Tainaron - Mail from another city Page 2

  52

  I should like a dress made only of this thread; a garment lighter, more festive or more beautiful I could not imagine.

  53

  But it is a childish dream: I shall never have such a dress. For the filament is so sticky that it would stick to my body like a corrosive glue.

  54

  So what is this thread used for? Do not ask me; I do not know, and I do not wish to know.

  55

  56

  Shimmer - the third letter

  57

  And then the lights of evening are lit, with hundreds of reflections in water and eyes and windows. You know, don't you, that there are creatures who light up their vicinity with the glow of their own organs or parts of the body: fireflies in the gardens of the south, the glow-worm on its blade of grass and the creatures who live in moats, who carry lamps on their monstrous foreheads. Colder still is the vast lustre of rotten wood covered in honey fungus....

  58

  But here in Tainaron, too, there are those who, at evening, draw glances because they secrete a fine veil of light and at times, when they become agitated, glimmer and flash. I gaze at them with admiration as they hurry past me in the street - always quickly, with almost dancing steps. They emerge from their houses only at evening, and I have no idea what they do until then, the livelong day - perhaps they merely sleep.

  59

  I have never seen any of them alone; they move in flocks and free groupings as if participating in some kind of formation dancing in the squares. But if it rains or if there is a fresh breeze, the sparklers go out like candles and disappear beneath the roofs. Difficulties and a severe climate, tiring work and unexpected upheavals are not for their sort. Whenever I see them I find myself thinking that there must be a party somewhere and that lots of fun is to be expected. They look so cheerful and carefree, and their rose-pink or yellowish glow would embellish any ballroom.

  60

  In the middle of the city there is a stairway around which Tainaronians gather in the evenings to converse or merely to watch one another. It is here that the most colourful, the strangest, the most elegant, the richest and the most tattered of all meet, on these broad steps, worn over many centuries. The Fireflies, too - is that not a good name for these little shimmerers? - are seen here as soon as darkness falls, as long as the weather is calm and warm.

  61

  I feel melancholy when I look at them, but I have never tried to approach them. I do not even believe that they speak any of the city's official languages; I do not know whether they speak at all. They are as graceful as down, as fine and light as the first flush of youth that no one has ever lived.

  62

  Recently I have betaken myself on many evenings to the steps to rejoice in their glimmer. They do not notice me, but when they pass - dance! - past me and past the beggars and past the pomp of the blue-belted knight, hope quivers and the spirit of spring gusts around them as freshly as if nothing had ever yet been lost forever.

  63

  But I must tell you, too, that when, yesterday morning, I crossed the square on the way to a certain side-street, I saw in the ditch a dusty rag, with a few pitying backs bowed over it. I passed it by without stopping, but when, at the corner of the street, I stopped to look, I saw it being lifted from the ground and carried away. It was only then that I understood that I had seen one of the sparklers, but this time quite alone. It was no longer glimmering, even palely; it was just a small, dark mass. The spark of joy, the gleam of life itself, had been extinguished. Wherever, whenever I happen to witness its destruction, bitter pain, seemingly incurable, weakens my sight and eats away from me, too, the small days of life.

  64

  But tonight in the city the Fireflies were on the move once more, as many in number as flocks of birds in spring, more joyful and glimmering more strongly than ever before.

  65

  66

  Their mother's tears - the fourth letter

  67

  There are strange houses in one of the suburbs. They are like goblets, very narrow and high, and to a certain extent they recall piles of ashes; but their reddish walls are as strong as concrete. In them live a countless mass of inhabitants, small but very industrious folk, who are in constant motion. They all resemble each other so closely that I should never learn to recognise any of them. One, however, is an exception.

  68

  It is already a long time since I asked Longhorn whether, one day, he would take me to one of those houses. 'Why do they interest you?' he asked. 'Their architecture is so extraordinary,' I said. 'Perhaps you know someone there? Perhaps I could go there with you sometime?'

  69

  'If you wish,' said Longhorn; but he did not look particularly keen.

