William Vollmann - The Atlas

San Diego, California, U.S.A. 32.45 N, 117.10 W

San Francisco, California, U.S.A. 37.45 N, 122.27 W

San Ignacio, Belize 17.14 N, 89.03 W

Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina 43.52 N, 18.26 E

Savant Lake, Ontario, Canada 50.16 N, 90.44 W

Sioux Lookout, Ontario, Canada 50.05 N, 91.55 W

The Slidre River, Ellesmere Island, Northwest Territories, Canada 80.00 N, 85.39 W

The Sphere of Stars

Split, Dalmatia, Republika Hrvatska (Croatia) 43.31 N, 16.28 E

State of Vatican City (Citta del Vaticano) 41.54 N, 12.27 E

Sudbury, Ontario, Canada 46.30 N, 81.01 W

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia 33.55 S, 151.10 E

Tamatave, Madagascar 181.05 S, 49.23 E

Taxco, Guerrero, Mexico 18.32 N, 99.36 W

Thailand

The Pas, Manitoba, Canada 53.50 N, 101.15 W

Tokyo to Osaka, Japan

Toronto, Ontario, Canada 43.42 N, 79.25 W

Virginia Beach, Virginia, U.S.A. 36.51 N, 75.59 W

Wailea, Maui, Hawaii, U.S.A. 19.52 N, 155.08 W

Washago, Ontario, Canada 44.45 N, 79.20 W

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada 49.53 N, 97.10 W

Winnitoba, Manitoba, Canada

Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar (Burma) 16.47 N, 96.10 E

Yukon Territory, Canada

Zagreb, Republika Hrvatska (Croatia) 45.48 N, 15.58 E

Scissoring legs and shadows scudding like clouds across the marble proved destiny in action, for the people who rushed through this concourse came from the rim of everywhere to be ejaculated everywhere, redistributing themselves without reference to each other. A few, like the small girl who sat on the stairs holding her bald baby doll, or the lady who stopped, shifted the strap of her handbag, and gazed at the departure times for the New Haven Line, delayed judgment (and an executive paused in his descent of the steps, snorted at the girl's doll, and said: I thought that baby was real!). But no one stayed here, except the souls without homes. Above the information kiosk, the hands of the illuminated clock circled all the directions, tranquilly, while the stone-muffled murmurs of the multitude rose up and condensed into meaningless animal sounds. There was a circle, and its spokes were their trajectories. But the circle turned! They did not understand the strangeness of that. Creased black trousers, naked brown legs, merciless knees, skirts and jeans, overalls swollen tight with floating testicles, paisley handbags passing as smoothly as magic carpets, these made noise, had substance, but the place became more and more empty as I sat there, because none of it was for anything but itself. The belt of brass flowers that crossed the ceiling's belly meant something, made the place more like a church; the sunken tunnels where the trains stretched themselves out, gleaming their lights, were the catacombs. One of those passageways went to the Montréaler, my favorite train. Canada's railroads continued north from Montréal, which was why when I peered into that tunnel (I'd ridden the Montréaler so many times, and wouldn't anymore), it was almost as if I could see all the way to Hudson Bay; one Canadian National sleeper did still go to Churchill—

A policeman came and told me to move on. So I went past the double green globes; I left the people who were going somewhere (a girl in high heels galloped by me, biting her lip with concentration, and one of her breasts struck my cheek); so I too went my way, obeying the same law that dispersed the others. .

There came a sharp low snapping of the air, somewhat louder than before, and then another at a distance, which briefly and metallically rippled. But these variants were incidental to the main sound, the weighty unpleasant sound of earth falling on earth, as if for some burial. Granted, they were all different in their unhappy way, like a chain of sobs. Now somebody was dropping things, slowly, with a nasty kind of weariness. Something thudded down. White smoke rose diagonally and lethargically in the hot air. So it was not fuel or tires burning. Analyzing was the first step to not listening (at least to the more distant impacts). After three or four days I no longer felt a naked tenderness at the back of my head where I imagined a sniper taking aim. I could feel the nose of the bullet pointed at me just as you can feel eyes staring at your back. No matter which way I turned, the sniper who was going to kill me kept the back of my head in his sights. The spot of tenderness was small, round, localized. Why it was that particular place (the center of the occiput) I could only theorize. Perhaps it was because it was 180 degrees from my eyes, the farthest possible point from anyplace that I could ever see, the place where I used to shoot cows to be butchered. This absurd and useless sensitivity persisted until my visit to the morgue at Koševo Hospital. On that day as always I was in the back of the car, gripping the doorhandle as the militiaman shouted to the driver to move his fucking ass because we were in a very dangerous open place and so we screeched around the corner and then the driver floored it; I saw the speedometer pass 120 kph and then we made another sharp turn. The back of my head itched. Not too far away, a sound came like a resinous twig bursting cozily in the fireplace. Then something ripped horribly. I remembered the UN observer at the airport coming to his feet at a similar sound, saying: That's bad. I don't know what that is. Sounds like a chain gun, but they're not supposed to have those. Maybe a rocket. — Last week's casualty list at the Holiday Inn, prepared by the Institute for Public Health, had figured up 218 killed and 1,406 wounded in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which worked out to 90 deaths and 540 injuries in Sarajevo, which became momentarily intelligible when, as I said, I smelled the day's harvest at the morgue and saw the dried blood on the floor. With no electricity and no water a morgue is not very nice. I saw the unidentified man whose legs had been blown off by a grenade. By law they had to keep him for twenty-four hours while he lay swelling and reeking on the table, a mass of shit and blood demarcating the end of his stomach. Next to him lay the twenty-five-year-old man with the bloody face (one wound was all that he had, a neat drilling from an antiaircraft gun); he was covered with flies and his hand was clenched and his naked body was reddish brown but blotched with a terrible white whose contrast with the extraordinary yellowness of the child's corpse (an antitank grenade had solved him) seemed almost planned, aesthetic, unlike the child's doll-face grinning, the eyes dark slits. From the child as from the others came the vinegar-vomit smell. It was unbearable to see how his head moved when the pathologist tried to unwrap the sheet, turning him round and round as his little skull shook; and in the end the pathologist could not do it because he'd been fossilized in his own dried blood, the sheet now hardened brown and crackly againsj his belly where the intestines had mushed out. Still the pathologist endeavored to remove the sheet in a professional manner, and the doll's head jerked rhythmically back and forth; so that I recollected a small Croatian girl I'd seen in a park in Zagreb; she had reddish-gold hair and was swinging. She moved almost like this doll. Sometimes she just seemed passive, with her legs locked out in front of her; at other times her knees hinged urgently until she made rapid arcs, but the creak of the swing was always the same. A man with a military crewcut sat smoking; his hair was the color of his smoke. After awhile he threw the cigarette down into the sand. It lay beside a boy's plastic spade and continued to smoke. Four boys came by and snatched it up. They passed it around from hand to hand and tried to make each other inhale. The one who'd actually found it kept his prize, watching the smoke rise from between his fingers as they all went off shouting together. The girl went on swinging. — This next one was killed several days before, said the pathologist. Perhaps you don't want to look. — The head, tiny and black, was a ball of swarming insects which for some reason had not yet attacked the yellow bloatings below. Beside him lay a woman, smiling, stained with blood.