FIVE

The World

[Late Winter, 2006]

Proteus set the notebook back near the pile where he’d found it and rubbed two fingers at his eyes. They buzzed and seemed to vibrate in his head. This always happened when he tried to read the books.

Among the first things he’d done upon settling into the apartment once occupied by the sheriff was to set the plastic chair aright. He’d needed someplace to sit. As uncomfortable as a plastic chair was, at least for any long sitting, it was still better than standing, at least for any long spell of time, and could be alternated with either sitting or lying, in various positions, on the shag-carpet floor. He would need, Proteus determined (reduced at length to the contemplation of minutia), such minimal comfort to read the books in. And it was clear that he should read the books, though they would make his eyes buzz and vibrate in his head.

The sensation made him think of the Abbey. It had been quite a while since he’d thought of the place at all. And though the Abbey had been the center of his life for ten years – and not so long ago – its grounds and buildings and great Buddha statues had taken, or been shoved into, a back room of his mind, its door seldom opened. The sangha lived there too, though he could scarcely picture their faces. (They may’ve had no faces…) He wondered why that should be. He’d not tried to put them all away. He’d not tried not to think of them. Perhaps he’d not had the requisite emptiness until now. He wondered why the buzzing sensation should be the thing to bring it back. Perhaps this was the sign of the emptiness; its sign and significance. Certainly, he’d felt this way often enough in his other life: the buzzing sensation, the vibration in the eyes, the hollow space at the center of his mind.

It occurred to him that he’d returned to his monastic life without ever meaning to. Just as he’d left his monastic life without meaning to. Just as he’d found his monastic life, not exactly meaning to.

That life. The hollow feeling. The buzzing sensation in his eyeballs. He rubbed his eyes with two fingers. He stood and shoved the curtains aside and thin light filled the apartment. Outside, the morning shone overcast. Striations of cloud ribbed across the low sky. From the window, Proteus could see down into the same courtyard of frozen mud he’d crossed the night before. Thousands of tiny puddles of ice pocked the wide, rough surface, which was crossed by intersecting pathways of concrete. People scampered below, over the pathways, all moving – dozens, maybe hundreds of people – in quick purpose, this way and that.

He had nowhere to go. Or if he did, he didn’t know yet where it was.

The light was as thin as he was hollow. This was good.

•

He made another inspection of the cabinets. He’d done this before, many times. There was nothing new to find, and he knew this, but he did it all the same. There was half a box of stale crackers, some peanut butter, and (thank the gods!) a jar of instant coffee. There were a few ceramic cups, one of them badly cracked, and one small ceramic bowl with a fluted lip. A drawer near the sink held a few basic utensils: a fork, a butter knife, and for some reason, two dozen spoons. He’d counted the spoons. There was also an individual-size packet of mayonnaise, the only thing in one entire cupboard. The printing on the foil package was in English, unlike the coffee or crackers or peanut butter, all of which were labelled in Cyrillic and another script unknown to him, which he guessed was Mongolian. He found his guess that the refrigerator was not working had been correct. He’d opened its door onto a warm compartment filled with nothing, and though he’d not been looking for anything, had not expected to find anything, and finding nothing was much better than finding something – which would’ve long been a spoiled and stinking mess – still, the utter emptiness of the refrigerator struck something in him that was as hard to fathom as it was to endure, and he slammed the door shut. Five minutes later he opened it again, felt that same terrible emptiness, but this time quietly shut the door.

There was a buzzing sound in the air, and he realized then that there had always been.

•

The air outside was predictably cold. Proteus had brought a field jacket and wore it now. His footsteps soon left the network of cement pathways, though for no good reason – he sure didn’t know where he was going – and as he walked across the courtyard of frozen mud between the buildings, his feet crushed the many skins of ice, so thin-stretched and so brittle, of little pools and pockmarks made to the field by so many feet, in warmer times, before his. He really didn’t know where he was going. The gray sky, as any would, loomed above, as always. All the people (there were fewer of them now) went along their own ways, from one end to the other. Sometimes a person here or there would look up at him, notice his difference, then look away again. Men and women. Young, old, neither young nor old. Sometimes there were children. The children watched him. The others always looked away. He didn’t know at all where he was going, but he needed something, and there was nothing in the apartment that he hadn’t already found, and that wasn’t enough, and he still had a little bit of money, if not very much money, but that should be enough, if for what, he didn’t know.

