House of Leaves (52 page)

* * * *

Funny how out of this impressive array of modem day theorists, scientists, writers, and others, it is Karen’s therapist who asks, or rather forces, the most significant question. Thanks to her, Karen goes on to fashion another short piece in which she, surprisingly enough, never mentions the house, let alone any of the comments made by the gliterati.

It is an extraordinary twist. Not once are those multiplying hallways ever addressed. Not once does Karen dwell on their darkness and cold. She produces
six
minutes of film that has absolutely nothing to do with that place. Instead her eye (and heart) turn to what matters most to her about Ash Tree Lane; what in her own words (wearing the same russet sweater; sitting on the same Central Park bench; coughing less) “that wicked place stole from me.”

So in the first black frame, what greets us is not sinister but blue: the strains of Charlie “Yardbird” Parker coaxing out of the darkness the precocious face of a seventeen year old Will Navidson.

Piece after piece of old Kodak film, jerky, over exposed, under exposed, usually grainy, yellow or overly red, coalesce to form a rare glimpse of Navidson’s childhood—nicht
alizu
glatt
und gekunstelt.
[332—“Not overly polished or artificial.” — Ed.]
His father—drinking ice tea. His mother—a black and white headshot on the mantle. Tom—watering the lawn. Their golden itriever, the archetype for all home movie dogs, frolicking in the sprinklers, pouncing on the pale green hose as if it were a python, barking at Tom, then at their father, even though as its jaws snap open and shut it is impossible to hear a bark—only Charlie Parker playing to the limits of his art, lost in rare delight.

As professor Erik Von Jamlow poignantly remarked:

I don’t think I’m alone in feeling the immutable sadness contained in these fragments. Perhaps that is the price of remembering, the price of perceiving accurately. At least with such sorrow must come knowledge. [333—See Erik Von Jarniow’s
Summer’s Salt
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p.
593.]

Karen progresses steadily from Navidson’s sundrenched backyard to a high school prom, his grandmother’s funeral, Tom covering his eyes in front of a barbecue, Navidson diving headfirst into a swimming hole. Then college graduation, Will hugging Tom good-bye as he prepares to leave for Viemam,[334—According to Melanie Proft Knightley in
War’s Children
(New York; Zone Books, 1994), p. 110, a weak heart prevented Tom from getting drafted. Navidson had gone ahead and enlisted.] a black and white shot catching the wing of his plane in flight.

And then the whole private history explodes.

Suddenly a much larger world intrudes on the boyish Navidson. Family portraits are replaced by pictures of tank drivers in Cambodia, peasants hauling empty canisters of nerve gas to the side of the road, children selling soda near body bags smeared with red oil-soaked clay, crowds in Thailand, a murdered man in Israel, the dead in Angola; fractions plucked from the stream, informing the recent decades, sometimes even daring to suggest a whole.

And yet out of the thousands of pictures Navidson took, there does not exist a single frame without a person in it. Navidson never snapped scenery. People mattered most to him, whether soldiers, lepers, medics, or newlyweds eating dinner at a trattoria in Rome, or even a family of tailors swimming alone at some sandy cove north of Rio. Navidson religiously studied others. The world around only mattered because people lived there and sometimes, in spite of the pain, tragedy, and degradation, even managed to triumph there.

Though Karen gives her piece the somewhat faltering title
A Brief History Of
Who I Love, the use of Navidson’s photos, many of them prize-winning, frequently permits the larger effects of the late 20th century to intrude. Gordon Burke points out the emotional significance of this alignment between personal and cultural pasts:

Not only do we appreciate Navidson more, are inadvertently touched by the world at large, where other individuals, who have faced such terrible horrors, still manage to walk barefoot and burning from the grave. [335—See the introduction by Gordon Burke in Will Navidson’s
Pieces
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1994), p. xvii.]

Each of Navidson’s photographs consistently reveals how vehemently he despised life’s destruction and how desperately he sought to preserve its fleeting beauties, no matter the circumstances.

