William Vollmann - The Atlas

Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. (1993) Bangkok, Phrah Nakhon-Thonburi Province, Thailand (1993)

Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. (1993) Bangkok, Phrah Nakhon-Thonburi Province, Thailand (1993)

Mogadishu, Somalia (1993)

Bangkok, Phrah Nakhon-Thonburi Province, Thailand (1993)

Yangon, Myanmar (1993)

Orillia, Ontario, Canada (1993)

Washago, Ontario, Canada (1993)

State of Vatican City (1993)

Mount Aetna, Sicily, Italia (1993)

Lutton, Oklahoma, U.S.A. (1968)

Herculaneum, Near Napoli, Campania, Italia (1993)

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (1994)

Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1991)

Tamatave, Madagascar (1994)

Sudbury, Ontario, Canada (1993)

Mexico (1993)

Allan Water, Ontario, Canada (1993)

Savant Lake, Ontario, Canada (1993)

Taxco, Guerrero, Mexico (1993)

Sioux Lookout, Ontario, Canada (1993)

Reddit, Ontario, Canada (1993)

Ottermere, Ontario, Canada (1993)

Malachi, Ontario, Canada (1993)

Diesel Bend, Utah, U.S.A. (1992)

Thailand (1991)

Chiang Mai, Chiang Mai Province, Thailand (1993)

Bangkok, Phrah Nakhon-Thonburi Province, Thailand (1993)

Winnitoba, Manitoba, Canada (1993)

Rice Lake, Manitoba, Canada (1993)

Yangon, Myanmar (1993)

Battle Rock, Oregon, U.S.A. (1994)

Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. (1994)

Budapest, Hungary (1994)

Zagreb, Croatia (1992)

Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992)

Key West, Florida, U.S.A. (1994)

Samuel H. Boardman State Park, Oregon, U.S.A. (1994)

Key West, Florida, U.S.A. (1994)

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (1994)

Mendocino, California, U.S.A. (1994)

Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992)

Karenni State, Burma (1994)

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (1994)

Karenni State, Burma (1994)

The Great Western Desert, Northern Territory, Australia (1994)

Key West, Florida, U.S.A. (1994)

Elma, Manitoba, Canada (1993)

Paris, Departement Paris, Region Parisienne, France (1995)

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (1993)

Roma, Italia (1993)Cairo, Egypt (1993)

Berlin, Germany (1992)

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. (1994)

New York, New York. U.S.A. (1994)

The Nile River, Egypt (1993)

Ho Mong, Shan State, Burma [Myanmar] (1994)

Marakooper Cave, Tasmania, Australia (1994)

Jerusalem, Israel/Jordan (1993)

Antananarivo, Madagascar (1993)

Bangkok, Phrah Nakhon-Thonburi Province, Thailand (1994)

Antananarivo, Madagascar (1993)

Vatican City and State (1993)

Afghanistan (1982)

The Pas, Manitoba. Canada (1994)

Churchill, Manitoba, Canada (1994)

Pond Inlet, Baffin Island, Northwest Territories, Canada (1990)

Tokyo to Osaka, Japan (1995)

Avignon, Departement Vaucluse, Provence, France (1995)

San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1995)

Churchill. Manitoba, Canada (1994)

Churchill, Manitoba, Canada (1993)

Churchill, Manitoba, Canada (1993)

Churchill, Manitoba, Canada (1994)

Home (1994)

Delhi, India (1991)

Churchill, Manitoba, Canada (1993)

New York. New York, U.S.A. (1991)

Home (1995)

Coral Harbour, Southampton Island, Northwest Territories, Canada (1993)

Churchill, Manitoba, Canada (1993)

Toronto, Ontario, Canada (1990)

Poland (Dreamed)

Eureka, Ellesmere Island, Northwest Territories, Canada (1988)

Churchill, Manitoba, Canada (1994)

Nevada, U.S.A. (1993)

The Slidre River, Ellesmere Island, Northwest Territories, Canada (1988)

He had used up every place now. Everywhere he went, he'd say I lto himself: There's nothing for me here anymore. No more nowhere nobody.

He had finished.