At some point near the center of the courtyard, he stopped and turned around and looked back at the building where he’d been. It was some kind of big, flat box. Not much more could be said of it, and that much he’d understood when he’d arrived the night before. But he’d not seen the colors. Now, in the day, he saw the colors; there were broad horizontal stripes that ran the length of the building, of each building, by alternating floors. One floor was sided beneath its bank of windows in blue, the next was orange. Orange, blue, orange. Etcetera.

He turned back around and walked. His feet broke through the crusts of ice like little thin skins with each step. He didn’t know where he was going.

•

Soon Proteus reached a busy avenue. He didn’t recognize it, but still he knew it was one the taxi driver had taken him down last night to the apartment complex. Nothing beyond the courtyard looked in the least familiar to him now in daylight. There were more people along these uneven sidewalks – crowds, and automobile traffic sped steadily through all six lanes in both directions. He looked first one way, then the other, chose, and walked on.

Construction cranes ahead hauled materials up toward a latticework of iron girders taking shape into a building already twelve floors high and still growing. Beneath it, an open square park was ornamented at its center by a statue of a man. The man had a stern look, and his features were not oriental. He looked like he might have been Vladimir Lenin, but Proteus felt certain he was not. The plaque at the statue’s feet was unreadable to him. He walked on.

Further ahead, directly at the center of the avenue, so that the lanes split apart and circled around it, was a domed arena. Though not especially large, it was at the center of everything and impossible to miss. It seemed, for no obvious reason, to glimmer. Its edges were cut sharper, and its colors less faded than anything around it. It seemed… buoyant; either more or less real than most other things, he wasn’t sure which.

This particular vividness of the arena confused him. Proteus slowed, grew unsteady, listed slightly to the left, then stopped, staring forward. He was still a few hundred feet from it, but this was as close as he cared to get until… until he understood. Why should the building shimmer? He gawked. People walked around him. He gaped. All thoughts left his head.

A policeman approached. Proteus saw him through the corner of his eye, but did not react, not until the officer said something directly to him and he had to. Then he turned his head and said, “What?”

The policeman, a little older than Proteus, to judge by the gray in his thin mustache and the depth of the wrinkles around his eyes, resembled nothing so much, thought Proteus, as a kindly uncle. The man repeated what he’d said before, more or less. None of it made any sense to Proteus. One thing that was clear, though, was that something definite was expected of him, and the officer wasn’t going away until he’d given it.

“I’m sorry?”

“Pass-port,” the policeman said, and held his hand out to accept the document. His expression was stonily unreadable, yet for some reason Proteus couldn’t shake his impression this man was his kindly uncle. Or if not his, then someone’s. A kindly uncle. He produced his passport from his jacket pocket, opened it, and looked at his own photo and the name beside it: PROTEUS. He handed it over.

The police officer took a look inside the document, giving it only the most cursory glance before shutting it again and tucking it into his own jacket’s inner pocket.

The two of them looked at one another in silence for a moment.

The policeman barked something angry at Proteus, spit flying from his lips, his face suddenly changed, deeply reddened, almost purple. He was no longer the kindly uncle. Proteus only blinked in response.

With nothing more to add, the policeman marched brusquely away in the direction he’d come from.

Proteus returned to staring forward at the oddly shimmering, domed building, while crowds of people parted and flowed around him, like a stream around a bit of stuck deadwood. He felt a lightness in his mind, as if his mind were a helium balloon and might simply lift off and float away in the breeze. Just then, a sudden gust of wind blew around him, picking up the lighter debris of the street and whipping it around in a swirling vortex. A spray of sand or dust impacted his face and Proteus instinctively shut his eyes tight against it. When he gradually opened them again, a small woman stood directly in front of him, smiling an embarrassed, little smile. She wasn’t even five feet tall, and wore a bright red, puffy jacket and a rather large and heavy-looking backpack strapped to her back. Inky black hair spilled out from a knit cap and over her shoulders, and her huge, dark eyes blinked up at him like a happy sea creature’s.

