Wonders of a Godless World

by Andrew McGahan

The orphan opened her eyes. She was back in the little furnace room. Her limbs were covered with sweat, her lungs labouring. From terror. From exhilaration. Before her lay the foreigner, his pale skin dry, his breathing calm, his hands folded on his chest. He might have been sleeping as soundly as when she had first entered the room, except that his eyes were open.

  His gaze was blank—but the orphan knew better now. She leant over him, her face above his, her mouth close enough to exhale her hot breath onto his cold lips. Deep in his empty eyes she was certain there was recognition of her. Weary. Pain-ridden. Exhausted even. But approving. And proud.

  You see? he said. You see how clever you are?

  9

  By next morning the hospital had mostly recovered from the effects of the eruption. The electricity had been restored overnight, the ash had been swept from the interiors and from the roofs, and in the yard the pathways were clear again. The laundry had even caught up with the washing.

  It was virtually an ordinary morning, but to the orphan, roaming the back wards, such ordinariness was itself extraordinary. Obviously, no one at the hospital knew what she now knew—that the world was round, that it spun in empty space. They couldn’t possibly, because how could people just carry on as usual if they had known—if they understood that the buildings they lived in, the ground they stood on, even the air they breathed, was all spinning on an immense, glowing ball?

  The orphan hugged the discovery to herself like a treasure. Never in her life had she possessed knowledge that no one else did. Always she was the slow one, the one left mystified. But this—this was a secret greater than any other. The patients would never guess it. It was beyond even the nurses and doctors. Why, if she told them, even if she could find a way, they would think she was mad. Or madder.

  But she wasn’t going to tell anyone.

  You must pretend nothing has happened, the foreigner instructed. He had been too exhausted to speak to her after their flight the previous afternoon, and she had left him for the evening. But, delightfully, he was there in her mind again when she woke at sunrise, quite audible, even though she was in her room and he was all the way across the compound in his. No one would understand. They’d only be scared of you.

  The orphan didn’t think she was capable of scaring anybody, but there was no question of arguing. Not with him. So she attended to her usual morning chores as if she was still the same old orphan. As if she couldn’t feel the floor moving and moving and moving as the earth revolved beneath her. As if, when she went out into the yard and looked up at the sky, she couldn’t remember what it had been like to soar beyond the warm blue air into a pure and freezing and silent blackness. As if the foreigner wasn’t with her, hour after hour—no matter where she was in the hospital.

  We’re connected now, you and I. Distance doesn’t mean anything. We’ll always be able to talk…and do other things.

  Other things? Did that mean they would fly again?

  A rueful laugh. When I’ve rested more, maybe.

  She was sorry. She had pushed him too hard and too high.

  Yes, you’re very strong, and I’m much weaker than normal. But when I’m fully healed, I’ll be able to match you. Don’t worry.

  Wonderful!

  But she was aware of a strange frustration. She was so grateful to him, so open to him, so enmeshed with him—quite unlike anything she had experienced with any other person—and yet it seemed that she had no word to define that to herself. No word to identify the sweet uniqueness of him.

  My name—that’s what you’re searching for.

  His name! But she could never know names…

  No…but there’s no reason that should be a barrier between us. Names aren’t the same thing as knowing. After all, you can’t tell me your own name, and yet I know everything about you.

  Yes, he did, it was true. But what did she know about him? Their connection flowed in only the one direction, it seemed. They had soared together, yes, and it was the most sublime moment of sharing she had ever experienced—but the sharing was all on her part. His own mind had remained closed throughout. Who he was, where he had come from, of those things she knew almost nothing.

  You will, in due course.

  When? Why not now?

  More laughter. Mine is a longer story than yours, and much more complex.

  But that wasn’t good enough. She needed to know, because not knowing frightened her. He had been trapped under a falling mountain and somehow survived and that was ninety-two years ago and she believed every word—but none of it made sense, and if it didn’t make sense, then maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe she was imagining it all, making it all up in her head. Maybe it was just her madness.

  It’s not madness. How could it be? Could you imagine flying? Could you make up the things you saw yesterday?

  The orphan wouldn’t have thought so. Certainly, she had never before imagined anything so exquisite as the shining world, spinning in space. But wasn’t that the cruelty of hallucinations? That they could be fatefully beautiful?

  Forget the beauty. What matters is—did it feel right?

  And, oh, it had felt so right. Indeed, the orphan had recognised the essential truth of what she was seeing even as they first rose above the volcano and looked back down. Those initial, minor revelations—that there were other towns on the island, that in fact there were other entire islands across the ocean—they had all seemed self-evident to her, even at the time. Of course there were other towns and islands. It was just that she had never travelled to them, or heard of them before.

  And the greater revelations felt just as manifestly true. Why, having seen it now, how else could the world be but round? Yes, it seemed flat, but it couldn’t actually be flat, otherwise it would have to go on forever, a stretched bed sheet that never ended—and a deep part of the orphan’s mind rebelled at that thought. Besides, if she stood on a high place, she could see for a long way, but not eternally, no matter how clear the air was. The view had edges. And those edges were simply where the world curved away from sight. The solution was so elegant that the same deep part of the orphan’s mind rejoiced in it. This could only be reality.

