The Map of the Sky

  Oddly content at the thought of the long-awaited rest this would bring, Reynolds let himself be transported on that icy carriage as it drifted between the icebergs, a wind gently blowing them wherever it wished to take them. The crushing fatigue and emotional drain of the last few hours soon plunged him into a kind of daze, from which only the stabbing cold or the relentless booming of the ice would rouse him. And in that dreamlike state, Reynolds passed the time gazing at the sky, fascinated by the dark tufts of cloud and the jagged gorges they passed through on their uncharted journey, relieved that it was no longer up to them whether they lived or died, that there was nothing they could do but lie there until someone, possibly the Creator Himself, decided on their behalf. He soon lost track of how long they had been drifting, waiting to die, and yet when he came around a little, he was surprised to find his heart still beating. He reached out and touched Allan’s body, which, despite being covered with a film of ice, appeared to contain a tiny glimmer of life that might miraculously be awakened if they could only find shelter. Or perhaps it would fade silently and imperceptibly there on the ice. After all, what did their lives matter? What essential ingredient would they have added to the great stew of life? Yet they must have contributed something, he concluded when, some time after the monster’s disappearance, the raft floated into a much broader channel, which he fancied was the open ocean. Seasick and blue with cold, he thought he detected signs of civilization on the coastline.

  Drifting in and out of consciousness, he let himself be hauled up by strong hands, warmed beside the gentle glow of a stove, and revived with warm broth that slipped into every crevice of his throat. And he felt life begin to stir inside him, slowly and cautiously, until one day, he did not know how or when, he woke up and found himself in a warm, cozy cabin next to a simple cot where Allan lay, breathing tenaciously. Despite being delirious with fever, he too had survived. When the captain of the whaler, a huge fellow capable of ripping a kraken’s head off with his bare hands, asked their names, Reynolds had to reply for them both.

  “Jeremiah Reynolds,” he said, “and my companion is Sergeant Major Edgar Allan Poe. We are crew members on the Annawan, which set sail from New York on the fifteenth of October for the South Pole, in search of the entrance to the center of the Earth.”

  XII

  AND YET, NEITHER THEN NOR IN THE DAYS that followed did Reynolds mention the monster that had come from the stars, nor the slaughter they had survived. At that moment, he did not think there were any words that would accurately describe that horror, any words with which to explain to their rescuers that Hell, whilst unarguably inhabited by demons, did not lie beneath their feet or above their heads. And in the days that followed, when Allan’s fever finally abated and he awoke with the melancholic look of one who has walked with death, both men agreed it was best never to tell their secret to anyone. What good would it do to reveal to the world a truth for which it was doubtless unprepared? Besides, they had no way of proving what had happened. If the Creator had answered Reynolds’s prayer, the monster would be lying buried somewhere in the Antarctic ice and, thanks to the interminable snow blizzards, so would its flying machine, long before any other expedition managed to reach that accursed place. And perhaps the only thing they would find when they did get there would be the charred wreck of the Annawan surrounded by the remains of her brutally murdered crew. This might turn out to be worse, of course, for as the only survivors they would no doubt become prime suspects in that mysterious orgy of destruction. And yet there would always be a handful of visionaries who would not only believe them but would go to great lengths to prove that their story about the first Martian to visit Earth was true. However, a far greater number would make them out to be madmen, or impostors, or both. And neither Reynolds nor Allan wished to spend their lives explaining, proving, and denying: in short, defending their sanity, or their honor.

  No. That was not why they had struggled to survive. In common with many who escape the jaws of death, both men felt that life was an unexpected gift, and each made a secret promise to himself to be worthy of that second chance, to renounce what he considered his previous inertia and numbness and to live passionately, to do everything it was possible to do with a life. Allan had decided to persist in his dream of becoming a writer with renewed vigor. He wished to do this single-mindedly, without being reminded of his sojourn in Hell. So he made a firm decision to put those days behind him, never consciously to think of them again. And if necessary he could always exorcise that horror by writing a story. The gunner could not think of a better way of ridding himself of the things that bedeviled his soul than by imprisoning them forever on paper. As for Reynolds, after coming so close to tasting the glory of the great adventurers, he had learned to love life in all its simple splendor. His only desire was to live in peace, celebrating each beat of his heart, each molecule of air he breathed, while doing his best to purge his soul of anything that might prevent those who had known him from saying after his death: there lies an honorable man. The last thing he intended to do was to turn his life into a sideshow with himself as the main attraction, ridiculed and pitied by the public. Those days had ended with Symmes. Reynolds intended to live a different life now, secretly knowing things others would never know, content to become one of a handful of simple, honest men who accepted their place in the world uncomplainingly. Neither Allan nor Reynolds considered they had vanquished the monster from the stars to live in the shadow of that event. It was best to say nothing.