  70

  Yesterday, at last, Longhorn took me to one of those dwellings. At the entrance was a doorman with whom he exchanged a few words and who set off to accompany me. 'We shall meet this evening,' shouted Longhorn, and disappeared into the gaudy bustle of Tainaron.

  71

  I was led along dim and intricate corridors that opened on halls, warehouses and living spaces of different sizes. Past me rushed large numbers of people; all of them seemed to be in a hurry and in the midst of important tasks. But I was taken to the innermost room of the house, at whose door stood more guards. There was no window in the room, but it was nevertheless almost unbearably bright, although I could not see the source of the light.

  72

  I certainly realised that there were other people in the room, but I could see only one. She was immeasurably larger than all the others, monumental, all the more so because she stayed in one place, unmoving. Her dimensions were enormous: her egg-shaped head grazed the roof of the vault and, in its half recumbent position, her breadth extended from the doorway to the back of the room. As I stepped inside and stood by the wall (there was hardly room anywhere else), there came from her mouth a creaking sound which I interpreted as a welcome.

  73

  'Show respect for the queen,' hissed my guide, and knelt down. Unaccustomed to such gestures, I felt embarrassed, but I followed his example.

  74

  Some time passed before any attention was paid to me. By the walls of the room, around the queen, rushed creatures whose task was evidently to satisfy all her needs. I soon realised that they were necessary, for the queen was so formless that she herself could hardly take a step. And I concluded that she could not possibly have gone out through the door; she must live and die within these walls, without ever seeing even a flicker of sun. Her plight horrified me, and I wanted to leave the glowing cave quickly.

  75

  At that moment the creaking voice startled me. I realised that the queen had turned her head a little so that she was now staring at me languidly, at the same time sipping a milky fluid from a goblet held under her infinitesimal jaw.

  76

  The straw fell from her lip, and new croaks followed. With difficulty, I made out the following words: 'I know what you're thinking, you little smidgeon.'

  77

  'I'm sorry,' I stammered, and vexation made me flushed.

  78

  'You think, don't you, that I am some kind of individual, a person, admit it!'

  79

  As she went on speaking, her voice grew deeper, and it was as if it began to buzz. It was a most extraordinary voice, for it seemed to be made up of the murmur of hundreds of voices.

  80

  'Yes, indeed, I mean....' I grew completely confused for a moment and sat down on my heels, as kneeling on the hard floor was too tiring.

  81

  'Quite so, of course,' I said rapidly, completely puzzled.

  82

  'Didn't I guess?' she said, and burst into laughter, which sometimes boomed, sometimes tinkled in the corridors so infectiously that in the end all the inhabitants of the building seemed to be joining in, and the entire house was laughing at my simplicity.

  83

 
; Suddenly complete silence followed, and she said, pointing at me with her long proboscis, 'So tell me, who am I?'

  84

  Before I could even think of an answer to this question, I realised at last what was happening in the back part of the room, which was filled with the queen's great rear body. I had, in fact, been aware all the while that something was being done incessantly, but the nature of that activity hit me like a thunderbolt. Bundles had been carried past me, but it was only at the third or fourth that I looked more closely and saw: they were new-born babies.

  85

  The queen was giving birth! She was giving birth incessantly. And just as I realised that, I seemed to hear from all around me the din of a hammer, commands, the chirrup of a saw, and everywhere there hovered the stench of building mortar. I realised that more and more storeys were being added to the house, and that it was reaching ever higher into the serenity of the sea of air. The sounds of construction reached me even from deep under the ground, and in my mind's eye I could see corridors branching beneath the paving stones like roots, greedily growing from day to day. The tribe was increasing; the house was being extended. The city was growing.

  86

  'You are the mother of them all, your majesty,' I replied, humbly.

  87

  'But what is a mother?' she squealed, and suddenly her voice rose to a piercing height, as one of her antennae lashed through the air above my head like a whip.

  88

  I retreated and pressed myself to the wall, although I understood that she would not be able to come any nearer.

  89

  'She from whom everything flows is not a someone,' the queen hissed through her wide jaws, like a snake. I gazed at her, bewitched.

