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My Encounter With the Eternal Mystery | Morton MarcusI encountered the Eternal Mystery once. It was on a spring night in Zagreb several years ago, in the unlighted hallway of a musty walk-up where I’d gone to visit the acquaintance of a friend, a narrow hallway where the odors of vinegar and coal gas had settled permanently in the darkness. I hadn’t taken ten steps into that darkness when I became aware of a hulking presence facing me from the depths of the hall. "Excuse me," I said automatically to the figure, and waited for a reply, my body tense, poised for whatever might happen. The figure didn’t answer. "Excuse me," I repeated, a quaver in my voice. Again there was no reply. I held my breath and listened, my heartbeat resounding from the walls, but I heard nothing, and it was so dark I couldn’t find the number of the apartment door I was looking for as a possible escape. "Excuse me?" I said again, taking a tentative step forward, but the silence of whoever or whatever was in that hall with me remained silent, advancing toward me with each step I took toward it. I stopped and listened again, straining to see that other figure, and when I resumed my steps my nerves were so jangled I didn’t know whether I was advancing farther into the hall or returning the way I had come. I stopped again and stood with the darkness surrounding me, and listened to my breathing, hoping to hear the breathing of the other, but there was only the darkness pressing in on me as if someone had flung a heavy cloak around my soul. I began to tremble. "Excuse me," I said for the fourth time, the words sounding more like a prayer than the apologies of an intruder or a clumsy tourist. What else could I have done–drop to my knees like a child at the side of a bed and, with hands joined, breathlessly ask a being who lives in the dark to protect Mommy and Daddy and especially me from the scaly, fire-eyed creature who, at that moment, I may have been praying to? No: that idea alone made me firm my stance, even though I was still trembling, sweat smearing my body as if I’d been anointed. "I said, ‘Excuse me!’" I repeated once again, but this time louder, with a twinge of annoyance in my voice at not being answered, and the defiance in my tone unexpectedly thrilled me. The breath seethed from between my clenched teeth. Simultaneously I heard, or thought I heard, a muffled snort or growl. It was a gagging sound, a struggle for breath that mimicked my own and, almost instantly, dissolved my annoyance, so clear was its desire to communicate, and so clear was its inability to do so, as if its words were trapped inside a muzzled snout. Understand, the entire incident had taken no more than several moments, and as I strained to interpret the gasping of that other, I had the strongest impression yet that someone stood facing me. At that instant a blade of light sliced through the dark from a wrenched-open door and a silhouetted figure bellowed in Croatian, "What’s all the noise? What do you want?" The light gave me my bearings, and without a word I turned and ran from the building.
When I returned the next morning, I was surprised to find how short the hallway was. In the gray daylight, I could see a staircase to my left, and set against the wall beneath it a narrow table topped with envelopes and circulars and a small vase with wilted flowers. There was no other furniture, except a full-length mirror beyond the table at the end of the corridor, placed there, I assume, to make the hall look longer. I watched myself advancing toward it, an anonymous figure with the light at its back, looming larger with each step, and I muttered, almost involuntarily, "I am who I am."
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