The Atlas

by William T. Vollmann

  The long blue train stretched a good half mile. Everybody had climbed down now into the coolness of Churchill, which is to say Church Chill, the consecrated snow country beyond the frosted windows. He walked around still orange-brown-bottomed pools ringed by rock and flowers and tiny trees. Visited by the striped tapering thorax and ochery-brown head of a mosquito, he let it bite. In the cracks of a lichen-spotted turtle-backed boulder grew moss and then eight-lobed blossoms of a Naples-yellow hue, and hollowed centers, uttering spiders of yellow-orange. He saw fresh bearprints in the sand near the water. He entered the smell of salt, blue mussels, crisp reddish-black seaweed. He did not yet understand the way the plants lived in their variously bordering neighborhoods, sometimes mixing, sometimes bowing in the wind.

  For a moment he felt as melancholy as he always did the day before some journey to unknown climes, but then he found himself remembering one of those December nights when he'd come home from a trip, brought the duffel bag upstairs and was asleep within minutes; but he'd awakened early, his innards still flooded with another country's time where high over the cobalt sea there was nothing, then suddenly four low brownish-green islands ringed with brilliant white—Taipei? No, blue space again. Now his half-dreaming eyes found the double wake of a ship; then under a long harvest of cloud some blue and washed-out land where his soul still wandered, unable yet to follow himself to sleep in the far-off winterlands, the insides of his eyelids still imprinted by grayish-blue riverfangs, then an immense harbor with gates and channels; that was the city where his mango-colored wife and children awaited his return, so he prayed for them, lying calmly and at rest in his bed for awhile, making friends with the darkness, and then after an hour or two arose, tiptoed surely down the chilly hall, reached into the back of the closet and pulled on his old Arctic jumpsuit over his nakedness. It was like pulling on a skin of confidence and valorous deeds. He went downstairs and opened the front door and looked out. It was black and cold and raining. The clock said 4:13. He'd slept maybe a couple of hours. He was starving. Because he'd been away, there was no milk in the refrigerator for his cereal. Milk always went bad when he left it. He thought he had chicken soup or vegetable soup, but in the cupboard there was only a can of refried beans. He chopped garlic and browned it in olive oil. Then he stirred the beans in and listened to them sizzle. He found some powdered parmesan cheese and some tomato paste and spooned those on and it began to smell very good. Five minutes and it was done. He sat eating out of the frying pan, warm and happy and alert because he still had the power to move freely within the atlas. Then he opened his mail. More memories of people long unseen and things long undone exploded happily, in the same way that in Delhi the merchants showed him handmade rugs which unrolled like fireworks, red snowflakes, gold diamonds, blue flowers, snow-blue crystals. A woman whom he loved had written him a letter which said: Often after I spend time with you, I feel almost ashamed afterwards, as if I were just speeding and babbling the whole time. It's like, there's so many things I want to ask you, and so many things I want to tell you, but afterwards I feel like I was talking so fast I found out nothing and communicated nothing. You remind me a lot of my sister, who is also strong and stoic and unafraid, and who won't ever really complain when she is uncomfortable or in pain. Eventually you become so adept at hiding your day-to-day physical or emotional discomfort that everyone thinks you are kind of superhuman and don't feel things as much. — Maybe I don't feel, he thought. That's my secret, darling. — A woman whom he loved, the one with whom he'd eaten Steammed Crab with Anything, had written him a letter which said: I receive your letter now how about you. I miss you lot now I'm in Bangkok now I'm always sickness but don't worry about me please good take care of your self you are my distiny. When I'm alone I miss you my dear. Joy she always take good care of me after I feel better. Bangkok it very hot now. I love you much more than I can say I send you my love and kisses. Love you much, your wife, and before he got to the signature the world went underwater and he sat there sobbing. She was sick, always in sickness. And he had no face. — Opening the next letter, he learned that he would be leaving again soon for still another place where he had never been, worshipping the mystery called motion. Please good take care of your self you are my distiny. It was another ten-o'-clock dusk with all the orange melancholy of another summer slipping away, the air chilly and good inside his nostrils, an unseen locomotive thrumming on and on in the dim stillness beyond pale fireweed, the horizon made up of brown Canadian National boxcars now empty of wheat—a hundred or more of them having been unloaded at the grain elevator a mile away where belugas broke out of the river long and black and hollowly breathing and chirping like birds; actually they were whitish like giant snails but the dusk silhouetted them. They were all neck; they were snakes. The energy of an oscillating body varies in proportion with the square of the amplitude of vibration. He tried to sense the combined force at the disposal of those immense creatures and could not. The atlas had closed. Great crates sat waiting to go north on the sealift to Coral Harbour, Rankin Inlet, Baker Lake, Arviat. No place was the end, nowhere never. The end was only in the observer's eyes. After witnessing violent deaths in the semi-elongated progress of his travels, he'd begun to gain the mystic ability to know exactly how the people he loved would die should they too be murdered. He'd be chatting with them on some innocuous subject—cumuli, the Republicans—when suddenly their hideous screams would toll in his heart; he'd see their pâté'd brains oozing greasily out of their foreheads or learn how their carotid arteries would urinate the dark liquid; he'd watch life drain from their faces with astonishing speed, the eyes going fishy and useless, the flesh becoming pale gray clay. It was always his fault. And they'd go on talking, not realizing that they were dead; he'd make himself smile, since it was no good warning them. Soon they'd be broken. That was destiny. And of course he remained well aware that most of these people would not die unpleasantly at all. It was all a figment of horror, some parasite overlaying their healthy countenances, defiantly exposing itself like a cartoon pervert and