10. Oliver

Eli saved the nasty part for last, after we were hooked on the idea of going. Leafing through the papers of his translation, frowning, nodding, pretending to have trouble finding the passage he wanted, though you bet he knew all the time where it was. And then reading to us:

“The Ninth Mystery is this: that the price of a life must always be a life. Know, O Nobly-Born, that eternities must be balanced by extinctions, and therefore we ask of thee that the ordained balance be gladly sustained. Two of thee we undertake to admit to our fold. Two must go into darkness. As by living we daily die, so then by dying we shall forever live. Is there one among thee who will relinquish eternity for his brothers of the four-sided figure, so that they may come to comprehend the meaning of self-denial? And is there one among thee whom his comrades are prepared to sacrifice, so that they may come to comprehend the meaning of exclusion? Let the victims choose themselves. Let them define the quality of their lives by the quality of their departures.”

Cloudy stuff. We poked and prodded at it for hours, Ned exercising all his Jesuitical muscles on it, and even so we could only pull one meaning from it, an ugly one, the obvious one. There had to be a volunteer for suicide. And two of the remaining three had to murder the third. Those are the terms of the deal. Are they for real? Maybe it’s all metaphorical. Meant to be interpreted in a symbolic way. Instead of actual deaths, say, one of the four simply has to volunteer to give up taking part in the ritual and goes away still mortal. Then two of the others have to gang up on the third and force him to leave the shrine. Could that be it? Eli believes literal deaths are involved. Of course, Eli is very literal-minded about this mysticism; he takes the irrational things of life extremely seriously and doesn’t seem to care much about the rational things at all. Ned, who doesn’t take anything seriously, agrees with Eli. I don’t think Ned has much faith in the Book of Skulls, but his position is that if any of it is true, then the Ninth Mystery must be interpreted as demanding two deaths. Timothy also doesn’t take anything seriously, though his way of laughing at the world is altogether different from Ned’s: Ned’s a conscious cynic, Timothy just doesn’t give a damn. It’s a deliberately demonic pose for Ned and a matter of having too much family money for Timothy. So Timothy doesn’t fret much about the Ninth Mystery; to him it’s bullshit, like all the rest of the Book of Skulls.

What about Oliver?

Oliver doesn’t know. I have faith in the Book of Skulls, yes, because I have faith in it, and so I suppose I accept the literal interpretation of the Ninth Mystery, too. But I’ve gone into this in order to live, not to die, and so I haven’t really thought much about the chances of my drawing the short straw. Assuming the Ninth Mystery is what we think it is, who, then, will the victims be? Ned has already let it be known that he doesn’t care much whether he lives or dies; one night in February when he was stoned he delivered a two-hour speech on the esthetics of suicide. Red in the face, sweating and puffing, waving his arms, Lenin on a soapbox; we tuned in now and then and got his drift. Okay, we apply the usual Ned discount and conclude that his death talk is nine-tenths a romantic gesture; that will still leave him the outstanding candidate for voluntary exit. And the murder victim? Eli, of course. It couldn’t be me; I’d fight too hard, I’d take at least one of the bastards with me, and they all know it. And Timothy, he’s built like a mountain, you couldn’t kill him with hammers. Whereas Timothy and I could polish off Eli in two minutes or less.

Christ, how I hate this kind of speculation!

I don’t want to kill anybody. I don’t want anyone to die. I only want to go on living, myself, as long as I possibly can.

But if those are the terms? If the price of a life is a life?

Christ. Christ. Christ.