So I blew it. Yes, I stripped, and yes, we scampered to the bed, and yes, I couldn’t get it up, and yes, Margo helped me, and at last libido triumphed over mortification and I became properly stiff and throbbing, and then, wild bull of the pampas, I flung myself at her, clawing, grappling, frightening her with my ferocity, practically raping her, only to have the wick soften at the critical instant of insertion, and then — oh, yes, blunder upon blunder, gauch-erie upon gaucherie, Margo alternately terrified and amused and solicitous, until at last came consummation, followed almost Instantly by eruption, followed by chasms of self-contempt and craters of revulsion. I couldn’t bear to look at her. I rolled free, hid in the pillows, reviled myself, reviled Timothy, reviled D. H. Lawrence. “Can I help you?” Margo asked, stroking my sweaty back. “Please go,” I said. “Please. And don’t say anything to anyone.” But of course she did. They all knew. My clumsiness, my absurd incompetence, my seven varieties of ambiguity culminating eventually in seven species of impotence. Eli the schmeggege, blowing his big chance with the grooviest wench he’ll ever touch. Another in his long series of lovingly crafted fiascos. And we might have had another here, slogging through cactusville to ultimate disappointment, and the three of them might well have said, at the end of our trek, “Well, what else should we have expected from Eli?” But the skullhouse was there.

The pathway wound up a gentle grade, taking us through ever more dense thickets of cholla and mesquite, until, abruptly, we came to a broad sandy clearing. From left to right stretched a series of black basalt skulls, similar to the one we had seen farther back but much smaller, about the size of basketballs, set in the sand at intervals of perhaps twenty inches. On the far side of the row of skulls, some fifty yards beyond, we saw the House of Skulls crouching like a sphinx in the desert: a fairly large one-story building, flattopped, with coarse yellow-brown stucco walls. Seven columns of white stone decorated its windowless facade. The effect was one of stark simplicity, broken only by the frieze running along the pediment: skulls in low relief, presenting their left profiles. Sunken cheeks, hollow nostrils, huge round eyes. The mouths gaped wide in grisly grins. The large sharp teeth, carefully delineated, seemed poised for a fierce snap. And the tongues — ah, a truly sinister touch, skulls with tongues! — the tongues were twisted into elegant, horrid sideways S-curves, the tips protruding just past the teeth, flickering like the forked tongues of serpents. There were dozens of these reduplicated skulls, obsessively identical, frozen in weird suspension, one after another after another marching out of sight around the corners of the building; they had the nightmarish quality I detect in most pre-Columbian Mexican art. They would have been more appropriate, I felt, along the rim of some altar on which living hearts were cut with obsidian knives from quivering breasts.

The building appeared to be U-shaped, with two long subordinate wings sprouting behind the main section. I saw no doors. Perhaps fifteen yards in front of the facade, though, the entrance to a stone-lined vault could be seen at the center of the clearing: it yawned, dark and mysterious, like the gateway to the underworld. Immediately I realized that this must be a passage leading into the House of Skulls. I walked toward it and peered in. Darkness within. Do we dare enter? Should we not wait for someone to emerge and summon us? But no one emerged; and the heat was brutal. I felt the skin over my nose and cheeks already stiffening and swelling, going red and glossy from sunburn, winter’s paleness exposed to this desert sun for half a day. We stared at each other. The Ninth Mystery was hot in my mind and probably in theirs. We may go in, but we shall not all come forth. Who to live, who to die? I found myself unwillingly contemplating candidates for destruction, weighing my friends in the balance, quickly surrendering Timothy and Oliver to death and then pulling back, reconsidering that too ready judgment, substituting Ned for Oliver, Oliver for Timothy, Timothy for Ned, myself for Timothy, Ned for myself, Oliver for Ned, around and around, inconclusively, indecisively. My faith in the truth of the Book of Skulls had never been stronger. My sense of standing at the brink of infinity had never been greater or more terrifying. “Let’s go,” I said hoarsely, my voice splitting, and took a few uneasy steps forward. A stone staircase led steeply down into the vault. Five, six, seven feet underground, and I found myself in a dark tunnel, wide but low-roofed, at best five feet high. The air was cool. By dim strands of light I caught glimpses of embellishment on the walls: skulls, skulls, skulls. Not a shred of Christian imagery visible anywhere so far at this so-called monastery, but the symbolism of death was ubiquitous. From above Ned called: “What do you see?” I described the tunnel and told them to follow me. Down they came, shuffling, uncertain: Ned, Timothy, Oliver. Crouching, I went forward. The air grew much cooler. We could no longer see anything, other than the dim pufplish glow at the entrance-way. I tried to keep count of my paces. Ten, twelve, fifteen. Surely we should be under the building now. Abruptly there was a polished stone barrier in front of me, a single slab, completely filling the tunnel. I realized only at the last moment that it was there, catching an icy glint in the faint light, and halted before I crashed into it. A dead end? Yes, of course, and in another moment we would hear the clang behind us as a twenty-ton stone slab was lowered into place over the mouth of the tunnel, and then we would be trapped, left here to starve or asphyxiate, while peals of monstrous laughter rang in our ears. But nothing so melodramatic occurred. Tentatively I pressed my palm against the cold stone slab that blocked our way, and — the effect was pure Disneyland, wonderful hokum — the slab yielded, swinging smoothly away from me. It was perfectly counterbalanced; the lightest touch was enough to open it. Exactly right, I felt, that we should enter into the House of Skulls in this operatic manner. I expected melancholy trombones and basset horns and a chorus of basses intoning the Requiem in reverse: Pietatis fons, me salva, gratis salvas salvandos qui, majestatis tremendae rex. An opening above. Knees bent, we crept toward it. Stairs, again. Up. Emerging, one by one, into a huge square room whose walls were of some gritty pale sandstone. There was no roof, only a dozen or so black, thick beams spaced at intervals of three or four feet, admitting the sunlight and the choking heat. The floor of the chamber was of purple-green slate, somewhat oily and glossy of texture. In the middle of the room was a tub-sized fountain of green jade, with a human figure about three feet high rising from it; the figure’s head was a skull, and a steady trickle of water dribbled from its jaws, splashing into the basin below. In the four corners of the room stood tall stone statuettes, Mayan or Aztec in style, depicting men with curved, angular noses, thin cruel lips, and immense ear-ornaments. There was a doorway at the side of the room opposite the exit from the subterranean vault, and a man stood framed in it, so motionless that I thought at first he was a statue, too. When all four of us were in the room, he said, in a deep, resonant voice, “Good afternoon. I am Frater Antony.”

He was a short, stocky man, no more than five feet five, who wore only a pair of faded blue denims cut to midthigh. His skin was deeply tanned, almost to a mahogany color, and appeared to have the texture of very fine leather. His broad, high-domed skull was utterly bald, lacking even a fringe of hair behind the ears. His neck was short and thick, his shoulders wide and powerful, his chest deep, his arms and legs heavily muscled; he gave an impression of overwhelming strength and vitality. His general appearance and his vibrations of competence and power reminded me in an extraordinary way of Picasso: a small, solid, timeless man, capable of enduring anything. I had no idea how old he might be. Not young, certainly, but far from decrepit. Fifty? Sixty? A well-preserved seventy? His agelessness was the most disconcerting thing about him. He seemed untouched by time, wholly uncorroded: this, I thought, is what an immortal ought to look like.