The Weird Part 94

'But this part of the city is old,' I thought aloud. 'Was it not surveyed many generations ago? What could there be to measure here?'

He looked at me in disbelief. 'What is there to measure?' he asked. 'It was a different time then. A different time, and different measuring devices. I and my grandfather are not at all the same size, as you may have thought.'

He took a large piece of fruit from his bag, sinking his many rows of healthy teeth into it. I no longer knew what to say, and felt a fool.

When the Surveyor had sucked the stem clean and dropped it into a rubbish bin decorated with the city arms, he rose decisively and felt it his duty to remark: 'Back to work!'

He, the measure of all things, hurried energetically to fulfil the demands of his job, growing smaller and smaller on the park path, and a straight, clear furrow was left in its raked sand. He went as official representatives of the people go, or as those who know that everything has its measure, and more what and who he himself is.

And, following the Surveyor's example, time too moved on; a dry leaf fell before me on to the dust and it was the first leaf of autumn. The season had changed.

The bells had stopped echoing, but the city radiated its own sound, like a busy b.u.mble-bee. The brightly coloured Ferris wheel of the Tainaron funfair, which was motionless for a moment at midday, started to spin once more. I saw it from the bench on which I was sitting, alone; it can be seen down in the harbour and in all the squares and markets, so high has it been set up, in the constant wind.

The Bystander The Nineteenth Letter This morning as I woke up, in bed, I was overcome by a prurient restlessness whose reasons I could not immediately divine. For a long time I sat on my bed and listened. Although it was already late in the morning, the city was silent, as if not a single citizen had yet woken up, although it was a weekday and an ordinary working week.

I dressed myself in yesterday's clothes and, without eating my breakfast, went down to the street, seeking Longhorn's company.

But before I could open the front door a surprising sight opened up through the round window of the stairwell: the pavement in front of the building was full of backs, side by side, broad and narrow, long and st.u.r.dy; but all were united by stillness, the same direction and position.

All at once I thought of a picture which I had once seen, perhaps in a book, perhaps in a museum; I cannot remember. Perhaps you too have seen it? The crowd in the picture had a common object of interest, which was not visible; it was outside the edge of the picture, perhaps in reality too. But more than the invisible event and its observers, my attention was drawn to a man in the background of the picture who was looking in the opposite direction to all the others. Do you remember him too?

When I then stepped out on to the outside step and I can tell you that I did it hesitantly, almost unwillingly I can confirm that a fair number of people were standing in front of the opposite block, too, but that there too silence prevailed. I do not think I have yet mentioned that the boulevard on which I now live runs from east to west. When, this morning, I eyed it from my front door, it looked as if the entire city had gathered along this long, wide street and had been standing there silently that was my impression perhaps from the middle of the night onward. The din that, with such numbers of people, generally rises like puffs of smoke, is impressive, but the rage or joy of the crowd could not have dumbfounded me as completely as its silence.

Since autumn is already approaching here, the sun was hanging, at this time in the morning, fairly low at the eastern end of the street, but as far as I could see every single citizen was staring in the opposite direction, at the point in the distance where the boulevard shrinks to a small yellow flower: where the linden trees stand in their autumn glory.

The street was empty. I have often examined its surface, skilfully patterned in stone, but now, as it spread, deserted, before me, when not a single walker was crossing it and no vehicle was rolling along it, I hardly noticed its unique beauty. In the pure dawn of the new day the tramway rails sparkled as if they were made of silver.

Then it occurred to me that perhaps some national day was being celebrated in the city, and that the boulevard was closed to traffic for a great festival parade. It might be that we should soon see the prince himself if he is still alive driving past us, perhaps acknowledging us with a slender hand...Or were we expecting a state visit to the city? Would a procession of closed carriages glide past us, taking n.o.ble guests to a luncheon reception at the city hall?

But I was soon forced to abandon such thoughts. For nothing about the appearance of the Tainaronians suggested great festivities. There were no bunches of flowers, no balloons or masks. Not a single child was blowing the kind of whistle which, whining shrilly, unwinds from a roll to a long staff, and no one was flying a miniature Tainaron flag, a white pennant printed with a spiral (or perhaps a nautilus; I have never been quite sure which).

Yes, they went on standing silently, and the eastern sun infused the strong heat of copper into their back-armour.

Despite the disapproving glances which were cast at me, I pushed right through to the front row and found myself balancing on a narrow kerb-stone of the pavement.

