I'm Not Stiller (19 page)

'My compliments on the efficiency of your Swiss organization, Lieutenant,' I said. 'But as far as I'm concerned—'

They didn't let me go on. There was only one idea in their three heads: Stiller must be in fighting trim. I couldn't escape trying on a pair of army boots as well—first-class goods, incidentally. And I didn't only have to try them on; the young lieutenant said: 'You must feel comfortable in them too.'

There was nothing for it.

And then right at the end, they became furious. I had to sign my name, to confirm receipt of a rifle and the new army boots. Everything must be in order. I quite understood that. I allowed the young lieutenant, who was obviously yearning for more important employment to lend me his fountain pen and filled in the form: White, James Larkin, New Mexico, U.S.A.

'White—what do you mean White?'

I returned the fountain pen.

'My name is White,' I said in English.

They looked at one another reproachfully.

'Aren't you Machine-Gunner Stiller?' asked the young lieutenant holding my binding signature in his hand and half shaking his head over the two storekeepers, who were really not to blame. They had simply been sent this man. Who? Why? I tried to elucidate, to explain.

'There is a suspicion,' I said, 'that I am the missing gentleman, but this suspicion—'

Obviously they couldn't arm a man on the strength of a mere suspicion. The lieutenant explained this to them, while I had to take the boots off again, just when they fitted me.

'Why the bloody hell,' swore the storekeepers, 'didn't you tell us that at the beginning?'

In view of their rage, which unfortunately they let out on the helmet and mess tin, I refrained from justifying myself. They simply hadn't given me a chance to speak. Their anger was understandable; for now I wasn't allowed to touch anything, neither the rifle nor the army boots, which latter I should have been glad to keep, and they had to repack the whole kitbag themselves. I merely said, 'Sorry!' But the young lieutenant found it very embarrassing; he felt obliged to chat with me for a while. He had a lively interest in America. He apologized several times; it upset him that a thing of this sort should have happened to an American in Switzerland, and he said good-bye to me with a military salute. To avoid waving, I also put my hand to my cap, and the two prison van attendants, whom the young lieutenant's civility had not escaped, received me as they had never done before, as polite as though there was a prospect of a tip; one of them even held the grey van door with the barred window open for me, while the other gave me a light, and the only thing missing was an inquiry as to where they could drive me.

***

Wilfried Stiller, the brother, is apparently very disappointed because I haven't answered his brotherly letter. I shall do so as soon as I have a moment to spare.

***

Today, Sunday, Knobel comes to see me out of uniform, in a white shirt and a tie, to hear about my fourth murder. I'm not in the mood. But I can't get out of it.

'That was in Texas,' I say. 'While I was still working as a cowboy.'

'You were a cowboy too?'

'Why not?'

'Well I'm damned.'

So I tell him how one summer morning on the prairie, feeling a bit fed up with my everyday life as a cowboy, I rode further than usual, further than necessary. I was lost in thought, so to speak (the nature of my thoughts is of no interest to my listener) and with no special aim. I even broke into a trot. After about five hours, during which time I had scarcely looked back, I came to the red rocks I had been seeing for weeks on the horizon of the plain. I jumped down from my black horse, tied it to a stunted oak and scrambled to a higher level, enticed by the ever-widening view over the endless plane that now lay behind me, over a green and silver-grey ocean of land. It was a hot, humming noontide, I was almost dying of thirst. I looked for a spring, but in vain, for the whole region was made up of limestone, and suddenly, as I was tramping with my boots through the dry and sometimes prickly scrub, I suddenly found myself standing on the edge of an abyss, a crack in the rock, that looked pretty much like the jaws of a shark, but it was vast and as black as night. None of my comrades had ever talked about this cave. It was pure chance that I had discovered the opening, which is only visible from right up close, in the midst of this hilly wilderness. Perhaps there was water here! It was deathly silent, to be sure, but I shall never forget how I took the first few steps, simply to satisfy my curiosity, into the shadowy abyss, cautiously, holding on to the shrub nearest the opening, and peered with neck outstretched into the yawning depths, blinded by the darkness. No one was ordering me to climb down into this cavern; nevertheless, I was very uneasy and I couldn't get my discovery out of my mind. A stone broke loose under my boot and bounced merrily down, echoing further and further away and didn't stop echoing until, cowboy though I was, I turned pale. I really didn't know if I could still hear the stone bouncing, or was I only imagining it? I could scarcely breathe for fright, but I forced myself not to run away. I could hear my heart pounding, otherwise there was a deathly silence. Then I shouted loudly: Hallo? And seized by groundless terror, as though it wasn't my own voice, I clambered up between the prickly bushes, hurriedly, as though in danger of being snapped up by a dragon, chased by the echo, into the sunshine, where I laughed at myself. Or at least I tried to laugh at myself. Because here, in the midday sun, all I could hear was the familiar hum of insects, the rustle of the tall grass in the wind, and I looked out over the Texas plain, that ocean of land which at the time I saw every day. And yet I had the uncanny feeling that I could still hear the bouncing stone.

