by Mat Johnson
Another wave of ash now falls on us continually. It hangs on Garth’s Afro, and over the straight greasy strands of Pym’s raven mane as well. It sits on our clothes and our skin and our boat, and all of our possessions. Everything is the same color, under its volcanic weight. There is only gray.
March 21
Wherever we are going, we are going there fast, and shooting toward our conclusion. Although it is difficult to gauge the speed at which we’re traveling, the increase of wind seems to indicate great movement, and the air now pushes forcefully past us. The food is gone; we are left now to revisit the bags and containers of past meals and scrape crumbs that were before beneath our notice. It’s not Garth’s fault; he barely eats in comparison to his normal appetite. Arthur Gordon Pym rarely rises up from the middle of the boat, and when he does it is to suggest that we pick straws. Garth and I have agreed to keep a watch on him, make sure his hunger doesn’t compel him to try to dine on one of us once again.
For an hour this morning, I riffed on the Europeans’ fascination with cannibalism, citing their use of the act in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writings as the defining difference between savage and civilized man. All this despite the fact that their largest church practiced ritualized cannibalism daily in the form of a sacramental cracker and glass of wine. From there, I went off on a rant about how this unique cannibalistic nature was at the center of European American culture, citing their devouring of black culture and regurgitating it for sustenance. “So you telling me hip-hop culture is any better?” Garth asked me. It was the longest sentence I’d heard from him in over a week. To this I told him, “No.” I hadn’t realized I was not only being absurd but also talking out loud.
March 22
The largest black birds I have ever seen have begun circling our boat, calling out to us in lispy caws, almost joyous at our arrival. While I’m no ornithology expert, I think they are albatrosses, and on first spotting their dark wings I believed that this time this was truly, truly the sign that our rescue was imminent, that land was just beyond. Their song almost sounded like the name of our hoped for destination, “Tsalal, Tsalal,” the gigantic things seemed to call from above, the sound building till, en masse, the flock retreated from our vision.
And there it was. Land, just beyond, and our boat rushed to embrace it. The stream we rode along aimed straight for a cave, in which it seemed the current met a river that traveled farther inland. In relief, in exhaustion, I let out a yell that was no rational word, just pure emotion. Excited beyond measure and too diminished physically to express this, I grabbed up the green canvas sack from beneath my seat and hugged the last remains of Dirk Peters to my chest in victory. Obviously the bones themselves were entirely less enthusiastic about their impending immigration than I was for them, but hadn’t that been Garth’s point all along? “I am placing you here,” I said, taking ownership of that, and of the fact that this gesture would always be mine alone. It was then that Arthur Gordon Pym, prostrate, stirred in the bottom of the boat, rising to see what Garth and I were both now making a fuss about. As Pym slowly rose to take in the shore, he looked weak, he looked paler than I had ever seen him. Facing our destination, he trembled to take it in. And then, suddenly, Pym’s eyes widened even further, and his finger shot up to point out something that clearly disturbed him. “Lord, help my poor soul,” his dry throat managed. It was the next sound he made that disturbed me the most, a hollow sucking, immediately followed by his collapse to the base of the boat.
I reached out to his now stilled body. Despite the heat of the air around us, Pym’s skin had grown disturbingly cold. Both Garth and I tried to resuscitate him, but his spirit had departed. Looking up to see what vision had mortified him, what there was beyond the tan sand and green palms that seemed so inviting, we could find no explanation. But we did see something, something that finally caught both sets of our eyes. Rising up in our pathway was a man. He was naked except for the cloth that covered his loins. He was of normal proportions, and he was shaking his hand in the air, waving it, and we, relieved, waved ours back at him. Past him, minutes later, we saw that he was joined in welcoming us by others, women, more men, and the offspring both had managed. Whether this was Tsalal or not, however, Garth and I could make no judgments. On the shore all I could discern was a collection of brown people, and this, of course, is a planet on which such are the majority.
Special thanks to Gloria Loomis, for whom the title “agent” comes up short. For reading this book in several unfinished forms over eight years, for pushing me to realize it fully, for not letting me destroy the project six years in when I became hopeless, I will be eternally grateful.
Thanks to Geoffrey Sanborn for putting me in the place to get into this work and showing me the intellectual path to find my way out of it.
Thanks to the United States Artists Foundation for providing the support that further enabled this work to be produced.
MAT JOHNSON was born and raised in Philadelphia, and has lived most of his life elsewhere.
He is the author of several novels and graphic novels including Drop, Hunting in Harlem, and Incognegro. Johnson is a faculty member at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program and lives in Texas with his wife and children.
