In the Distance Read online

  They had just passed a group of Chinese seamen having lunch, and Linus had told his brother some facts about their country and its traditions. They had kept walking, gaping and wide-eyed, looking at the scenes around them, and then Håkan had turned to Linus, but he was no longer there. He looked around, backtracked, walked from the curb to the wall, ran forward, and then back to their landing place. Their rowboat was gone. He returned to the spot where they had lost each other. He got on a crate, short-breathed and trembling, screamed his brother’s name, and looked down at the torrent of people. A salty fizz on his tongue quickly became a numbing tingle that spread over his entire body. Barely able to steady his quaking knees, he rushed to the nearest pier and asked some sailors in a dinghy for Nujårk. The sailors did not understand. After many attempts, he tried “Amerika.” They got that immediately but shook their heads. Håkan went pier by pier asking for Amerika. Finally, after several failures, someone said “America” back to him and pointed to a rowboat, and then to a ship anchored about three cable lengths off the shore. Håkan looked into the boat. Linus was not there. Perhaps he had already boarded the ship. A sailor offered Håkan his hand, and he got on.

  As soon as they got to the ship, someone demanded and took his money and then showed him to a dark corner below deck where, among berths and chests and bundles and barrels, under swinging lanterns hanging from beams and ringbolts, loud clusters of emigrants tried to settle in and claim some small space of the cabbage- and stable-smelling steerage as their own for the long trip. He looked for Linus among the silhouettes distorted by the quivering light, making his way through screaming and sleeping babies, laughing and haggard women, and sturdy and weeping men. With increasing despair, he rushed back on deck, through waving crowds and busy sailors. The ship was clearing of visitors. The gangplank was removed. He shouted his brother’s name. The anchor was lifted; the ship moved; the crowds cheered.

  Eileen Brennan found him starved and feverish a few days after they had left, and she and her husband, James, a coal miner, cared for him as if he were one of their own children, gently forcing him to eat and nursing him back to health. He refused to speak.

  After some time, Håkan finally left the steerage cabin but shied away from all company, spending his days scanning the horizon.

  Although they had left England in the spring, and summer should now have settled in, it was getting colder every day. Weeks went by, and Håkan still refused to speak. Around the time Eileen gave him a shapeless cape she had sewn out of rags, they spotted land.

  They steered into unusually brown waters and anchored in front of a pale, low city. Håkan looked at the faded pink and ochre buildings, searching in vain for the landmarks Linus had described to him. Rowboats packed with crates shuttled back and forth between the ship and the clay-colored shore. Nobody disembarked. Increasingly anxious, Håkan asked an idle sailor if that was America. Those were the first words he uttered since shouting his brother’s name in Portsmouth. The sailor said yes, that was America. Holding back his tears, Håkan asked if they were in New York. The sailor looked at Håkan’s lips as he produced, again, that glob of molten sounds, “Nujårk?” While Håkan’s frustration mounted, a smile on the seaman’s face widened until it became a peal of laughter.

  “New York? No! Not New York,” the sailor said. “Buenos Aires.” He laughed again, hitting his knee with one hand and shaking Håkan’s shoulder with the other.

  That evening, they sailed on.

  Over dinner, Håkan tried to find out from the Irish couple where they were and how long it would take for them to get to New York. It took them a while to understand each other, but in the end, there was no room for doubt. Through signs and with the aid of a small piece of lead with which Eileen drew a rough map of the world, Håkan understood that they were an eternity away from New York—and getting farther from it every instant. He saw they were sailing to the end of the world, to get around Cape Horn, and then head up north. That was the first time he heard the word “California.”

  After they had braved the wild waters of Cape Horn, the weather got milder, and the passengers grew eager. Plans were made, prospects were discussed, partnerships and parties were created. Once he started to pay attention to the conversations, Håkan realized that most of the passengers discussed only one subject—gold.