“Hel-lo,” she said. Her voice was as small as her person, and she appeared to be quite young; not a child, though, despite her size.

“Hi.”

“You… are Am-er-ic-an.”

Proteus blinked. Her dark eyes blinked.

Though it had not been a question, he said, “Yes.”

“The police,” she said, “have… ta-ken… your passport.”

Proteus cocked his head slightly to one side. He tried to understand this new person, this new sea creature. He said, “Yes.” After a moment, he added, “Why?”

The young woman looked to either side – either watching for eaves-droppers or seeking invisible support? – before she turned again to face him, cocked her head slightly to match the inquisitive angle of his, then smiled brightly. She said, “So that… you… would not… have! It!”

He nodded. He understood.

Before she spoke again, Proteus could see something in her winding up, as if she were sorting carefully through all the words she could think of first, trying to find the right ones. “You could,” she told him, “have… giv-en… him. Money.”

“Yes.”

“He would. Maybe. Give it back.”

“Yes.”

“Too late now.”

He nodded. “Too late. Yes.”

“He’s…”

“He’s gone away,” Proteus finished for her.

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

Her smile broadened and she bounced on her toes.

“Thank you,” said Proteus. “You speak English really well.”

“I study,” she said. “I’m Byambaa.” She pressed her hand to her chest.

“Hi. Thanks, Byambaa.”

“Hi. I can practice. With you.”

“I’m…” Proteus hesitated.

“You need help.”

He nodded.

“Come… with me.”

•

The place where young Byambaa took him was an American-themed hamburger restaurant.

“This is good and… and you… will like it,” she told him. Already he’d learned to read through her pauses and odd use of punctuation, so that her way of speaking seemed by now more natural to him.

A hostess in a blonde bouffant wig and elaborate ivory chiffon dress seated them at a table in the back. Aside from her Asiatic features, it seemed she was supposed to be Marilyn Monroe. The mole painted onto her cheek was the final giveaway. And the place was crammed full of people, though the hour seemed an odd one. But then, Proteus didn’t know what the hour was.

Perhaps she’d thought the element of familiarity would help to put him at ease. But the restaurant was a fever dream of Americana, set within a concrete bunker and crowded with Union Jacks, posters from old westerns, photographs of antique gas pumps, movie stars, and a much-faded portrait of the elder George H.W. Bush, smiling as blandly as any man could. Proteus noticed that most of the clientele were young – Byambaa’s age, maybe students like herself. When a waiter approached their table wearing a leather jacket, his dark hair shaped with volumes of grease (either Elvis or James Dean, it seemed), he nodded first in recognition of her, then hesitated for a moment when he realized that Proteus probably truly was American, giving him a look as if to ask what would someone like you be doing here?

She ordered hamburgers for the both of them.

After the waiter left, the two sat in awkward silence for a time. Byambaa smiled sweetly, but then her smile faltered, became uncertain, dropped. She lowered her eyes shyly. Proteus looked around the dining room until his gaze lighted on a landscape painting of the “Mittens” rock formations of Monument Valley. The artist had depicted several noble-looking Navajo riding war ponies over the flat terrain, long black hair trailing behind them in the wind, vast red rocks on the horizon. Beside it hung an iconic photograph of John Wayne as a lawman, a publicity still from some movie or another. Proteus had never followed westerns.

Byambaa saw where he’d been looking and seized upon it. “In America,” she said, “you have… the cowboys… and the In-di-ans. Both sides.”

“The Indians were there first,” Proteus said. “But the cowboys won. Now it’s mostly cowboys.”

She thought about this, nodding. “Here,” she told him, “we are both. Indians and cowboys, both. We are… here first. We win… then we lose, then we’re still here.”

“I see.”

“You… can-not go back.”

“No… Wait. What?”

“You… cannot go… home… with-out your pass-port.”

“No.”

“What-will-you… do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe something else.” The waiter brought their hamburgers and set the plates onto the table between them. Beside the burgers were heaping piles of French fries and an assortment of small, foil packets of condiments: mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise. The packets were American brands, in keeping with the theme, and Proteus then realized where the mayo packet in his kitchen had come from.

“May-be…” Byambaa echoed. “You can go. To. American embassy.”

