I left the Riviera’s desolation behind and walked to Boud’a’s house on the main road. The door was shuttered, the windows broken, the front garden that had formerly been so meticulously kept by Boud’a’s mother now filled in by concrete. Leaning against the side of the house were four planks of wood covered by plastic. I looked around the empty main road, then threw the planks over my shoulder. I studied the door a bit longer, hoping an old friend might still emerge, another human who might recognize my face.
On my way back, I asked the old woman without a watch about the fate of Boud’a’s family. They had fled to the city, she said, as most people had, fled to the city for jobs and for supermarkets the size of circus tents, where you could choose between tomatoes from Italy and tomatoes from Spain. I stopped myself from asking if she knew what Boud’a was now doing with his life, fearing the answer could be something like banking. I imagined instead that Boud’a had stuck to his desire to own a restaurant that served mussel pizza. He’d eaten mussel pizza in Greece once, and after that, all he wanted was to grow up and make the best mussel pizza on Earth. The old woman asked if I needed anything else, and I waved good-bye.
I returned to the house and carried the planks inside, in case of rain, then went to the bedroom to check on the spider. It was gone. In the kitchen, I chopped up one of the planks and filled the stove. As the fire grew, I spread lard along the new pan and laid out eight slices of bacon. Within ten minutes, the odor of cigarette butts had been dominated by pure animal. Saliva dripped from the corners of my mouth—I could not contain it. The plan was to cook up some eggs too, but I couldn’t wait to eat as I cleaned the small pan for another round. I ripped a hunk of bread from the loaf and separated the soft middle from the crust. Over the middle, I cracked a raw egg. I stuffed the bacon inside the crust. I fell upon the improvised sandwich like a beast, tasting blood from my gums as it seeped into the food, but I chewed with greed, without a concern for dignity, with the carnal pleasure of an unsupervised animal. I lost track of time. As I finished, the sun, concealed by clouds to begin with, crept somewhere behind the horizon.
The shed still held all of its tools—rusty, sure, with some of the wooden handles having rotted, but in the fading light I found a hammer and nails, some of which still seemed factory fresh. I dragged the ladder from the shed, checked each step for damage. So much of my grandfather’s kingdom had been preserved here—with some additional tools, I could again convert the shed into a powerhouse factory. Make a new table, new bookshelves, encase the single bed with a fresh wooden frame. I could rip out the molding carpets and bathroom tile, smash the piss-soaked walls, replace electrical cables, install indoor plumbing. I did not lack time. I did not lack patience. I would remove every organ, haul it to the garbage dump by the ton. I would be an artist restoring his own painting—rejuvenating colors I had once known to be radiant. I would be the plastic surgeon of history. Retain the ghosts and refresh their facade.
Yes, I could do it. It could be my life. Jan Hus had died for country and lived for himself. If only he could live in our age, become my phantom brother. We would attend Dr. Bivoj’s village festivals of small pleasures, drink the tainted hooch. We would visit Petr and learn to play the guitar. Hus would tell me of his widow and I would tell him of my Lenka, what used to be.
I walked out of the shed, tools in hand, and looked over the reclaimed backyard. Here again, animals would roam. I could raise a Louda, scout the Internet for a flintlock pistol to employ in executions. I could scythe the fields of grass behind the village every morning, carry piles of it on my back, allow it to dry beneath noon sunshine, and feed it to rabbits. I could obtain chickens for the harvest of yolk and the carnal sincerity of their nature. Small dinosaurs. I could keep a few guinea pigs, perhaps a ferret. Creatures of routine to look after.
And the garden beyond? I would resow every crop. I would grow my grandfather’s carrots, potatoes, peas. My grandmother’s strawberries, tomatoes, celery. After caring for the animals, I would pull on my galoshes and get ahold of the shovel. Whistle songs of the past as I tended my earth.
Yes. This life awaited. I saw children’s feet marking the fall mud in the backyard. My daughters and sons picking their first tomatoes off the vine. The children of my children digging for potatoes when my knees were too old for bending. And there was Lenka, silver-haired, watching the bursting life grow around us. Somehow I’d gotten her back. Somehow we’d found each other again.
For a moment, Lenka’s face transformed into the face of Klara. Her hair so thick I couldn’t stop running my hands through it. She had never died, she’d run away with me and we’d become phantom lovers.
In this future, we were free of systems. Other humans went on to become symbols, sacrificed their lives to serve. Other humans handled the torture, the coups, the healing. We simply sowed, harvested, and drank a bit before dinner. No one tried to take what was ours. We had too little. We were invisible, and in this slower life we were our own gods.
Yes, there were things left in this world. I had traveled through Space, I had seen truths unparalleled, but still, in this Earthly life, I had barely seen anything at all. Something rests in the mortal soul, hungry to feel anything and everything in its own boundless depths. As boundless and ever-expanding as the universe itself.
Back inside the house, I pushed the bed to the wall, where it used to rest when I was a child, and leaned the ladder against the interior wooden frame of the roof. I climbed, and I set each plank against the frame, nailing them in until I had finished the first layer. As I worked, the night map of the universe above was startlingly clear, as if once again trying to lure me. It looked exactly the same as it had on the day my grandfather and I sat by a fire and spoke of revolutions. The purple glow of Chopra still remained, though it was weakening, collapsing in on itself and saying its last good-bye to the Earthlings dying to know its secrets. I appreciated this gesture, yet I could not bring myself to leave even the smallest gap between the planks to stargaze. I needed the intimacy of an enclosed house. A structure to trap me.
The patch created a nearly perfect darkness. I slowly made my way down the ladder, lit a match, and held it over a candlewick. The silence infiltrated my muscles and spread their fibers apart, inducing soreness and serene warmth. The only force present was a small flame. I had built a dam to deter the murmur of the cosmos.
From the kitchen pantry, I retrieved the jar of Nutella. I lay on the bed, opened it, and scooped some out with my fingers. Spread it along my tongue.
The darkness overtook me. I woke up sometime later to the faintest tapping on my skin. On my forearm rested the daddy longlegs.
“Is it you?” I asked.
I smeared some Nutella on my wrist, right next to the arachnid. Taste. You loved it.
No movement. Its fat belly remained lodged on my forearm hairs.
“Are you still afraid?” I said.
The weight is nice. What would the world be without it. Nothing but fear and air. Yes, the weight is nice.
Is it you?
Because it is me. I can promise you, I am here.
It is me. The spaceman.
Acknowledgments