Hernán Díaz - In the Distance

They took the abandoned wagon apart, working around the bodies, which they left untouched. After removing the hood of their own wagon to make room for the longer planks, they loaded all the wood and got ready to leave.

“Sadly,” Lorimer whispered to Håkan as they set off once again, “I think these bodies are a good sign.”

And he was right. Shortly thereafter, they saw clouds on the ground. It looked like the end of the world, as if the flats had suddenly broken off and from that point there were only sky in every direction—even down.

“Water,” the tracker said.

The crazed men galloped toward the reflection of the sky. Lorimer tried in vain to stop them. He and Håkan kept their moderate pace. When they got to the reservoir, all the men were lying on the ground, panting, by pools of their own vomit. One of them got up, retching. Lorimer mouthed something, but his voice did not come out. He tried again.

“Brine pools,” he said.

“You promised water,” the tracker whispered.

“Yes,” responded Lorimer. “Build a fire with the planks.”

The men on the scorching ground looked at him as if unable to make out his words, but after overcoming their own bewilderment, they got to work. The white flats outshone the flames, reducing them to a mere convulsion in the air. While the men labored, Lorimer filled the bottom of their largest stockpot with brine and placed a small empty pot in the center, keeping it in place with a rock. Then, he covered the stockpot with a waxed cotton cloth, tied it to the rim, and deposited a stone at the center, weighing the fabric down and creating an inverted cone. The whole contraption was put on the fire. Soon the brine was boiling. Lorimer adjusted the waxed cloth. The men gaped at the invisible flames. When a rattle replaced the bubbling sound, Lorimer asked Håkan to help him get the stockpot down. They uncovered it, and, to everyone’s surprise, the smaller pot at the center, which was empty when they covered the stockpot, was now full of water.

“Drinking water,” Lorimer announced as he poured it into one of their empty barrels. The tracker, skeptical, tasted a ladleful. He looked up at his companions and nodded. They all looked at the naturalist in awe.

As he got everything ready to repeat the procedure, he explained to Håkan the general principle behind what he had done—evaporation, the weight of the salt, condensation. He also explained that the dead family told him that the brine pools had to be near—quite apparently they had all died more or less at the same time, most likely stricken by the same malady. He guessed they had all had the brine, and after vomiting, the already dehydrated emigrants did not stand a chance.

The sun was setting. They boiled several batches throughout the night and replenished their reserves. The blazing fire was an additional joy. They were almost happy.

The following morning, Lorimer was knee-deep in the brine pool. The poisonous spirits in the basin were the distillation of the plains and the skies around and above it—colorless and impassively hostile to life. The naturalist had a tube about three feet long with a glass lid on the bottom and handles at the top, which was open. By submerging the windowed end of the cylinder and looking into it, he could see under water. And this he did all day long. On occasions, he dove in to retrieve some specimen. He tossed most pebbles back into the water, but every now and then he found a sample worthy of further examination and placed it at the edge of the pool. Around mid morning, there was a line of identical (at least to Håkan’s eyes) white pebbles on the shore. The men had erected a few sunshades with some poles and tarpaulin, which they shared with some of the horses and donkeys. At first, they followed Lorimer’s movements with curiosity, but as soon as they realized how monotonous his work was, they tilted their hats down to their noses and dozed off. Håkan offered to help, but Lorimer told him, in a distracted and distant tone, that he had no time to explain what he needed. By noon, the combination of water, salt, and sun had burned and lacerated Lorimer almost beyond recognition. His quivering lips had bloated to monstrous proportions. He found it increasingly difficult to control his tremors, and the ripples around his underwater viewing tube were becoming small waves.

That night, shaking in his furs, he begged Håkan, sobbing, not to let them take him away.

“This will pass. It’s the sun,” he said, shivering. “Please. I’ll be fine. Never again will I come back here. If we leave. In my life. Promise me. I have. Nothing. I have. Just sunstroke. I have. Tell them. Money. I have. Nothing. Please. Please.”

He cried himself to sleep.

Lorimer did not really wake up. By dawn, when mumbles started to seep out from his dreams, fever had turned him into its languid puppet. Håkan did not oppose the tracker’s order to put him in the wagon and leave.

A new layer of desolation came over that already destitute land. The lifeless flatland, with its ever-multiplying cells, stayed the same. The sun remained, as always, piercing and pervasive, sharp and blunt. There was only one change in that unyielding monotony—Håkan’s loneliness, the only thing with depth in that flat and flattening world. With Lorimer fading among his crates and jars, Håkan felt a void almost as profound as the emptiness that overtook him during the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. He missed Lorimer in the same way (if not with the same intensity) that he missed Linus. Both had protected him, deemed him deserving of their attention, and even seen in him qualities worth fostering. But the main virtue his brother and the naturalist shared was their ability to endow the world with meaning. The stars, the seasons, the forest—Linus had stories about them all, and through these stories life was contained, becoming something that could be examined and understood. Just as the ocean had swelled when Linus was not there to dam its immensity with his words, now, since Lorimer’s illness, the desert had violently expanded to an endless blank. Without his friend’s theories, Håkan’s smallness was as vast as the expanse ahead.

The tracker was taking them back the way they had come. He suspected there was a cutoff, but they were nearly out of food and could not afford to get lost. Their rations had been cut to half a cup of cornmeal porridge and a biscuit for both breakfast and dinner. A few days into the trip, one of the men came into the wagon where Håkan was nursing Lorimer. He went straight for the wicker cages with the birds, picked two of them up, and turned around to leave. Håkan grabbed him by the wrist and ordered him, with a gesture, to put the cages down. The man complied, but with his freed hand produced a single-barrel pistol and put the barrel to Håkan’s chest. Håkan’s reaction (which later, upon reflection, amazed him) was to tighten his grip on the man’s wrist rather than to let go of it. The man cocked his gun. Håkan released him. That night, the men roasted the birds. Håkan had cornmeal. As they moved along, they stewed Lorimer’s snakes and broiled his cats. The dogs were spared.

Illness had so reduced Lorimer that the movement of his sleeping chest was almost imperceptible. His withered cheeks had sunken into the hollow of his jaws, and his shriveled lips had withdrawn from his teeth, already suggesting a skull. Following the treatment he himself had received when rescued, Håkan fortified Lorimer’s water with honey. He tried to feed him mashed cornmeal, but the gruel only lay on his tongue and dripped down his chin. The same day the salt field first became dotted with dirt, Lorimer looked at Håkan, not with that delirious gaze that seemed to go through him, but with eyes that, despite being unnaturally dilated, were full of intention.