by Unknown
I don’t know what happened to Stefan and he suddenly—for the second time—gave the vehicle a straight upward trajectory. My instinct and reflexives pushed me to grab him in order to hold on.
In response to my reaction, he gave me the “We’re almost there” look…
There came a moment that I thought would be my last one but, ultimately, my faith in their technological advancement mitigated the fear in my heart.
From up above, you could see countless milky-coloured floodlights coming from the South. One of them started getting closer and closer at the point where it looked like a piece of evening daylight sank into the deep darkness of the night… This unburning, cool light they have managed to create is, in my opinion, one of their greatest achievements.
“Look! Look! It’s Markfor!” Stefan shouted, pointing in the direction of the city. And instantly the “State of the Temples” revealed itself below us: this exquisite megalopolis, the centre of modern art and literature, which I had heard so much about from Ilector Jaeger.
We slowed down, entering the normal flow of traffic along with the other mechanical birds that crowded that part of the sky, silently passing by each other. In a few minutes we were landing inside the powerful white light.
Seeing how excited I was, Stefan told me that he wished his own mental world were a tabula rasa like mine, ready to welcome new impressions without being influenced by any previous memories.
You didn’t see houses here—only palaces, parks and temples. Various incredibly large terraces and plenty of architectural works of art, strongly influence by the Roman order, I would say. Enormous gardens and squares, and many sculptures, including a huge marble statue I saw, depicting Christ with a halo on his head which, however, wasn’t made of marble but of an invisible source of light instead!
Many times that night I heard Stefan utter the phrase “another day”… He was so narrow-minded that he couldn’t understand that for me and my impatience there was no “another day”; I wanted to see everything now! Among other incredible sights, I saw a very leafy tree, something between a fir tree and a cypress, huge in size and very different from ours.
After a while, in the Reigen-Swage Palace, the partners walked ahead of us, leading us through the building. Those kind young ladies and willing young lads, all with the same, typical pageboy hairstyles and dressed in their white and light green uniforms adorned with silver belts, appeared behind some enormous columns to welcome us, before we had even finished going up the great exterior marble staircase. I remember asking a seventeen-year-old blond with grey eyes, who ended up being our guide, if having to stay awake so late at night was tiring for her.
“Why, of course not!” she replied smiling hesitantly, as if she were surprised—whether from my question or my accent is unknown. “Each of us only has to stay up at night once a month, but still, we switch every few hours.”
Stefan had entered the Reigen-Swage Institute to inquire and, for a little while, I waited alone and slightly lost, observing the scenes from modern history captured by the big boards on the walls. There were no inscriptions on the bottom and so the subjects and contents of them remained unknown to me. Suddenly, Stefan came out and my heart leapt excitedly. It is incredible how even seeing this man makes me so cheerful, considering that a few months ago I was completely unaware of his existence. What’s wrong with him, though? He doesn’t look so pleased.
“Some other day,” he says, “we’ll be able to see things that interest you and matter to you more. Today we came without any notice and they are displaying things you are already familiar with. What would you like to see?”
For now it didn’t really matter to me what I saw, as long as I saw something. I told him to go inside anyway because I couldn’t wait any longer; my impatience was killing me!
They led us to one of the small doors along the corridor. We opened it and entered…
Oh my God! The feeling of entering a place with a secret expectation of joy, the feeling of hearing the door closing behind you— as if forever separated from the world—and suddenly facing the void is breath-taking! It wasn’t pitch-black darkness that we stood before: I wasn’t afraid of the dark. Something frighteningly endless spread out around us that gave me a crystal clear impression of a colourless abyss surrounding us from everywhere… Shaken and sputtering, I grabbed Stefan who, however, appeared reassuringly calm.
“You have no reason to be afraid,” he told me. “Keep walking.”
I took a tentative first step. Indeed, one could stand and walk very securely in this chaos. Stefan patiently walked me through the small room and made me spread my hand and touch the walls until my mistaken first impression—this terrible optical illusion—had been corrected. I realised that we were simply inside a room like any other, with a ceiling, a solid floor and walls of a colourless metal. I also observed that two steps away from the walls were sufficient to re-give you the impression of absolute chaos.
Somewhere in the middle of the room there were some comfortable seats, which we sank into.
“Now listen,” he whispered to me. “Don’t be scared, because from now on we won’t be able to keep talking to each other. Here…” he grasped my hand, “I’ll be right next to you… I’ll hold your hand…”
And then with my own eyes I saw things which seemed incredible. I suddenly found myself with Stefan in the countryside and a soft light began to rise out of the distant horizon, an ambiguous light that increasingly grew brighter. At first I couldn’t clearly see the shapes of things, but gradually everything started taking shape and form, like a new creation! And finally everything came to life: the countryside and the meadows, the grazing herds and the watermill, the storks hovering above the surrounding mountains.
In a blink of an eye a whole world had been created around us. Without moving a finger, we became spectators not from the outside, but from inside that world! Stefan and I found ourselves sitting on a rock on a hill, when in reality we were still nestled in our seats.
