The Dark Backward

by D. W. Buffa

  Holderlin slipped back into the chair in front of Darnell’s massive desk. He sat, as he always did; the way, Darnell noticed, Adam did; the way that any man of noble lineage and good breeding did: with easy elegance and razor straight.

  “Yes, I found the island; though it may be more accurate to say that the island found me. How did I get there? – Chance, chance in the form of a brazen adventurer with the euphonious name of Alberto Lopez Rodriguez. I had left Cuzco and wandered westward, down to the sea, where I took my time learning what I could about whatever local legends I could uncover, the stories old men tell each other and that get embellished with time, but that, like language itself, carry within them the first seeds of their development. Nothing much happened in those days along the Peruvian coast and news of a young European with an interest in what others had heard of the sea traveled ahead of me, news that Alberto Lopez Rodriquez thought he could turn to his own advantage.

  “You should have seen him. He might have been a distant descendant of the lost tribe of Atlantis, with his blazing black eyes and glowing bronze skin. He wore a thick black mustache of truly epic proportions and had a dazzling smile of immaculate teeth. It was a smile that made you think he knew what he was talking about precisely on those occasions when he was almost totally confused. He had heard, he informed me with the measured look of a born conspirator, the very legend he had heard I wanted to learn about, an ancient tribe, the Incas – no, the grandfather’s of the Incas was the way he put it with that voice of his that whatever he said always seemed to whisper danger – that had left the Andes and disappeared somewhere in the Pacific. He had heard more than that, Rodriquez assured me; he had heard from his father, who had heard from his, about an island where this ancient tribe had gone. It was, he insisted, a difficult, treacherous voyage, but one that he had made before. Others were afraid to go there, and, he admitted, they were right to have their fear. There were rocks and whirlpools and other obstacles, and, some said, even fire that came down from the sky. No one would go there; no one would even admit that such a place existed – ‘Lest their cowardice be revealed,’ he put it with that glittering smile of his. But even though he was honor bound to advise me against the risks of such a journey, he had respect for bravery and would take me if, knowing of the dangers, I still insisted. He owned a boat and made his living from the sea.”

  Holderlin’s eyes sparkled with the memory of the false bravado of Alberto Lopez Rodriguez, a man who, had he been a general, would have been so entranced by martial music that he would have marched into battle and only remembered too late that he had forgotten to bring any weapons.

  “I do not know if he meant to steal the little money I had, or if, with his crazy dreams of grandeur, he believed in all the stories that by his own description had terrified other men, and thought that, with this one voyage, he would make his mark as the permanent local hero, the man who finally sailed to this island full of mystery and made a safe return. We sailed due west, in that tiny fishing boat of his, the captain and a crew of three, each of whom seemed to look at me with one eye full of distrust and suspicion and the other full of greed. We had been out for ten days, moving at what seemed a steady pace, and we had not had any sight of land. The weather had been perfect, the sky a constant radiant blue, but then, that afternoon, the clouds began to gather, and before we knew it we were in an awful storm. The men began to grumble, and, as the storm got worse, Rodriguez began to panic, afraid that he might lose his boat. He decided to turn back. I protested. He got angry, demanded payment. I reminded him that we had agreed he would be paid only upon the successful completion of the voyage. This infuriated him. I tried to reason with him, but finally, to keep his good will, I relented and gave him the money, nearly everything I had. I told him that I expected that he would now, as a man of honor, continue on the route he had planned. A hero in his dreams, Rodriguez was insulted and did what he thought any man of honor would do, which, as sometimes happens, was the very course of action a murderous thief would choose. He hit me as hard as he could, knocked me off my balance and pushed me over the side. Rodriguez had my money and the sea now had my life.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Darnell had work to do before the morning and the next day in trial, but he had forgotten all of that, listening to Holderlin tell the story of his exotic and inexplicable adventure. He would have experienced no greater sense of charm and wonder if, instead of this strange European, a Saudi prince had suddenly materialized to tell him that the stories of the Arabian nights were true and that he himself had lived every one of them. With every word the story became more fabulous and impossible; with every word it became more plausible and convincing. Darnell sat quietly, staring at his hands folded in his lap, as Holderlin described how he had miraculously been saved from the sea.

  “I struggled for a short while in the water, the natural instinct of anyone who wants to live, but with every stroke I tried to take, I only took in more water. There was no point to it; nothing could prevent my drowning. I stopped trying; I stopped trying to swim and became the curious observer of my own impending death. It was, I decided, not the worst way to die, still young with all my powers, doing what I had thought important. It seemed better than wasting away, an old man with nothing left to live for. Odd, how much we’re given to vanity even at the end.

  “I was floating, a bubble on the surface of an endless sea, a speck of nothingness in the infinite reaches of the universe. There was darkness everywhere, as if, in the last and greatest of all the great disasters, the earth and everything on it had sunk below the surface and vanished beneath the waters of the ocean. Then, suddenly, driven by the waves and current, I was pushed beyond the darkness and out into a circle of light that was like a rainbow except that instead of bending in an arc rose straight up, a bright colored column, a solid fire, hurled from heaven into the sea. That was what I remembered, the last thing I saw, before I lost consciousness, before I thought I drowned.