drinking his life; he, not the doomed recipients of his poisoned friendship, was the coward who died the proverbial thousand deaths. But he didn't even fear dying so much; it was more the ritual of watching them end, always in unique ways, the timbre of their screams plausibly calibrated to their well-known voices which he had scarcely if ever heard raised; was this what Biblical prophets witnessed when they gazed with inward-rolling eyes upon their as yet unraped cities? One night what fellow travellers and parlor leftists call "the phenomenon" struck a woman who was on top of him fucking him eagerly, and for a second he thought that his tears were going to explode into her exploding intestines (impish death had blown her stomach open; the insides of his nostrils were spattered with her blood and bile); that was why he wanted to say he was sorry, now while she moaned and convulsed, his penis tearing her open. But she slammed herself upon him faster and faster! Blood trickled out of her mouth. His penis burst out of the crown of her skull (the bone of her snowy like a birch). She screamed. After the Feast of the Dead, souls become turtledoves, as some Indians used to say, but the majority believed that they go together to the Country of the Dead. PIERCE HEAD puts their brains in His pumpkins, and then the evil dog by the treetrunk-bridge bites their heels, seeking to make them stumble into the rapids where they'll be drowned, and then there is nothing for them but lamentation and complaining endlessly, there in the Country of the Dead. She screamed. He held her more tightly and kissed her; how could he disturb or disappoint her now when she was coming? Afterward he buried his face between her breasts and listened to the heart a mere inch beneath the hot sweatslicked flesh, beating out its song: I'm alive; I'm alive. This was the center. He remembered a woman he'd once known for a year or two, a graphic designer, Roman Catholic, a tall brunette (how to characterize a person? what is most relevant?), who'd said to him: I believe that people are here on this planet because they need to learn certain lessons. And I think no one can know what lessons ano
ther person can learn. — And now he wanted to shout: What lesson am I to learn from these screams? For a long time that question echoed inside his own mucus-walled chest defiantly, bouncing and flailing against his organs, so of course there was no answer. But one day he asked it sincerely, and then he got a reply. The mysterious woman, the one with the delicious-smelling oval face who had usually slept in her own hotel room in Montana, she was the one who decided to get sterilized. He said: I'll come be with you. I'll hold your hand. — When they stuck the IV in she moaned and said: Oh, it hurts. It hurts, and it feels so cold going in. — Then the anesthesiologist, that representative of superior puissance, took a slender hypodermic, fitted it to the intake port, and slowly pressed the plunger. The anesthesiologist had drawn water from the wells of salvation, and she could not see it because she was locked down upon the table with her thighs spread, and people all around! He held her hand. That transparent liquid which the anesthesiologist had almost lasciviously squeezed into her IV crawled down the tube; he watched it coming closer and then it went inside her hand, scuttled up her armways into her shoulder and up her neck and she whispered: It hurts; it hurts! — When it got to her brain she began acting vague, and it went around and around inside her, and each time it came back to her brain she got drunker and wearier and her eyes glazed; then she was gone. He kept holding her hand until the doctor and the nurse and the anesthesiologist made him go outside. An hour later they called him. She was on a gurney outside the blue curtain, and her eyes were closed. (He peeked behind the blue curtain and saw another woman with thighs spread.) He held his darling's hand. When she woke up, the pain was so intense that her teeth chattered and huge tears ran down her cheek. He called them and made them give her morphine. The morphine didn't take for a long time. They had to give her three shots. After an hour or so the morphine began to make her sick, and she vomited. She vomited all night. Sometimes she was too weak to bring it up easily, and then she stuck her finger down her throat, at which the occasionally visiting nurse would make a face. (The nurse also disapproved because his darling hadn't any underwear.) He was beside her with the curvy tray of pink plastic to catch her vomit, and when he emptied the plastic tray for the third time he understood what the lesson was: The screams were so horrible because life was beautiful. He, the dullard, needed to be hunted by screaming throughout his life, so that the fear, agony and grief at losing life which they evoked would remind him to cherish it in himself and others. — I also believe in the value of human existence, the Roman Catholic woman had said. I believe there are other human souls coming which want a chance. A lot of stuff I don't understand, but I wonder if accidents ever really happen. I don't think I've ever had one. If I got pregnant, I'd probably take it as a challenge. I'd probably take it as a chance to express some love inside me. I don't believe in judging another person. If it's a young girl, she has to be given a choice. — The next day, sleepy from her omnipotent medicines, the mysterious one said to him: I love you. — How do you feel? he asked. — She smiled slowly. I'm so happy, because I'm sterile! — Every day she got stronger. Soon she could get out of bed again. He loved her life's ongoing. He loved his life. He rode the bus and emptied the garbage and picked up dogshit and composed his Traveller's Epitaph: I can't say I know much, but I've loved, maybe too much; maybe from love I'll get my death. I've seen Madagascar and walked the frozen sea. I have no trade, make nothing but pretty things which fail against the seriousness of rice. I'm not well or wise; I fear death; but I've never failed any woman I loved. I never refused gold bracelets to any wife who asked them of me. When they did me evil I received it gracefully; when they were good to me I gave them thanks. I denied none esteem, never heeded shaming words. I can't say I've done much or been much, but I'm not ashamed of who I've been. I don't ask your forgiveness or remembrance. I'm in the flowers on my grave, unknowing and content. — But it didn't ring true. He hadn't loved enough (how can one love enough?); and how could he dare to say he hadn't failed anybody? Whom hadn't he failed? He could only say that he loved life. He closed his eyes, and a screaming grey face exploded into crimson gobbets.