It was night by the time I got back to the ranch. I excused myself with some impudent lie. But I didn't say a word about the cave, not even to Jim, my best friend, who slept alongside me; he tugged at my hammock to find out where I had really been all day, and I left him green with envy in the belief that somewhere in that almost uninhabited plain (for months on end you met only men, horses and cattle) I had found an easy-going girl. Jim gave me a dig in the ribs, the sign of a hearty delight in my good fortune and an equally hearty jealousy at the same time. But, as I said, I didn't give away my cave.

Our work on the ranch was strenuous, there were only a few of us, and one of those was ill; I had to wait another two weeks for my next day off.

Naturally, I rode off at first light (in a wide arc so that no one should see where I was going) to my cavern, equipped with a lantern in order to be able to penetrate the darkness, ready for anything except the possibility that I might not be able to find my cave. It was already midday by the time I was tramping uphill and downhill, perhaps quite close to the mouth of my cave, perhaps a mile away from it, for the same hills and hollows, the same thistles, cactuses, agaves appeared everywhere and in between them the damned poison oak shrubs. Exhausted and discouraged, without having found the cave, I rode back, more convinced than ever that this cave contained a fabulous treasure, gold perhaps, seized and then lost by Spaniards; hadn't those adventurers Vasquez Coronado and Cabeza de Vaca passed by here? The least I could expect were objects of historic value, but perhaps also Indian jewels, the whole treasure of an extinct tribe. Even when I thought about it rationally all sorts of things seemed possible. Naturally my friend grinned over my extreme weariness when I sank down in my hammock in the evening, and also over my silence. What's her name then? he asked, and I said: Hazel, and turned over on the other side.

Weeks passed like this.

My cavern in the rocks began to turn into a ghost that was impossible to find in reality, although I rode over into the region several more times, each time equipped with a lantern and a lasso, one pocket full of carbide, the other full of provisions, and I had really ceased to believe in my discovery when one evening, dusk was already falling and it was high time to ride back, I saw a cloud of bats. It was as though they were rising up out of the ground. Millions of bats. They were coming from my cave!...It proves not too difficult to climb down into the first cave with the lantern and the lasso, which you can loop round the jagged rocks the way mountaineers do. It is huge. As I was just able to see in the last light of evening, it is as big as the interior of Notre Dame. Apart from bats on the walls, which my lantern lit up only faintly, and apart from pot shards, there was nothing to be found. Probably this upper cave had really once been a shelter for the Indians. Bit by bit, as I walked on in this subterranean cathedral, I lost almost all my fears; true there were cracks here and there in the walls and my lantern lit up small chapels, but of course there was no sign of dragons with glowing eyes and sulphurous breath. I was beginning to feel very pleased with myself for having discovered such a considerable cave, and also
a little disappointed at having got to the bottom of the mystery, when suddenly the light from my lantern—I shall never forget the moment!—was swallowed up by the floor. Breathless with fright at the abyss yawning at my feet, I didn't dare move. Quite simply: there was no longer any floor for my light to fall on. I looked up towards the mouth of the cave, towards the daylight, but meanwhile night had fallen over the earth too; I saw a few stars, a few sparks gleaming dully in the infinite distance, all around the close blackness of the rock, and remembering the bouncing stone whose echo had died away in ever increasing depths, I didn't dare even to walk back the way I had come; every step, it seemed to me, meant a fall to death. Finally, I knelt down, tied the lantern to my lasso in order to lower its dim light and sound the threatening darkness; it dangled in emptiness. In time, however (I was kneeling at the edge of the hole, as I said, hearing only my heart beating), I could make out a cavern, an equally large space not reminiscent of Notre Dame but of dreams, a world that was suddenly so different, not rocks with bats on them, but a fairy-tale cave with hundreds and hundreds of columns of glistening stalagmite. That was my first discovery. For someone who could climb it would not be impossible to clamber down into this fairy tale. But how would I get back up again? But I knew one thing: if I turned back now I should rue and regret it all my life. My anxiety turned into recklessness. With great caution and extreme effort (but without thinking of the way back) and after constantly grazing myself, I finally arrived, after a daring leap, in those miraculous depths where even the stars were no longer visible. Everything depended on the light from my lantern. Excited as I was, I nevertheless acted with a rationality that surprised me; I immediately marked the cliff up which I had to climb back with the soot from my lantern and wrote a large 'one' with this soot, as though I had been taught to do it. Only then did I look around. Enticed by a maze whichever way I shone my light, I tramped along behind my lantern, half blissful as though I had reached the goal of all my desires, and half horrified, as though I were already lost, condemned as the price for my amazement, never to return to earth, never again to see the sun, the stars of which I had just caught a glimpse or even the pale moon, never again to ride over the heath, to smell its plants, never again to see a human being, never again to be heard.

