In the Distance

For Håkan did believe that he had sinned. Not against god, whose fading presence he barely considered any more, but against the sanctity of the human body into which he had so recently been initiated and then, just months later, utterly violated. There were no exceptions, no excuses, no attenuations for this violation – not even Helen, whom he had been unable to save. What would these killings turn him into? What would he become?

HOW MANY YEARS had passed since he had left the cañons, he did not know

ove and longing had kept him going, but now, with Asa by his side, he saw how hopeless his search had hitherto been, and how doomed it would have been without Asa’s aid.

The plains were no longer blank but traversed by lines of certainty, as solid and unquestionable as avenues and thoroughfares.

Håkan had stopped smelling the mad odour of his coating.

These were the only events that vaguely organised his existence, which took place in an elastic present that kept on stretching without the slightest distortion and without ever promising to snap.

ach day resembled the last, and their lives remained unchanged until a speck of dus

At the mine, however, time seemed either to be frozen or to slip away – it was hard to tell which.

as it happened, he felt the weight of reality draining out of the world. Later, he was embarrassed to recall that hi

The source of his malady was outside him. It was the plains. It was his constant motion through the void. Perhaps the lack of proper food and rest exacerbated it, but the undulated expanse itself had become sickening. Just looking at the plains made the lum