  That evening the wind was full of vowels, and it said: ai ee eh uh oh eh ee oh. He listened and listened again. Then he understood that the wind was saying: why we never know where we go. Everywhere nowhere up down around.

  He set out for the Barren Lands, always following the coast of Hudson Bay. One of his more reliable and harmless pleasures was to return to his tent after a stroll sufficient to make the cold seem warm, look around one last time at the midnight sun, breathe another breath of that good subarctic air, undo his boots, crawl into the tent, pull the boots off, zip the doorway shut against mosquitoes and rain, and then drink to his heart's content of pure and chilly river water, the bottle having been filled that day by him or one of his Inuk friends from the place where some children swam and others sat with their parkas on. Then he walked to the place where there were no more Inuk friends, nobody nowhere forever, and his walking was completed.

  He listened to voices. He loved them. They were always different, although they said the same things; in much the same way that the cries of dogs sometimes resemble those of children, sometimes those of wolves or pulled nails, sometimes those of soccer fans, and sometimes those of dogs.

  Then the day came when he realized that he could truly understand some of the words the dogs shouted; and without effort he heard the meaning in the haunting cries of gulls. It was only because he spent so much time alone, eating little; it was nothing special.

  He was cold. He shivered and twitched like grass. The skeletons which had been sleeping in the inch-high lichen hills grabbed with rib-claws, vertebral hooks, and tailbone rakes, wanting to pull themselves out of the cold wet place. His lichen-blots were all he owned now, but they were bright enough to keep him counting them in the wind, absorbed like a vampire in wasting all before his dawnless dawn. The grass-columns flashed like skirts.

  I know I said I wouldn't write, his first love had written. I lied. The cancer is back. I'm scared to death. I cannot believe this is happening. I am not vain. I do not care about losing my breast but I do want to live. Do you believe in God?

  Once she'd sent him a photograph of herself at the zoo; and when he found it years later in an envelope with a thirteen-cent butterfly stamp she scarcely seemed familiar. But he had always been bad with faces. A giraffe stretched its neck in the background. Her beauty was what they used to call "classical." It was a face that could easily have been haughty or cold but in the photo she had a sweet little smile and she looked so young, so young. She could have been his little sister; in a few more years she could be his daughter. He was ashamed that he had ever caused her inconvenience or pain. He could never be hers now. He had thought that the picture, at least, would always belong to him; but as he'd wandered through the atlas, the photograph and he had diverged. On the envelope she'd written: Inside are pictures! Lions and tigers, monkeys cats and giraffes! and Hey, did you hear Nixon resigned? and If I wrote you in French could you understand it?

  Sure, he said. Try me.

  He listened to the plants.

  Willow Lady grew slowly out of his thoughts, hour by hour in that summer of perpetual chilly light. The wind was her breath and the wind's voice was her voice. The wind rarely spoke anymore. She had a face like a sly brown mask. She had Inuk eyes. She smiled richly, showing her teeth. Her lean skull was cradled in hair whose stubby woody strands meandered across the moss, holding her safely down; willow leaves sprouted from them in dark green clusters and sometimes there were fuzzy buds. She told him to walk to the waterfall. The wind said: go. But he didn't know where the waterfall was. He wanted to find it because he wanted to listen to it and breathe the aerated coolness when he hung his head over the clifFside, watching the white foam softer than moss become brown and then indigo as it rushed away, into the world. He asked Willow Lady how to get there but she wouldn't tell him. There were yellow flecks in the sky, the hue of that stone calle
d tiger's eye.

  Skeletons buzzed in the moss.

  The tundra became an exploding puzzle. Leaves, flowers, stalks, buds, roots, mosquitoes and bones flew apart, leaving white snow between them.