Beside me stood a gleaming black shape that reminded me of a diver. I knocked echoingly on his polished surface and said: 'Excuse me, but please would you tell me what day today is?'

He glanced at me, disturbed, and after making the rapid and sullen reply, 'The nineteenth,' he turned back at once toward the west.

I was none the wiser, but I had only myself to blame the timing and phrasing of my question had been badly chosen.

Then, my dear, there was a sudden gust of wind, and the Tainaronians suddenly began to crowd around me, so that I had to stand with one foot in the gutter. That did not matter, since I had managed to secure a lookout spot for myself. For something was now happening at the point where the boulevard dived into a dusky tunnel under the linden trees. From that direction, some kind of procession was approaching, something very long and pale; but however much I screwed up my eyes I could not make out any details.

It progressed slowly, and our moments stretched with it, but inch by inch it approached our building; and the better I could make it out, the more astonished I was.

What a parade it was! I could see no glittering carriages or bra.s.s bands. Quite the reverse: as it approached, the silence deepened still further, for on the broad boulevard of Tainaron silence combined with silence; the silence of the procession merged with the stillness of the crowd. No flags or streamers, no songs, shots or slogans. But neither did this procession have any of the solemn brilliance of a funeral cortege; not a single flower or wreath gave it colour, and there were no candle flames to flutter and smoke.

When the head of the endlessly long ribbon, which took up almost the entire width of the street, reached us, new battalions rolled forth far away from under the trees. Battalions, I call them, but even today I still do not know whether these were in any sense military. I shall now try to describe to you what I saw before me this morning.

The procession was so uniform that it recalled a snake, but in fact it was made up of countless individuals. Its speed was leisurely, so that I had plenty of time to examine the beginning, which broadened like a reptile's head and which apparently like the entire procession was covered by a transparent, slightly s.h.i.+ny membrane, like an elastic cellophane bag. Inside this membrane, in rows and fronts, marched small creatures; as far as I could see from where I stood they were like grubs, almost colourless and about as thick as my middle finger, but a little longer. I shuddered slightly as I watched them as one s.h.i.+vers when one comes inside from the cold.

The procession was made up of two or even three layers: those below carried the surface layer, which moved more slowly than the lower layer along a living carpet. I think what happened was that when those on top reached the head of the procession, they joined the bottom layer and, in turn, carried the others. It was impossible to estimate the number of members of the procession, but I should imagine that it was a question of millions rather than hundreds of thousands of individuals.

As I gazed at the torrent that surged before me, I remembered that a few nights previously I had dreamed a dream in which this same street had become a river. Now I was, of course, tempted to see it as a prophetic dream, although I do not habitually do that.

I tell you, I would like to understand the nature of the silence with which the city greeted the march-past of this ma.s.s. Was it respect? fear? menace? Now, when I remember our morning, I am inclined to think that it included all those emotions, plus something else, which I shall never understand, for I am in the end a stranger here.

I like the others who stood around me saw at the same time that a small figure had appeared in the middle of the roadway, some kind of weevil, which stared dispiritedly at the approaching flattish serpent's head. There was nothing that was open to interpretation about its motionlessness: it was pure terror and catalepsy. The great head, which glistened unctuously in the sun, by now s.h.i.+ning from high above, and which was made up as I have already said of hundreds of smaller heads, drew ineluctably nearer to the point on the cobblestones where the poor creature stood. At that petrified moment it did not even occur to me that I could have dashed into the roadway and dragged the creature to safety. For my part, I was convinced that the weevil would become food for that living rope; or, if not, that it would at least be an unwilling part of that strange procession.

But what happened was this: when the slowly undulating river reached the creature which looked as if it was benumbed into a hypnosis-like state its head split in two and left a s.p.a.ce for the weevil without even brus.h.i.+ng its unbudging form.

There was a sigh it was unanimous and the front part of the snake merged once more, but in the middle of the broad flow the little creature stood like an island, while the ma.s.ses that seethed around it flowed, glistening, onward.

I do not know whether you will find this description strange. Have you ever, on your travels, encountered anything comparable? You have told me so little about the time when we did not yet know each other...

For my part, I am still bewildered by my morning experience. I do not know how long I stood on the spot, one foot on the pavement, the other in the gutter, as new battalions, divisions, regiments, rolled past us. I should like to say, too, that (with the exception of the case of the weevil) nothing about the procession suggested that anyone in it might have seen or noticed us, that we, the citizens of Tainaron (I am, after all, in a sense one of them) existed in any way for them, let alone that this great march was organised with us in mind.