  “But I didn’t drown, of course; I was pulled out of the water, as I later learned, by the islanders, or rather, those who were forced to live on shore. Alberto Lopez Rodriguez never knew how close he had come to realizing his dream. When he shoved me off his storm-tossed boat, we were less than a mile from the island, that place of mystery and legend that would have made his name.”

  Darnell looked up, waiting for an explanation that did not come.

  “The straight light, like a column – was that…?”

  “My imagination, the light some people claim is seen just before death, the light of heaven? No, that light was real. The island is often surrounded by a thick fog, a heavy, impenetrable mist. It’s dark as night when you’re inside it, but then, when you come through it on the other side, the brightness of the sun – and the sunlight there is brighter than any I have ever seen – takes the form of a column, or perhaps more accurately, the inside of a cylinder. The mist that surrounds the island has something to do with the mountain, a weather pattern that the mountain makes, if you assume that it is only nature at work and not the hand of man.”

  “The hand of man? Are you suggesting that…?” Darnell’s voice trailed off. He read in Holderlin’s expression that there were things that could perhaps never be explained, things beyond the range of what was considered human capability. “Yes, I understand,” he added, the vague assurance that he knew things could happen that no one would believe. “But you said something else – you were rescued by the islanders, those ‘forced to live on shore.’ What did you mean, ‘forced to live on shore?’ That’s where Adam and the girl lived, where the village is, on the shore.”

  Holderlin bent forward, quick to agree.

  “Exactly right. Has he told you why he lived there? Has he said anything about having done something he should not have done and been punished for it?”

  “He said he was an exile, and that he could never go back. It didn’t make any sense to me because he was on the island when the island was discovered – or perha
ps I should say discovered for a second time, after you had done it first.”

  Holderlin was far too interested in what Darnell had been told to care about the question of discovery.

  “That is what exile means: living in that village on the shore. The punishment for breaking the laws is banishment from the city.”

  “The city? What city?”

  “The city on the mountain, the city neither your Norwegian captain nor any of the Americans who have since gone there know about.”

  Darnell’s eyes opened wide. He remembered the courtroom testimony describing the island. Only part of it had been explored.

  “They said everything the other side of the river was impassable, a sheer wall of rock thousands of feet high. You’re telling me that somewhere on top of that mountain there is a whole city?”

  Holderlin seemed almost to feel sorry for him, as if there were such an enormous disproportion between what Darnell could possibly imagine about what had just been revealed to him, this city no one knew existed on a mountain no one had explored, and the truth of it, that trying to explain it would be like trying to teach the laws of physics to a child. Darnell caught the hint of condescension, the air of superiority, but he also grasped that it was not meant to be offensive and that, far from a slight on his intelligence, it was a comment on the limits of how far any man’s imagination could comprehend another man’s experience. Darnell began to ask questions.

  “How large is this city?”

  “Three thousand - sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. They control it as best they can. They have to, you see. They can’t allow too many people; they have to live within their means. But it’s more than that, more than the need to make certain they always have enough food and other resources; they think it important, even vital, that each child they bring into the world be capable of full development, capable, each of them, of the requisite human excellence. Every one in the city is regarded, and regards himself, as part of a whole. It’s how they’ve managed to survive these last twelve thousand years.”

  Darnell’s mind raced back and forth between Holderlin’s description of the city and Adam, facing charges of incest and murder.

  “When a child is born who, because of some disease or deformity, isn’t capable, then the child is put away?”

  “As you yourself pointed out – I’ve read the accounts of the trial – it is an age-old practice, one approved of by your Aristotle, as I believe you reminded the jury.”

  It seemed to Darnell that ‘your Aristotle’ was a strange way to put it, but then everything about Holderlin was strange. He lived in another world, the only man alive, until he told Darnell, who knew about a city that was not supposed to be there and a lost tribe that, instead of being lost, was not supposed to exist.

  “Infanticide, in other words, is the common practice, much like abortion is here today?”

  A look of scarcely veiled contempt passed quickly through Holderlin’s eyes, a scornful dismissal of the parallel Darnell had tried to draw.

  “Every child’s death is considered a tragedy. It isn’t less painful because it is unavoidable, Mr. Darnell; it may be more so. It’s a tragedy precisely because it is necessary, a condition of existence, something which, if it wasn’t done, would lead to the end of everything. They don’t share our belief that there is nothing more important than life; they believe that life, existence, is not an end in itself but a means, a means to live the life that nature intended, to achieve perfection, or as close as any can come, of the specific excellence of human beings, what distinguishes us from all the other animals: the very reason that allows us, or some of us, to grasp the nature of the world.”

  Darnell tapped his fingers briskly on the desk. There was more than one question he wanted to ask.

  “But Adam never learned to read; no one ever taught him. Or was that part of the punishment, the reason he was sent into exile.”

  Holderlin raised an eyebrow and then, a moment later, raised his chin. He seemed to think the answer was plain on the face of it, if Darnell would only examine a little more closely what he was sure Darnell must already have known.

