Beacons

by Gregory Norminton

  Cities & the Desert 2

  A visitor to the city of Keystone might assume that it is inhabited by giants, for who else could build such cathedrals of industry, the furnaces and smokestacks that obscure the day with smoke and banish the night with flames. Wading deeper into the foul brown air, you learn that the citizens are of ordinary size and divided between those who must live and perish in the canyons of steel and others, more privileged, who by serving the furnaces earn the right to be sheltered from them. These functionaries can be seen processing along tunnels of tinted glass, while in the streets preachers lambast the poor for their poverty, and melancholy whores flaunt whatever assets were loaned to them at birth. The beauty of women has a price in Keystone and there are no poets to praise it, for poetry is idleness to a culture in which Nature herself must earn her keep. This she does by surrendering from her folds a dark flammable liquid which is both the wealth and the ruin of the city. The senator or statesman long ago breathed his last who did not owe his position to the extraction of this fuel. Given the scale to which its availability has expanded the city, the demand for it is insatiable, for no man can see his wife, or child return from school, without the help of Keystone’s elixir. This dependency has so enriched a minority that truth itself has become a commodity which can be depreciated with judicious investments, and the few scholars remaining in the university can be relied upon to think in ways that are profitable to their patrons. As a result, it is the norm in Keystone for the poor to be castigated and despised, while the powerful are lauded for a wealth which, no matter how it was acquired, is regarded as proof of moral virtue.

  Yet to stay in Keystone, if one can stomach life outside its hostelries and pleasure domes, is to discover that the consensus does not lack dissenting voices. These can be heard discussing the iniquities of the system and dreaming of its demise. Public meetings are not uncommon and take place with the authorities’ blessing, for the powers discovered long ago that there is nothing to fear from a message that inconveniences a majority of the city’s inhabitants. Marginalized and derided, the malcontents console themselves with the hope that industry will exhaust itself, choking on its unreason. They are mistaken, for Keystone’s thirst is exhaustible only by the limits of Nature herself, and the city fathers, oblivious as all true madmen must be of their insanity, will have laid waste to the four corners of the earth before they abandon a system that once served the city that now serves it.

  Ingenious Cities

  At the end of seven days, moving northwards, you quench your traveller’s thirst with the sweet waters of Miranda. After drinking deeply, you wonder how it came to pass that a fountain should be placed in the middle of a forest. It takes a minute or two before you perceive the homes all around you, topped with meadow grass and sedum, hunkering into banks covered in bougainvillea, or raised on stilts in pools brimming with lotus flowers. What you took for a wilderness is really your intended destination; for where other cities seek to impose themselves on the landscape, Miranda is designed to blend into the conditions from which it seems to have grown. Every building is constructed in relation to its environs: a hill, a tree, a termite mound, a winter stream. The city is a conversation between land and man, nature and civilisation. Indeed, so accustomed are Mirandans to their way of living that they see no distinction between these categories. This is not the result of sentimental thinking, for Miranda is subject to a harsh and changeable climate, so that wetlands are essential to absorb floodwaters, while the green shade of trees filters dust out of the air and offers a refuge to citizens from the heat of the sun.

  We have known the melancholy of urban places, the unease in vacant lots and treeless courtyards. This may explain the frenzy of city living, as the heart inside us batters for respite, for the green world in which it became human. In Miranda, by contrast, life is lived at a leisurely pace which, far from hindering enterprise, permits citizens to work to the fulfilment of their gifts. The reality is that Mirandans are profoundly practical and relish pitting their wits against seemingly insurmountable problems.

  Along a range of hills that surrounds the city, and far out to sea, vast wheels spin on the wind and carry its power inland, while along the once barren coast, seawater is distilled by captured sunlight into fresh water that irrigates orchards and fields of corn. Water is valued to the point of reverence, and everywhere the intermittent blessing of rain is captured and stored, filtered and cleaned to be used again. Hard though it may be to imagine, every home drinks in the power of the sun, storing it in chemical hearths to be released as required after sundown. So resourceful are Mirandans in harnessing the weather, and so abundant the fruits of their cooperation with the seasons, that few inhabitants do not participate in some way in the life and well-being of their durable city.

