Wonders of a Godless World. Andrew McGahan

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       5

      She was falling.

      Darkness was rushing about her, or perhaps she was moving at great speed through the air, the orphan didn’t know and hardly cared. She was too stunned with pleasure, because of the voice. Such a voice.

      For the first time in her life she had understood speech instantaneously. Oh, words had always entered her ears clearly enough before, but always they had then been waylaid by the fog that enveloped her mind, forcing her to strain to discern their meaning. But just this once—the sweet clarity of language. It had been only a single short statement perhaps, but what a dazzling beam of light, cutting through the mist.

       Now you, girl, are a surprise.

      It must have been the foreigner. The voice was his, surely. She had been staring at him, and his gaze had come alive, and he had spoken.

      Except…why hadn’t his lips moved?

      A doubt rippled through her, and abruptly she wasn’t falling anymore, she was standing upright, and she was cold.

      The orphan opened her eyes. The volcano was gone. The patients were gone, the hospital too, and the compound, and the jungle. She was standing on the rocky floor of a long and narrow valley. Naked mountains rose steeply on either side, their flanks grey under a night sky, their peaks capped with white. A shallow river ran noisily beside her, and a freezing wind scudded across the stones.

      She turned a slow circle, her head tilted to the empty slopes. It was all so alien that she didn’t feel afraid. Was she dreaming? Had she fallen over and hit her head? That could explain it. And yet she had never dreamt anything like this before. Her dreams were about the hospital, about places and people she knew, distorted perhaps, and bizarre, but still recognisable. There was nothing she recognised here. She had never known cold like this, she had never seen mountains like these, she had never stood in a landscape so stripped of trees or grass or plantations.

      Perhaps it was her madness, then. She knew what it was when people saw things that weren’t there. The nurses called it hallucinating. But surely hallucinations weren’t like this. Not so concrete. She had weight here, the sharp stones bit at her feet. She heard this place, she saw it and felt it and tasted it.

      But at the same time there was an unreality too. A distance. She sensed this was not a place that was now. This was not the present.

      Correct, said the voice.

      Her heart lifted. It was the same voice, the foreigner’s voice. And he sounded pleased with her, applauding her instinct.

       This is the past. This is ninety-two years ago.

      He wasn’t there. She was alone in the wasteland. But it was him all the same, and once more the sheer thrill of speech elated her. His voice was the most enchanting thing she had ever heard. It came from nowhere, from all around, it encompassed her. She had felt herself falling into his eyes—so was she inside his head now? Held somehow in his mind? In his memory? No, it had to be madness. She was sick. But it felt so good, when he spoke. His approval was as warm as basking in sunshine.

      Follow the river, he said.

      She walked obediently. He meant upstream, she knew, deeper into the valley, where the mountains crowded together like knives. She waited for him to speak again, but a long time passed and the only sounds were the water and the wind. She tripped on stones, and stared up at slopes so steep and high they made her dizzy. The chill sank into her skin, and slowly, without his voice for company, she did become frightened. How would she ever get back to the green, living warmth of her home?

      She trudged on, shivering. A full-moon shone from above, lonelier than an empty sky would have been. But by its glow the orphan saw eventually that she was following a track—two wheel ruts, thinly worn into the rocks, running along the bank of the river. So people did come here, at least sometimes.

      Sometimes, agreed the voice. A very few people.

      He was with her still. She felt better. If he had brought her here, then he could take her back. She pushed onwards, and finally she saw a light ahead. And then another, some distance along the valley. Dim, flickering firelight. And, half-guessed, the shapes of walls and roofs.

      It was a village, a handful of buildings huddled up against the foot of a mountain. They were strange houses, made of mud and tiles. The orphan imagined that the people who lived in them must be very poor. Who else but the poor would inhabit such mean dwellings, in such a hard land?

       It’s better in the warmer season. There is a little grass then for the animals, and the ground thaws for planting crops. But yes, this is a hard land. One of the hardest. It’s far from where you live. It’s a place called—

      The foreigner paused, and the orphan, while delighting in the flood of words, sensed a sudden frustration in him. Of course—it was her inability with names. He must have seen into her mind and realised that, even if spoken by him, a name would still slip through her head unremembered and without meaning. He was disappointed, and if the orphan could have, she would have cried out that she was sorry.

       It doesn’t matter. Look.

      She felt her eyes drawn again to the village. A door was flung open in one of the outermost buildings. A smoky light cast out upon the stones, and a man emerged, wrapped in strange clothes and hunched against the cold. He marched down the valley towards the orphan, and she stopped, uncertain, but he hurried by her as if she was not there. His head was hooded, but she caught a glimpse of his face. Young. Bearded. He was singing softly to himself, a formless hum of contentment.

      Do you see how happy he is? For a moment the voice seemed to reflect. And why shouldn’t he be? It’s not long since he was married, the dowry was a good one, and his wife is already expecting their first child. By the standards of this place, he is a lucky man. He has land of his own, and a small herd of goats. That’s where he’s going right now, to his barn, to check his flock one last time for the night. Then it will be back to his dung fire and his salt tea and his new wife waiting with her swollen belly.

      Was there something cruel in the voice? The orphan saw that the man had reached a low shed partially dug into a bank of rising ground. She had passed it by in the darkness, all unseeing. He disappeared inside, and she was alone again.

      She stared back up to the village. It was a desolate encampment, dwarfed by its own landscape. There were no electric lights, no shopfronts, no cars, no activity. There was only the bitter wind, and the rush of the river in its bed, and the mountain, standing forth from the valley walls to crouch above the houses. Her gaze lifted to take it in. This was no gently sloping cone draped in green jungle, like her volcano. This was a great hump of bare rock, rising cliff upon cliff, rimmed with ice.

      Fear СКАЧАТЬ