Zampanò's apartment

**Zampanò's apartment** refers to an apartment on the first floor of an apartment complex. Zampanò lived in this apartment for years until his death in very early 1997.

A copy of the lease agreement was discovered by Johnny Truant years later, though this shed little new light on the apartment or the person who rented the place. The leasor had signed simply "Zampanò."

## Description.

The apartment was on the first floor of a complex, "peering out over a wide, overgrown courtyard" with "knee high weeds" and over 80 stray cats. It was down a hallway in the back of the building, "last door on the left." The apartment had both a front door and a rear door into the courtyard. Truant describes the front door as both "unremarkable" and "a door to the dead." The front door had a single bolt lock. The floor was wood. He had at least two dressers, a refrigerator, and "strange, pale books."

Zampanò was completely blind. As a result, his apartment was littered with unused candles, but devoid of any clocks and only a few light bulbs (at the time of his death, even his refrigerator lacked a bulb). His apartment was "eclectic but hardly grotesque or even that far out of the ordinary."

Zampanò attempted to prevent any air ventilation in and out of his apartment. He nailed the windows shut and sealed them with caulk, he storm-proofed the front and rear doors, and he covered the storm vents with duct tape. Because Zampanò had taken great pains to eliminate any ventilation, a "patina of odor" lingered even a week after his death that reeked of "human history---a composite of sweat, urine, shit, blood, flesh and semen" and the complex range of emotions and experiences in the life of a human being.

Much of what we know of the apartment comes from observations performed only after Zampanò's. When Zampanò died, four gouges measuring six-to-seven-inches in length were found in the hardwood floor next to his corpse, "dead center" of the room. The gouges troubled Truant and Lude, which tore into the wood as if clawed by "something neither one of [them] wanted to imagine;" the police ultimately dismissed the gouges because all evidence pointed to Zampanò dying naturally.

Truant recalls several objects in the apartment that were relevant even years later at the time of writing the Introduction:

* A "battered" Zippo lighter with Patent Pending at the base;
* The metal ridge of a light socket, strongly resembling a spiral staircase; and,
* "[W]hat [he] remember[s] most of all," an old, hard, cracked tube of chapstick.

The apartment was decorated with other objects as well: "tattered furniture, unused candles, ancient shoes . . . , ceramic bowls as well as glass jars and small wood boxes full of rivets, rubber bands, sea shells, matches, peanut shells, [and thousands of] elaborately shaped and colored buttons." A beer stein held used perfume bottles. Oddly, the refrigerator held not food but "was full of strange, pale books."

## History.

Zampanò died on January 6, 1997. The following day, the landlord posted a notice of abandonment. A week later, he declared the contents of the apartment to be worth under $300 and authorized a charity to remove them.

Lude lived in the same complex. The resident building manager was a man known as Flaze, who possessed a copy of the key to the apartment. After Zampanò's death, Flaze gave the key to Lude.

Lude and Truant robbed the apartment at 4:00 AM on a night in January 1997.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Johnny Truant, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xii (2000).
2. ↑ Johnny Truant, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xiv-xv (2000).
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Johnny Truant, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xv (2000).
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Johnny Truant, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xvi (2000).
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Johnny Truant, "Introduction" in House of Leaves" xxi (2000).
6. ↑ Or, "longer than a hand." Johnny Truant, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xvi (2000).
7. ↑ Johnny Truant, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xv-xvi (2000).
8. ↑ Johnny Truant, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xix (2000).
9. ↑ Johnny Truant, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xiv (2000).
10. ↑ Johnny Truant, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xi (2000).
11. ↑ Johnny Truant, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xiii (2000).