  90

  'You came to see me, admit it!' she growled, more deeply than I dared think. 'But you will be disappointed! You are already disappointed! Admit it!'

  91

  'No, not in the least,' I protested, anxiously.

  92

  'But there is no me here; look around you and understand that! And here, here in particular, there is less of me than anywhere. You think I fill this room. Wrong! Quite wrong! For I am the great hole out of which the city grows. I am the road everyone must travel! I am the salty sea from which everyone emerges, helpless, wet, wrinkled....'

  93

  Her voice chided me warmly, like a great ocean swell. As she spoke, she glanced languidly behind her, at her formless, mountainous rear, from whose depths her latest offspring were being helped into the brightness of the lamps. They were all born silently, as if they were dead.

  94

  But suddenly I saw something gush from her eyes; it splashed on to the floor and the walls and wetted all my clothes.

  95

  She was no longer looking at me, and I rose and left the room, wet with the queen's tears.

  96

  The burden - the fifth letter

  97

  I have not told you that I am already living at my second address here in Tainaron. There were some difficulties with my first apartment, so vague that I have not written about them earlier, but at the same time serious enough to force me to move.

  98

  For my first week I lived in a northern suburb, in a building which must once have been plastered in pale green, but had since fallen badly into decay. The plaster had split off in great flakes, and the spaces they left behind them brought to mind faces and patterns seen long ago. At first, nevertheless, I liked both the house and the apartment a great deal: a room and small kitchen on the first floor, with a window opening on to a short, peaceful street.

  99

  Then, one night, I woke up. It was perhaps my third or fourth night. My upstairs neighbours were making a noise, and it was this which had woken me. Someone was moving a heavy piece of furniture - that is what it sounded like, at least - dragging it back and forth across the floor above my ceiling. I looked at the clock: it was a little past one. For some time I lay awake, waiting for the noise to end, but when the din went on I got up, angry and tired, to look for something with which to knock on the ceiling. I could not find anything; I had not yet bought even a broom for the apartment.

  100

  I opened the door that led to the stairway and listened: it seemed to me that the whole house must have woken up. But the noise was much fainter in the stairwell, and no one else had got up to wonder what it was. The calm light of the street-lamp drew a beautiful ornament in the cracked marble of the wall of the stairway.

  101

  I lay down once more and stared at the ceiling. It looked at me as if it were shaking under the heavy thumps that went on, one after another. I thought I had lain there for a long time, I thought it was already morning, when the noise suddenly ceased and it was as if everything was abruptly interrupted. When I glanced at the clock, I realised that it had all lasted for less than an hour.

  102

  The following night as I went to bed, I had already forgotten the matter. But my sleep was interrupted again by precisely the same kind of sound as on the previous night, and at exactly the same time. I tried to remain calm, and took up a book. I even leafed through it (it was the flora you gave me long ago), but the incessant knocking prevented me from understanding anything. The hands of the clock moved as if some nocturnal force were hindering them, but when they finally reached two, peace returned as suddenly as it had been broken.

  103

  The next day, I saw the upstairs resident in a small neighbourhood shop opposite our house. She was a fragile old spinster with astonishingly thin limbs, who supported herself with a slender stick with an elegantly turned head - it represented a creature with a beak and horns. The lady was known well in the shop and was served with respect. In the midst of her purchases she turned to me and asked, in a surprisingly strong, trumpet-like voice, 'Well, how do you find us?'

  104

  I had not in the least expected that she would know who I was. My landlord had only once pointed her out to me, through the window, when I was signing the rental agreement.

  105

  'That old lady lives above you,' was all he had said, and I had glanced at my neighbour in passing from my first-floor perspective.

  106

  'I am Pumilio,' the old lady said now, and now it was my turn to introduce myself; but I am sure that I was unable entirely to banish the quiver of suspicion from my face as she continued, immediately: 'Have you settled in to your new apartment?'

  107

  As she asked the question, quickly and animatedly, I thought her gaze held real curiosity, quite out of proportion to the formality of the question.

  108