  And so, there in the modest cabin of the ship ferrying them back to America, they shook hands on what neither ventured to describe as a gentlemen’s agreement, for theirs was clearly a pact between cowards. Both men realized that keeping such a transcendental truth from the world might be considered a shameful betrayal of the human race, and yet both believed they could easily live with that on their conscience. And so they agreed to lie. And if as he watched over the gunner, Reynolds evaded their rescuers’ questions by supplying the occasional snippet of their ordeal, and when Allan awoke he added all that was necessary in order to elaborate a tale as fantastical as it was plausible. They spent entire evenings embellishing it with further details, most of them the product of Allan’s prodigious imagination, smoothing out any contradictions until they had produced such a solid, incontrovertible truth they ended up believing it themselves.

  However, during the voyage, surrounded by the expansive silence of the ocean, Reynolds and Allan did more than invent the story that would protect their lives: they also resumed the intimate discussions they had begun on the Annawan, sealing the friendship with which Fate had chosen to bind them together. Without knowing why, they talked until the early hours, each eager to reveal the innermost parts of his soul to the other, perhaps because each had saved the other’s life. And, as though he considered the gunner had earned the right to know everything about him, one night Reynolds even confessed the secret he should have taken with him to his grave. This was tantamount to placing his fate in the gunner’s hands, yet the explorer knew that if there was one man in the world incapable of betraying him, it was Allan. Thus, in the same fearful whisper with which his mother used to tell him tales of graveyards filled with ghosts and goblins, Reynolds told the gunner his darkest secret: Captain MacReady was not the first man he had killed; he had already killed someone else before he joined the Annawan. But not with a gun. No. That time he had simply opened a window. When Reynolds had finished telling him how he had ended Symmes’s life, Allan’s gaze wandered for a moment. Reynolds wondered whether his somber eyes were envisaging that unknown hotel room in Boston, in which a wretched man lay abandoned on the floor while the snow wove an icy blanket over him. Then he looked straight at Reynolds with that half grin of his, which made him look at once younger and older, and said, “My dear friend, if one day you are judged for this in Heaven, I only hope I can be there to help you invent a good excuse.”

  Reynolds beamed, pleased that Allan had not condemned his act. No
man was a complete saint or a complete sinner, the gunner must have thought, and however much Reynolds tried to convince himself that what had happened in the Antarctic had made a new man of him, that he had emerged from that savage catharsis an honest, upright individual, no one changed completely, except in bad novels. To think that would be as absurd as to believe he had come through the experience knowing how to play the violin.

  For his part, Allan seemed equally forthcoming, and as Reynolds looked on affectionately, the gunner poured out every detail of his young life with the same jubilant despair with which he spilled his soul onto paper. He traced a portrait in which he himself tried to decipher what kind of man he had been in those distant days when he had encountered terror only as a product of his ghoulish imaginings. The explorer listened spellbound, admiring the gunner’s ability to conjure up images whose vividness made his own memories seem pale by comparison. Thus Reynolds could picture him swimming with his sleek, amphibian body six miles up the James River to emulate his hero Byron; becoming enamored of Mrs. Stanard, the frail mother of a friend, whom he converted into his muse, until she was swallowed up by the murky waters of insanity; crying with rage after every argument with his stepfather, who was determined that he become a lawyer, no matter that each night by the light of a candle he struggled to compose the verses that would turn him into a poet; writing love letters to the young Sarah Elmira Royster, which, he would later discover to his fury, her father had intercepted before they could set her heart aflame with their declarations of ardent love. It was the portrait of a rebellious youth, to whom his parents had left nothing save the corrupt blood of a consumptive; an avid reader and a brilliant student burdened with a troubled soul; someone left intoxicated by a single sip of alcohol; a poet who had just finished a lengthy ballad called Al Aaraaf when the Martian had descended from the stars to plague their nights with bad dreams, and in passing—for every cloud has a silver lining—to inspire a novel he had already begun to forge in his mind, which, he was certain, would turn him into a writer. Why else had he escaped from Hell? Why else indeed, Reynolds concurred.

