With the blood stained smock draped around his neck, he slogged his way back across the submerged field and up to his sleeping spot. He stuffed his blanket in the suitcase, and after he clicked the latches, pushed it over the precipice and watched it tumble down the slope. He followed it, pulled out the handle, and gazed up for a few seconds at the structure that had sheltered him. The suitcase floated as he pulled it. He could even shove it ahead of him as he labored through the sludge. By the time he got back to the top of the causeway, the mud that coated the bottom half of his body had dried to a powdery chocolate. He liked the way this felt and it made him consider if it would be better to start his trek naked or with clothing. The day was warm. His skin, except on his face and hands, was pale and delicate. Still, the sunshine invigorated him; or maybe it was because of his long sleep. It was like an energizing drug, and he remembered another thing Ottala had said—to know the truth, an artist needs to walk through it naked. Swan was no artist but, since her death, he believed even more fervently in what she’d taught him. Again, he looked up at the great white clouds with their melting vaporous edges. Something else occurred to him; something that caught him by surprise. Even after all life passes away, he thought, nature will continue to exist. Clouds will exist. The blue toned mountains will exist. Nature wasn’t just biological systems, and perhaps a living observer wasn’t strictly necessary. For the moment the job was his however, and he felt a strange new desire to test himself and to see as much of the physical world as he could before the end. He wanted to walk over the mountains naked.
They were farther away than the distance he’d already covered, he suspected. He knew it would be difficult. He’d start without clothing but he’d cover himself if his skin began to burn. He had Dr Escobar’s sunburn cream in the suitcase, and now he remembered the wide brimmed hat.
He flipped back the bright aqua lid to find everything jumbled together. His hat was somewhere in the midst of all this and to get at it he needed to pull out the dirty blanket with bits of gravel still sticking to it. The pencil and a sock accidentally fell onto the roadway. He stood and shook out the blanket then, and on impulse decided to place all of his things on top of it in order to repack the suitcase in an organized way.
He laid his cane sword down and the Elastoband. He took out the scandium pot, his wooly lamb, his spoon, his eight bags of buns, one of which was nearly empty, and set them on the blanket. The Big Book of Edible Weeds, the sunburn cream, the unspilCup, the notebook, the flameUp, the pencil, his too-small hat which he placed on his head, his blood-stained hospital smock, his two bottles of dieCo, his roll of shirts, his trousers, and his underpants. He was separating out these various articles of clothing when it struck him. “Where are you?” he muttered aloud. And then, as he pushed his fingers into every pocket in every garment, in a louder and louder voice, “Where?! Where?! Where?!” Where were her pajamas? Where were her slippers? Where had they gotten to? Alarm spread from his heart like a signal. He felt instantly sick in the pit of his stomach, and his urge to walk naked through the truth evaporated.
He ran back, this time without his sword, splashing through the water and his mind. He fell several times before he managed to reach the ledge. Her clothes were nowhere to be seen. He’d left nothing behind. The only sign that he’d been there were the smears of dried blood at the spot where the loose gravel had been swept away.
He remembered how carefully he’d tucked Ottala’s pajamas among his clothes. Regardless of how many days had passed or how deeply he’d slept, he clearly remembered this fact. Her golden outfit was his most cherished possession, his life’s treasure. To lose anything else was acceptable, as long as he had the clothes that touched her body he could go on.
He spent an hour or more searching the whole area. He searched all along the bottom of the embankment as well, even beneath the water, sweeping the submerged area near the abutment with his hands. Among the floating garbage, a used syringe pricked his elbow and he tossed it into the lake. Then, abruptly, he sprang up and ran splashing, falling, reopening the wound between his legs and half foundering, back to the top of the overpass. All of his things lay where he’d left them. Only the corner of the blanket had flipped over in the breeze.
He went over the old suitcase like a blind man. There was no lining of course. He’d torn it out the day he found it. There was no place where anything, no matter how minuscule, could be hidden. He slammed it shut and looked beneath it. One at a time, he picked up every object from its designated spot. He turned each item over and shook it again and again. He emptied his open bag of buns. Only two were left. He’d eaten eight when he thought he’d eaten only six. No golden pajamas. No slippers.
“This is crazy!” he shouted, following it with a frenzied, wordless scream.
How could he explain it? How was it possible?
He stood and looked all around him; at the enormous lake, at the sky mirrored in the water as if the two had merged, at the muddy shoals that looked so black—like rows of dead pixels on a screen.
There was, of course, a way that it was possible…. He shut his eyes and covered his ears, trying to put a brake on this horrifying thought. Even in the solitude of his mind, he couldn’t allow himself to think it.
He couldn’t allow himself to think they might not have been real.
The drop of poison dispersed through his being and forced him to his knees. He covered his face with his hands.
From high in the sky—from the viewpoint of a flying drone, or a hawk, if one still soared—Swan could be seen crouched, solitary and naked, in the middle of the elevated road which was itself in the middle of the flooded plain. But where he was really, was in the great blank space of his mind. He was turning over events in much the way he’d turned over his possessions.
Images appeared and disappeared: Ottala lying on his lap stretched out so prettily, Ottala laughing at one of his jokes. Ottala explaining, helping him make sense of his past, lending a sympathetic ear. Swan was bowed so low his head nearly touched the roadway.
Her golden pajamas were exactly like the ones Ting Ting wore. It had bothered him and he’d avoided thinking about it. And now, questioning it again, he went back over the events of the night he found her pajamas in the toilet. He went over everything, replaying his actions in his mind. He observed how he plunged his hands into the slop, suddenly absolved from the need to press a knife blade into his flesh. He observed how he moved his hands under the tap, how he smoothed her blouse on the table beneath the light. How good he was at interacting with his fantasies! How good at play-acting! He’d dressed and undressed his dollies even while they chatted with him. He’d enacted so many stories and inhabited so many fictitious worlds during his life. His feats of imagination had been a source of pride since the days when he played at Mommy’s feet.
When he’d waved his transmitto over the empty tabletop, it was only natural that he’d see her slippers enlarged upon the wall. When he folded empty air, of course he’d been careful to align the seams of her blouse and trousers.
Probably, that was what happened. Not probably. Almost certainly. Not almost. Dr Escobar was right. Swan had been insane all along.
His nausea, delayed and suppressed, welled up again. He tottered and fell to his knees, vomited undigested bits of Monkebrites over his hands—yellowish lumps of slurry that sparkled in the sun.
His heart thumped as he rose to his feet and wiped his hands on the backs of his legs. The pitted highway stretched before him with its fading line. It pointed to a solitary cloud, very far off, almost perfectly round, and he reached and closed his fingers over it. Swan’s brain had dreamlike power, and he knew he could resurrect her whenever he wanted to. “Ottala, you weigh almost nothing,” he said as he turned over his hand and spread his empty palm to the sunshine.
The spell was broken. Going back to the city was unthinkable. He would continue on his way, and there was no time to lose. Swan packed up hurriedly. He wadded up the blanket with everything inside it and smashed it down beneath the lid. With his madness, his delusions, his hallucinations left behind him, he began to walk.
He walked nearly continuously for six days on his way to the mountains, and only rested for an hour or so during the darkest part of each night. His suitcase turned out to be the perfect height for sitting and he’d slept long enough. With his blanket pulled tight across his shoulders, he’d pause in his thoughts to stare, blankly up, at the crazed spume of the Milky Way—so much brighter and deeper here than the one he’d seen on his bedroom ceiling.