  They finally cast anchor in what seemed to be, strangely, a busy ghost harbor: it was full of half-sunken ships looted and abandoned by crews that had deserted for the goldfields. But the derelict vessels had been occupied by squatters and even converted to floating taverns and general stores out of which traders sold their overpriced goods to newly arrived prospectors. Skiffs, barges, and rafts went back and forth between these improvised establishments, ferrying customers and merchandise. Closer to the shore, several of the larger ships slowly foundered as their decaying frames were forced into the most whimsical positions by the tides. Intentionally or not, a few boats had run aground in the shallow waters and become lodgings and shops with scaffoldings, lean-tos, and even proper buildings attached to them, thus reaching dry land and extending into the city. Beyond the masts, there were large tan-colored tents pitched between smoke-grimed wooden houses—the city had either just sprung up or just partially collapsed.

  It had been months since they had set sail, but when they docked in San Francisco, Håkan had aged years—the lanky boy had become a tall youth with a rugged face, weathered by the sun and the briny wind, and furrowed by a permanent squint full of both doubt and determination. He had studied the map Eileen, the Irishwoman, had traced in lead for him. Although it implied traversing a whole continent, he concluded that the quickest way to reunite with his brother would be by land.

  2.

  The Brennans insisted that Håkan join their prospecting expedition. He was going inland anyway, and they needed help carrying their equipment. They also hoped he would stay on and mine with them for a while—he would need money to get to New York, and they could use another man to stake their claim once they found gold. Their chances were good, they said, since James was a coal miner and understood rocks. Håkan agreed. Even if eager to set out as soon as possible, he understood he could not cross the continent without horses and provisions. There was no doubt in his mind that his brother had made it to New York—Linus was much too smart to get lost. And although they had never planned for a situation like this, New York was the only place where they could meet, simply because it was the only place in America they both were able to name. All Håkan had to do was get there. Then, Linus would find him.

  As soon as they landed, the Brennans realized that their life savings were worthless. A harness in California was the price of a horse in Ireland; a loaf of bread that of a bushel of wheat. After selling all their possessions back home, they barely had enough for two old burros, a wheelbarrow, some basic supplies, and a flintlock musket. Ill-equipped and bitter, James led his family inland shortly after they had disembarked.

  The little party would not have made it very far without Håkan, since one of the donkeys soon bloated up and died, after which he did most of the lugging. He even devised a yoke of sorts—made of leather, rope, and wood—so he could more easily pull the wheelbarrow uphill. The children took turns riding in it. Several times a day, James would stop, read the dirt, and set off on his own, following a sign visible only to him. He would then pick at a rock or pan some mud, study the results while mumbling to himself, and then signal everyone to move on.

  America did not make a deep impression on Håkan. Having heard so many of Linus’s tales, he had come to expect a dreamlike, outlandish world. Even if he was unable to name the trees, did not recognize the songs of the birds, and found the dirt on barren stretches surprisingly red and blue, everything (plants, animals, rocks) came together in a reality that, although unfamiliar, belonged, at least, to the realm of the possible.

  They moved in silence through the interminable sagebrush, whose monotony was interrupted, now and then, by small packs of dogs
and busy, terrified rodents. James failed to shoot jackrabbits but seldom missed a sage hen. The children buzzed around the wheelbarrow and the burro, hunting for glittery pebbles they submitted for their father’s consideration. They collected wood along the way for their cooking fire, by which Eileen nursed Håkan’s hands and shoulders, severely blistered by the wheelbarrow’s handles and the harness, and read from the Bible to the family before sleep. It was a tedious journey that tested their patience more than their courage.

  After crossing a forest of giant trees (the only landscape bearing some relation to Linus’s outrageous American vignettes), they found a hirsute, laconic trapper wrapped in a greased hunting frock, and, a few days later, their first mining camps. They walked by modest settlements, clusters of precarious tarp shelters and malformed log cabins with burlap roofing, guarded by hostile prospectors who never invited them to sit by the fire or share a cup of water. The small things they asked for (food for the children, a nail for the wheelbarrow) were offered to them at extravagant prices and could be paid for only in gold.