Beside us and before us, the village: streets, fountains, the typical cross-beamed framed houses with the old triangular roofs and the square to the right. On the other side of the square they were changing the horses of the mail coaches. On another side there was a gathering of farmers in the characteristic outfits of the French villages of the 8th century. The farmers were gathered around someone who, standing up on a table, was speaking while animatedly gesticulating.
That was not a mere spectacle then! That was life! Real life of the past, drawn out of history pages!
What I was seeing and experiencing was so plausible that it had made me forget where I really was. It looked so real that it kept your interest undiminished at all times and to an incredible extent! If you tried to speak, your voice would not be heard, no matter how hard you tried or how loud your scream was. If you tried to stand up and walk, then this whole miracle would instantly disappear and you’d be caught in the darkness once again. If after that you returned to your seat, then you’d start seeing again, but you’d have lost a part of the story.
There! A man was now coming panting from afar. He was heading directly to the city hall. Shortly after, big news was announced in the square. That man was the postman Droue and he had seen a carriage outside the town coming this way. He was very surprised by the incredible resemblance of the passenger of the carriage to the man depicted on the banknote that he happened to be holding in his hands. Now I understood!
“We were in Waren! Isn’t that right, Stefan? We’re in Waren during the great French Revolution! It’s the day when the king fled and they caught him! There! The citizens are now running to get their weapons! Oh God, everything’s so real! So, so real…”
On the way home I did nothing else than talk to Stefan with great enthusiasm about my impressions. My mind was working incessantly. I knew that for others all this was very common, but for me it was the first time. I knew that on the Reigen-Swages one could virtually go back in time and see the events of bygone
eras unfold before their eyes like a giant dramatic spectacle, but I never thought that it could look so perfectly real!
I remember that, even when we had long left the Reigen-Swage Institute and we were on our way to the Stella Maris Park to get our linsen and head home, I was still so affected that I was naïve enough to ask Stefan to what extent all that we had seen was authentic.
“How could they be authentic, since we’re talking about an era so far back in time?” He said, looking at me noticeably puzzled.
He also said—if I understood well and transfer his words correctly—that what some scientists wanted to prove still remains an unfulfilled dream, that is, that some day in the future we, humans, will be able to capture the images that had, in the meantime, run towards infinite space with incredible velocity. Now, however, their technological progress has begun to decline and there are no big visions for new technological advances like there were in the past. From this perspective their culture has begun to wane. He explained to me that of course all this was but a representation, though from a certain era and onwards they were indeed authentic.
We arrived at the villa very late and Stefan, who wasn’t used to such late hours, seemed worn and exhausted.
“You didn’t sleep again tonight because of me…” I told him.
He replied kind-heartedly that he felt fine and that the evening breeze had revived him.
Markfor, 27-XII
For eleven days and nights I didn’t write a single word. Hard to find the time and mood for writing or even for a little meditation and undistracted thinking.
Lately, I hardly ever set foot in the house, a big and comfortable new apartment given to us four when we arrived, located in one of the six cities that constitute Markfor. In fact, the men said that it is much bigger than the one Stefan and Hilda had last year in the old city.
I spent our entire first night here outside the city, wandering through the nearby neighbourhoods and looking mainly for monuments and statues with inscriptions. Stefan was persistently trying to convince me to stay for a few hours at home and rest, but I was adamant.
Now every day I walk from morning till noon around this vast state, and then again in the evening, either with Sylvia or by myself. Never before in this new life of mine had they let me go out by myself so often and for so long, but now Jaeger had told them that there was no longer need to prevent me from doing so. In fact he’s staying here as well, in his own little palace, and two days ago I went to see him.
I cannot describe how much joy it gives me to be able to freely go wherever I want, to have the liberty to choose any route and destination and explore this dream-like state on my own terms! I stop and stare for however long I fancy without anyone pressuring me and dragging me around. And trust me, it’s one thing to come here as a guest and another, quite another to stay here permanently for a while. The latter has given me such great self-confidence that I can walk around the streets of Markfor and see thousands of pairs of eyes around me instead of on me and say, “I’m one of you. I belong in your world. I’m a part of your circles. I’m another drop of water in this river!”
They have some odd-looking bicycles here called velos, very different from ours, and almost everyone uses them to get around when they’re not walking.
What I want to say is that, if you are like Stefan and the rest of our group, redeemed from crazy ambitions to climb up the social ladder or be famous, free from any class or individual aspiration to stand out, from any obsession with original, creative spiritual work—which here is the only way to stand out, equivalent to our “success-in-life” notion—then you really feel and are happy and complete. In this funnel of a world, dreams and aspirations, individuality and toils and sacrifices are obliterated.
STATUES FROM THE FUTURE
28—XII
(Midday)
Today I wasted all morning at home. Silvia wanted everyone’s opinion and help—including mine—to sort out the thousands of things that had arrived yesterday along with the carpets and the furniture for the new apartment. This distribution was for the whole winter and there wouldn’t be another one. Among all sorts of useful things, there were also quite a few curious things made of synthetic ivory, picked out a few days ago by Sylvia from the Partners’ Exhibition in Monza, and some other little figurines made of something like porcelain, from New Cristiana.