If you were to ask, I would answer that I do not know. No, I really have not been able to find out what it was and why it went through Tainaron, where it came from and whether it had a destination. It could be that it was searching for something; it could be that it was fleeing something. If the others know something, if you receive any information about this matter, then tell me; do not hide anything!

When the tail of the procession, so thin that its tip was formed of just a few individuals and they themselves were unusually slender and transparent had finally slipped out of sight beyond the square where the boulevard terminates to the east, the crowds dispersed incredibly quickly. I looked around me and stood there, alone on the kerbstone, and the sun was at its highest. Everything bustled around me as before; the shops opened again and vehicles rolled both eastward and westward. Some dashed to banks and offices and secret a.s.signations and others to meetings or to prepare the day's dinner. But in the middle of the street as far as the eye could see, in either direction ran a moist, slimy trail.

This afternoon, when I walked across the boulevard, I could no longer see it. It had dried up and was covered in the same sand and dust that dances before winter in each of the streets of Tainaron.

King Milinda's Question The Twentieth Letter My immediate neighbour, on the same floor, is an extraordinarily old person; much older than the prince. Some people claim he is already over one hundred and fifty years old, while others, like Longhorn, say that he is only one hundred and twenty-five or one hundred and thirty. But everyone who sees his frailty understands that he has lived past his own time, and it is incomprehensible and even cruel that he must continue living here in the city of Tainaron.

He has a servant or perhaps he is one of his descendants who takes him out every morning. He is dry and light and has shrunk so small that he is carried in a kind of bag or sack. The bag is set in the sun on a park bench and its sides are turned down a little so that the old man can take the air and look at the flowers and the pa.s.sers-by. There he is left, and after a couple of hours he is taken home again. In his bag he looks, with his thin limbs, like nothing but a bunch of straw, as dry as kindling.

Do you think there is a place where people do not grow old? I wonder if I ever met an inhabitant of such a country when I was quite young? And will he met me again when my age is as great as that of the old man in the sack?

What a shock he will get. 'My dear friend,' he will stammer. 'What dreadful thing has happened? Who has treated you so badly? Where is your thick hair? Why do you walk so slowly and with such a stoop? Tell me who is to blame, and I shall make him answer for his deeds.'

Childish, ignorant person! Let him go back to where he came from!

I have seen a vision that came from the sack. It looked just as if there were a mirror in it. And the straw rose to give a sign; it beckoned to me. And so of course I went, I went and sat down next to the sack, which was very humble considering that one hundred and fifty years fitted inside.

The sack's voice was so weak and hoa.r.s.e that I could not immediately understand it. The sack asked where I was from, and said that it had not been born in Tainaron either. And I had only sat there for a moment when I realised that the bag contained someone alive and remembering. And when I had sat there for another moment, I knew that he was not old. Old age was merely his disguise, as childhood had once been. I knew it as I once knew that a certain very small creature was right when she shrieked: 'I am not a child! I am not a child!' I knew it because I had not been a child myself, either; I knew it because I shall never be old. I knew it because I had heard King Milinda's question: 'Was he who was born the same as he who died?' and heard the answer, which was not yes or no.

And now the park's trees waved the shadows of their fluttering over my years and over the years of my companion, leaves that were still fastened to their branches, but were already yellow and would soon be dead, detached, absent.

I asked what had been most difficult in life, and the bag answered: 'The fact that everything recurs and must always return and that the same questions are asked again and again.'

But before I could ask more of the same questions, the servant or descendant approached us with purposeful strides. Lightly he lifted his burden its years were feathers to him and, grinding the gravel under his feet, took him back home.

I had got hot and, forgetting the old man in a moment, strolled slowly toward the harbour. There I saw the same white s.h.i.+p that once brought me to Tainaron; but why, I cannot remember.

Not Enough The Twenty-First Letter How are you? How are things with you? That you are so implacable in your silence makes you gradually become more like G.o.ds or the dead. Such is your metamorphosis; and it is not entirely repugnant to me.

For let me tell you what has happened to me. What has happened to me is that people are no longer enough. They are not enough, be they ever so great or beautiful or wise or complicated.

They are not enough, even if their antennae were to stretch further than radar beams and their clothes were to be stronger than armour.

