In the Distance

by Hernan Diaz

  Asa had climbed up a crag to get a better view of their surroundings and find a shortcut through the particularly rough stretch they were traversing. As he descended, he slid and rolled down the cliff. He looked like a thing as he tumbled and bounced against the rocks. Håkan saw it from afar, and as it happened, he felt the weight of reality draining out of the world. Later, he was embarrassed to recall that his first thought had been that now he would be completely alone again. The initial shock overcome, he ran to the base of the crag where Asa lay, badly bruised and bleeding but conscious. His left tibia was disfigured in a zigzagging fracture.

  “I can help,” Håkan panted, holding Asa’s head in his hands.

  Asa did not respond. The pain had canceled out whatever it is that makes eyes human. They moved around frantically, looking at nothing. His chest heaved. He gasped like a fish.

  Håkan ripped Asa’s trousers. The bone had almost broken through the skin. He thought that he might be able to set it but was concerned about the fever and the rot that often followed wounds of this kind. Asa started shivering. His teeth chattered. The horses could not get up there. Håkan would have to move him down. Make a stretcher. But first, the bone. He needed the sedative. He held Asa’s head tightly to his chest and then, very gently, put it down. Asa’s eyes still stirred, staring beyond the sky. Håkan took a step back. He could not leave him there, alone. Not even for an instant. He wished he could ask Asa what to do.

  “I will come back,” he said and, before becoming paralyzed by doubt again, turned around and dashed downhill toward their horses.

  He got his tin box, blankets, and rope, and ran back.

  Asa’s jaws were now clenched in a sinister smile, as if offering his teeth up for inspection to a remotely distant being. He looked lost. Asa had never looked lost before. His frame shook. Håkan managed to pour a few drops of the tincture down the corner of his mouth. The shaking subsided. Håkan touched the skin over the fracture. It was tight, like a full bladder. For the first time, he was scared of a body—of hurting it, of the power its frailty had over him. Gently, he got Asa on a blanket, dragged him over to a tree, sat him up with his back against the trunk, and, after padding his armpits and chest with another blanket, tied him to it. He studied the fracture, then looked at the mountains, then at the sky, then down. He closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands. A hawk called; another responded. He removed his hands from his face. As if waking up, he opened his eyes and kneeled at Asa’s feet. He grabbed his ankle, delicately moved it up and down and side to side, and suddenly, with abrupt violence, pulled. The bones shifting through the flesh sounded like horses chewing corn. He kept pulling and twisting the ankle, holding his breath, blinded by his sweat. With a deep moan, he let go. The bone seemed to be in place, but blood kept pooling under the skin. He could only hope no major vessel had been torn. With some branches, blankets, and rope, he improvised a stretcher on which he pulled Asa down to their camp. The slope was littered with sharp stones. They slowly clambered their way down. The sun had long set when they got back to their horses. Håkan pitched camp.

  The following morning, Asa had a fever. He raved and constantly tried to get up to repair a ladder. It was an important ladder. It had to be fixed. What would they do without the ladder? With a lancet, Håkan drained the slow blue blood from his leg, always fearing to find pus. Most of the day was spent going back and forth to a nearby creek to cool the compresses he applied to Asa’s forehead, lips, and wrists.

  After coexisting for a while, the moon prevailed over the sun. Håkan built a fire but cooked no food. Asa wrestled with himself for most of the night, but when he finally calmed down and fell asleep, his face acquired a calm and stern expression, showing a serene strength that made Håkan think of a king. Up to that moment, this word, king, like so many others, had had a pictureless meaning for him—he had never seen a king, not even in a portrait; but now, as he watched Asa sleep, those sounds merged, forever, with his face. He put some salve on Asa’s rope burns and then lay next to him, resting his head on his chest. Asa’s heart beat slowly. Even unconscious, he managed to comfort Håkan. Out of the night and in between heartbeats, Linus’s face came forth in his mind. The picture of his brother, who had protected him from hunger, cold, and pain, had always come to him as the very image of safety. Until now. This time, as Linus’s features became clearer, he saw something different—a child. The Linus he had loved and lost was a child. It was true that Linus had protected and cared for him, but Håkan had never before understood how young and innocent his brother had been at the time. His stories, his bravados, his knowledge, his boundless confidence—vain constructions of a little boy. The realization made him cry. He had outgrown his older brother. Never again would he find that comfort and safety in Linus’s image. He listened to Asa’s calm heartbeat and felt its throb against his temple. Asa was not a child. Fleetingly, Håkan wondered what Linus would make of him. What would he make of them? Although he still loved his brother dearly, Håkan discovered that he did not care.