  “Do you believe that Adam couldn’t teach himself to read? Do you think that if he tried, there might be something he would forget; that the task would be too great, take too much time and effort?”

  “I haven’t told you anything about him,” replied Darnell, wondering how he knew about Adam’s gifts. For a brief moment, Holderlin seemed confused, as if, now that he was challenged, he did not really have an explanation.

  “I’ve seen him, in the courtroom, the last few days in trial. I didn’t want to approach you before I was certain that he was one of them, one of the ones chosen to lead.”

  “Chosen to lead? You just told me – what he’s told me himself – that he was exiled, banished, for something he had done. But never mind that. You could tell just by looking at him - what, exactly? That he could learn to read, write, could learn anything, if he chose to do so?”

  “Yes, I could tell that. He has the look, the look the most gifted ones have, the ones born with god-like minds, the ones who have the quickest apprehension, the ones who can listen and remember everything they’re told.”

  Darnell cupped his hand over his mouth and chin. He nodded thoughtfully.

  “A memory like nothing I’ve ever seen. But that doesn’t explain why he wasn’t taught to read or write.”

  “No one is,” said Holderlin with a shrug of indifference. “No one before they are fifty years of age, and then only those, like this young man you call Adam, who will eventually be entrusted with the mysteries, the rituals, and the records that have been kept through all the time that Atlantis and the descendents of its survivors have been in existence. There isn’t any reason for anyone else to read and every reason why they should not. It weakens the memory, reduces concentration, and does not allow error to be corrected. You seem shocked, Mr. Darnell, but you shouldn’t be. You put a witness on the stand so both sides can ask him questions and the jury, watching the way he reacts, can decide whether or not he is telling the truth. Would you have the same assurance if the only way to get his testimony was to have him write it down while he stayed somewhere out of sight? But in any event, I’m not here to defend what they do, only to tell you what it is. I would add, however, that they are the best educated people I have ever seen.”

  “The best educated…? But how, if almost none of them can read or write? Are you going to tell me that they all have memories like Adam?”

  “I said he had the look of one of those with the quickest apprehension, one who can listen and remember everything they’re told. That makes him different than the others of his generation, but different in degree, not in kind. It is remarkable how much a human being can do, how much he can learn, when there are no distractions and when everyone of every age believes that nothing is quite so important.”

  Any other time, Darnell would have been ready with a dozen different questions about how the children of the island were taught and what they learned, but right now Adam was his only concern.

  “If Adam had such unusual powers, if he were one of those who would eventually be taught the mysteries you referred to – he must have done something awful to be punished like that, made an exile for life.”

  “Not for life, Mr. Darnell; though that almost certainly is what he would have been told. It’s all part of the test. But you asked what he did. The answer is simple: the girl.”

  “The girl? You mean because of what he did, had relations with her, his own sister?” Darnell was visibly disappointed. “So the law there isn’t that much different than what it is here.” He suddenly remembered. “And that was the reason the girl was also punished, sent into exile as well, because even though she was much younger she should have known better than to break that taboo?”

  Holderlin lowered his gaze and gathered his thoughts. When he looked up again, Darnell was struck by the change of expression in his eyes. A
kind of gentle wisdom suggested a different understanding, a way of seeing things beyond the narrow limits of a given time and place.

  “It wouldn’t have been anything like what you think. They weren’t sent into exile, Adam and the girl, for what they did; they were sent into exile for what they wouldn’t do.”

  “What they wouldn’t do? So what they did was all right? Relations between a brother and sister aren’t forbidden? Incest is not a crime?”

  “It may be better if I go back to the beginning and tell you something more about the city. I did not see it, did not know it existed, until I had been some weeks in the village by the shore. They weren’t allowed to speak of it, even among themselves. That is the first thing you need to understand. The people of the village – it’s part of the punishment, the price they have to pay for having disobeyed the rules, the curse for disobedience, driven out and sworn never to mention home, like fallen angels who can never speak of heaven.”

  “But from all reports,” protested Darnell mildly, “there is nothing violent about these people. Captain Johansen speaks of them as the most gentle-souled men and women he has ever met.”

  “They’re not criminals, Mr. Darnell; not as you understand the term. They didn’t hurt anyone; they just didn’t live like everyone else. They only hurt themselves. It is their example that could not be tolerated. That is the reason they have to be removed. You’ll understand this when I tell you what I learned

  “As I was saying, I was there, in the village, several weeks, and then one morning there was a great commotion. Everyone was running around, getting everything in order. Each family stood in front of its small house, ready, as it seemed, for some kind of inspection. Two men dressed the same way as the villagers except for the gold wreaths they wore on their heads, came across the river on a raft. They greeted everyone by name, but no one said a word in reply, and, stranger still, no one dared looked either one of them in the eye. By now I had learned enough of that most difficult of languages to understand most of what the two men said. They had come to see for themselves the stranger and to invite him to visit the city. At this there was a murmur of excitement which, as I was later brought to understand, was because this meant that what they had done in saving me from the sea had met with approval. They were exiles, banished from the city, but they were still a part of it, responsible for discovering the first sign of trouble from the other world, the one beyond the ocean.