  Perhaps, great Khan, you doubt the existence of so happy a commonwealth. It is true that, shortly after I waved goodbye to my hosts, I began to distrust my memories of Miranda. Perhaps there is something in those fountains that purges one for a time of scepticism. It may be that Miranda is impossible, a dream that cannot withstand the scrutiny of wakefulness. Yet nothing in that vision is beyond our ingenuity, and I suspect that only inertia and habitual thinking prevent us from building Miranda in our homelands, from giving it space and letting it endure.

  Cities & Idols

  It is impossible, in nightmare or malediction, to conceive of a city more infernal in aspect or function than the metropolis of Bolgia. From denuded mountain to famished plain, it sprawls beyond measure or comprehension, engulfing all who come to it in a labyrinth of scrapyards and prisons, barracks and bordellos, drained canals, fetid shacks, tanneries, and middens. War is the chief engine of Bolgia, for the city long ago exhausted its resources and must prey on its neighbours to secure the essentials of water, food, and fuel. Scarcity is not the sole reason for Bolgia’s belligerence: war is necessary, at frequent intervals, to ease the pressure of a burgeoning population, while the prospect of external enemies channels the rage of young men who might, otherwise, turn on their masters.

  Although it is questionable whether one can ever be said to have arrived in a city so vast, you may find yourself, on your travels, in a rubbish-strewn square when fresh hostilities have been declared, whereupon you will see, carried above the heads of the crowd, the bronze idol in which reposes the city’s hunger for meaning. This idol is the figure of a charging bull, the fetish of a god of enterprise and competition. Though the cult manifests itself in enslavement for millions, to question its supposed benevolence is to risk a charge of heresy. A high priesthood, indistinguishable in dress and manners from the city’s plutocrats, dedicates itself to the pursuit of unbelievers, for though the bull cult is not obligatory, the wealthy in their gated enclaves cannot tolerate any scepticism that might question their divine right to rule. Credulity is essential to Bolgia’s self-consumption, and the rich are happy for the poor to console themselves with vengeful gods whose propitiation does not, on close examination, differ greatly from that of the sacred bull.

  Exploring Bolgia is a perilous business to be undertaken only in armed company, for a city in which other resources have become scarce will sate its appetite on the last item in abundance: human flesh. Countless numbers are sold into prostitution, or sell parts of themselves to medicine, for life is a brutish struggle to survive, while the elites have withdrawn into compounds guarded by militia against the desperation of the masses. Within their gilded cages, the rich occupy themselves in furious debates concerning the shape and nature of the city they no longer dare to explore. Some hold that it is the only possible city, that nothing under heaven can be more perfect, while others doubt its spiritual reality, and a very few speculate about its future. These last are shunned by their peers, who fear the utterance of a secret known to many, yet acknowledged by few: that the present in Bolgia feeds on the future, the old on the young. The city fathers, when they deign to acknowledge the disease, blame it on those who would cure it, for they know in thei
r hearts that Bolgia’s only hope lies in patricide. For no body politic can consume itself indefinitely. Such a property belongs only to the sun, and possibly to hell with its eternal fuel of souls. Bolgia, being an earthly place, will have, by one means or another, to transform itself or face annihilation. Until then, it will continue to seethe, a cauldron of meaningless suffering above a fire of inexhaustible need.

  Cities & Time 2

  From there you proceed along a highway of abandoned vehicles, weaving between rusting hulks, behemoths of a failed migration to a plain that never existed. You must withstand several days of this, the dust scorching your lungs, before you reach the outer districts of Gardenia.