  The next morning, Asa woke up hungry and without a fever. Håkan’s knees almost faltered with relief.

  “You will live,” he said, turning away from Asa when he felt his eyes well up.

  After breakfast, Asa asked him to get ready to leave. Håkan refused. They could not risk aggravating the wounds and having the fever return. Asa did not listen. The brethren, the Wrathful Angels, the bounty hunters, the law would all close in on them soon. Their only hope, he believed, was to get to the cañons. If they did not get lost there themselves, they would surely manage to lose their pursuers. The discussion ended when Asa tried to ride his horse. With great difficulty, Håkan managed to get him on. The pain distorted Asa’s features as he sat on the saddle, and his face turned white when his injured leg started bouncing against the moving horse. Håkan helped him dismount before he fainted. They tried different kinds of splints and straps, but once on the saddle, the pain was always too intense. Defeated, Asa picked a more secluded recess where they would settle down for a few weeks.

  Time went by slowly. At first, Håkan thought that they would enjoy their rest in that benign spot—close to fresh water, surrounded by plentiful trees and bushes, in the path of easy game—but the first few days, Asa was so vexed by his condition that he barely uttered a word. Håkan went on short expeditions in search of some of the ingredients he knew that Asa liked. For the most part, they would rot by the fire pit. Gradually, Asa’s irritation turned into anxiety. He would not allow Håkan beyond a narrow area around their crag. They were coming, he said. No doubt. Someone was coming. It was a matter of time. Håkan believed him—as he always did. After all, he owed Asa not only his life but also the world, which he had lost after the killings. Still haunted by the lives he had taken, Håkan felt sullied and fallen. The shame of being, for almost everyone, a murderer, a murderer of women—Helen’s murderer—was enough to make him want to shun the society of men forever. But the world had returned. Asa had brought it back to him, brimming with meaning and purpose.

  Despite his constant uneasiness and his somber mood, Asa never failed to express his admiration and gratitude for Håkan’s healing abilities. He had seen too many people perish in similar circumstances—a fall, a fracture, bleeding, gangrene, amputation, delirium, death—to take Håkan’s talents lightly. The story of how he set his leg fascinated him, and no matter how many times he heard it (“Tell me about the leg, and what you did,” he would ask Håkan over and over again, like a child), Asa always listened with gaping reverence. Each compress and salve that Håkan applied, each bleeding, each suture was received with solemn devotion.

  When he was not looking for food or tending to Asa’s wounds, Håkan worked on new crutches and different kinds of splits, whittling, stitching, and patching together all sorts of materials. Eventually, Asa started cooking again. They had to stock up on cured meats and preserves for their trip to the barren cañons.

  “The cañons are our only hope,” Asa repea
ted every evening. “Too many days lost here. We can’t outrun anybody. But maybe we can lose them.”

  One night, after much hesitation, feeling foolish for having waited for so long, Håkan asked, “What is the cañon?”

  “I’ve never been myself,” Asa responded. “They say it’s a land like no other. Like a bad dream. Red tunnels carved by long-gone rivers. Like old scars in the ground. Very deep. For leagues and leagues. Few go in. Fewer get out.”

  Later that night, long after they had gone to bed, Håkan woke up. He could feel Asa thinking behind him—his thoughts had woken him up. He could also sense that Asa knew that he was awake.