Once life had been as mysterious as a Sierra lake at dawn. That was when he believed that things would happen to him. Now he understood that nothing would ever happen.

It was time to go back to Canada.

Travelling, especially early in the morning, is equivalent to dying, swimming through a night of sleep-choked houses, carrying one's baggage the last few steps to the place where it must be surrendered, entering the irrevocable security zone, then waiting in monotonous chambers to be taken away. This was how he now voyaged through his days. Of course he knew that living, too, is a likeness of dying. Living means leaving, going on trying not to hear the screams.

Almost silently the train departed its tinsel of darkness, metal, concrete and glistening glass. It left another train behind. Then it struck the sky, which had been bright, cloudless and noisy with seagulls since five hours past midnight. The atlas opened as he entered that morning of birds. For a moment he vaguely remembered those summers that adolescents have, when they think they are about to irrevocably change. Montréal continued under its plague of sleep. Apartments, hotels and warehouses were but monuments.

He sat beside a French-named family of Indians: the plumply phlegmatic young mother, disinclined toward rippling her own peace, her four- or five-year-old daughter, who was the most "native"-looking of them with her cedar complexion and long black hair, then the old grandmother complete in spectacles and purple. The grandmother was reading a book about how to live in Paradise forever, her crumpleskinned arm flat across the type, her glasses crouched on the tip of her nose, her lower lip puffed out. He decided that he wanted to live in Paradise, too. He tried to have faith that the train was taking him there. Maybe it was. No more nowhere nobody.

They crossed the river of small green islands.

In an hour they were already in Cornwall, riding the green ocean whose spray was leaves and needles foaming gently against the sky. Another train passed so rapidly that it became a sky of reddish flickers in the lefthand windows.

When the train broke down and another train had to push, the Canadian ladies merely said: Ooh, this is exciting, eh? — Only one person complained, a man who was going to be late in London.

They crossed a shining river, greeted the shiny roofs of metal sheds, and then said to each other: You meet the most interesting people on trains.

I was raised on the prairie, a woman said; which was enough to make him long for the prairie miles ahead. Canada was already making him well. It was an infallible country. What heart-wound or soul-wound could remain unhealed by Canada balsam? How could death ever gnaw away Canada's birches in full-leaf? Why, those leaves had the power to compose an entire yellow-green sky! The grandmother's book was true. He had come back to Paradise.

Passing along the deep brown railroad ties they reached the forest's end. Wet fields of pale green with trees between the rows, a silver silo, long streams of blond hay on the emerald fields — these things now refreshed and greeted him.

Then, like the forest, the world ended in a darker coagulation of blue sky that went on forever: Lake Ontario. Trestles, canals, whitewashed box-houses; they'd reached Port Hope. They continued without stopping. The center was not at the center but at his left hand, which addressed nothing. On the left, nothing but water (lightest closer to shore, with occasional white diagonals across its middle surface, almost all the way to its thick dark horizon-line of blue).

Not a lot to see, though, once you get west, eh? a man said.

No, not a lot, a lady said. We were there once. We got on the flat prairie.

Now and again trees rose tall and summer-leaved around the tracks, and another reddish train-body hurtled by, but then the water would be there again, nearer or farther away.

Pickering's the most special place, the lady said. Wait till you see Pickering.

More semicylindrical hay bales, then a hot, wooded suburb, a vast golf course, a river half-shored with concrete, two men fishing at a sandy spit choked with seagulls — these manifestations he'd finished with. Maybe that was why they didn't stop at Pickering. As for Guild-wood, that town came into being as a hot wasteland of pipes, bulldozers, weeds and apartment towers, but Canada itself could not hurt his Canada. He remained unburied even yet, and they changed at Toronto. In the waiting room he remembered all the waiting rooms of his life. He remembered a crazy old man in Napoli with bandages around his ankles who'd come stamping rhythmically across the floor, raising an army of echoes. The young men put their hands in their pockets and leaned forward grinning. They shouted: March, march! Now suddenly it seemed that all his deeds and hopes and memories were no more than the old man's echoes. But he said: Never mind. I'm in Canada.