Viator

Several days later, as Wilander descended the stairs toward the engine room, he encountered Halmus, who was climbing the stairs, going with his head down, carrying a toolbox, and asked him what he had told Nygaard about Viator. Scowling, Halmus pushed past him, and Wilander, who—albeit taller and stronger—had previously been quailed by Halmus’ temper, felt a burst of heat and hatred so all-consuming, it seemed to have been produced by a chemical reaction, the ignition of some volatile agent in his blood, a childish response buried beneath years of socialization, muffled by the practiced constraints of a business life, and—eventually—suffocated by reflexes born of poverty and failure and dissolution, by an appreciation of your own unworthiness that leads you to avert your eyes whenever an insult is hurled your way, and yet had never been extinguished, hiding like an ember beneath a board, waiting to be rekindled. He caught Halmus’ elbow and slung him into the railing, which broke free with a shriek and went spinning down to clang against the floor thirty feet below, and Halmus, arms windmilling, teetered on the brink of a fatal drop until Wilander hauled him back and pushed him against the opposite railing and asked his question a second time.

—I don’t know what you’re talking about! Halmus struggled against Wilander’s hold.

Goaded by the man’s foppish beard and the contemptuous set of his mouth, Wilander knuckled his Adam’s apple and said, You told him Viator means traveler.

—That’s what it means, you ass! It’s Latin! Didn’t you go to school?

—The school I went to, we didn’t learn faggot shit like Latin! You know what I learned? While you were studying Latin and going to art movies and jabbering about political injustice in coffee bars, preparing yourself for a life of taking drugs? I learned statistics, cost accounting! I learned how to make a fucking living!

—Yeah? And how’d that work out?

Wilander forced Halmus harder against the railing. What else do you know about the ship? What did you tell Nygaard?

—I didn’t tell him anything! I don’t know anything! Halmus twisted his head, trying to see behind him. Let me go! The railing’s loose!

Though tempted to push harder yet, Wilander shoved Halmus down onto a step and loomed over him. From now on, when I ask you a question, drop the attitude and give me a straight answer.

As was typical, Halmus glared in response, but the wattage of his glare seemed reduced. You’re crazy, he said.

—That’s your diagnosis? I better get myself checked out, then. Someone who goes around all day picking up little pieces of glass, you need to listen to someone like that when they talk about mental health issues.

Wilander noticed the toolbox, which Halmus had let fall, and picked it up.

—Be careful with that! said Halmus.

—Is there something breakable in here? Wilander gave the toolbox a shake.

—Don’t…okay? Please! Halmus had lost all hint of arrogance.

Inside the toolbox was a dagger-shaped shard of glass wrapped in an oil-stained rag.

—Put it back, Halmus said.

—Did you find another prize for your collection? Wilander unwrapped the shard, nothing remarkable, a piece of clouded mirror glass that gave back a partial reflection of his face, but as he made to toss it aside, catching sight of it at an angle that no longer reflected his face, he noticed movement on the surface and, upon peering more closely, realized that the apparent movement—it had to be apparent, he thought, caused by his hand trembling, a shadow misapprehended, something of the sort—looked to be occurring beneath the surface, as if the glass were not a mirror fragment, but a dagger-shaped aperture opening onto an overcast sky clotted with real clouds, storm clouds, grayish black and tumbled by the wind, and it seemed he was diving down through them; they went rushing past, blinding him for long moments, then intermittently affording a view of the ground far below through frays in their gauzy substance, an indistinct landscape of forested hills ranging a seacoast and, as his angle of descent lessened, like that of a flying creature flattening out over the hilltops, he glimpsed something ahead, an interruption in the flow of the forest over the hills, along the shore—buildings, perhaps—and then the mirror was ripped from his grasp and he was looking at Halmus, stunned and shaken, trying to reconnect with the feeling of triumph that had gripped him the instant before the mirror was snatched away.

—You saw something, didn’t you? Halmus said, tucking the mirror into his toolbox. What was it? What did you see?