Hernán Díaz - In the Distance

He lost track of time. It seemed to him that he had been walking for an eternity when a feverish delirium took hold of him. He started to hear voices and hooves and had to turn around continually to swat away the imagined sounds. Sometimes he threw himself on the ground, believing the jingle of the black carriage was catching up with him. To mute these hallucinations, he started talking, mostly to Linus. Sometimes Linus responded. Gradually, Håkan’s body became light and rigid. Walking was a constant miracle. The most difficult moment of each step was to put his foot down. He would look at his shoe, amazed to see it in midair, wondering how it got there and how it would ever manage to land. Then, on his next step, he would stare at his other foot with the same bewilderment. And each time his surprise was fresh, as if he were noticing his suspended foot for the first time. His gait became an odd balancing act as he raised each foot increasingly higher and left it hanging for a short while, his arms slightly outstretched for balance, like a stiff monster. The sameness of the landscape only added to his derangement. He came in and out of consciousness and found himself in midstride, marching through a country identical to the one he had seen before his spell. It was impossible to know how much time had elapsed or how far he had traveled. Sometimes he thought he was walking in place.

One morning, he woke up shivering, embracing a dead dog. He could not remember catching it or breaking its neck.

He walked on until suddenly his foot failed to meet the ground—it kept dropping, slowly falling into a void revealed by the parting sand. The last thing he remembered was looking up at the sole that had remained on the surface.

A fire warming his face. The stars above the flames. A damp cloth on his lips. The sun filtering through a canvas canopy. The taste of fever. The dreaded sound of carriage wheels. Dusk or dawn. Voices. The taste of honey. Eyeglasses. Linus smiling. A horse neighing. The smell of porridge and coffee. His own screams. Hemp rope around wrists and ankles. Linus telling him a story. A fire warming his face. Voices. A damp cloth on his lips. Eyeglasses. The taste of honey.

The blisters on his wrists woke him up, but he welcomed the burn underneath the rope as confirmation that he and his body finally had reconciled. He was lying in a covered wagon. The sun was a hot stain on the canvas. Two silhouettes on the driver’s bench talked quietly. He could hear other men on horses or burros. Time flowed gently through him. Shapes, sounds, and textures were once again part of one single reality.

As his perception of his surroundings grew clearer, he realized that from the sides of the wagon came a wide array of chimes—quick shrill dings and slow low dongs. He turned his head and saw a crowded collection of jars hanging from every bow and bolt and fastened to the bed of the wagon. In them, suspended in a yellowish liquid, were lizards, rats, squirrels, cats, spiders, foxes, serpents, and other creatures. Some jars contained unborn animals, viscera, limbs, and heads. He stirred around but found himself firmly tied down. Lifting his head, he saw cages flapping with birds, baskets crawling with insects, and wicker trunks hissing with snakes. Håkan thought that his recovery had been just an illusion and that he was still trapped in one of his nightmares. He made a sound, and one of the men in the front turned around. Håkan could see only his outline against the bright sky. The man climbed into the back of the wagon and leaned over Håkan, revealing the bespectacled face that had hovered over him during his agony. The man smiled.

“You’re back,” he said.

Håkan tried to sit up, but the ropes kept him in place.

“I’m sorry,” said the man, horrified as he remembered Håkan’s bonds, and swiftly proceeded to untie him.

As he worked on the ropes, he talked to Håkan in a soothing voice. By the time he was done with his ankles, his speech had come to an end. Håkan stared at him. The man asked him something. Silence. He removed his eyeglasses and tried another question. Håkan looked into his gray eyes—they were curious without being intrusive, compassionate without being condescending. Like all the men Håkan had seen in the wilderness, he was unshaven, but unlike all of them, he truly owned the rich reddish beard that reached the uppermost button of his shirt. His hair had been flattened and tamed by dirt, and it was easy to imagine that it would look wilder the cleaner it got. Here was a man who had been improved by the plains. As his right eye started wandering off to the side, he put his glasses back on.

“You don’t speak English?” he asked.

“Little,” replied Håkan.

The man asked him another question. It did not sound like English. He tried again in a guttural, harsh language. Håkan looked at him, rubbing his raw wrists. Noticing this, the man apologized once more, and mimicked a delirious, raving man, kicking and punching the air. Then he pointed at Håkan, and touched his biceps with his index finger and quickly withdrew it, as if the muscle had been white-hot.

“You’re strong!” he said and laughed.

They were silent as the man inspected Håkan’s blisters.

“Where are you from?” he asked, rearranging his glasses when he was done.

“Sweden.”

The man was both gratified and troubled by this answer. Gently tugging at his beard and squinting, he seemed to reach into the past and finally said something that sounded very much like “My name is John Lorimer” in Swedish. Håkan lit up. Lorimer kept talking in a dream version of Håkan’s mother tongue—a language that was and was not Swedish, that sometimes felt familiar but suddenly would become incomprehensible, that evoked home only to stress, immediately after, how remote its foreign sounds were. Later, Lorimer would explain that it was a hodgepodge of German and Dutch, patched together with English.

Laboriously, in his jargon of mixed tongues, Lorimer told Håkan that when they had spotted him walking stiffly with his arms outstretched in front of him, some thought that he was a devil. As they approached him and saw his dark skin, others believed he was an Indian. When they were close enough to see he was in fact covered in congealed blood, they were all convinced he was fatally wounded. Håkan did not seem to notice them, but when they tried to take him to the wagon to dress his injuries, he fought them fiercely, and it took three men to subdue him. Soon after that, he passed out and remained in a delirious haze for six days. Lorimer was baffled to find no significant wounds after washing away the dried blood.

In Swedish marbled with English, Håkan gave a brief account of his ordeals, beginning with the Clangston woman. He urged Lorimer to stay clear of her men and told him he would leave the convoy in the morning since his pursuers would not hesitate to murder everyone in the party to get him. All he needed was food and water, if they could spare some. Lorimer would have none of it. Håkan was to remain under their protection until he had fully recovered and they had made sure that he was beyond the woman’s reach. Their convoy was headed east anyway, at least until reaching its next destination, the great salt lake of Saladillo, after which Lorimer and his men would turn south. In the meantime, Lorimer said, he would like to be taught Swedish. And anyway, he could also use an assistant. Håkan looked at the heads in the jars with apparent concern. Lorimer laughed, told him not to be alarmed, and explained that he had caught those creatures for the benefit of man.

With proper food, drink, and rest, Håkan made a swift recovery. Soon he was out with the five men who assisted Lorimer in his labors and escorted him for his protection. Håkan, in charge of their spare horses and burros, rode next to Lorimer as often as he could, and they taught each other their languages. Lorimer was a fast learner, and his eagerness to practice Swedish came to the detriment of Håkan’s English, but after such a long time sloshing in the slippery sludge of foreign sounds, Håkan welcomed the solid words of his mother tongue.