In the Distance

by Hernan Diaz

  Since the cobblestones set into the dirt evened and dried out the more they were trodden on, the original part of the burrow was also the most comfortable one. The clay on those walls had been baked hard by countless fires and acquired the texture of earthenware. Sounds down there felt like solid little objects. Nothing echoed. Life existed only as a murmur. Loud noises were muted, yielding to the whooshing of canvas and the creaking of leather. Sometimes, the hairs on his forearms rose with pleasure at the clack of wood on wood and the clink of stone on stone. Every aspect of fire was audible—crunching kindling, rustling leaves, snapping sparks, hissing sap, popping pinecones, crumbling logs, exhaling coals. Whenever Håkan coughed or said a word out loud, his own voice sounded monstrous, like that of an ungainly giant, an invader in his own home. It was a relief that the clay walls sucked in these awkward growls immediately, without leaving a trace. In this subterranean quiet, his movements became more deliberate and softer. Everything took more time, and there was a full awareness of each action as it was being performed—as if to expand the present to which he was confined. The tin cup was not merely put on the table, but placed there with the utmost care, so that when the tin and the wood touched, the moment was prolonged enough to give a slightly miraculous feel and create the impression of a gentle yet momentous meeting of alien worlds. He was reluctant to split firewood indoors, feeling there was something irreverent and even tasteless in the loud snaps. When he made a stew or glue, he was careful to stir the liquid without clanging against the pot’s walls. Without being fully aware of it at first, he often found himself scratching his beard just because he enjoyed the sound.

  If the clay walls, threatening to slide, crumble, or even collapse in extended avalanches, demanded constant attention (tiling, retiling, buttressing, propping), the pitched roofs required, perhaps, even more work. They were mostly made out of pine branches that he had learned to entwine while they were green and supple, interlacing them with leather where needed. The result was a tight enough thatch to keep the floors in the passageways more or less dry—but seldom sufficiently waterproof. In whichever trench or cell Håkan took residence, he reinforced the roof with some waxed tarpaulins and oilcloths. He also made rectangular frames out of sticks tied together with tripe, which he then fitted with skins, creating movable panels, some of which could be opened and shut with leather hinges. In varying combinations, branches, cloth, and leather panels were mounted on beams buried obliquely on either side of the trench and joined, at the cusp, to a ridgepole with rope made of braided leather straps. His glue, perfected over the years, sealed the cracks between the disparate parts. These were rather precarious structures, and some of the rare events that interrupted the sameness of his existence over the years resulted from problems with the roofing. Sometimes, under the weight of rain or snow, or merely because the wood had decayed, a section of the roof came crashing down. Once, the whole construction, beams, joists, and all, collapsed on him while he was sleeping. A big bough stabbed him in the leg. Through the yellow fat, he could see his femur. At first, it did not heal properly. He feared for his leg and considered different devices to amputate it himself. Then, he feared for his life. Despite the fever and the stupefying pain, he managed to drain the wound, keep it clean, suture it, bind it, and, eventually, cure himself. Since then, all his beds were covered by a sturdy canopy.

  A few years later, however, there was another incident, from which no canopy could have saved him. The roof of one of the lateral passageways was hit by lightning. To prevent the fire from spreading, he tore down all connecting sections. Isolated, the straight line of fire kept burning after the short storm had blown over, and, for a moment, as dusk set in and the flames died down, it looked as if there were two horizons, each glowing with its own twilight.

  Less grand but more profound was another phenomenon, involving a different part of the ceiling, that lasted for some time. He was working on a distant tunnel, making a deep cellar for his tanned skins, which demanded watertight roofing. After securing a few pieces of leather and tarpaulin to the protruding structure, he climbed down into the hole to inspect the results. To his complete bewilderment, on one of the walls he saw an image of the sun setting among the treetops—upside down. A perfect picture of the world outside of the hole. In lifelike colors. And it moved. The trees swayed; birds flew by; the sun continued its descending course. Upward. It felt like someone else’s hallucination; as if someone, far away, were dreaming up that place (wrong side up), and Håkan, for some reason, were able to look into that dream. Overcoming his bewilderment, he dislodged one of the leather panels to see if there was something abnormal outside. As light streamed in, the image on the wall vanished. He looked out of the hole. The same ashen landscape as always. Nothing out of the ordinary. He ducked back in and fitted the panel back into place. The hole darkened, and the image reappeared. As he leaned across it, his own shadow revealed that there was a hole in the tarp through which a beam of light came filtering in and, it seemed, became that inverted moving picture as it hit the wall. There was no room in his mind for superstition or magic. Astounding as this image was, he knew it must be a natural occurrence. But he failed to understand what was behind this prodigy. For a few days, the picture appeared on the wall as the sun started to set and vanished before it had fully sunken. Even if he knew every last detail of that patch of land, Håkan never tired of looking at its slightly watery inversion on the wall. Then, one evening, it was gone. He tried everything, but never managed to bring the picture back.

