The Wilderness

STORY OF THE END OF THE WORLD

The sea washes up to his ankles. He steps back. When he looks up the beach there are no people, only stones, rocks, and a flurry of leaves scudding across in the wind. Are they leaves, or are they birds? He reaches his arm out and snatches one from the air, inspects it to see it is a leaf, and puts it in his pocket.

Now there seem to be an infinity of leaves which he rushes up the beach to catch. But not an infinity, that is reckless, just a lot. How much is a lot? Is seven a lot? Running is easy even on the stones. The beach is made of pebbles here, stones there, rocks over there, and boulders beyond them, and the increase in size gives the impression that he is running into a reverse perspective, and that gives the impression that he is not really here, but he is. Of course he is here. If he keeps running he too will get bigger. The thought interests him, but does not grab him; maybe he wouldn't like to be bigger. Every now and again, as he pushes the leaves into his pockets, he looks back at the black bag he has left by the shore to check it is at a distance from the tide, then he progresses forward again until his pockets are full and the sky is cleared of leaves.

He returns to the bag and catches his breath. Then he squats and reaches his hands into its endlessness, where they disappear for so long that he wonders if he has lost them. Eventually he has to peer in. Hands? he calls quietly. Where are you? There in the bag's darkness he sees them large, paper white, and ageless. It is with surprise that he manages to take hold of the urn when his hands are so desperately cloudy, but he does, he clutches it either side and, holding it to his face, sees the breakage of his reflection in the hammered-silver surface.

Maybe his hands unscrew the lid or maybe the spiralling wind does — in any case he drops the lid to the stones where it falls with an insolent clang as if announcing a song it will never again sing. He kicks it aside. Step by step, and holding the urn, he walks into the sea, up to his knees at first, stopping to see one lone leaf blow past and push its way out onto the horizon, then pressing his thighs into the water until he is up to his waist. He raises the urn, tips it, and shakes the ashes to the wind. As they leave the urn the ashes appear to stop momentarily and study their reflection in the silver, and then, without a second thought, they become smoke. Might as well have had her cremated after all, he thinks lightly. The smoke leaps out and up and disperses. Goodbye, Mother, he says. Mother, he thinks over and over as if it is the only word left to him. Up and down the shore the stones tremble the word back.

Waist-deep in water, he looks once more up the beach and finds that where it was empty it is now populated by a handful of people who he can almost claim to recognise; they are all the original people. But as soon as he attempts to speak their names he feels fraudulent. It is more that he knows of them than knows them. On he goes into the sea, chest-deep, neck-deep, the salt slipping into his mouth through the absurd smile on his lips.

As he wades the last few inches he feels his hand getting wet and a voice fighting through the wind.

“Come on, Jake, we haven't got all day.”

The moment falls into view: the dog licking his hand, the woman taking the other, the flat bemused smile he offers, the one she offers back. Does he not have all day? What else does one have, he wonders, if not all day? He has no idea where he is, but he gets to his feet anyhow. Everywhere is perfectly dry all of a sudden. How strange, when it was all wet. Perhaps he is dead. Alive, dead, wet, dry, what difference? What reason to be anxious?

“What day is it, Jake?”

His hands come together; he is surprised to feel his fingers touch his face. He considers the words. They are foreign words. He offers a genuine smile, pleased to be here and to see her.

“Can you tell me the year?”

“Is that, by that do you mean, in the years before?”

“No, by that I mean, what is the year we're in now?”

“Ah. Yes, yes, yes, yes. The year is, and the years is, let me see, what was that? It must be about 1935 by now.”

“Do you know why you're here today, Jake?”

He raises his eyes to her and squeezes his hands tightly. “I believe it has something to do with my hair.”

She nods. “Your hair?”

“It falls out. What must we do to keep it?”

“I suppose we must let it go. What do you think?”

“I suppose that's the law.”

She closes the folder on her desk and pushes a glass of water his way.

“A kind of law,” she says. “Yes.”