“Don’t know that there’s anything to see, though. It’s just a rock, I’d imagine.”
“Of course.”
“You enjoy your renovations, Mr. Loesch.” I detected a bit of irony in his mode of address, and it was true, he was some years my senior, and by rights ought to be calling me Eric. I briefly considered telling him to do so in the future. But I had wasted enough time already, and I did not wish to further erode the wall of privacy I had erected between us. I thanked him curtly, and wheeled away, my muscles aching.
It was a bright, breezy day, and a wind carried with it a balm, a round moistness with a hint of warmth. It was perhaps this warmth that had caused an odor to begin drifting through the rooms of the house. I suppose I had noticed the odor before — a flat, dank mustiness — but it was only now that it had grown intense enough to demand my immediate attention. To this end, I had included among my purchases from the hardware store a bag of quicklime, a bottle of antifungal spray, a respirator with several sets of filters, and a package of extra-heavy-duty plastic garbage bags. I would find whatever it was that had grown moldy, and I would throw it away.
In the back of my mind, however, and creeping ever closer to the fore, was the understanding that I would have to work in the cellar, under the disheartening glare of a single ancient bare incandescent bulb. This inevitability was causing me distress, and the distress grew more powerful with every passing moment. I unloaded my car, removed the respirator from its package, screwed in the filters, and adjusted the straps, taking as long as I possibly could, and all the while feeling my heart beat faster and harder, and my head fill up with toxic fog.
Allow me to state that I am not a coward. Indeed, I am a man of some considerable courage. This is not a boast, merely a statement of fact. I have faced great dangers in my life, have stared death in the face and not backed down. But those dangers were clear and well defined, and my superior skill in the areas of planning and prevention were able to protect me against harm. My impending journey into the cellar, meanwhile, was something different. There was no reason for me to fear it — indeed, I had been living and working above it for some time now, and had neither heard nor seen anything that would indicate danger. But reason did not come into it. My fear of the cellar was irrational, and there was nothing I could do that would erase it. I would have to carry it with me, bear it upon my shoulders as I worked, endure it until my work was through.
The time had come to act. But I dawdled for at least an hour more, making a pot of coffee, drinking a cup of it, checking the glazing on the windows, examining the winter-bare landscaping plants around the house, for buds. Eventually, though, I grew annoyed with myself. Where was my discipline, my self-control? A strong man, I told myself, did not hesitate in the face of his fears; rather, he took note of them, dismissed them, and got on with the task at hand. Disgusted by my weakness, I went back inside, put on my respirator, took up my supplies, and trudged down the rickety steps.
The steps were painted red, which paint had worn away in the middle of each from decades of tread. They creaked and bowed under my weight. My hands were full, and anyway there was no handrail, and I took each step with great care, making sure each foot was firmly planted before transferring my weight to it. In this way I descended gradually, until at last I stood on the bare packed-dirt floor.
The smell here was stronger, of course; I could detect it in spite of the respirator. My breaths inside the device were hot and damp; I had to draw them more deeply to pull the air through the filters. The cold crept up underneath the cuffs of my pants, and the furnace, a monolithic, mound-like protuberance in the ground, snaked its black tentacles all across the room. It appeared to me like a giant mushroom, some massive death cap, and as I stood regarding its great dark enormity it emitted a thunderous clank, and a hacking whoosh, like a sudden gust of wind. I could see the blue glow of the gas flame etched around the edges of the door, and I felt something turn over in my chest. Perspiration began to leak out of my pores, under my arms and in my crotch, and inside my boots my feet began to itch. I realized, belatedly, that I ought to have urinated before I came down here. But that would have to wait. I gritted my teeth and, supplies in hand, moved forward into the darkness.
The basement was laid out in a large square the size of the house, and had not been subdivided in any way. Enormously thick wooden beams supported the floor joists above, with the furnace in the center. The stairs had led me down to the south wall, and the light bulb was southwest of the furnace, illuminating the new circuit breaker box that Heph had installed. Foolishly, I had neglected to bring down a flashlight — but with my eyes adjusted, I could make out the north and east walls behind the furnace, and knew I would be able to see well enough to clear out the moldy trash.
My heart thudding, I took a few tentative steps north. I felt my entire body tighten, the skin squeezing the bones, as if it were trying to shrink me to nothing. My jaw, tightly clenched all this time, began to spasm, and I struggled to keep my teeth from knocking together. But I continued, taking one step and then another, my hands cold and trembling, my head pounding, my face swollen and irritated from the nylon straps of the respirator.
And then a familiar emotion took hold of me and my trembling subsided. Heat coursed through me. I gripped the lime bag and spray bottle tighter, crushing them in my grip, and vulgarities began to pour from my mouth.
It is a well-known truth that fear gives way to anger — we have seen it, for instance, in those diagnosed with a dangerous illness, or among citizens of an occupied state during a time of war. But in my case, the transformation was immediate. My irrational fear melted in the face of an equally irrational rage. I cursed the slovenly, careless people who had left things in my basement capable of growing mold; I cursed poor Heph for forcing me halfway down the stairs. I denounced the forest and its cruel rejection of me, its master, and I spat and seethed at the thought of my sister, the devious whore, for interfering in my life after ignoring me for so long. In short, the world was my enemy: it had driven me here, to this sanctuary, and, not having had enough, it had forced me into its bowels to clear away the miserable reek of its past. And so, fueled by hate, I made my way across the near-lightless space to the far northeast corner, where a jagged lump reshaped itself into a pile of cardboard boxes, each slumped, eaten away by fungus, and spilling books through its ruptured sides.
I gathered up as many of the books as I could carry, and then, my teeth tearing the insides of my cheeks, the taste of blood on my tongue, I roared up the stairs and out the back door, to fling their infernal rot into the brutal spring sun. I made many trips — a dozen, I’d say — growing angrier with each return, until at last I howled at the limp stinking cardboard that remained, bellowed as I scooped it up and hugged it to my chest and hauled it out into the light.
By the time I had opened the box of lime and begun dumping it on the floor, my anger had weakened, and with that task completed, my fear returned. I had time for a few spritzes of the antifungal spray before, wracked by terror, exhaustion, and spent emotion, I dragged myself at last up the creaking stairs to the bathroom. There, I tore off my mask and my clothes, spreading dust and scraps of clotted, putrid paper all over the floor, and stepped into a scalding hot bath, where I cleaned my wounds. I had gouged the back of one hand and an ankle during one of my desperate tears up and down the stairs; my face and scalp burned with scratches from who knew where, and my muscles ached from the tension at last released. From the bath I tumbled into bed, shivering beneath the blankets, and I slept until late afternoon. Then, at last, I dressed in clean clothes, tidied up the bathroom, and went out into the yard to transfer the ruined books to the trash pile.