then be the stronger, whereas at the moment Jim, with the mutton in his stomach, probably had more strength; a tactic which, on the other hand, forced me to stay awake at all costs, otherwise I should be robbed and done for. So, for I don't know how many hours, we held each other in check, chatting about our plans up there on the green earth; Jim was drawn to the city, especially New York, and the women he had missed for so long on our ranch, and I (during those hours) was attracted by the life of a gardener, if possible in a fertile region. What on earth were we doing in this godforsaken darkness? Our two lanterns were still alight. Jim was right: it's a waste, an idiotic waste. Why didn't he put his out? Because he distrusted me, because, although he kept on talking about our friendship, he considered it altogether possible that I might abandon him, my only friend at the time, to the deadly darkness. I enquired about the state of his pain, his hunger, his thirst. Jim, he said to me—you see, at that time I was also called Jim, a very common name in America—Jim, he said to me, we mustn't leave each other in the lurch, you know, we must be sensible. I said: Then put out your lantern. He said: We haven't time, Jim, we must get moving, we must give it a try. After five hours, at a guess, we had reached the next cave, but in a state of exhaustion, so that we had to lie down. I put the knapsack containing my last piece of mutton under my cheek with the strap round my right hand, so that I should wake if Jim tried to steal my mutton. When I woke I found he had smashed my lantern in order, as he said, to put an end to this idiotic waste. At the same time he asked me for half my remaining mutton. He wailed: You can't let me die of hunger! Ahead of us, lit up by our single lantern, gleamed the almost vertical rock wall, the difficult bit which, however, I had once overcome all on my own. Jim was already exhausted from crawling and I told him openly what I thought: Jim, give me the lantern, I'll leave you the last few mouthfuls of my mutton and try to climb this wall on my own. Because it was ridiculous to dangle on the rope with another exhausted person, I with my torn
hands, he with a broken ankle, at a point where you had to climb like a monkey. I said: If I succeed then you're saved too, then we'll come and fetch you, that goes without saying. He said: And suppose you fall, Jim, along with my lantern? And suppose you slip, Jim, with your broken ankle, and drag me down like you did before, good God, what will you gain if we're both lying down there below? He refused to give me the lantern. Jim, he said, you can't leave me alone in this darkness, you can't do that? As always when one person has the courage to reveal frank selfishness, the other came along with his damned morality. I know, I did exactly the same thing. Jim, I said you can't expect me to starve along with you, Jim, just because you've broken your ankle and can't climb, you can't ask that of me, Jim, if you're my friend. Once more, for the last time, we became sentimental, reminding one another of our time together on the ranch, of all kinds of nice things, and in fact there was no doubt about our friendship, yes, during those cowboy months without women we had indulged in acts of tenderness such as do occur quite frequently among men but which had been unknown to Jim and me until then. Now too, while he held firmly on to the lantern in such a way that I couldn't get hold of it, his other hand, the left, stroked the hair out of my bloody gash and we were pretty close to putting our arms round each other and sobbing; if it hadn't been for the lantern. I calculated that our light would last for six or seven hours; in my experience the climb to the upper cave, where the distant daylight might be of some help, took seven to eight hours, barring errors. A decision had to be made, right now, in front of this rock wall. What was the use of talking? We both wanted to live, if possible with decency; but suppose the other fellow was trying to kill me with my decency? I said once more: Give me the lantern, Jim, and I'll give you the last of the meat. Jim laughed as I had never heard him laugh before, so that his laughter scared me. Jim, I asked him fearfully, what are you planning to do? Without a word, because it was quite clear, he answered with action. He hobbled over to the rock wall as fast as his broken ankle would allow him, obviously determined to reverse the roles, to hang onto the only lantern and try if he couldn't climb the dangerous face, leaving me the last of the mutton in exchange. Jim, I said and grabbed him just before he reached the wall, that cataract of green stalactite, where he was looking for handholds, having already found the chalk cross, our sign for the place to climb. He said: Let go of me! I drivelled with fear: If you were ever my friend and so forth. At the moment when, by the light of the swaying lantern, which Jim was holding at arm's length to the other side, so that I couldn't grab it, we saw the familiar skeleton of our predecessor, that skeleton of a man sitting hunched over, who had died at this spot all alone (or had there been two of them as well?), who had in any case perished like a dog, at that moment, since there was nothing left to restrain the silent horror that had been held back for hours, there was of course only one thing left, the thing we didn't want: a fist fight; a murderous struggle between friends, terrible, but brief, because whoever slipped first was done for, would hurtle into the darkness, be smashed to pieces, silenced.