Wonders of a Godless World

by Andrew McGahan

  I dived, with the currents, under the ice caps, where lethal spears reached down from pressure ridges on the surface. I leapt from continental shelves and plunged over cliffs with undersea waterfalls, thundering silently. I fought in canyons, where the currents were squeezed into narrow gaps and the water rushed at terrifying speeds, stripping bedrock away as if it were mud. And I lingered in stagnant eddies, mid-ocean, where the flow faltered and the refuse of all the seas collected, carcasses of ships and trees and waste, all tangled in a sluggish mass, mile after mile, rotting beneath the sun.

  I did not want to wake from those dreams. It was no help to tell myself that the ocean was less than one-thousandth of the world’s mass. It was still vaster than anything I had encountered before, a wilderness beyond any other. And the pulse of the currents was endlessly hypnotic. Like blood in arteries, like a mother’s heartbeat to a child in the womb. I had only to close my eyes at night and I was entranced.

  Even by day I was slipping…

  I lost track of time. I had taken no watch with me, no calendar. I began to count the days by scratching a tally in stone…but then I would forget whether I had marked down a day, or marked it twice, and soon I had no faith in the tally at all. It might have been six months, it might have been a year. Time, I came to understand, was not to be marked by hours or days or weeks anymore. It was marked only by the moods of the sea.

  Sometimes, for instance, great calms would settle over the waters. The waves, always so wild and restless, would sink away until the ocean’s surface became glassy smooth. The winds too would die, and a silence descend. Then, in the stillness, the sea mist would come—a white line forming on the horizon, and advancing slowly towards the island. The first time it manifested I thought it would be like any other fog I’d seen. Fog is only cloud, after all, and as you know, I was more than familiar with the workings of clouds.

  But while other fogs rolled along in billows, the face of the sea mist would remain sheer and straight. And its height would become apparent as it approached, like a cliff moving across the water, rising and rising, until it towered so tall I had to crane my head to take it in. In the moments before it engulfed me, I would feel that I stood at the base of some fantastic glowing wall, so large it divided the earth in two. Then it would slide over my island and I would be lost in a dank, grey world. I would remind myself that this was a natural phenomenon, merely the result of temperature differences between water and air. And yet, trapped in that shadowy limbo, it was no comfort.

  For the fog was haunted. Shapes moved within it, twisting and curling and almost, but never quite, forming into something real. Or a deeper patch of darkness would seem to loom up, just out to sea, and pass slowly by the island, like some derelict ship drifting, tattered sails hanging from mildewed ropes. Or perhaps—I would convince myself—it was a real ship, a modern ship, and I would be sure I felt the thrum of motors, and could even catch the ring of a bell or a snatch of conversation from men upon the deck, and I would have to fight to stop myself from running to the cliffs, yelling for rescue.

  On other days there would be no mist at all, but still the sea would lie flat and unmoving, with a sheen like bronze. A shimmering glare would turn the sky white, and the horizon would begin to tremble. Then I would see mirages. Now, any traveller upon the ocean knows mirages. They too are only an effect of contrasting temperatures, of one layer of air being warmer than another, of light refracting at different angles, creating illusions…

  Ah, but how the horizon danced for me.

  Sometimes it would divide in two, one horizon above the other, both quivering madly as if the edge of the ocean was reverberating like an enormous gong. Then the second line would peel away completely, flailing up into the sky and vanishing like flame. At other times great swathes of the ocean would seem to be reflected from above, and I was certain I could see far beyond my own horizon to places hundreds of miles off; I could see cities, and ships steadfastly ploughing their way across the waters, upside down, labouring higher and higher into the air, their wakes like the contrails of jets.

  But it was the human mirages that disturbed me more. Figures that strode like distant giants across the horizon, or smaller apparitions that seemed to walk upon the water only a few miles out to sea. First one, then two, and then more, the shapes cavorting upon an ocean that had turned into glowing tarmac, solid underfoot. And sometimes those figures would turn and stare silently at my island, and no attempt at rational thought would help me; I wanted to step out onto that solid sea and run to join them.