I shouted, Hallo, and then, How are you? There wasn't even a proper echo here. Every ten steps, I made a mark with the soot. Up on the surface, I thought, it must be getting on for morning. Once I checked to see whether I could find the rock that was the start of the climb back (mark number one), whether I could rely on my trail marks. I could rely on them. But I was sweating by the time I found mark number one, and yet it was really very cool, of course. Shivering and by that very fact forced into further activity, but relieved, as though I possessed Ariadne's thread, I explored in the other direction, climbed further down, reckless despite all my precautions (I never forgot to make the soot mark) and scared by every echo of my slipping footsteps, which told me how vast this darkness in the bowels of the earth was, how many holes led on into ever more mysterious zones where no human foot had ever trod, yes, and wasn't my lantern the first light ever to shine on this fairy-tale world, the first light to reveal all these halls with their glistening columns? Behind me, the moment my lantern ceased to shine on it, everything returned to darkness as if it had never existed, and you couldn't see from the darkness whether it was the darkness of rock or the darkness of the void. In deathly silence, the dripping had been going on for thousands of years. Where was I trying to go? Probably I simply wanted to reach a cavern from which it was impossible to proceed any further, where uncertainty ended, where the stones that shifted under my feet did not bounce away into further depths. I didn't get that far. A human skeleton that was suddenly lying there in the light from my lantern so released my fears that I yelled out, at the first moment actually fled, stumbled, smashed a pane of my lantern and made my face bleed. The feeling that I was caught in a trap and would never be able to get out again, like my predecessor here, so that my only alternatives were to starve to death or hang myself with my lasso, paralysed me mentally and physically; I had to sit down, I licked the warm blood that was flowing over my face and had to call upon all my commonsense not to take the skeleton lying in the circle of lamplight for my own. I had somehow forgotten to reckon with time, with my supply of light, and probably that skeleton (so it seems to me today) was my salvation. Whether it was an Indian or a white man who had seen all these caverns before me, I don't know; I suddenly had no time to look for relics that would have answered this question—I reached the mouth of the cave as evening was falling. The sun was dying away behind a cloud of flitting bats and up on the surface it looked as though nothing had happened. My horse was whinnying with thirst. Exhausted as I was, I lay down on the warm earth, smeared with sand and blood, and tried to eat. For fear of starving like my predecessor down below, I hadn't taken a single morsel from my pocket yet. Naturally the rancid mutton (I was sick to death of mutton at that time) tasted like ambrosia. And although there was still a twilight sky, I left my lantern burning, as though if my lantern went out everything would go out, even the moon that was just rising over the violet plain, and the stars over the prairie, yes, even the sun beyond the mountains that was poised over the ocean lighting up China.