  And so the two men came to know each other better even than they knew themselves, and in that friendship they found a refuge from the loneliness that invaded them after discovering that Man was not the only inhabitant of Creation. However, as they drew closer to their destination, the two men ceased talking about the monster from the stars. To begin with they did this out of caution, to avoid any slipups when they reached America, and then later on because they became so used to the story they had invented that they accepted it is as true. Reynolds did so consciously, relieved that those fearful memories had begun to fade; but the unhealthy zeal with which Allan appeared to devote himself to keeping up the farce began to worry Reynolds. He even began to fear for the gunner’s sanity when in the middle of a conversation at which no one else was present he alluded to that apocryphal story as though it were the true one. As the days went by, Allan seemed more and more nervous, distant, transparent even, as though his mind were wearing imperceptibly thin, like a hallway carpet. It worried Reynolds, who had still not made up his mind to confront the gunner about it, for fear of making things worse. Be that as it may, on reaching America, both men were able to relate their story unflinchingly to the army of journalists awaiting the arrival of the only surviving members of the Great American Expedition to the South Pole. For long hours, in slow, strained voices (as if remembering what had happened still reverberated in their souls), they described all they had experienced since the day they sailed from New York Harbor in search of the passage to the center of the Earth.

  And the world appeared to believe them.

  • • •

  FOLLOWING AN ENDLESS ROUND of interviews that left them worn out, they traveled at last to Virginia, where Reynolds was relieved to see that the air appeared to agree with Allan. Within a few days he had completely recovered, emerging intact from his feverish chrysalis, or at least as intact as he must have been before Reynolds knew him. Even so, the explorer could glimpse in his eyes the vestige of horror left in his soul, and he was unsure whether Allan recalled what had actually happened in the Antarctic or whether he had buried the memory beneath that mound of lies. A week after their arrival, unable to assuage his doubts, Reynolds decided to ask him straight out. Allan stared at him, slightly astonished.

  “Why, of course I remember what happened to us there, my friend. Each night I force myself to remember, so that the horror feeds my nightmares, and each morning I force myself to forget, so that I can set them down on paper with a steady hand,” he confessed, smiling gently. “Don’t worry about me, Reynolds. I am an artist. And an artist is simply a man who is pulled along by a river: on one side sanity lies, and on the other madness, yet he will find no peace on either, as the current of his art drags him away from the everyday life on its banks, where others watch, unable to help him, until he reaches the immensity of the ocean.”

  Reynolds nodded, although he did not fully grasp Allan’s convoluted metaphor. He had understood the first part of what he said and that was enough: Allan remembered everything. He was perfectly well aware they had been attacked by a Martian. He could tell the difference between reality and fantasy. He had not lost his mind, as the explorer had feared. And, content with Allan’s reply, he spoke no more of the matter. Since setting foot on America’s blessed soil, Reynolds had, metaphorically speaking, cast off his dreamer’s garb and thrown it onto the equally metaphorical fire, to embrace instead his true, pragmatic nature. And so, once the gunner’s mental and physical health appeared to be out of danger, he busied himself with his own affairs, considering he had more than fulfilled his duties as a friend.

  The first thing he did was visit his fiancée, Josephine, with the intention of jilting her, as he had decided during the expedition. But, to his surprise, he left her house having agreed on a wedding date. At the outset, Reynolds had studied her with inscrutable intensity, expecting to feel something akin to repulsion welling up inside him, for, having discovered a renewed and boundless lust for life, he did not wish to spend another day in the company of someone who was able to breathe without being moved to joy by such a miracle. There was a time when he might have resigned himself to that, but now he no longer needed money, respect, glory, or social status. He needed something more; to experience love, to fall passionately, everlastingly in love. He did not want to die without having tasted what suddenly struck him as the most sublime of all emotions.