  Håkan barely understood scattered fragments of these exchanges—occasional words and, at best, the general intention suggested by the surrounding circumstances. To him, English was still a mudslide of runny, slushy sounds that did not exist in his mother tongue—r, th, sh, and some particularly gelatinous vowels. Frawder thur prueless rare shur per thurst. Mirtler freckling thow. Gold freys yawder far cration. Crewl fry rackler friend thur. No shemling keal rearand for fear under shall an frick. Folger rich shermane furl hearst when pearsh thurlow larshes your morse claws. Clushes ream glown roven thurm shalter shirt. Earen railing hole shawn churl neaven warver this merle at molten rate. Clewd other joshter thuck croshing licks lurd and press rilough lard. Hinder plural shud regrout crool ashter grein. Rashen thist loger an fash remur thow rackling potion weer shust roomer gold loth an shermour fleesh. Raw war sheldens fractur shell crawls an row per sher. At first, the Brennans (especially Eileen) made an effort to keep Håkan informed of their plans, but eventually they gave up on him. Håkan followed them without attempting any questions. They were, for the most part, heading east, and that was enough for him.

  Wanting to stay clear of the other diggers, James refused to follow the faint trail over the mountains. They tried to find their way through valleys and over low hills, but the wheelbarrow was too cumbersome for the terrain. They got into a country where there was no grass and water was scarce. The skin on Håkan’s hands and shoulders (where he fitted the leather harness to pull the cart) was, for the most part, gone, and the exposed flesh glistened, pale pink, under the viscous honey-colored varnish of incipient infection. During a steep descent, the compresses in which Eileen had wrapped Håkan’s hands slipped off, and the rough handles burned his blistered palms, tore off his scabs, and pierced his raw flesh with dozens of splinters, forcing him to let go. The wheelbarrow raced downhill with increasing speed, first rolling, then tumbling and flipping on itself, and finally turning somersaults and pirouetting with surprising grace until it smashed against a boulder, shattering beyond repair. Håkan lay on the rocks, almost unconscious from the pain, unassisted by the Brennans, who, mesmerized by the catastrophe, stared at the path made by their belongings strewn down the hill. Eventually, James came out of his stupor, rushed over to Håkan, and started kicking him in the gut, yelling—a wordless scream, a deep howl. Somehow, Eileen managed to contain her husband, and he collapsed on the dirt, weeping and drooling.

  “It is not your fault,” she kept telling Håkan over and over again as she picked him up and inspected his hands. “It is not your fault.”

  They collected their things, camped by a nearby stream, tried to sleep by a feeble fire, and put off the discussion about their prospects until the following morning.

  Apparently, there was a town a few days away, but they did not want to leave their effects behind. Håkan could not be sent for help, and James seemed to refuse to leave him with his wife, children, and property. The kind Irishman who had boarded in Portsmouth was vanishing—since they had docked in San Francisco, he had darkened with disappointment and was quickly being reduced to an angry and distrustful shadow of his old self.

  Deep in thought, James wandered down to the stream with his pan, more out of habit than with a clear design, and submerged it absentmindedly in the water while murmuring to himself. When the pan came out, he stared into it, transfixed, as if he were looking into a mirror without recognizing the face that was supposed to be his. Then, for the second time in two days, he wept.

  That was the first gold Håkan ever saw, and he found the minute nuggets disappointingly pale. He thought quartz and even the mica scales on any ordinary rock were more impressive than those opaque, spongy crumbs. James, however, had no doubt. To make sure, he placed the pale yellow pea on a boulder and hammered it with a stone. It was soft and did not break. It was, beyond question, gold.

