After Dachau (15 page)

Terrifyingly, she crashed through the top of the cabinet but came to rest on some surface inside that was just a couple feet below.

“I’m all right,” she said, pulling herself out of the hole she’d dug with her feet. “I’ll go find some planks to cover the hole so you can jump.”

She sat down on the edge of the cabinet then shoved off to reach the floor six feet below. First, she dragged over some crates to build a two-step stairway against the side of the cabinet, then she went hunting for planks. Luckily, things like crates and planks were as plentiful down there as clods of dirt in a cornfield, so it was only a matter of minutes before a substantial platform had been laid across the hole in the cabinet below me, and I was able to make the descent to the next level.

When Mallory insisted on dismantling the platform and stairway before moving on, I asked why.

“Just a habit,” she said.

“Even habits have a point,” I insisted.

“Call it superstition then, like throwing spilled salt over your shoulder.”

I understood Mallory well enough by then to know I wasn’t going to get any more out of her than that.

• • •

This level
, which I had to suppose was at least three stories below street level, was naturally darker than the one above and even more cluttered with incomprehensible structures and rusting machinery. Dusty pipes ran in all directions like massed armies, enormous timbers lay in confused piles like pickup sticks, and rotting tubes and electrical conduit dangled from every surface like vines in a jungle. Mallory was leading us through a maze of tunnels, and it occurred to me that I was now hopelessly lost.

“Where are we?” I asked. “I mean in relation to what’s aboveground.”

“I’d say we’re somewhere under the public library, assuming it’s still where it was in 1952. Or we might be a little west of there.”

After a few more zigs and zags, Mallory headed for what was to me just one more anomalous structure out of hundreds we’d passed, a flat-roofed shed surmounted by the remains of what had once been a pulley arrangement of some sort. The interior of the shed was closed off by a pair of matchboarded leaves sagging away from their strap hinges. When we tugged at them, they didn’t so much come open as come off.

“Watch out,” she warned, “there’s no floor in there.”

Indeed there was no floor but rather a six-foot-square shaft that appeared to go down about forty feet.

“I hope we’re not going to jump this one,” I said.

“No, there’s a ladder attached to the wall over there at the right.”

And so there was. Getting to it, however, would mean stepping across a chasm perhaps two feet wide. A distance of two feet doesn’t sound like much, but the idea of crossing
it over a forty-foot drop gave me a sickening twinge in my stomach.

“Aren’t I clever?” Mallory said cheerily. “I brought some rope so we could lower our backpacks first.”

We shrugged out of them, threaded the rope through the straps, and sent them to the bottom. Then, with my flash lighting the way, Mallory swung across the void and started down the ladder. The ladder, at least, looked solid enough, apparently made of some rustproof alloy.

While she was descending, I considered my situation. I didn’t care for the idea of crossing the gap with a flashlight in one hand. I wanted both hands free for the business of grabbing the ladder, but I certainly wasn’t going to make that grab in the dark. Since we had flashlights to spare, I decided to sacrifice one to illuminate the ladder while I was taking that big step. I dragged over a crate and positioned the flash to bounce light off the facing wall onto the ladder, so I wouldn’t block it with my own body. Two minutes later, Mallory was down, and it was my turn. Ignoring the twinge, I stepped across and grabbed.

The ladder wobbled, or maybe I wobbled, I couldn’t be absolutely sure which it was. The ladder was held away from the wall by a ten-inch brace. I stared at this brace, irresistibly contemplating the fact that the wooden plank it was screwed into was at least two thousand years old.

Well, it was bound to be fastened at lower points as well, where the wall would be stone. I looked back at the platform I’d just left. It was still there, just a step away. I’m afraid nothing but vanity decided the matter. I declined to lose face over a qualm that was probably groundless, so I began my descent.

Just below floor level, I saw there were indeed more braces, these screwed into masonry. The trouble was, I had enough light to see that, as I lowered my right foot to the next rung, the ladder shifted slightly to the left. As I lowered my left foot to the next rung, the ladder shifted slightly to the right. With every step, I was using the weight of my body to pull the ladder away from the wall. I decided to hurry. Keeping my body as close to the ladder as possible, I took three more steps down. One screw gave—I could feel it. A second followed quickly, then they all went in rapid succession like a burst of machine-gun fire as the ladder began to topple backward.

“I’m going to die now,” I remember thinking.

But of course the ladder’s yaw was broken by the other side of the shaft, leaving me dangling by my hands like an apple.

“Help,” I croaked superfluously.

“You’ve got to get on the other side of the ladder,” Mallory shouted up to me.

“I’d like to do that very much,” I would have said if I’d had any breath. As it was, I just squawked, “How?”

“Wait, I’m coming.”

I felt the ladder thrum as she climbed, on the “wrong” side, of course. I began to wonder how long I could actually hang on this way. Minutes seemed to pass, but it was probably just seconds.

Mallory reached between two rungs, grabbed my belt, and said, “Give me your right leg.”

As I lifted it, she grabbed it and wrapped it around the side of the ladder. She switched hands at my belt, then asked for my left leg. When that was in place, she surveyed the situation
and told me to put my left arm through the ladder and grab a rung as far down as I could reach. I did that.

“What we’ve got to do now is get you around the right side of the ladder. Can you scoot over to that side?” I could, but only by a few inches.

“Can you reach your right arm around to my side of the ladder?”

“Yes, but not very far.”

“Get it around as far as the elbow.”

I managed that, and she planted my right hand on a rung in front of her.

“Now we’ve just got to get the rest of you around here.”

“My left leg is the problem.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll unwrap it and help you put it on a rung on your side of the ladder. Can you do that?”

“I guess so.”