  It is possible at first to imagine that these are ruins, for Gardenia, which was not always blessed with such a fruitful name, used to be a teeming metropolis, fuelled by industries that expanded the city beyond its capacities, till those industries failed and the limits began, like the corona of a bruise, to fade and contract. In these impoverished quarters, the task of demolition is left to the wind and weeds. There are houses collapsing under scrub which even the ghosts have abandoned; dilapidated theatres where rats cross the stage; temples to a god of prosperity upon whose altars pigeons roost. The rich of the inner city turn their backs on the periphery. Only their servants gaze in wonder and sorrow at the vastness of its remains. Yet the visitor to Gardenia would do well not to trust appearances. Life is returning to the blighted neighbourhoods, working its way up from the asphalt as a plant forces its way into the light. Where smoking factories once stood, poisoned soils are being nursed back to health in the roots of Italian alders and poplar groves. As you wander from your path, you see tilled fields, beehives in new meadows, market stalls on street corners, and everywhere people toiling and trading. Repair workshops double as hostelries, for the citizens of Gardenia have become intensely sociable, and every day in the green thoroughfares a festive atmosphere reigns. People take pride in growing their own food, which they distinguish from the feed that once consumed their wages. Where formerly these kitchen gardeners had been tenants dependent on their employers for water and fuel, now they manage the same for themselves. Everyone owns a little, and such is the level of cooperation that visitors from the centre scoff at what they perceive to be laziness – for how can industrious folk waste so much time in talk and play? Perhaps most offensive to outsiders is the extension of neighbourly feeling to the non-human, for birds and pollinating insects are welcomed, while trees, which some call leaf residents, are afforded the respect and security of citizen status. Sentimental madness, the sceptics say; yet the locals shrug and return to their labours, for they know what will grow in the wasteland, and are too busy tending it to mind the ill opinion of those who will have, in time, to make the same discoveries.

  ‌

  The Great Khan sighed again and shut the atlas in which he had attempted, without success, to find the cities of which Marco Polo spoke. Clenching his lips on the amber stem of his pipe, he fixed his eyes on the Venetian.

  ‘Each of your cities,’ said Kublai, ‘appears to refute its predecessor, one place contradicting what has been built in another. Which, then, is the true city, the city of the world as lived in by men?’

  ‘All of them,’ said Marco, ‘and none. Each city is a reality in which the inhabitants have chosen to invest. Each is a dream, or a nightmare, which by dreaming together men have made real.’

  Kublai turned his eyes on the arrested sunset beyond the balcony. It was impossible to determine whether the point of brightness on his wizened cheek was a jewel or a tear reflecting the sky. At length he said, ‘How is it possible to live with this war in my breast between hope and despair?’

  ‘If I knew the answer to that question, I should never have had to leave my native city.’

  The emperor of the Tartars flattened his beard against his amethyst choker. ‘The horror you speak of is too easy to imagine, while the good seems an idle fantasy. I fear the struggles of men will never cease, just as I shall be unable at last to possess my empire.’

  And the Venetian answered: ‘Sire, a day will come when all the emblems and signs of your empire will be known to you. On that day you will understand that we cannot own the world of which we are a part, any more than a pearl can claim the necklace on which it is threaded. Then, great-hearted Khan, your empire will possess you, for the world and humanity are indivisible, as you and I and the reader of these words are one and the same person …’

  ‌Hospital Field

  ‌Siân Melangell Dafydd

  Owning something ancient adds weight to life. Your tree: nut-skinned, sturdy, harmony in a pot, which has grown up to be tiny, perfectly asymmetrical and squat, with teardrop, razor-edged leaves, which has grown up beautiful, is finally being delivered home. You stuff all your other belongings into a rucksack: underwear, toothbrush, books, and you negotiate customs, ticket turnstiles and packaged sandwiches while your two hands are firmly wrapped around its roots in a blue glazed terracotta pot. You think it looks like it ought to have been a teapot, not a plant pot; blue as sea in summer, shining about its soil. Your fingers sweat all the way home but you hold it and hold it, adjusting your fingers when their bones ache.