  Tracing a line from the spot of his finding to the mountain, James started working with his pick on a flaky hillside off the riverbank. His family looked on. After a while, he stopped, spat on the rock, and rubbed it with his fingertips. Suddenly pale, panting and stumbling stiffly like a flightless bird, he went to his children, dragged them to the hillside, and seemed to explain to them what he had just found. With eyes shut, he pointed first to the sky, then to the ground, and finally to his heart, on which he tapped while repeating the same phrase over and over again. The only word Håkan understood was “father.” The children were frightened by James’s rapture, and Eileen finally had to step in when he grabbed the youngest one by the shoulders and delivered a possessed soliloquy whose ardor brought the boy to tears. James did not notice the effect his state had on his family. He never interrupted his vehement address to the rocks, the plains, and the heavens.

  The following weeks resembled, in many ways, Håkan’s life back in Sweden. He was mostly in charge of gathering and catching their food, for which he went on long excursions with the children, just as he used to do with his brother. It was plain James did not want him around the mine. He trusted Håkan only with menial, brawny tasks that kept him far from the actual extraction—moving boulders, shoveling dirt, and, eventually, digging a canal from the creek to the mine. Meanwhile, James worked alone with pick, chisel, and hammer, crawling into his holes and hunching over pebbles, which he spat on and rubbed against his shirt. He dug from dawn until well into the night, when his eyes got dry and bloodshot from laboring by the weak light of two flat-wick lamps. When the work of the day was done, he disappeared into the darkness, presumably to hide his gold, and then returned to camp to eat and then collapse by the fire.

  Their living conditions deteriorated rapidly. Absorbed by work, James had never taken the time to build a proper shelter for his family—Håkan had tried to erect a precarious hut, but it was only good for the children to play in. Exposed to the elements, their clothes started to degrade, and under the tatters, their red skin bubbled with blisters. Eileen and the children, who were very fair, even developed white reptilian scabs on their lips, nostrils, and earlobes. Since James did not want to attract attention to his quarry by firing his musket, they could only supplement their dwindling provisions with small game—mostly sage hens, which, they soon discovered, were so unfamiliar with humans that the children could simply walk up to them and smash their heads with a club. Eileen cooked the birds in a thick bittersweet sauce made of a kind of huckleberry Håkan never found again in his travels. The children ran around with Håkan all day, dodging their mother’s halfhearted attempts at schooling them. James, working uninterruptedly and hardly feeding himself, was becoming a gaunt specter, his eyes—at once distracted and focused, as if seeing the world through a dirty window and inspecting the grimy glass rather than looking through it—bulging in his haggard, angular visage. He lost at least three teeth in a matter of days.

  Each night, he scurried away to his secret spot. Once, Håkan happened to be nearby and saw him remove a slab of stone that covere
d a hole and put the yields of the day inside. James stayed there for a while, crouching, peering into the pit. Then, he replaced the slab, covered it with sand and pebbles, pulled his trousers down, and defecated on it.

  The trip to the nearby town could no longer be postponed. They needed basic supplies and, above all, tools to expand the operation—James was mostly concerned with getting lamps that would allow him to keep working through the night. After complex, secretive preparations, he decided it was time to leave. He gave Eileen and the children meticulous instructions that always came back to the same basic command—no fire. He packed the burro lightly and ordered Håkan to follow him.

  Their journey was uneventful. They did not cross paths with anyone on the trail. Silence was seldom broken. The weak burro dragged his feet behind them. James rarely took his hand off his chest, against which, under his ragged blouse and fastened to a string tied around his neck, hung a little canvas sack. On the third morning, they arrived.

  The town was only one block long—an inn, a general store, and about half a dozen houses with their blinds shut. The rough, skewed constructions seemed to have been erected that morning (the smell of sawdust, tar, and paint still lingered in the air) with the sole purpose of being taken down at dusk. New but precarious, as if decrepitude had been built into them, the houses seemed eager to become ruins. The street had only one side—the plains began where the thresholds ended.