He is sandwiched between two nothings: the oceanic roll of clouds below and the wheezing sterility of the plane’s inner chamber, with The Esteemed Reverend Sachs trying to furrow his brow into unimpeachability on the folded printout before him while, across the aisle, Archie Farquhar yaks up last night’s gin into a Greenpeace sack. Down, outside, is an icy stratospheric sundae, seated long into a tired sun, inviting in its blueish contours.
‘Mr. Sweltham,’ Sachs calls out over the raw noise of engine and aeronautics.
Parker sits up. ‘Yes.’
‘When I was a boy,’ Sachs shouts, his big lippy grin full in place, ‘I never dreamt I’d tire of flying in the clouds. Look at that. When I was a boy I was pickpocketing soldiers in Freetown. The first time I flew on a plane was eleven years ago for the International Methodist Assembly in D.C. This is Washington.’
Archie ceases vomiting. He glances around, glassy and tearful, then slumps forward again, face buried in knees.
‘That first venture was an unbelievable experience, Mr. Sweltham. Our images of Heaven, the Afterlife, manifestations of Paradise. Unfortunately, these cartoons compete with the verifiable, and we aren’t ready for all the wonders now available to us. To all of us. When I found myself rising up uppy up, into the sky, so high that everything down there became unrecognizable, I thought I sat in defiance of He Himself. And looking out the window and seeing the clouds below me, to recline above even angels, that felt blasphemous.’
Parker: ‘Imaginably distressing.’
Sachs: ‘Sure, but. After all these diplomatic voyages, all these trips to all these piece-of-shit broken-down town halls, you start to realize. You see the miraculous and, well, as time goes by, you are more and more unimpressed by anything.’