  These events provided him with a vague calendar—before and after the accident or the lightning or the moving picture. And there were a few more incidents that loosely divided his monotonous life into different eras. The bear that kept him distant company for one fall. A shower of stars. The fox that gave birth in one of his tunnels. Those times the moon turned red. The birds whose feet froze into the ground. Some bad storms. In time, however, the order of these events got confused in his head. Looking back, his life in the maze seemed a completely uniform period. The few extraordinary moments were lumped together in a cluster of their own, unrelated to the sameness that ruled those years. Seasons went by and returned, and Håkan’s occupations never changed. A roof could leak less. Traps had to be set. A gutter overflowed. Tiles had slid out of place. An abandoned ditch had to be filled. The coat had to be mended. A trench had fallen into disrepair. Firewood had to be gathered. An extension to an old passageway was necessary. Drinking water was needed. A new tool had to be made. Some meat had to be jerked before it spoiled. Cobblestones had come loose. A leather flue was too decayed. More glue had to be boiled down. Before one of these tasks had been completed, the next one demanded his attention, so that at all times he was engaged in one of these chores, which, together, over time, formed a circle or, rather, some sort of pattern that, though invisible to him, repeated itself, he was sure, at regular intervals. These recurrent duties made every day resemble the last, and within each day, from sunup to sundown, there were few markers to divide time. He did not even eat at regular hours. In fact, his diet had been reduced to the absolute, life-sustaining minimum. Sometimes he was surprised that his health was so robust. He had not lost a single tooth—and he had never met an adult with a full set of teeth. This could only be explained by another fact that he found equally puzzling: even though he did not know how old he was, it was clear to him that he had reached the age at which the human body has matured and starts its decline. Still, he had never stopped growing. Since he had not seen another human being in years, he had no sense of how tall he would feel next to someone else, but he did know he would be conspicuous—an added reason for staying out of sight. But these were only fleeting thoughts. He seldom considered his body or his circumstances—or anything else, for that matter. The business of being took up all of his time.

  21.

  Those flailing arms sticking out of the upright trunk. Those legs, like ridiculous scissors. Those forward-facing eyes on that flat face with
that beakless, snoutless hole for a mouth. And the gestures. Hands, brow, nose, lips. So many gestures. Those misshapen and misplaced features and their wasteful, obscene movements. He thought nothing could be more grotesque than those forms. His next thought was that he looked just like them. Then, he ran for his gun.

  Because he had lost the ability to think about the future, he had stopped considering what to do if someone ever came to the burrow. And now that five men were approaching, it seemed the most obvious thing in the world. Of course someone would come at some point. With the oncoming men, a forgotten dimension of reality suddenly reappeared, defying his senses. The world was new, complex, and frightening. His hands shook as he readied the gun.

  He reached toward the ceiling, slid a leather panel to the side, and peered out. The men rode about leisurely, inspecting the burrow and pointing out this and that detail. They were alert and, at the same time, relaxed, as if they knew that he lived there, but also that he was outnumbered. Had they been spying on him? Where from? How could he have failed to notice? Everything in their approach—their loud voices, their occasional laughs, their slow pace and the sagging reins, the casual way in which they held their rifles—indicated that they were certain he was alone. They had the arrogance of the conqueror who knows that merely showing up will be enough.

  Three of them were soldiers, but they seemed to belong to two different armies. Two were in loose-fitting gray uniforms and matching forage caps, while the other soldier wore blue and a slouch hat with some sort of adornment pinning the brim up. His left sleeve was empty, folded up, and attached to the elbow. On his right arm were three yellow stripes. Regardless of color and rank, the uniforms were torn and tattered. The remaining two men looked like so many others Håkan had seen on his journeys—deerskin leggings, flannel shirts, wide-brimmed hats. The civilians were on regular bays, but the soldiers rode thick, tall draft horses—stout, muscular, almost neckless, their fetlocks and hooves covered by thick tufts of hair full of burrs and thistles. Håkan knew nothing about breeds, but it was clear that those beasts were meant for the harness and not the saddle.

  “Friend!” the blue soldier cried. “Hey, friend! We’re friends!”

  Håkan realized that he was panting. Out of nowhere, a colony of little incandescent dots started bubbling, popping, vanishing, and reemerging before his eyes. His body felt less dense. Even if he had wanted to respond, his tongue, glued to his palate, was too dry and heavy to allow him to speak a single word.

  One of the soldiers in gray muttered something, and the others laughed. They rode by some meat that was being jerked on frames. The other gray soldier took a piece, tasted it, and spat it out. He rubbed his tongue with his sleeve while cursing and making grotesque noises. More chuckles.

  Håkan thought that he could smell them. Human stench. To what savagery would he be subjected? Because these were wild and unkind men. He could tell from their scars, their snickers, and, above all, their calmness—the calmness of people who know they can always rely on absolute violence. He looked at the gun in his hand as if someone had planted it there while he was distracted. Taking another life.

  They stopped about fifteen paces away from him. Had he been seen? After conferring—in signs more than in words—one of the civilians put his rifle into his saddle holster, dismounted, and took a few steps toward Håkan.