  And then there was a drowned rock that would appear to rise out of the deeps, draped in seaweed, with the bones of an ancient shipwreck strewn across its back. And terribly there would be one living soul trapped there, a skeletal, long-lost mariner, waving frantically to be saved. But then the shimmers would clear, and I would see that the rock was my own island reflected in a mirrored sky, the ruined ship nothing more than my crumbling hut, and the castaway merely myself, waving at no one.

  I can’t tell you how long this went on for. Calms and mists and mirages, all of them were mixed in with featureless days of wind and grey clouds and waves tossing. A year, two, three. I don’t know. I was confused and bedazzled to the point of stupor.

  But then, finally, came the sea monster.

  I was huddled inside the hut at the end of a cold and sleepless night, and suddenly I heard an unearthly sound come from out across the ocean. I stumbled outside to investigate. Half the overcast sky was stained a dull red by dawn, but the other half remained dark. And as I stared into that darkness I heard it again, awful, a whistling moan that seemed to make the black waters shiver. And then a greater darkness gathered, and a vast creature rose before me from the sea, white froth fuming at its waist.

  Oh, I knew that there were no such things as sea monsters. But I saw, catching the red gleam of the dawn, impossible tentacles. One, then two, then three, twisting and writhing into the sky. Taller than lighthouses, and twice as thick. And in their midst I saw a great bulbous head with glowing eyes and a rumbling, roaring inner breath. For a full ten seconds, perhaps, I knew stark terror. But then, just as the monster heaved itself over the island, and the red tentacles thrashed on either side, the last sane part of me finally recognised the thunder cloud and the three water spouts that danced around it.

  Then the storm hit. Having tortured me with guile and trickery for so long, with fog and mirage, the ocean now shrugged off its dream aspect, and revealed to me its true nature. Fury. Oh, the initial squall soon blew over, for all its ferocity, but behind it came scudding clouds, an unceasing hurricane wind, and mounting seas—a true ocean storm that raged unabated into the day, throughout that night, and on to the next morning.

  I watched from the cliff tops, awed and exhilarated, especially by the rising waves. They were nothing like you might see from a normal shoreline. These weren’t breakers curling onto a shallow beach. My island, remember, was merely a tower set in the sea. I stood in the deeps, among the great mid-ocean waves, the beasts that mount height upon height, and roll unbreaking around the world.

  The grandeur of them! I watched as each one reared closer to my cliff-top perch, a trough falling away before it like a valley. And then, so lazily, the water would swell up and slam against the stone, and boom, the ground would tremble and sheets of spray would rocket into the sky, drenching all. And turning, I would see the rest of the wave tumble away from my outcrop, plying onwards to wherever the wind might be driving it.

  They were the most beautiful things I had ever seen.

  And I wanted to go with them. It was a yearning born of my long-marooned madness no doubt, but it didn’t feel mad. The pang inside me was simple and clear. I did not want to be left on that island. I wanted release, I wanted to let go and be overwhelmed by the sheer energy contained in those seas. Indeed, after all my proud boasts about eternal consciousness, I longed for the oblivion the waves offered.

  All that second day of the storm they buil
t. They were grey in colour at first, and then a dull green, but by afternoon they had become a shade that only sailors in the worst of conditions have ever witnessed, and few enough have lived to report—an electrically glowing blue. I crouched on the cliff edge, face to the screaming wind, staring out in search of the one titan I knew must be coming.

  And in the dimness of evening, it came—a crest way out on the tumultuous sea, lifting and then falling and then lifting again.

  I could explain the theories of wave formation to you, orphan, the interactions of wind and water. I could speak of friction and fetch and wavelengths and resonance…but what does any of it matter? All that matters is that the wave I saw gathering out there was twice the height of any other, and it was made especially for me.