Karen, however, does not need to point any of this out. Wisely she lets Navidson’s work speak for itself. Interestingly enough though, her labor of love does not close with one of his photographs but rather with a couple of shots of Navidson himself. The first image—purportedly taken by a famous though now deceased photojournalist—shows him when he was a young soldier in South East Asia, dressed in battle fatigues, sitting on an ammunition crate with howitzer shell casings stacked on a nearby trunk marked “VALUABLES.” An open window to the right is obviously not enough to clear the air. Navidson is alone, head down, fingertips a blur as he sobs into his hands over an experience we will undoubtedly never share but perhaps can still imagine. From this heart-wrenching portrait, Karen ever so gently dissolves to the last shot of her piece, actually a clip of Super 8 which she herself took not long before they moved to Virginia. Navidson is goofing around in the snow with Chad and Daisy. They are throwing snowballs, making snow angels, and enjoying the clarity of the day. Chad is laughing on his father’s shoulders as Navidson scoops up Daisy and holds her up to the blinding sun. The film, however, cannot follow them. It is badly overexposed. All three of them vanish in a burst of light.

* * * *

The diligence, discipline, and time-consuming research required to fashion this short—there are easily over a hundred edits—allowed Karen for the first time to see Navidson as something other than her own personal fears and projections. She witnessed for herself how much he cherished the human will to persevere. She again and again saw in his pictures and his expressions the longing and tenderness he felt toward her and their children. And then quite unexpectedly, she came across the meaning of his privately guarded obsession.

While Navidson’s work has many remarkable images of individuals challenging fate, over a third captures the meaning of defeat—those seconds
after
an execution, the charred fingers found in the rubble of a bombed township, or the dull-blue look of eyes which in the final seconds of life could still not muster enough strength to close. In her filmic sonnet, Karen includes a shot of Navidson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph. As she explains in a voice-over: “The print comes from Navy’s personal collection.” The same one hanging in their home and one of the first things Navidson placed in their car the night they fled.

As the world remembers, the renowned image shows a Sudanese child dying of starvation, too weak to move even though a vulture stalks her from behind. [336—This is clearly based on Kevin Carter’s
1994
Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a vulture preying on a tiny Sudanese girl who collapsed on her way to a feeding center. Carter enjoyed many accolades for the shot but was also accused of gross Insensitivity. The Florida St. Petersburg
Times
wrote: “The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well
be a predator, another vulture on
the scene.” Regrettably constant exposure to violence and deprivation, coupled with an increased dependency on drugs exacted a high price. On July 27, 1994 Carter killed himself.
—
Ed.] Not only does Karen spend twenty seconds on this picture, she then cuts to a ten second shot of the back of the print. Without saying a word, she zooms in tighter and tighter on the lower right hand corner, until her subject finally becomes clear: there, almost lost amidst so much white, lie six faintly penciled in block letters cradled in quotes—

“Delial”

* * *

There are only 8,160 frames in Karen’s film and yet they serve as the perfect counterpoint to that infinite stretch of hallways, rooms and stairs. The house is empty, her piece is full. The house is dark, her film glows. A growl haunts that place, her place is blessed by Charlie Parker. On Ash Tree Lane stands a house of darkness, cold, and emptiness. In 16mm stands a house of light, love, and colour.

By following her heart, Karen made sense of what that place was not. She also discovered what she needed more than anything else. She stopped seeing Fowler, cut off questionable liaisons with other suitors, and while her mother talked of breaking up, selling the house, and settlements, Karen began to prepare herself for reconciliation.

Of course she had no idea what that would entail.

Or how far she would have to go.

XVI

When mathematical propositions refer to

reality they are not certain; when they are

certain, they do not refer to reality.

—
Albert Einstein

Up until now
The Navidson Record
has focused principally on the effects the house has had on others: how Holloway became murderous and suicidal, Tom drank himself into oblivion, Reston lost his mobility, Sheriff Axnard went into a state of denial, Karen fled with the children, and Navidson grew increasingly more isolated and obsessed. No consideration, however, has been given to the house as it relates purely to itself.