  “We mean no harm, mister. No harm at all. Just a few words.”

  Showing himself unarmed was the only option. Perhaps his size would intimidate them. Perhaps his size would make them want to shoot him on the spot. He was reconciled with the idea of dying, but he did not want to share that singular, final experience with these brutes. Before putting the pistol down and proceeding to one of the exits, he realized, fleetingly, that it was the first time in his life that he was scared of men younger than himself.

  The lion coat hung on one of the posts at the foot of the bed. It was not cold, but he put it on. After removing a section of the roof, he stepped on a table and climbed out.

  Because he was crouching when he emerged from the trench, his height was not revealed at once, but as he uncoiled and came to an upright position, he looked ahead and saw amazement gradually overtaking everyone’s expression. Håkan himself was surprised. It had been years since he last stood next to another person or something of a more or less constant size—something that was not in nature or that he had not made with his hands. The men were like children. The horses looked wrong. Håkan and the men stared at each other; he, remembering what a man was; they, discovering what a man could be.

  One of the civilians cocked his gun. The soldier in blue raised his single hand without looking away from Håkan.

  “It’s you,” he said.

  Håkan stared at his own bare feet. After so many years looking down at them, they had become objects removed from his own self. Even more, callous and insensible to touch, they had ceased to mediate between the world and his consciousness. They were one more everyday article.

  “It is you,” the one-armed man in blue repeated. “See?” he cried, turning around to his comrades. “It’s him!” And then, facing Håkan once again, “The Hawk.”

  The disgrace, the guilt, the fear came rushing back, wiping out all the years spent in solitude. He was back where he had left off.

  Perhaps as a reaction to his shame, for a moment he forgot how recognizable he was and thought that if the blue soldier knew who he was, they must have met at some point. In the fraction of an instant, all the faces he could remember flashed through his mind. None of them matched the blue soldier. Perhaps the soldier had been one of the children on the emigrant trail. Maybe he had been one of the boys who had flung rotten vegetables at him when the sheriff had him on display. But there was an expression on the soldier’s face that Håkan knew well. It was the stare of people who had heard about him but never actually seen him. Briefly, he wondered if those uniforms meant that the newcomers were lawmen.

  “The brethren killer, lion skin and all.”

  The blue soldier’s explanation was unnecessary. The awestruck, frozen expression of the four remaining men showed that they had realized on their own who Håkan was.

  “He’s alive?” asked one of the civilians to no one in particular.

  “Abundantly,” said the blue soldier, gesturing to Håkan from head to toe.

  Håkan looked around, pausing on the different sections of the burrow. Knowing that he would soon leave it forever, he understood its magnitude for the first time.

  The blue soldier had rejoined the others, and they were having a muted discussion. Every now and again, they turned around and, still mesmerized, stared at Håkan.

  “Do you have a gun?” someone asked.

  “Inside.”

  “Quite a place you got here,” a gray soldier said. “Quite a place.”

  “How did you do it?” the blue soldier asked, ignoring his friend’s remark.

  “I dig,” Håkan responded.

  “No, no. How did you do it? All those things. You know, the brethren, escape from the law. Stay away for so long.”

  “I walked,” he said, addressing only the last part of the question.

  The men laughed.

  “He walked,” someone said and giggled like an idiot.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re a legend, you know.”

  Again, his feet.

  One of the civilians took a swig from a flask and offered it to Håkan, who shook his head.

  “Quite a place,” the gray soldier said again.

  They dismounted, escorted Håkan to his cell, and, after taking the guns they found there, walked around, inspecting the burrow and claiming different sections for themselves.

  Night came. After the men had had a long conversation by a fire removed from Håkan’s quarters, they asked him to join them. The one-handed soldier in blue spoke for all of them.

  “We have some business to discuss with you. A
n offer.” He paused, peering into Håkan’s eyes. “We all admire what you’ve done. Like I said, you’re a legend. Getting those settlers. And then those heathens—those brethren. And then.” He laughed in advance. “And then getting away on the sheriff’s horse! I mean. Hell!”

  Talk. This was what Håkan had been running away from. That he was being complimented did not make it better. He wanted no more talk.

  “We have our own stories to tell, all of us, from the war. But nothing like you. Anyhow. Ever since peace reigns again,” he said, looking at the gray soldiers with a smirk, “we’ve been riding about, trying to survive. You know. Plenty of opportunities out there.”

  Someone kept spitting into the fire. The embers hissed each time.

  “So we were thinking. Thought we could use you. You wouldn’t have to do anything. Unless you wanted to, of course. All you do is show up. You just show up in your big lion skin. We walk into the place. Store, tavern, bank, whatever. Then you walk into the place. People see you. They freeze. We take it from there. It would even be your gang. The Hawk Gang or The Hawks or something. Take all the credit. But with your name, reputation, and. And. Well.” Failing to find the right word, he just pointed at Håkan. “With you. With you, no one would stop us.”