William Vollmann - The Atlas

Below me, corkscrew trails of snow whirled across the plain and fogged the ridges. They blew across the land like parallel wave-crests. The fjord also flowed in that direction; the wind was pushing it, wind-ripples greenish-grayish-gold.

I raised my arms to my shoulders, and opened them wide. I laughed as the wind lifted me under the armpits and bore me up into the blue sky, where the clouds floated like drifts of ice. I flew far.

I came to a place where the ice was gray but gold-bordered. It seemed to glow from beneath. On the white snow-beach I saw the black silhouette of a woman, with white fur-ruff around her face.

The snow was raked into parallel ridges half a foot high. Ridges ran also between the black rocks that protruded from the snow-covered river, so that they seemed to be lined up in rows. The scene expressed above all an unearthly precision . Once again golden plant-stalks rose above the snow; the faraway ridges were blue, and all was calm.

The wind began to keen, and I closed my eyes again. In my sleep the wind caught me and carried me to the woman with the fur-bordered face. She kissed me. Then I heard my friend unzip his sleeping bag and open the outer door; I heard the match strike and smelled the sulphur of it; I smelled the cigarette smoke. Opening his eyes, I saw the smoke mingling with the steam of my own breath. It was another cold and dreary day. Yet somehow it did not seem dreary anymore.

In the afternoon the sun came out, but the snow and wind kept on for a long time. Finally the snow stopped and I lay in the tent watching the fly flap away from the tentwall in the gusts so that the wall became sublimely white and perfect for a moment before the fly's writhing shadow lashed it; all day I watched the sun-play and felt that I needed no more.

Later my companion and I came to a mound of frozen sand and stones like the one in my dream, and as we started to climb it the wind swooped to chill our faces numb and white. And yet we both were laughing, too. By the time we reached the summit of that upturned bowl the wind was almost strong enough to carry us away. I wanted to be carried away. I said to the wind: Please carry me away. — Then my companion rushed past me. Before he disappeared in a lenticular cloud, I saw that his eyes were closed and he was smiling tenderly and his arms were outstretched as if he were about to embrace someone.

Now I want to know who will pay for the car, said the rental agency man. I have been to the bridge to get the car and it was very dangerous with all those bombs.

That's nice, I said.

In America you could not leave the country before you paid for this type of damage, he said.

I don't like to be threatened, I said. If you threaten me I won't help.

He sat there in my hotel room and stared at me while I sat on my bed looking back at him on that Sunday morning.

Why did you go there? he said. You must tell me why you drove that dangerous bridge.

Why don't you ask Mr. A., I said politely. He was driving.

He's dead, the man said. (I could see that he had no sense of humor.)

Well, then, why don't you ask Mr. B.

But he is also dead.

I guess you're out of luck then, I said.

We stared at each other some more, hating each other more every minute, and the church bells tolled outside, and then he got out an album of color photographs which portrayed the car from every angle.

As you see, it is completely damaged, he said. Destroyed.

Which photo is your favorite? I said. Why don't you give me your favorite one and I'll take it to my agency.

At first he wouldn't do it. He hated to part with any of the glossies in that collection so pure and complete, but at last he selected a good one that showed how the driver's side had been smashed and twisted and riddled.

That's nice, I said. That's very artistic. Here. I'll show you a couple of nice pictures, too.

I got up and went to the other bed and took the envelope of contact prints.

This is Mr. B. after I pulled him out of the car, I said. Isn't that nice? He was my friend for nineteen years. And this one here is Mr. A. Here they both are in the front just before I pulled them out.

Mr. A. was driving? the rental man asked.

That's right. See how the first burst got him right in the head? I'll be happy to make a copy for your collection.

He looked away. — So you will stay here in Split?

No, tomorrow I'll go back to Mostar, I said. It's so nice there.

Why? Why do you go back to that dangerous place? — That was what I expected him to say because that was what everybody else said, but he did not say it. He was not so interested in future whys because he was first and foremost a rental man.

When do you come back? he said. I'll be waiting for you.

Tuesday night. That's when Mr. B.'s family is arriving for the funeral—

So they will be in this hotel? he said, eyes lighting up for the first time. What room number?

I want you to understand something, I began.

I already understand everything, he said. But who will pay for the car? Ten thousand six seven hundred dollars! Who will pay for that? I ask you, who will pay?

No, you don't understand everything, I told him. What you don't understand is that if you bother Mr. B.'s family with this matter in any way I will not help you anymore. His mother is old and has a bad heart.

Then who will pay?

I did not sign the rental agreement, I said. Legally I have no responsibility. Morally I do, so I will try to—

You are also responsible, he interrupted. You also chose to go there. I have rented to journalists before. I know how you are (this last he said with stunning contempt).

I promise you, if you disturb Mr. B.'s family in any way you will receive no help from me, I said. I will not be happy. Right now I am very happy because I enjoy talking to you so much. If you bother anyone but me I will be quite unhappy. Then maybe I will not be very nice.

You were very lucky, he said. So you must pay.

We understand each other there, I said. What you say is very true and relevant to all walks of life. Thank you for imparting your philosophy to me.

His cellular phone rang just then, so he had to go off to Sunday dinner with his family. He was eager to go now because the food would soon be getting cold. Before, his business with me had been quite urgent. I offered to buy him a drink and show him still more photographs of my friends' mutilated bodies, but he would not stay. So I sat alone on the bed, looking at the damage estimate, which was typed in a language I could not read, and I was unable either to laugh or to cry.

Peter returned to the mount called Olivet whenever he could, at first because he sought yet for signs of Him Whom he worshipped, but once he'd taken upon himself the first black mantle of priesthood, once he had founded his church, his craving for JESUS lost its ache and became instead a wholesome nostalgia: — This place, he said to himself, is where I became what I am. — And he meant this not out of any sinful pride, for he fully expected to die for the LORD as JESUS had done (and we know that in this he was to be gratified). So Peter walked the path of hardpacked quartz pebbles; his robe caught and tore on the gray bushes; he ascended the way his FRIEND had gone and looked up at Heaven until his face was sunburned; he sat on the spot where the two Angels had appeared, and there he rested all day, smiling with his head in his hands. In the evenings that cut like blue and ancient knives, birds pelted the sky in droves, sounding their different notes, and the Joshua trees seemed to stretch upward as their shadows lengthened; His shadow must have become impossibly, mournfully elongated as He had risen (but the silhouette of His face would have remained as it was, a face of ordinary proportions, bowed upon a great pillar of cooling shadow) — and the Joshua trees whose arms invoked all directions like the crooked legs of spiders began to tremble in the wind, and the ridges to the west turned purple with black tree-dots, while the ridges to the east, receiving the last of the sun's low-slanting rays, glowed hot and pink above the darkness.