  I stood. I took a last look at my island, all soaked and windblown and deserted. The relief ship, if it ever came, would wonder what had happened to me. They would think that surely no one could simply be washed away, not when the cliffs rose a good fifty metres. They would declare my loss a mystery, another legend of the sea.

  I laughed. I turned back, and there was the wave, its crest level with me, even though it was still far out to sea. I watched it come and could scarce stop myself from jumping into the ocean and swimming to meet it. On it came, the crest above me now, all the surrounding water drawn, against gravity, to that one central peak.

  The wave didn’t break. It simply rose until I was engulfed. I didn’t even need to step off the cliff. The water was simply there, lifting me, cold and irresistible. I was swept right across the island, gripped by a force so powerful it could have smashed me to pieces, and yet which wafted me gently, my head above water all the while.

  I cried aloud. This! This was freedom. To be washed away, to let the immensity of nature take me and rule me. I could’ve ridden that way forever.

  But the wave reached its climax at last. Unknowing, I stared down from the peak into the misted chasm that had opened in the ocean below. There came a monumental sense of overbalance, of a catastrophic overtopping. And then I was falling, and the black depths opened to swallow me. Thus the wave broke.

  And thus, for the fourth time, I died.

  21

  The orphan came back to herself with a gasp, as if she had been underwater and only just struggled to the surface.

  Somebody was in pain.

  She leant forward. It wasn’t the foreigner. He lay as insensible as ever on the bed, his eyes open but blank. She shook her head to clear it. It felt like hours had passed, and even though she knew she had never left the room, it seemed that the sounds of wind and crashing seas were only just now fading.

  The pain continued, waves of it. A moan came. The orphan looked to the doorway and saw the archangel there. He was curled on the floor, his hands covering his face, his book dropped unheeded at his side. She turned back to the foreigner, frowning. He had promised he wouldn’t hurt him!

  This wasn’t my doing. You saw. He wanted to hear.

  The orphan stared at the youth. What was wrong with him?

  The siren’s call. The seas are building. Any moment now, he’ll be stepping off into his own ocean, just as I did. You’ll see. I tried to warn you.

  She didn’t understand. He would have to explain.

  But now that his tale was done, the foreigner projected merely an aggrieved indifference. I promised you I wouldn’t go into this boy’s head, and I won’t. If you want to know what’s wrong with him, you go in yourself.

  And with that the orphan felt him withdraw. Annoyed, she dared momentarily to chase after him, to see where he went when he left her—but in place of his mind there was now only a forbidding absence, too cold and dark for her to enter.

  She shivered, and the archangel groaned.

  Now, his mind she could feel. It was throbbing with distress. She could no more ignore it than she could have ignored a bleeding wound. The foreigner was right. It wasn’t his fault. She was the one who had brought the archangel into this.

  Uncertain, she reached out a hand to his shoulder. It was no use. He flinched at the touch and crawled away, back into the dayroom. For a moment the orphan didn’t follow—she was staring in alarm at the floor. The archangel had left his book behind. Impossible…he was never without it. She picked it up, flicked through its incomprehensible pages, and went after him.

  It was night, she realised, the dayroom sunk in darkness. (So they had lost an entire morning and afternoon, there with the foreigner on his island. And yet they hadn’t been interrupted. How could that be? Had no nurse visited the crematorium all day?) The only light came from the television, throwing blue shadows. The virgin was sitting in front of it, legs drawn to her chest, dreaming in the ever-changing shapes and patterns. And the archangel was now hunched behind her, on his knees.

  What was he doing? Was he praying? But no, he was silent, simply staring at the back of the virgin’s neck, his hands on his thighs, trembling. And once more, the orphan felt the pain in him, a pressure building and building. Was he going to hurt the girl? Crouching at the youth’s side, the orphan drew a deep breath, then slid her awareness out of her own head and into his.

  Into the silent chamber at the top of the tower.

