They also talked with Daniel Atijas, and he, I heard, confirmed what I’d said, remarking that even from a distance, even at a run, it was possible to see, he said, that I had poured every atom of strength into holding on to Ivan Matulić’s grandson before he plunged to his death. He hadn’t known then, he said, that this would end in death, of course, but the moment he realized it, when, he said, he saw our hands pulling apart, he could only regret that he hadn’t been three or four steps closer once he started running. Had he been closer, he said, this whole story would have had a different ending. The police officer thanked us and, seeing that the mountaineers had brought in the stretcher, asked if we could identify the victim. I refused, pleading distress, but Daniel Atijas followed the police officer, went to the stretcher, leaned over, and lifted the corner of the white sheet. He looked away. Yes, said Daniel Atijas, that’s him. Soon after that, if I am not mistaken, we parted ways. Daniel Atijas joined a group of hikers, I believe — among them was the woman who had peered over the cliff edge — and he went with them down to the foot of the mountain without noticing, or, perhaps, not wanting to notice, the small, secret signs hinting of my presence. I let them get ahead, then slowly, more slowly than I would ever walk on the prairie, I set out along the winding trail among the pines. When I neared the end, my hopes swelled that I might come across Daniel Atijas waiting for me at Saint Julian Road. From the start he had struck me as a person who makes good on his promises, even when he hasn’t sworn to them before witnesses.
There was, however, no one on the trail, and after a brief hesitation I went on toward the Centre. News always travels faster than people do, especially bad news, and none of the people I passed on my way passed me without commenting on the, in the words of the Toronto playwright, “pointless death,” which only enraged me all the more, because I doubt that any death can be said to have a point. I hurried further along among the buildings and was on my way to the studio, believing I could find a solitary passage there into another world, which, I confess, is only another name for the bottle of cognac I kept on the kitchen shelf. In the area between the small practice huts for musicians, right where the path ran that led to the roomier studios for writers and painters, stood two elks. They were still, their necks gently bowed, and they seemed to be listening to the strains of a cello, which, low and muted, reached them from one of the huts. I waved at them, thinking it might unnerve them and persuade them to back away, but they paid me not the slightest heed. To circumvent them I had to climb partway up a hill and then come down through the woods, and suddenly, as I pushed apart the bushes through which I was clambering, I felt a crushing exhaustion, so much so that I barely resisted lying down right there on the ground strewn with pine needles and leaves. If I had, I know I never would have gotten up again. I stepped over a fallen tree and returned to the path. There was only a short walk from there to my studio, but I had the impression that I would never get there or would fall asleep midstride and keep walking while asleep to the ends of the earth. At one point it seemed as if someone was walking behind me, but when I turned, I saw no one, elk or human.
The next minute someone seemed to be walking ahead of me, or lurking behind a bush by the path, but when I neared the spot, there was no one there, though there was a scrap of red cloth, flamelike, on a twig. I don’t know what time it was when I finally stepped into the studio, but by the time I left it, night had fallen. I drank some cognac, of that I’m certain, just as I am certain that I found no passage to another world. While I was drinking I studied the drawings again, sequencing them toward the greatest openness, making minor changes in only one or, perhaps, two places, adjusting the sequence. I picked up the phone several times, but each time, after a slight, or longer, hesitation, I set the receiver back in the cradle. I sensed that Daniel Atijas was not in his room, and even if he had been there, I thought, he probably wouldn’t have picked up the phone, but still, when I entered Lloyd Hall, I went first to his room and leaned an ear toward the door. No matter how hard I tried, however, I couldn’t hear a thing, and all I smelled was my own foul breath. When I returned to my room, I saw that a folded sheet of paper had been pushed under the door. I unfolded it and examined both sides, but there was nothing written on it. First I don’t hear, I thought, then I don’t see: is it time to check if I am even alive? Then I recalled stories and movies about messages in invisible ink and embarked on bold experiments with water, soap, shaving lotion, graphite powder, and other substances. None of these gave results, which, I thought, probably was the intention of the person who had slipped the sheet of paper between the foot of the door and the rug.
If this was a warning, I thought, then it warned of a void; if it was advice, it was also warning of a void, but between the two voids the difference was vast. The first void spoke of absence, of the absence of absence, while the second spoke of presence, of absence as fullness. I was convinced that this was the meaning of the blank sheet of paper, just as I was convinced that Daniel Atijas had slipped it into my room, and then, driven by that unconvincing thought, I dropped onto the bed and straightaway, fully clothed, fell fast asleep. I am more inclined, however, to believe that I wasn’t sleeping, because what I saw when I dreamed might be better termed a vision, events observed with eyes wide open. There is always a moment in a dream or immediately after waking when a dreamer’s consciousness alerts him to the fact that what he was seeing was a dream. A vision is more real than a dream, and instead of playing with events from the past, a vision is nearly all focused on the future. A dream is guesswork, and a vision is a warning, which means that they are in no way similar. What I saw, flung as I was across the bed like a bedspread, was about the future, no doubt about it. When the vision ceased, I was overcome by an exhaustion one never feels after regular sleep and by a longing to tell Daniel Atijas about all of this, even though he was leaving soon, but I knew that after everything that had happened, I had to wait for morning, just as I knew that I should show him the portraits in the sequence in which I had laid them out in the studio, no matter what. This didn’t mean that I saw any connection between the drawings and the vision, but if there was something they had in common, it was how they were different.
The portraits spoke of calm and superiority, while the vision expressed agitation and debacle, the only similarity being that I perceived the vision as a sequence of scenes, just as the portrait was a sequence of drawings. The vision, in brief, showed my country in flames. I was surprised, frozen, and resisted with every ounce of my being, because everything in me said something like that could not happen. Canada in flames! When Daniel Atijas mentioned the possibility, I had dismissed it flatly, but now I saw, clear as a bell, how buildings in Montreal were toppling, how Indians battled the Quebecois, or rather fought a detachment of Quebec police who appeared from somewhere, apparently having trained for years, and I saw the fresh scalps of white men and Indians hanging from the branches of century-old trees, and then clashes broke out within the Quebec police, Quebecois against Anglo-Quebecers, and then volunteers from Ontario and Manitoba joined the fray; at the same time, in the left corner of my field of vision, Indians from British Columbia declared their reservations to be free territory, white racists from Alberta shot the first Arabs and Chinese, the prairie was ablaze in Saskatchewan, and only in the Atlantic provinces was there a deceptive calm, though the first skirmishes had begun on the streets of Halifax and in the rural areas of Newfoundland. The sky was glowing red over the North Pole, the polar ice cap was melting, and no one knew what to do, especially when the tower on the parliament building in Ottawa swayed slowly, then faster and faster, until it fell. Then I awoke, or maybe it’s that I fell asleep, or lay there confused in the dark as it grew lighter.