  “We can’t go to California now,” Asa said at last. Then, after a long pause, “They’ll be looking for you. You’d never make it. We’ll go to the cañons. Wait there.” He was quiet for a while, as if his silence were a small sample of that wait. “Then, to San Francisco. I don’t know how, but we’ll make it.” Another pause. “There, I’ll find my friends. They can get us on a boat.” Another silence. “We’ll sail to New York. Nobody will be looking there. You’ll be safe there. We’ll be fine.” Pause. “And we will find your brother.”

  Something within Håkan melted. Only now, as it softened and evaporated, did he realize that for years he had lived with a frozen lump in his chest. Only now that he knew he would see Linus again—for there was no doubt that, with Asa’s help, he would see him again—did he feel how much pain this cold shrapnel had caused him. And he understood that up to that moment he had never had a chance of finding his brother. Getting to New York? Finding him in that endless city? How would that ever have happened? Love and longing had kept him going, but now, with Asa by his side, he saw how hopeless his search had hitherto been, and how doomed it would have been without Asa’s aid.

  How could he respond to Asa’s words? Like a magic spell, they had changed reality just by being uttered.

  19.

  The day to leave came at last. Asa’s leg had improved enough for him to move around with a pair of crutches Håkan had made him. Out of bones, wood, leather, and tarpaulin, he had also devised an articulated brace that allowed Asa to mount with greater ease and dulled the impact of his leg against the horse’s side while helping the bone stay in place. Their two spare horses were loaded with the water and provisions they had gathered during the past few weeks.

  It got warmer, redder, and drier. The mountain chain was reduced to a few crooked pillars. The forests died out, and only some prickly gray things sprouted every now and then. Birds no longer flew in flocks—only a bird here and then, later, maybe, a bird there. The air felt tense, as if the entire sky had inhaled and pulled back while holding its breath. And the sun, always the sun. Small in the sky, immense on the ground.

  Asa reckoned they would travel about one hundred leagues through the cañons, making a stop halfway, before reaching the forests. The horses were his main concern. The country had few watering places and was almost barren of feed. Luckily, the animals were quick to spot edible desert scrubs and a fleshy, almost harmless variety of prickly pear. They also fed on forbs and shrubs and learned to nibble on malformed piñon pines and stunted tree yuccas. When everything else failed, they licked salty rocks and ate dirt. Their ribs started to show, and there was something increasingly deranged in their bulging eyes, but they kept going. One of them, the one that had belonged to the sheriff, had a great talent for detecting water underground. He would stop, snort, and dig with his forelegs. Håkan helped. The horse was never wrong.

  It was sudden. Somehow, without ever having climbed up, they were looking down. It took their eyes a few moments to adjust to the darkness below. Cool air came wafting from the depths. The feeling was so pleasant, Håkan had to take a step back when he pictured himself plunging into the shady chasm. The deep gorge, branching out in angular streams, looked like a black horizontal flash of lightning.

  They walked along the edge, looking for a way down at each angular fork, but the incline was always too steep for the horses. Never had Håkan witnessed desolation at such a scale. The deserts he had crossed so far had felt alive compared to this landscape. They were wastelands, yes, but they had been created that way, and perhaps their emptiness was only the first stage of a long process toward a lush future. They were perfect blanks. They were full of promise. But the cañon was done. Some great force had tried; it had broken the ground up like a loaf; it had, at some point, poured water into those ravines; it had even arranged the gulches and streams in pleasing patterns. And then, for some reason, it had desisted and withdrawn. The rivers dried up. The dirt hardened, yellowed, and crimsoned. All that was left was a majestic hopelessness.

  The sun was setting, and they still had failed to find a path down into the cañon.

