Walking to the Interior

by Pil Lee

There is so much dust in parts of the Interior that you sometimes feel like you’re wading through a velvet field. As your feet push forward there’s only the slightest resistance, and you can see it pooling back like gentle waves behind the walkers in front of you. It doesn’t rise into the air and waft about you, but rather eddies and swells around your ankles, and if you try to follow the small ripples with your eyes, they stretch far away across an endless brown sea. The road to Bethlehem is full of walkers, either alone or with just one other beside them, and the ripples through the dust are never still, never absent, as far as the eye can see.

I had been on the same road for nearly a week, although ‘road’ is quite misleading. Picture rather an endless plain, without feature and with no destination in sight. I’d taken a visual fix on the sun and the stars at first, but always there was some other figure, either close or distant, that I could follow. Gradually I trusted that we were all going to the same place and stopped sighting the sky.

There were four of us, each trying to make it to Bethlehem first. An old, old story claimed that the only way in was by the road, no matter what other route you tried. So my best friend, Keith Mantle, was a couple of days away from taking a commercial helicopter in from the nearest sea port at Riyaan. My wife Sandra would be leaving at the same time on a National Geographic shuttle, planning to parachute in from the north of the city. And Eli Goldener, a longtime fellow traveller who’d first told us the story, was probably right now boarding a minisub with navigation through the Suez B-link Canal programmed in. We planned to all arrive at the same time, which meant that I’d already been on the road, on foot, for six days, with another two to go.

There was no way to talk to any of my colleagues. All transmissions from the Interior were blocked, and they couldn’t reach me either. I had no idea what had been happening in the outside world since I’d started on the road, and had exhausted the only reading material I’d brought along on the first night, huddled with a torch in my little pup tent. I’d imagined before I left that I’d use the time to meditate and unwind from the mundanities of life, but the absolute silence and stillness of the road had become too oppressive by the third day. I began to angle off towards other walkers in the distance, hoping for some companionship and idle chat. Everytime I came close enough to see someone clearly, they moved away from me, still heading generally towards Bethlehem, but obviously with no wish to come in contact with anyone else.

I gave up after a few attempts, and took to singing loudly to myself to pass the time, puzzling over a song until I had remembered all the lyrics. I stopped for more and more meal breaks, just for something to do, until I started to run dangerously short of food. This was unlike any other travel I’d ever done. Usually, no matter how alone I was and for how long, there was always something to look at, something to photograph, terrain to navigate or routes to decide. Here there was nothing but the dust and a merciless horizon.

The last two days I’d fallen into a reverie, mindlessly walking forward in almost a trance, and I think the man behind me must have spoken several times before his voice penetrated my daze.

I stopped suddenly, disoriented, and he moved up beside me.

“Are you alright, Sir?” he said.

“Yes, thankyou, Sir,” I replied, eyeing him warily.

“I am looking for company on the road, Sir,” he said, white teeth smiling in a pale pink face.

“Well, you are more than welcome to walk with me, Sir,” I said.

He reached out towards me. “Franz Schappel.”

“George Mbuli,” I said, shaking his hand. “Aren’t you the wrong colour to walk into the Interior, Franz?”

He started walking forward, and I eased into step beside him. “God told me I would be fine,” he said.

I was amazed. “You actually spoke to God? I mean, he actually spoke to you?”

“Yes, many times,” he said.

“In the Interior?” I asked. “Were you in the Interior when he spoke to you?”

“No, I’ve never been here before,” he said. “I asked him questions from home about this trip and he answered all of them.”

I shook my head. “I sent him a whole page of questions, and so did my editor, and he didn’t reply to one.”

Franz shrugged. “Maybe he’d had bad press from your editor. Is that what you do, George? Are you a travel writer?”

“No, I’m a traveller, a bit of an explorer,” I told him, delighted to be talking to someone again. “I usually take long trips with two others, including my wife, but a magazine buys articles from me once in a while.”

“You sound wealthy, to do so much travelling,” he said. “Where is your wife now? She’s not on this trip?”

“Well she is in a way,” I said. “I’m going to Bethlehem on the road, she’s going by air and two other friends are also on their way. One’s coming through the canal, and one from orbit. We’re all supposed to meet there in two days.”

Franz stopped and turned towards me. “But you can only enter Bethlehem by the road.” He gestured at the dusty plain. “This road.”

I grinned at him. “I know, I know, we’ve heard the story, but you’ve gotta try.”

“But George, God doesn’t allow it,” he said.

“God doesn’t intervene,” I said.

