In the Distance

After such a long time in the odourless desert (he had long ceased to notice the few habitual scents of his body, his animals, and his fires), the stench of civilisation hit him like a solid mass, rather than a vapour – a smell at once slippery and barbed, piercing and thick.

Although the sounds had the texture and flavour of church music, the melody was un

The vast plains receded. He felt out of place, and there was something thrilling and comical about this. But at the same time, he also felt lonelier than ever – smaller, frailer.

the plains into an actual territory that could be traversed and exited instead of a suffocating void from which everything, including space itself, had been drained.

He reminded Håkan that life is a struggle against the downward pull of gravity – life is an ascending force that moves every plant and beast away from the dirt (and the same can be said about a creature’s moral evolution, by which it moves away from its primordial instincts towards a higher awareness).

But the main virtue his brother and the naturalist shared was their ability to endow the world with meaning. The stars, the

nd yet, despite his profound misgivings, Håkan felt his own past (with all that he thought he knew, with his father’s few firm words, with the minister’s unquestioned doctrine, and even with his brother’s lovely stories) dissolve into the night and fade in the presence of the impressive and awful history he had just heard.

His limited knowledge of the Bible, his common sense, and, above all, his own humanity made it impossible for him to believe that his seniors, no matter how removed, had been animals. Had he understood Lorimer’s rudimentary Swedish correctly? Even more outrageous and insulting was the notion of that primordial snot. Had he not been created in god’s image? What, then, was god?

If confirmation of the existence of this first creature, this disembodied brain, could be found anywhere, it would be in Saladillo.

The inescapable and stunning conclusion of this was that human intelligence, in some form, must have preceded all organic matter on Earth.