  Only it wasn’t silent anymore. The archangel sat apparently serene in his chair, but a great roaring surrounded the room, and beneath him the tower shook and swayed. Through the windows, the orphan could see that a storm was raging. The wind was tearing away chunks of paper from the walls, and the clouds, so sluggish when she had first seen them, were racing now.

  She knew this storm. It was the same one that had assailed the foreigner on his island. But now it was a particularly female thing. The clouds formed lurid shapes as they churned—curved clefts, and protuberances like lips and breasts. And far below, in the tower’s foundations, a snakelike thing was stirring.

  The orphan withdrew from his mind and stared at the archangel. A woman. The youth was tortured by thoughts of a woman. Yet he had never even noticed any of the women in the hospital before, no matter how they flirted. But then the orphan was looking at the virgin, sitting oblivious before him.

  The virgin? That was ridiculous. She would never allow him to touch her. Why, she would never even deign to notice him.

  Except…

  The orphan studied the girl. Was there something unusual in the tilt of her head? The orphan shifted so that she could look at the virgin’s face. The girl’s eyes were as unfocused as ever, and yet her gaze seemed to be angled slightly away from the television—as if she knew that someone was behind her.

  Ah now…

  The orphan thought back to the day after the volcano had erupted. She had brought these two together then, the virgin and the archangel, and made them touch hands. There had been a reaction, she recalled. A connection like a flash of blue light. Even so, was it really possible that the girl could…?

  She opened her mind again, and flowed out—this time, into the blindness of the virgin’s world. The orphan had been there once before, and it was as drear a place as she remembered. Looking through the girl’s eyes, the room might have been filled with a brown haze that leached everything of brightness and life. It was a world where there was nothing, and no one, worthy of attention.

  But the television! How it blazed!

  The orphan gazed in sudden comprehension. When she had been in the virgin’s head before, the girl’s magic window had been shut, and the orphan had only dimly grasped that it was somehow linked to the television. But now she really saw. The window was wide open, the screen radiant, and finally the colours and patterns there made sense to the orphan’s eyes. They were people. Glowing, gorgeous people. More beautiful than any she had ever seen. They moved as gracefully as water flowed. And the sounds that surrounded them. How to describe the sounds, pulsing and lilting? It was only through the virgin’s mind that a fitting word came to the orphan, a new word—music.

  No wonder the girl stared at the TV so. No wonder she thought that this v
ivid world was where she really belonged. No wonder she was so uninterested in everything else. And yet…even in that instant of revelation, the orphan could see that for all its brightness, the television world was far off and small. And cold. No warmth came from the glowing people. No touch. No matter how she stared, the virgin could never go there and be with those wonderful beings. It was a screen, not a window. She would always be trapped on the wrong side of it, in the world of shadows.

  The orphan dismissed the television. It was a distraction. The shadows were what mattered. Why had the real world gone so dark and dull for the girl? The orphan peered deeper into the virgin’s mind. Expert at this now, she dug away at levels of memory, unearthing year after year of the girl’s life. Surprisingly, even as far back as the virgin’s adolescence her world was already darkened, her manner already languid and soporific. So the orphan went deeper, into her childhood. And it was only there, when the girl was no more than eight or nine, that the orphan found light and colour again—and, stern in the girl’s memory, a face.

  It was the girl’s grandmother, the one who sometimes came to visit. The woman was younger in the virgin’s memory, but still old, and fiercely commanding. There was no mother that the orphan could see. No father. They had disappeared somehow before the girl was even conscious. There was just this old woman. Grim. And poor. They lived, the young girl and the grandmother, in a house that must once have been grand, but which was dark now, empty of furniture or people. Or food.

  But men came there. They came to see the virgin. Though still so young, her perfection brought them. The smoothness of her skin. The pure oval of her face. The fullness of her lips. She was famed across the island. And they were wealthy men, men of property and importance, men looking for future wives for their young sons—or even for themselves. The grandmother rubbed her hands at the delightful prospect. A contract of marriage, a dowry bestowed, the family fortunes revived.