“Of course he does, he intervenes all the time,” said Franz. “George, you must contact your wife. You must stop her.”

“Why?”

“Before God stops her,” he said.

I shook my head.

“George, how can you be so naive,” he said. “The triumvirate and the media want you to think that God is powerless, but that’s not true.”

“I’m not one of the gullible who think he’s powerless,” I said. “But he doesn’t intervene. That’s been proven time and time again.”

“Well how did the Interior come to be?” said Franz.

“We signed a treaty,” I replied. “It’s just an area where people don’t trade or do business. No one’s much interested in going there anymore. And it’s not easy either, if crossing this plain is the only way to the main city.”

“This plain?” he said. “Is that what you think this is, a plain?”

“Well, road then,” I said, starting to get annoyed, but not really wanting my only companion to leave. “Whatever it is, let’s keep walking.”

Franz turned to face me, the horizon at his back and his face only a few inches from mine.

“This is Heaven, George,” he said.

I stared at him. “I’m sorry Franz, I think your navigation is a bit off. Heaven is where you go when you die, and this is definitely not it.” I looked at the barren landscape. “No one’s paying taxes for this.”

Franz shrugged off his pack and threw himself facedown on the ground. The dust swirled about his head, up to his ears, and started to billow over his body. He was motionless, and I suddenly worried that I was stuck with a complete lunatic and I was about to witness his suicide.

Just as I was reaching out to grab his shoulder and haul him up he flipped his body over so that he was flat on his back, facing the sky, then he lurched back to his feet.

“Am I covered with dust, George?” he asked. And, looking at him closely, I could see the dust still pooled around his ankles but his body was clean as if he’d never rolled in it.

“These are the dead, Sir”, he said formally. “Dust to dust.”

He hoisted his pack onto his shoulder and strode off towards Bethlehem.

I watched his back for a moment then ran to catch him up. We walked stiffly side by side for a few minutes before I broke the silence.

“What do you do for a living, Sir?”

“I am an accountant, Sir,” he said.

I digested that. “Well, if it’s true,” I said, that this is where they send the dead, why do you know all about it and I don’t?”

“I don’t ‘know all about it’, as you put it,” he said. “I just know what anyone knows about the world who is actually interested in news about Earth. People are always acting as if it’s been kept from them when they learn news about a place they’ve never cared about before. Chances are no one else has any interest in it either, and it’s never been reported. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing happening there, or that the people there are trying to keep a secret.”

We walked on for a while, pushing through the dust, sharing the rythmn.

“If God really does intervene,” I said, “how will he stop the others getting to Bethlehem?”

“I don’t know,” said Franz. “But you should tell your wife to turn back. I don’t think she is safe.”

“But I’m six days walk inside the Interior,” I said. “I can’t signal her, I can’t walk out before she travels.”

Franz was silent for a while. “I’m sorry, Sir,” he said.

I grabbed his arm so that he swung around to face me.

“But God spoke to you, Franz, didn’t he, before you started on the trip. You could talk to him again, ask him to help me,” I said.

“How can I speak to him if I am inside the Interior like you?” said Franz. “I can’t signal either.”

“You can’t signal God inside the Interior?”

“No, of course not,” he said. “All transmissions are blocked.”

I stared at him blankly.

“But didn’t God sign the treaty for the Interior? Isn’t he in charge here?”

“Yes, of course,” said Franz, “but there is still complete transmission silence.” He gazed at me for a moment. “I’m sorry, George,” he said. “Maybe she will be alright.” He looked at the dust lapping over his feet. “But she will not be in Bethlehem to meet you.” He continued walking and, after a moment, so did I.

“I don’t believe anything you’ve said, you know Franz,” I said. “Not to be offensive or anything. I don’t believe this is Heaven, for a start. That would be the most unimaginable IRS scam, it would bring down the bloody triumvirate. And I don’t believe there is any harm going to come to my wife. And even if God can intervene, and I guess no one’s actually stopping him, there’s no reason he’d care which way people entered the city.”

Franz looked up to the bright clear sky for a moment. “We’re all going to the same place,” he said. “All these walkers. Maybe some of them think like you, blinkered by the privileged world they think gives them freedom. And maybe some of them know how the world really is.” He looked sideways at me. “We don’t agree, I know. We’ve only known each other briefly, and maybe you don’t want to share the rest of the walk with me, but if you need someone when you get to Bethlehem, I will be there.”

And then he quickened his pace, and moved off at a bit of an angle from me, following the other faint figures walking at the very edge of vision.

And I followed in his wake, pushing through the gentle brown sea, deep into the Interior.