For that reason I confess that everything I say contains the unspoken hope that it is linked with all my actions as well as to the moments when I just sit and look. Ardent hope! Incorrigible hope! That G.o.ds and the dead might hear. That G.o.ds and the dead might see. That G.o.ds and the dead might know...

But there is only one who can make them hear their song. But he was one who became truly unhappy and was torn to pieces.

Last night I returned to you after long years, from such a distance and over many obstacles. Barricades and brushwood fences, barbed wire obstacles and piles of stones rose up in my path. Craters, chasms and stinking trenches opened up before my feet. But my speed was so dizzying that I flew over peaks and depths and sped along the bright, frozen channel that led straight to your door.

The bell rings through the house, through the darkness of the winter's day, and you open the door, the same as before. How happy we are! How we embrace each other!

But at once I notice how absent-minded you are. You are expecting something completely different; yes, I am right: you listen over my head, which is pressed against your chest. And now I, too, hear footsteps approaching below in the stairwell.

Then the light of a living flame spreads across your face as you ask: 'Are they coming here? Are they not close? Are they not familiar footsteps?'

But I do not reply, and you would not hear what I said. Your arms have already loosened around me, and I have returned on the same road along which, just now, I sped toward you, trembling with antic.i.p.ation.

Dayma The Twenty-Second Letter Yesterday I wished to try, for my morning drink, the Tainaronians' favourite sweet, foaming dayma or daime, which is drunk through a straw. They like it so much that they drink it at every possible opportunity, cold or hot, and in addition to dayma they have dozens of other names for it. I have heard it said that in large quant.i.ties it has curious effects and that some may see strange and even improper things after drinking it.

For my part, I did not notice any such effects. But everything I see here is strange, even without drinking a drop of dayma.

I remembered a particularly pleasant little cake shop on the side of a ca.n.a.l where Longhorn took me soon after I arrived in Tainaron for the first time. I also wanted to try those particularly crisp herb pastries, as light as wafers, which smell of smoke and which I believe are not made anywhere else but in that bakery. My desire was so strong that my mouth watered and I had to swallow when the memory of the little pastries spread on to my tongue.

To my disappointment, I could no longer find the cross-street of the ring boulevard on which the cafe was located. I thought I was following the correct route; I turned at the same street corner as before, and carried on along the side of the ca.n.a.l, but soon I found myself in quite unknown quarters. There were unfinished buildings and enormous industrial sh.e.l.ls from which the sound of turbines and the fumes of combustion engines rose into the air. The people there also looked completely different, poorer and smaller than the Tainaronians who had sat on the terrace of my favourite cafe. At last I found a glum coffee bar where badly foamed dayma was served in thick handleless cups and where the bread was dense and heavy.

'I should like to have a map of Tainaron,' I said yesterday to Longhorn. 'It would be much easier to wander here alone, and you would not always have the bother of being my guide. I could not find a single map in the department store. Could you perhaps find a map somewhere? Would it be possible?'

'Unfortunately it is impossible,' he answered.

'Why impossible? Have all the maps sold out?'

'That is not why,' he said. 'No comprehensive map of Tainaron has ever been made.'

'What? No proper map has been made? But that is very strange,' I said, dissatisfied and astonished.

'It is not at all strange,' Longhorn said abruptly. 'It would be sheer impossibility to draw up such a map, a completely senseless project.'

'Why so?' I asked, increasingly irritated. 'To me a kingdom which has no map is not a real kingdom but barbary, chaos, mere confusion.'

'You still know very little about Tainaron,' he said quietly. 'We too have our laws, but they are different from yours.'

I felt a little abashed, but that did not wipe away all my irritability.

'A map cannot be made,' he continued, 'because Tainaron is constantly changing.'

'All cities change,' I said.

'None as fast as Tainaron,' Longhorn replied. 'For what Tainaron was yesterday it is no longer today. No one can have a grasp of Tainaron as a whole. Every map would lead its user astray.'

'All cities must have maps, at least of some kind,' I continued to argue.

Longhorn sighed and looked at me kindly, but a little wearily.

'Come!' he said, and took me gently by the arm. 'Let's go!'

'Where to?' I asked.

'We are going to the observation tower,' Longhorn said. 'To make you understand.'