  Reynolds was certain Josephine was not the woman to stir such feelings in him. Yet, when he saw her sitting there, wearing the appropriate dress for that time of afternoon and listening to his exploits with demure politeness, but without the slightest interest in a world which for her had no validity or substance simply because it was not the one she lived in, Reynolds came to doubt the existence of another world at the Earth’s core or in the depths of outer space. Perhaps it would be more precise to say that he preferred not to know, because, for the very first time, the self-evident world before him, filled with things that not only could he touch but that were devoid of all mystery, such as the porcelain teapot on the table or the young woman’s choker, was enough for him. And Josephine, the empress of that falsely true reality inhabited by the uncurious, seemed to him to offer the perfect refuge from the horror pulsating beneath the surface. All at once, he realized that the only escape from being overwhelmed by fear or madness was to become as ordinary as she was, to shelter behind the ignorance and apathy of singularly uncomplicated souls. As he contemplated the young woman, he told himself it was up to him to find her more beautiful and interesting than she really was. And so he set himself to the task, helped by his relentless pragmatism, and after half an hour of sparkling conversation he managed to make Josephine forget the desultory manner in which he had previously courted her and to surrender her heart to the surprisingly ardent lover whom the frozen wastes had delivered back to her. What better way to secure his place in this innocuous wo
rld that Man had constructed than to apply himself to making sure it ran smoothly? thought Reynolds. Having planted his first heartfelt kiss on Josephine’s lips, he threw his belongings into a trunk, bade Allan farewell, and set off for New York to study the law.

  However, despite taking shelter behind the façade of an ordinary life, each time Reynolds lowered his guard he was plagued by memories of his experiences in the Antarctic. For that to happen he need only examine the tiny burn mark on the palm of his right hand, the letter or symbol whose meaning he would never know, which was a constant reminder of the hidden mysteries that lay beyond the visible world. Some nights, this thought would keep the explorer awake, and he would gaze out of the window at the star-speckled sky, wondering what had become of the Martian. Had they really managed to kill it, or had it survived and contrived to follow him to America? Was it keeping watch on him, having usurped the appearance of one of his fellow students? He realized this was unlikely, but it did not stop him from feeling a stab of fear whenever he noticed one of his classmates staring at him more intently than usual. He had even stopped speaking to a certain Jensen, who had invited him to his room for a brandy. Reynolds realized he was being overly cautious, yet he could not help such fears affecting his life. He felt alone, gripped by a strange, absurd sense of his own isolation. Only Allan’s letters managed to dispel his unease, as the gunner was the sole person who could understand him.

  Since Reynolds had left for New York, his friend would send him long missives keeping him abreast of his news, although it was obvious that his true reason for writing was to relate the sorry state of his soul. And so the explorer was able to observe the life of his only friend begin to change shape. In his first letter, Allan told of his expulsion from West Point. This had caused a fresh altercation with his stepfather, of such violence that Allan had decided to seek refuge at the home of his aunt, Maria Clemm, in Baltimore. He made up his mind to devote himself to writing short stories, since he had been greatly discouraged by his relative lack of success with the publication of Al Aaaraf, the long poem he had written during his sojourn on the Annawan. However, Reynolds soon realized that those bland details were merely a polite preamble, and what Allan really wanted to share with him were the sinister nightmares his brain engendered in the dark. He told him of dreams filled with immeasurable horrors: ships crewed by dead men, ladies with dazzling teeth that, prey to some mysterious malady, rotted away in front of his eyes. He even saw himself tortured by the Spanish Inquisition or putting out the eyes of a cat with a quill pen, only to hang the creature without remorse. Such was his state of anxiety that sometimes when he ventured out of the house he thought he saw himself. These monsters, which have with such subtlety infiltrated my dreams, he wrote disconsolately, cause me to awake in the middle of the night in a fit of anguish, my heart beating wildly, bathed in an icy sweat, although I confess I have never written as much as at present. Nor would I wish to banish these nightmares, for I fear they are the only way I have of diminishing the horror that fills my wretched soul, a horror which I have at last understood how to convey to paper, as authentically as if I were writing in my own blood.