Viator

Walking toward Kaliaska, Wilander’s frustration with Mortensen abated and he chided himself for having confronted the old fool. With every step, his mood was buoyed further by the prospect that in less than an hour he would be with Arlene, and by the beauty of the luxuriant growth, the sunlight filtering through the canopy to gild trembling leaves and nodding ferns, a feeling that peaked when, looking back, he saw Viator’s prow, black and made mysterious by ground fog, thrusting between two hills; but once he passed beyond sight of the ship, he was possessed by the feeling that the dream place into which he had gazed earlier that morning had a physical presence, a geography, and the ground whereon he walked was part of it, the firs, the mossy logs, and the carpeting of salvia and ferns, all of them were elements of an illusion that had taken root in the pale brown medium that enclosed the ship, growing there like fungus on a stump. The notion was, of course, irrational. He rejected it, he went at a measured pace, he fixed his thoughts on Arlene. But each step now seemed attached to mortal risk—at any second his foot might breach the apparent solidity of the trail and he would plunge into the pale brown void beneath and fall prey to the menacing undulant shapes that inhabited it. The certainty grew in him that a fatal step was imminent, that some dread trap he could neither anticipate nor characterize was about to be sprung. Before long, his uneasiness matured into panic, and, unable to restrain the impulse, he fled through the forest, soon forgetting what had so frightened him, afraid of everything now, of shadows and glints of light, of stillness and a surreptitious rustling among the bushes, stumbling, tripping over roots, scraping his hand on a stone, thorns pricking his arms, falling, scrambling up again, until he reached the rise overlooking Kaliaska and collapsed atop it.

He had intended to catch his breath, then proceed to the trading post, but the town looked vulgar and forbidding in its plainness, the color of the dirt on which it stood virtually the same as that of the sky in his dream, the movement of dogs and people and vehicles conveying an aimless, annoying rhythm. Under the strong sun, Inupiat men and women trudged along the streets, some stopping to exchange a few words; a red pickup pulled up next to the trading post; three children played clumsily on the shingle, while their fathers patched a net. Wilander felt defeated by circumstance, stranded between two inimical poles, and wished he were back in the comfort of his cabin. He sat on a flat rock, flanked on one side by a bush with dry yellow-green leaves and on the other by the remnants of a fire and some charred fish heads upon which flies were crawling, and watched the sluggish creep of commerce with an utter lack of interest. Something was wrong with him, he decided. The past few years must have cracked him in some central place. His behavior was becoming as eccentric as that of the men aboard Viator. Not as eccentric as Mortensen’s, but given what had just transpired, he doubted it would be long before he began collecting paint flakes or pressing linden leaves between the pages of his books. It seemed he had posed this—to his mind—overly dramatic self-diagnosis in order to provoke a denial, to energize himself, but it had entirely the opposite effect, weighing on him as would a criminal judgment; and, oppressed by the idea that he might be slipping, he sank into a fugue, staring at the town, seeing in its plodding regulation and drabness an articulation of his decline.

In the mid-afternoon, Arlene, wearing baggy chinos and a green T-shirt, stepped from the door of the trading post, shielded her eyes against the lowering sun, and peered at the rise. She spoke to someone inside and then walked toward Wilander at an unhurried pace, hands in her pockets. She stopped on the incline a few feet below his rock and said, Terry says you’ve been sitting here a couple hours. You okay? It was in Wilander’s mind to assure her of his well-being, because she was intolerant of weak men, a by-product, he assumed, of a previous relationship; and yet she was also, if her depictions of former lovers were accurate, attracted to weak men—he did not want to think of himself as weak, nor did he want to play on her weakness for the weak or engage her intolerance by planting the idea that he might be on the verge of another collapse; but the way she looked, sensual and motherly at once, her breasts enticingly defined by the green cotton, a hint of sternness in her face, roused in him a childlike need for consolation. He caught her hand and pulled her down beside him.

—What is it? she asked, slipping an arm about his waist.

—I’ve just had a hell of a day.

She leaned into him, her breast flattening against his arm, and that yielding pressure was enough to break the last of his resolve, turning him toward confession.