The observation tower was built on the same hill as the funfair. I had not noticed it until now, for the movement of the Ferris wheel had taken up all my attention. We had to climb for an agonisingly long time up the narrow wooden stairs which circled the outer wall of the tower like a creeper. I do not like such high places, and I felt as if the wind were rocking the frail construction. We climbed and climbed. As we circled the steps, the Ferris wheel, too, kept returning before my eyes; its carriages, now empty, shook and swayed, and its movement made my dizzy. We climbed, and I regretted that I had taken up Longhorn's offer.

Midway, I said to Longhorn: 'Now I cannot climb any farther. Let us stay here. We can see enough from here.'

But Longhorn's ears were deaf, and he continued his astonis.h.i.+ngly agile clambering. At times he seemed to glide upward but of course he did have more pairs of legs than I. He did not even glance behind him, and I had to follow him. I went on climbing.

At last! We were standing on the upper platform, but I had grown dizzy and did not immediately go right up to the rail. My eyes were sore from the wind and suns.h.i.+ne which, up here, seemed blindingly bright. I tried to breathe slowly; I swallowed and fastened my eyes on the fibres of the platform's planks. I had decided that I would not complain any more; for I suspected that Longhorn now considered me spoilt and bad company and by no means did I wish him to tire of acting as my guide.

But I could not help hoping that Longhorn would put one of his narrow, long upper limbs around my shoulders. He appeared not to have noticed my uncertain state, but was gazing absorbedly and so it seemed to me with eyes moist with pride the panorama that opened up before us. He began to hum a wordless song which I had never heard before, and its monotonous melody and the peaceful wave-forms of the timber fibres restored my balance.

I gathered my courage and looked downwards. We had been climbing for a long time, but I was still astonished that we were so excessively high up. I shaded my eyes and saw, in the dizzying depths, the plain of Tainaron, patterned with the shadows of frantically scurrying clouds. I also realised that the tower must be a little skew, for the horizon was clearly slanted. Directly below us was the little funfair, today deserted, with its gaudily coloured tents. Even the highest carriages of the Ferris wheel were far below us. Far away gla.s.s and steel glittered, bronze and gold glimmered, when a s.h.i.+mmering ray lit up the windows of a skysc.r.a.per or the cupolas of churches. This was Tainaron, his city, theirs never mine.

But it was an astonis.h.i.+ng city! Longhorn's pride was understandable. I had never understood how enormous Tainaron was. I saw the cone-like areas which I had once visited, only to be dampened by the queen's tears, I saw the prince's palace park with its paths and paG.o.das, and in the east the endless, muddled skeins of the slums.

We were so high up that from below all that could be heard was the occasional shriek, isolated, a shriller cry than the rest, and mysterious clinking sounds which I had also heard at night and whose origin I had never been able to trace. It sounded as if someone were tapping a gla.s.s with a silver spoon in order to make a speech. A little farther up, and everything would have been completely silent.

'Here is everything I have,' Longhorn said. 'You, too.'

The s.h.i.+ning belt of Oceanos with its stripes of foam encircled us on all sides. A haze hid the horizon to the south, but to the north a high, silver-glowing cloud formation was visible, so motionless, in contrast to the clouds that slipped over Tainaron, that it looked like a metal sculpture. Its shape was like that of a human torso.

'Is there a storm brewing?' I asked.

'It is not a storm,' he said. 'Worse. It is winter. Although it will be a long time before it reaches us. But when it is here, I pity those who have not already gone to sleep!'

I already felt cold now, in full sunlight. We looked in silence at the majestic shape of snow and ice. To me it still did not look as if it were changing shape or approaching Tainaron.

'Perhaps it will not come this time, after all,' I said to Longhorn, half in earnest, and hopeful. 'Perhaps it will stay up there in the north.'

'What a child it is,' Longhorn said in an aside, as if there had been a third person with us on the platform. Then he continued, turning to me once more: 'I did not bring you here only to look at the coming of winter. Do you see?'

Longhorn gestured toward the northern edge of the city, below the winter, where there swelled a cl.u.s.ter of dwellings of different heights and shapes. It must have been because of my sore eyes that their outlines looked so indefinite. As we looked, it seemed strangely as if some of them were in motion.

'What is happening there?' I asked.

'Changes,' he said.

That was indeed how it looked. Clouds of dust spread on the plain and in a moment all that could be seen where the crenellations of towers and blocks had meandered were mere ruins. But there had been no sound of any explosion.

'That part of the city no longer exists,' he said calmly.

'Not an earthquake, surely?' I asked fearfully, although I could not yet feel any tremors. 'No, they are merely demolis.h.i.+ng the former Tainaron,' Longhorn said.