  Your girlfriend asks you how old it is.

  ‘It’s very old,’ she says, ‘it must be.’ You tell her you have no idea and probably won’t, unless it dies and you get to cut its trunk to count the tiny age circles, ‘but really, really, do you think I’m ever going to get to do that?’ you ask her. You both agree on ‘old’.

  On the mantelpiece it goes, then, next to a painting by a school-friend artist and a black and white photo of your grandmother looking young on a boat. Against a white wall, you are pleased with its shape and how the light from the window throws its shadow diagonally and larger than life. The tip of its right, out-reaching branch throws the longest shadow, hitting the rim of a photograph by a semi-famous Cambodian. The chair you sit on to play the guitar lives in the right place, so that when you look up again from folk songs and breathe deep, there it is, perfectly crooked and alive in your home.

  ■

  Your bonsai dies or it seems to be dying: you’re not sure which. It takes seven days to get to such a state. On the morning of the eighth, the little feet of its blue pot are covered in leaves, and the palms of the leaves are closed. On the ninth morning, even more. You break your waking ritual. Instead of going first thing to loo-kettle-radio-shower, you pop your head into the living room to check the damage. You’ve learned to expect disappointment before your eyes are fully open. On the floor, leaves crunch like grains of rice into your parquet gaps.

  The tree rejects you. After one week of checking in with it before really starting the day, only three leaves remain. One: right at the top. Two: tight by the knot of its belly. Three: barely visible, it’s becoming brown, tucked behind a branch-pit. You leave the dustpan and brush in the newspaper rack now, and for the life of you, you can’t shake the fear that it’s all your fault.

  Your girlfriend says you should be talking to your tree, and laughs.

  ‘Which language?’ you ask. She suggests English is a poor second to Japanese but you could give it a go since singing hasn’t charmed it into feeling at home.

  You tell it about your day, about the man across the way on the seventh floor who had a heart attack and had to be taken out of his flat in a crane through the window, his chest naked to the freezing air and pumped by a machine. You even ask it if it’s listening and then prod the soil which is just as it should be, according to the instructions.

  ■

  Day fourteen and leaf three shrivels and drops in front of your very eyes. It scrunches to powder between your thumb and forefinger and flakes back to where it fell in the first place. You leave the dust there.

  Something must be done. You journey to the other side of the city after work, to a place you hardly ever go – journey to the very end, just because you’re after a specialist and that’s where he’s to be
had. It’s where the canals merge: large maples and damp benches, and street sweepers hosing the roads down between pedestrians and cyclists. The shop is the size of a locksmith’s, has mini grass plants you don’t recognize hanging from upside-down pots on a washing line. A miracle man works here, clearly.

  ‘I have come to ask about my bonsai,’ you tell him.

  He asks if you bought it here.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you bring it with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘At home, losing its leaves.’

  ‘That’ll be the problem: your home,’ he says. ‘Take it outside and it might survive. At the very least don’t keep it cooped up,’ this man says, pressing his black fingernails into his palms, ‘not for more than, say, seven days on the trot.’

  You repeat ‘cooped up’ in exactly his tone: high-pitch disgust. You wonder whether he imagines you in an apartment with trees in chains, just like the silver birches in the Bibliothèque Francois Mitterrand.

  ‘I need to lock up,’ the man says, as if he’s seen into your soul and seen padlocks, and you watch his hands as he fiddles with the keys. You trust those hands.

  ■

  You report back over dinner.

  ‘It is hot here,’ your girlfriend says, ‘very hot.’

  ‘You’ve never said that before,’ you tell her.

  ‘But it is though,’ she says and blows out with puffed cheeks.

  ‘This isn’t hot,’ you say. You point at the thermometer which shows something between seventeen and eighteen degrees as you knew it would. ‘My dad has it fixed on twenty-three.’