I wonder where he envisages his new existence, if any, when it comes to that night under the stars. But I have no desire or need to know because I have already stumbled too far into his world once again and, yes, because many of the important moments of my life have been reflected by books, I have indeed already thought of Kurtz. But there are no heads on poles in Canaan, only help stations, water to drink and the promise of shelter. So this is no heart of darkness, no Charles Manson Spahn Ranch, and at that moment I start to conceive of it in the most obvious terms – a final repentance, an attempted atonement for past sins that could no longer be obliviated by a quick confession and an easy penance. And who can say he was crazy because perhaps all our lives should have a final atonement – an atonement for the things we regret, for all the times we fell short of our best selves. For having lived timidly too often and at the direction of others. And, yes, when we didn’t do the right thing, even though we go on trying to make excuses for those failures. Each of us could make our own lists and sometimes I tell myself that writing this story is part of my personal act of contrition and if nothing else that alone makes it worthwhile.

So to speak of Saigon suddenly feels unseemly, like a dog looking at its own sick. Will compelling a dying man on that journey through the years amount to anything other than a futile confrontation with what had long vanished into history and could not be changed? Nor do I know whether the things that happened in those far-off days might be ameliorated by words uttered in the present, or if it is possible that the memory could be salved, however selfishly or too conveniently. I no longer feel able to make the judgements that I clutched securely when setting out and, as we sit in the fire’s light, the sweep of history seems to unravel into nothing more than the never-ending days in which we lived. Days filled with both piety and shame but which can never be fully disowned no matter how much we try.

I go to say something to him but see his head slump on his chest and for a second I think he has gone, until I hear his shallow breathing and know that he is sleeping. I take the blanket off the couch and cover him with it, then make the fire safe. I find the room where I am to sleep and lie down on the single bed. I will start back home in the morning, enter once more the round of my life, try to find something to staunch the loneliness of the house in which I live and try also to keep moving forward, because I know not to do so will eventually risk my succumbing to whatever it is that corrodes the soul. And on the edge of a desert I know I want to face the sea again, absorb its restless unceasing motion, let the salt-laden breezes fill my lungs and stir me into the possibility of life’s newness even in what I like to think of as early old age. But as I slowly drift into sleep it isn’t the ocean I see but those two quivering arcs of fire and, despite my resolve to keep moving forward, in my dreams I walk once more through the open door of La Porte Bleue, hear my calling voice echoing in its silent emptiness. And then I dream of snow, dream of snow on the edge of a desert. But what is falling, suffocating the world, isn’t white but rather black; and it doesn’t drift dreamily down from some drowsy sky: instead it churns its darkening flakes from the multiplicity of incinerators that burnt on Saigon roofs and in back courtyards and whose fall always marks the end of empire.