I spent hours staring at the latter today. The material they’re made of looks a lot like our porcelain but the colours, the style and what these little sculptures represent—something I had to ask to find out—were completely different.
Such objects or ones similar to them had been sent to every country of the world. Only the Tilteys have nowadays the privilege of “uniqueness” in works of art. Only they have rights to artistic works with personality, without the mediation of the machine. Only they can make them “theirs” even if it is for a little while and in a limited number of copies, provided, of course, that they make their orders on time.
(At night)
Nothing is like the first time. There was none of the traffic fever and feeling of doom that permeated the air and my body whenever I did not feel Stefan beside me. It’s easy to find your bearings in this endless garden city with its impeccable layout and urban planning and its rational arrangement of motorways – no other type of roads exists here. The most striking and characteristic element of this city are the immense parks and green spaces and the monumental temples, larger and far more impressive than any other that I’ve come across in my travels around today’s world.
The traffic and overcrowding in motorways and sky is only unbearable during the early morning and the late night rush-hour, but even then, everything moves calmly and silently, without unnecessary anxiety and noise. There is great symmetry governing the lined up flocks of these wingless, fusiform, flying vehicles, which all have the colour of the grass directly hit by sunlight, and a thick, dark olive green tape on the bottom. You can see countless of those vehicles travelling in the same direction and on parallel tracks over the domes and arches of Santa Virgo, in eastern Markfor.
The faces of the people passing by are characterised by an incredible serenity, the exact opposite of the hurried travellers queuing up for the daners at the airport quay in Norfor, the “Flower of the North”.
They’re all so peaceful that it makes you wonder whether they all go somewhere and pray in groups. Maybe they go to one of their myriads of temples: the temple of the Universal Spirit, the Socrates, the History Temple, Ars Poetica, Divine Wisdom, Mercy, or the Temple of the Heart of Jesus. This last one with the twin belfries in the front strongly reminds me of the towers of our own Grossmünster in Zurich, though these are much taller. Their temples are extremely large and can hold up to about forty thousand people each. I feel that someone else, more experienced than me, would be better at feeling and appreciating their history and their style and deeply understanding their true meaning. I think that I’m the wrong person for the job…
I’ll try to write down some names in the inscriptions of the statues I saw, names of distinguished contributors of the new era: Inge Borksen, Spinelli, Rodersen, Axel Jenefelt, Tinersen (the one with the parable), Felix Torquay, Erlander, Rudelin (a mountain of fresh laurels surrounded his monument), the famous cultural critic Anerholm, the historian Esterling, the aesthete Nimotti, Dimagia, Larsen and Mary-Lea Volky, whose statue was lying ecstatic on the golden sand, with her hair wet by the sea and her forehead shining under the sunrays. She had been Alexis Volky’s student and after she died, she almost achieved sainthood. From our own familiar men, I saw the statues of writers Friedrich Schiller and Victor Hugo, poets Edward Young and John Keats, Saint Francis of Assisi, philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and statesman Lorenzo de Medici. It was as if the statues had added a new spiritual beauty to their faces. They all had a hint of a smile drawn on them, as if they knew exactly what was mapped out for humanity…
(Half an hour later)
Sometimes I wonder if someo
ne has cast some kind of spell upon this place that makes everyone becomes so happy just by breathing its air and staring at its sun! Eleven days here I haven’t done anything other than wander around from place to place with a map in my hands, thirsty for exploration. Museums, palaces, art galleries—I can’t get enough of them! I always need more time to enjoy them. I could spend my whole life in this city studying until the end of my life. What I wouldn’t give to have grown up here and have experienced as a child all the past years and all the joys of childhood first hand…
And then there is that charm of the place name: the great Stella Maris Park, the Little Anolia, Rosenborg (a simple district of Markfor, no relation to the great state of central Europe), the two Fiammes—the east and the west—Fiammarosa and Fiammazzura, the seven-lane Roads of Jasmines (parallel and numbered motorways), ancient Magenta… I get drunk at the mere mention of the names… And strange as it may sound, I felt a pang of jealousy when I heard a ten-year-old boy that I ran into on the street two days ago so naturally talking to his mother about their coming back from Smirilud, on the west side of the town. I was jealous because he was born here, he speaks with such ease about all kinds of things, he mentions with such naturalness the name “Smirilud”, he lives among them, he remembers names from his earliest years. As for me, who knows how long it’ll take for these places to accept me as “one of their own”?
(Later)
Stefan finds all this impatience, thirst, enthusiasm and overall “fever” of mine normal. It’s the same thing that Jaeger had told me about five months ago: that if I could get used to the idea of my unbelievable, personal destiny and could finally let my heart breathe, incredible images and experiences were awaiting me, unattainable by any other man of my era. And he was right. I never forget how much my mature friend helped me tame my nerves and anxieties and calm down, look my destiny straight in the eye.