Examined then from as objective a point of view as possible the house offers these incontrovertible facts:

1.0
No light. I, IV-XIII* [*
See Chapter.]

2.0
No humidity.
I, V-XIII

3.0
No air movement (i.e. breezes, drafts etc). I. V-XIII

4.0
Temperature remains at 320 F
±
8 degrees. IX

5.0
No sounds. IV-XIII

5.1
Except for a dull roar which arises intermittently, sometimes seeming far off, sometimes sounding close at hand. V, VII, IX-VIII

6.0
Compasses do not function there. VII

6.1
Nor do altimeters. VII

6.2
Radios have a limited range. VII-XIII

7.0
Walls
are uniformly black with a slightly ‘ashen’ hue.
I, IV-XIII

8.
0
There are no windows, moldings, or other decorative elements. (See 7.0). IX

9.0
Size and depth vary enormously.
I, IV-VII, IX-XIII

9.1
The entire place can instantly and without apparent difficulty change its geometry.
I, IV-VII, IX-XIII

9.2
Some have suggested the dull roar or ‘growl’ is caused by these metamorphoses. (See 5.1). VII

9.3
No end has been found there.
V-XIII

10.0
The place will purge itself of all things, including any item left behind. IX-XIII.

10.1
No
object
has ever been found there.
I, IV-VII, IX-XIII, XI

10.2
There is no dust.
XI

11
.0
At least three people have died inside. X, XIII

11.1
Jed Leeder, Holloway Robert and Tom Navidson.

11 .2
Only one body was recovered. (See 10.0)

Where objective data is concerned, this was all Navidson had to work with. Once he left the house, however, he began to consider new evidence: namely the collected wall samples.

In lush colour, Navidson captures those time-honored representations of science: test tubes bubbling with boric acid, reams of computer paper bearing the black-ink weight of analysis, electron microscopes resurrecting universes out of dust, and mass-spectrometers with retractable Faradays and stationary Baizers humming in some dim approximation of life.

In all these images there is a wonderful sense of security. The labs are clean, well-lit, and ordered. Computers seem to print with a purpose. Various instruments promise answers, even guarantees. Still in order to make sure all this apparatus does not come across as too sterile, Navidson also includes shots of the life-support system: a Krups coffee maker hissing and bubbling, an
Oasis
poster taped to the vending machine, Homer Simpson on the lounge TV saying something to his brother Herbert.

As a favor to Reston, petrologist Mel O’Geery, up at the Princeton geology department, has agreed to donate his spare time and oversee
the
examination of all the wall samples. Prone toward bird like gestures, he is a slight man who takes great delight in speaking very quickly. For nearly four months, he has analyzed every piece of matter, all the way from
A
(taken a few feet into the first hallway) to
XXXX
(taken by Navidson when he found himself alone at the bottom of the Spiral Staircase). It is not an inexpensive undertaking, and while the university has agreed to fund most of it, apparently Navidson also had to throw in a fair amount himself.
[
337—The actual sum is never made clear in the film. Tena Leeson estimates Navidson’s contributions were anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand. “The High Cost of Dating” by Tena L.eeson.
Radiogram,
v. 13, n. 4, October 1994, p. 142.]

Setting out all the sample bottles on a long table, Dr. O’Geery provides the camera with a summation of his findings, casually gesturing to various groupings while he sips coffee from a Garfield mug.

“What we have here is a nice banquet of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic samples, some granular, possibly gabbro and pyroxenite, some with much less grain, possibly trachite or andesite. The sedimentary group is fairly small, samples
F
through
K
, mainly limestone and marl. The metamorphic group predominates with traces of ainphibolite and marble. But this group here, it’s composed primarily of siderites, which is to say heavy in iron, though you also have aerolites rich in silicon and magnesium oxides.”