  More angered than weakened by their thirst, the horses refused to go on. They bivouacked by the edge of the precipice, ate some charqui, and went to bed. The following morning, however, their luck turned. Before noon, they found a more or less gentle scree slope, and as soon as they scrabbled down to the bottom of the bluff, the sheriff’s horse darted around a bend, where there was a small stream. Asa laughed. He confessed that the night before, as he lay down, he thought that they would die in a few days. While the horses drank and Håkan washed, Asa walked up the gulch. A moment later, he returned, excited beyond measure. There were some bushes and small trees upstream on which the horses could feed. All they needed was a hideout close enough to the springs and the shrubs. Toward nightfall, they found a curved passageway leading up to a hall of sorts, part of which was covered by a smooth orange dome. Too magnificent to be human, too intimate to be natural, it was an eerie yet inviting place. It was neither a fully enclosed nor an entirely open space. The vault, covering about three-quarters of the chamber, was big enough to shelter and hide them and their horses, but the far end of the refuge was open and looked down onto the ravine, offering a view of the entrance to the passageway from above, so no one could approach them unseen. They concealed the access to the cave with some rocks, which could easily be removed as needed. Asa said they could not have wished for a safer hideout.

  Days and weeks went by. Asa believed that if they waited long enough, their pursuers, seeing how hostile the conditions were, would abandon that course and head west ahead of them—and there was nothing better, he said, than being behind one’s chasers.

  Håkan found bliss in their austere life in the dome. They lived frugally on the victuals gathered in the mountains and spent their days in almost complete silence. Asa told him they should make as little noise as possible, since sound traveled fast, loud, and far through the cañons. Håkan did not mind. The orange vault, marbled with pink and purple, kept the air cool during the day and warm at night. He liked to spend entire mornings lying down with Asa, staring at the dome, and, in whispers, pointing out faces, animals, and all sorts of fantastic scenes that popped in and out of the intricate swirls on the cupola. Examining the colored layers on the wall, Håkan found some remarkable fossils (legged shields, spiral shells, thorny fish) but never showed them to Asa.

  Once a day, in the afternoon, when the bottom of the ravine was shady (and therefore less visible from above), they took the horses to their feeding place and fetched water from the spring. Since the boulders that blocked and concealed the entrance could only be removed and replaced from the inside, they had to take turns. At first, Asa refused to let Håkan go at all. It was, Asa said, the only moment they could be found and killed. But Håkan insisted: they should share the risk. In the end, and not without reluctance, Asa agreed. Although he missed Asa when they were apart, Håkan also enjoyed that daily hour of solitude, either walking down the gorge with the horses, looking at the earth from below, or staying in the dome, pacing around, humming ever so softly—fearing Asa would hear him from the brook—and listening to his own voice bounce back from the most unexpected corners.

  It was one of these afternoons, when Asa had left with the animals, that Håkan, who was humming to himself, h
eard a big commotion. Galloping. Many horses. Asa whooping. A gunshot. Another. Asa hooting. Galloping. Håkan crawled to the open end of the refuge from which he could see the entrance while remaining invisible in the shadows. The hoofbeats, the screams, and the shots grew louder, and one echo resounded over the other so that it became impossible to tell where the sounds came from and in what order they had been produced—cause and consequence, past and future were overturned and scrambled in the reverberations. For a moment, in the swirl of sounds, Håkan thought that Asa might have been shot already, even if his screams were still in the air. But as the wave of echoes surged, Asa emerged from behind the bend, galloping at full speed. Raising himself on the stirrups, his body leaned forward, touching the horse’s neck. When he was not whipping the animal with a piece of rope, he brandished it in front of its eyes, so that the horse became as frantic as the rider. He sped by the hidden entrance and turned up his head to the dark balcony from where Håkan was looking down. Asa could not have seen him, but his upturned gaze and his furtive smile, warm and serene for a moment (a moment during which the chase, the noise, and the world came to a halt), told Håkan that he knew he was being watched. An instant later, Asa was out of sight. Immediately after, three riders galloped by. They, too, vanished. The screaming and the gunshots continued. Then they stopped.