When we got that done, she said, “Can you move some more to your right? We’ve got to get your arm around as far as the armpit.”

“Help me move my left leg some more.” I managed to use my left arm, looped over a rung in front of me, to take a little weight off it.

I was now basically hanging off the side of the ladder.

“Now we just have to put your right hand where my right hand is, then you’ll be able to pull yourself around.”

“Where will
you
be?”

“As soon as we get your right hand connected to the side rail, I’ll get out of the way.”

On her way down, she paused to twist my right foot around so it was toed in on the rung. It was an awkward situation
but not nearly as awkward as falling thirty feet in the dark, so I managed to heave myself around. The trouble was, as soon as I did, my legs turned to rubber, and I had to hang there like a scarecrow for ten minutes till they started feeling like legs again and I could begin a wobbly descent.

Mallory used the interval to organize a reception, creating a small dining alcove lit by the larger flashlights, which were designed for area illumination. She sat me down on a crate and handed me a chocolate bar, which I ingested in not much more than a single gulp.

“I’m sorry,” she said matter-of-factly.

“You didn’t know it was going to happen.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I hope there are no more thrills like that one in store for us.”

“No, nothing like that,” she said ambiguously.

I looked up at the scene of my narrow escape and asked how we were going to get back.

“Oh, we’re not going back
that
way.”

“Obviously.”

“I mean that was never the intention.”

“You mean we could have come a different way?”

“Of course. There are hundreds. This is just the one I know.”

“If this is the one you know, then how do we get out?”

“Getting out is entirely different.”

“How so?”

She thought about that and said, “It’s like a parking garage. The trick is finding your car, not getting out. You can’t miss getting out—once you’ve found the car.”

“I see what you’re saying.”

“Right now, you could find your way back without me—just take any opening that heads upward. But without me, you’d never find the place where we’re going.”

“I get it.”

“Are you ready to go on? It’s not far now.”

I said that was good news and dragged myself up.

WE WERE NOW
beyond all reach of light from the surface, and as we continued to thread our way through the maze, the beams of our flashlights turned the region into a dancing maelstrom of shadows.

“This is probably an extremely silly question,” I said, “but are we headed for one specific spot you know about?”

“Of course,” she replied. “Why would you think otherwise?”

“Because you can’t possibly know exactly where you are.”

“What makes you think that?”

“It’s beyond belief that this chaos could be recognizable to you after two thousand years.”

“From my point of view, it’s more like two weeks.” “But it can’t possibly be the same now as it was then.”

Mallory paused in front of a rectangular niche, big enough to hold a couple of refrigerators. I call it a niche, but this implies a function the space may never have had.

“Do you know what was going on here two thousand years ago?”

“You mean right here in this niche? I have no idea, obviously.”

“It was a little flower stall, run by a girl named Shirley.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“You don’t? When Shirley went broke, it was taken over by a guy who had a line of handmade chocolates. Then later there was a guy dealing three-card monte, and after that a couple of rack-fillers used it as a warehouse.”

“Okay, I understand that none of this is true. What’s your point?”

“The point is that two thousand years ago, this niche was as empty as it is today, and for the same reason. It’s absolutely useless for any imaginable purpose. No one uses it, no one wants it, no one changes it. The same is true of everything down here.” She flashed her light on a coil of conduit that lay at our feet, one bit of trash in the midst of thousands. “Why don’t you move that?” she asked.

“Why should I?”

“Exactly—why should you? Why should anyone? No one’s moved it in two thousand years, and no one’s
going
to move it. Come back in a thousand years and it’ll still be right here.”

“I see what you mean,” I said.

A few minutes later we were heading down a long, round-sided tunnel like dozens we’d traversed and hundreds we’d passed. As in many, a bundle of pipes of various sizes ran
down its length, held in place at shoulder height by heavy metal straps. Mallory was interested in this particular bundle, however, and was following it with her flashlight.

About midway down the course of this tunnel, the biggest of the pipes—perhaps thirty inches in diameter—was joined by another the same size coming through the wall beside it. As was usually the case down there, the work done to put this pipe through the curved wall of the tunnel wasn’t elegantly executed. A generous-sized hole had been punched through the masonry, and that was that. No one had troubled to fill the gap above the pipe. Why would they? There was room enough to shove a small suitcase through on its side—except that, as Mallory explained it, we weren’t going to be shoving any suitcases through the gap, we were going to be shoving ourselves through it.

Forestalling the objection I was about to make, she said, “This is the destination, Jason. We’re there. It’s ten feet away.”

I could hardly dig in my heels over ten feet, so I said, “Okay.”

She hesitated for a moment, then added, “This is no joke.”

“I didn’t say it was a joke. I said okay.”

There was just enough light to see her shake her head. “You’re going to think I’m playing with you, but I’m not.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Instead of answering, she hoisted herself up onto the pipe and worked her way into the hole, pushing her backpack in front of her. It was time to get seriously dirty.

I waited till I was sure I wasn’t going to get kicked in the face, then I slipped out of my own backpack, stowed my
flashlight, and followed her example, heading in a direction I identified as vaguely east. There was one spot where my head would go through, provided my cheek was sliding in the dust on top of the pipe. With my arms inside, I had to apply first elbows then hands to the interior wall to propel the rest of me in up to my hips, at which point I seemed to be stuck. My legs, still outside, had nothing to push against, and my hands had nothing to grab onto except the dusty pipe I was lying on. I eventually adopted a sort of caterpillar wriggle, lifting my chest, bringing my stomach forward, and using that to propel me an inch or two at a time. I soon worked a knee through the opening, and it was easy after that. I wondered how Mallory had managed it so effortlessly, sliding through the hole like an eel.