  Even the things she had seen that weren’t obvious, that indeed seemed the opposite of obvious, did not shake her conviction. There was the mystery, for instance, of how people were held to the earth—despite it spinning—rather than being flung away. She had no explanation for that. But nor did she doubt that it was a natural phenomenon, a force rooted in the fabric of the world. Something in the earth pulled objects to itself, and she and the foreigner had only been able to escape it and fly because they had been in shadow form. Weightless. And even then, it had cost them pain.

  No, she could not believe that any of this was madness, nothing she had seen, nothing she had heard. It wasn’t in her to create such marvels and puzzles. It was a knowledge that came from outside of her. It was a wisdom.

  And it’s all ours, my orphan. Yours and mine alone.

  Again, wonderful.

  Yet questions remained. In particular—was she truly clever now? If she had learnt so much, was she no longer retarded, or stupid? Had the foreigner made her smart?

  By mid-morning, she wasn’t at all sure.

  For one thing, if she was smart, then why was she still having so much trouble understanding people when they spoke to her? The foreigner, oh yes, when he was talking his words fairly hummed with meaning—and she’d hoped that it might be that way when anyone spoke now, that the old failing in her mind had been repaired or removed. But it seemed not.

  In fact, the problem was worse than ever. In all her various encounters that morning with the patients and nurses, the orphan could not decipher a single word that was said to her. For the most part she coped anyway. She knew her duties well enough to guess what people wanted. But there came a moment when a nurse requested something the orphan could not grasp at all. Nor were there any clues—no patient nearby who needed new sheets, no puddle of urine waiting to be m
opped up. The nurse, if anything, seemed to be waving at the empty air.

  The orphan was close to panic when—

  There’s no cause for alarm. She wants you to replace the mosquito coils in the rooms down the hall, that’s all. The patients are getting bitten.

  The foreigner had come to her rescue!

  And why not? He was there in her mind, wasn’t he? He could hear everything that anyone said to her. And he was not slow. He could understand exactly, and then tell her what was required. How very convenient.

  But as she hurried away to the storeroom, the orphan couldn’t help noting that she’d been asked many times before to change the mosquito coils, and had always managed somehow to understand. So what was wrong now?

  Nothing! And even if there was, what did it matter? The problem might go away, and if it didn’t, she was better off anyway with the foreigner there. She wouldn’t have to struggle with words anymore; he could simply translate for her.

  Except…

  He wasn’t always there. Not every moment. Twice more that day he helped her, interpreting instructions from the staff, but a third time, while she was being addressed by a laundry woman, the orphan reached out for his aid and found nothing. She was alone in her head. And she could only stand there, baffled and ashamed, until the laundry woman, impatient, gave up on her and turned away.

  I was asleep, was all the foreigner said when he returned.

  Asleep? But wasn’t he always asleep, and yet really awake?

  My mind must truly sleep at times. I can’t watch you every moment. I’m a man, not a guardian angel.

  But couldn’t she rouse him? Couldn’t she demand his attention? Or was the connection made only when he chose it, and not when she did?

  But he was gone again, and didn’t answer.

  Indeed, he was gone much of the time over the next few days. And for some reason her duties did not take her to the crematorium at all in that same period, as they usually would have, so she was denied even the sight of him.

  And other questions arose for the orphan.

  Television, for instance. As an experiment, she went and stood in front of the TV in the main dayroom. Half a dozen patients were there, staring up at the wire cage. The orphan studied the screen hopefully, but, as ever, she could determine nothing from the flickering colours. And the foreigner remained absent. He didn’t take over her eyes and show her what everyone else in the room, apparently, could see.

  It was the same with her radio. She turned it up extra loud, and waited for the foreigner to make sense of the tantalising sounds for her. But he didn’t. She even tried staring at posters around the hospital, hoping for the squiggled lines on them to be transformed by the foreigner into messages of some kind. But again, nothing. And when she wondered why this was so—why he either refused to help her, or was incapable of doing so—he offered no excuse and no explanation.

  His silences, she began to suspect, could be deliberate. But then she would feel guilty. How could she be so ungrateful, so doubting, after all he had given her?

  Finally, late on the fifth night after the eruption, he spoke to her while she was cleaning the old doctor’s office in the front wards.

  I feel better tonight, orphan. I’m sorry if I’ve been inaccessible these last days—I was more drained by our flight than I realised.

  Oh, he was forgiven, of course. Now that he was with her. Everything was forgivable when he was with her.

  Good. There’s something I want to show you. It might be useful. There. Do you see it? On that shelf in the corner?

  She looked. It seemed that he was talking about an ornament which sat there. It was a multicoloured plastic ball, on a stand. She had noticed it many times before, and knew that it spun if she flicked it with her fingers. But that was all it did, and she’d always thought it odd that the old doctor would keep such a toy.

  Really look at it. Does it remind you of anything?

  She stared harder, hearing the test in his question and wanting to pass. But the ball was just a ball.