“I’m looking for something.”

She nodded enthusiastically and tucked into her food, picking the burger up and cramming as much into her mouth as would fit.

Proteus poked at a fry.

She set down her burger and chewed, watching him not eat. “You are… mif-fing… fomefing…” she said around a mouthful of food.

Proteus stared at the fry he’d poked.

She swallowed hard, looked like she might choke, didn’t, then said, “You have… dropped… pieces. Of yourself. Somewhere. Your. Soul.” Her eyes widened. “And… so-you… lost-it.”

He looked up.

“I am. Looking. Also,” she said, seeming almost, for an instant, on the verge of tears. “For something.”

He tilted his head skew-wise.

“Tell me,” she said, “about… the… future.”

•

“What?”

She set her food down and looked at him levelly. “It was. A. Simple question.”

“Yes, but…” he stared at her in astonishment, “why should you know about that?”

“Why are you… changing? Shapes?”

“I’m sorry.”

“It is… just-fine. Not to be sorry. But why?”

“It’s what I do.”

“I don’t see. Who you are. You look dif-fer-ent.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not to be sorry. But. You will-not… tell me… the future?”

“No.”

“Now you are back to yourself. Just-fine. I… just-fine. Tell me. This, but… why… were you star-ing?”

“I didn’t know I was staring. Sorry.”

“Not. Now. No… then. When-I… found… you. When the police-man. Found you. You were star-ing. At. Something?”

“I… I was looking at a building.”

“Yes.” She nodded emphatically.

“There was something about the building.”

“Yes. Yes.”

“It seemed to shimmer.”

“Shim-mer. Yes.”

“Do you know what that means?”

She nodded. “No.”

Proteus tried to think of how to describe shimmer to her. Finally, he held up both his hands with his palms toward her, fingers outspread, and he waved them back and forth really fast.

Byambaa only looked confused.

“Never mind.”

“This is,” she said, “what. Is wrong? With you?”

“That’s how I saw the building.”

She mimicked him with her small hands, holding them up and waving them really fast. “Like this?” People were staring.

“Yes,” Proteus said, “like that.”

Understanding seemed to awaken in her eyes then. “The Wrestling Palace!”

“That big, domed arena building. In the middle of everything.”

“Yes!” she said excitedly. “Yes! It is like that!”

“The Wrestling Palace.”

“It is like that!” And she did it again with her hands, waving them quickly back and forth.

It was his turn to look confused, and when she saw it in his face, Byambaa became suddenly serious. “Okay!” she said. “I will make a deal. With you. Okay.”

“Oh…”

“This is… a good deal. You are American. You will… under-stand.”

“Good.”

“Yes. I help-you. Find your… missing pieces. Your soul! Okay. You-will. Tell-me the fu-ture.”

“Oh.”

“You are. Do-ing. It. Again. You change shapes.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”

“Not to be sorry.”

“But why do you want to know? You’re so young. Nothing good ever comes from it.”

Byambaa, finished with her burger and fries already, eyed his, as yet untouched. He pushed his plate over to her.

“I am. Young?” she said, taking his plate, picking up his hamburger, holding it in front of her mouth. “Yes. Maybe. I have. No-time. I have. Visions? Of… some future. Of? No future. I take… things…” and she shook the burger violently, flinging specks of pickles and dressing into the air, “I see… no past… no future. In things! What. Is. Future? Is? Time… a shape? I want… to see… the shape.”

“The… shape?”

“Yes! The! Shape!”

He dropped his gaze down toward the empty spot on the table where his plate had been. “I can tell you the future. But you’ll regret it,” he said.

“Regret? What is this? To… know. To see. The. Shape.” She bit into the food. “I… haff to… regreft… fomfing…”

She had a point. Maybe. What Proteus could not quite grasp of her reasoning, he could at least appreciate that these were her conditions. Perhaps it was a fair trade, because the price, no less, was his missing soul, perhaps by magic returned. And so, amidst this lunchtime crowd (that had by now collectively lost interest in them both, despite his evident strangeness), while Byambaa stuffed her second burger of the day, almost whole, into her tiny little mouth – there would be no further words between them here; none were necessary – despite his misgivings, they came to an understanding.