  Strange…but then I suppose any artificial representation or abstraction…the same as it is with names, or pictures…

  Had she failed him? Disappointed him?

  Reassurance. No. You could never disappoint me. It’s just that this…globe…tells people what the world looks like.

  The orphan studied the ball scornfully. This? This piece of plastic was supposed to represent the majesty of what she had beheld? Impossible. There was no life in it, no momentum or weight, no shimmer of ocean or wrinkle of land, no silver cocoon of atmosphere. Compared to the actuality, it was laughable.

  Yes, but it’s a sphere, isn’t it? And it spins.

  Uncertainty seized her. He was right. And that meant that the makers of the toy must have known the great secret about the world. They must have learnt it somehow. But she’d thought that she and the foreigner were the only ones who knew. No one else had flown so high and seen so much. He’d said so!

  It’s known that the world is round, and that it spins. Everyone understands that—or at least, they think they do, but only because it’s what they’ve always been told. Very few have seen it with their own eyes, and none have seen it the way you and I have. I meant what I said. That experience was ours alone.

  Her hurt eased. And it was the thought that he might have been lying to her, rather than anything else, that had been so terrible.

  I’ll never lie to you.

  She was happy again. So—did he have more marvels to show her?

  The foreigner’s tone was lightly scolding. Is that what you think this is all about—showing you marvels? It isn’t, you know.

  Immediately she was chastened.

  You’ve glimpsed the planet from space, yes, but that’s the least someone with your talents can do.

  Teach her then! Right now. She wanted to fly again. To circle the world—the planet, that was a new word—and absorb its every mystery.

  It hasn’t occurred to you to wonder why?

  What did he mean—why?

  Why it is that I’m doing this?

  The orphan had no answer. She hadn’t even thought!

  I supposed as much. Well, perhaps the first thing we should do is go back to the beginning. After all, you wanted to know more about me. My reasons for helping you and the long story of my life are very much one and the same.

  She nodded eagerly, her mind wide open.

  We won’t be leaving our bodies this time, all you have to do is listen, but you might want to sit down anyway. You won’t be disturbed?

  No, no one would come to the office this late, except maybe the night nurse, and the orphan knew that he was already asleep in one of the empty rooms. She dropped her broom and sat down on the floor.

  Very well then. We’ll return to the day of my birth.

  Ninety-two years ago now…

  10

  You saw me. I crawled out from beneath that landslide, and I was the same man, but not the same man anymore. I stood on top of that pile of stone and there was nothing but frozen mountains all around and an empty sky above, and I knew that I was alone in an inhuman place that was entirely without pity.

  I could have lain down and died then, of course. I’d lost enough blood, and I was naked, already suffering from exposure. There was little reason for me to go on living. Everything I had ever known or loved was now under half a kilometre of rock. But I turned and walked away from that place. Exactly why…that I can’t remember. The things we do, they are decided deep within us sometimes, without our knowing.

  And how I managed to walk, when nothing was left of my foot but bone, that I can’t remember either. Which is also the way of it. The body—I know this from long experience—doesn’t want to remember pain. In any case, somehow I made it all the way down the valley to the next village. It took me a day and a night, without sight of another person, and I really was pretty much dead when I drew near. The first thing I found was a body, a man, in the ruins of a collapsed st
able on the outskirts. And the first thing I did was steal his clothes, despite the fact that my fingers were so crippled with cold I could barely strip his corpse.

  The village itself was in chaos, the population weeping and wailing. The earthquake had levelled half the houses. At least three days had passed, but the dead and the injured still lay out in the open. Everyone was living on the streets, afraid to enter those buildings left standing. The closest thing to a doctor was the village midwife. She was wise enough in her way, but she had no equipment and no medicine. There was thirst and hunger and soon there would be disease. What frightened people most, however, was that the river had mysteriously stopped flowing. The water was gone. No one knew why.

  I could have told them, if anyone had asked, but no one spoke to me. This was a bigger village than my own, and there were so many injured, I was merely one more. The midwife took one look at me, shook her head, bandaged my shredded limbs with a few rags, then left me there on the street with the rest of the dying.

  And yet, even then I wondered if there wasn’t something else to it. I had travelled to that village before, and was known to many of its inhabitants. But now when they looked, they didn’t recognise me. They were in shock, of course. So was I. But in truth, I felt as if I really was a stranger, that there was nothing left of me to be recognised.

  A day later, outside help finally arrived.

  Now, you mustn’t think of ambulances or fire engines, like today. This was a long time ago, and in a remote part of a poor country—even poorer than your little island here. The nearest large town was many miles distant, and the nearest city far, far away. So the only assistance that came up the valley was a small train of wagons, carrying a little food and water, some blankets, and a collection of government officials, there to investigate the damage and to make a count of the dead.

  There was no doctor. The midwife debated furiously with the officials, and it was decided that two of the wagons would go back down the valley with the worst of the injured. The midwife walked along her makeshift ward and selected those to go. She looked hard at me, and I knew she was wondering whether I would live long enough to make my inclusion worthwhile. I was sure she would say no—and I was too weak even to argue.