News from Gardenia

by Robert Llewellyn

  I nodded, clearly Chan knew a lot more than me. Beijing pod, fair enough. I thanked Chan, then turned toward the blue building. I approached it looking for something that might be a door. I couldn’t see anything remotely door or window-like but then a section lifted on the side of the thing and an ancient-looking man emerged very slowly. He looked up and smiled at me.

  ‘Hey you, how ya doin’?’ he asked immediately he saw me.

  ‘I’m very well thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m a visitor, from Gardenia. Are you Mike?’

  ‘I sure am. Welcome sir,’ said the old man. ‘Tell me son, are you hungry?’

  I hesitated, then decided it was probably best to say I was hungry. I nodded and he beckoned me into his peculiar abode. I passed beneath the flap and entered what can only be described as an enchanted palace. The light was wonderful, a soft blue colour. Everything inside was curved and comfortable looking, there were no obvious windows but somehow the daylight entered and cast a delicate hue over everything.

  ‘My name is Gavin,’ I said, feeling slightly awkward.

  ‘Hey, Gavin,’ said the old man as he lifted the lid on a wooden box mounted on a sort of slope in the floor. There was not one straight line in this dwelling – everything was curved and shaped, including the floor. Even the wooden box was shaped like a kind of timber torpedo. The old man extracted something wrapped in cloth.

  ‘Here you go son; try one of my muffins, fresh baked today,’ he said, smiling kindly as he spoke.

  I took the small offering, opened the cloth and saw what Americans describe as an English muffin.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said and took a bite. I was feeling a bit like Alice in Wonderland, standing in this peculiar blue space with an ancient man and eating some weird cake. Although it was delicious – still warm and so freshly baked I was half expecting to shrink to mouse size or grow to tree size.

  ‘How d’you like that?’ asked Mike.

  ‘Wonderful,’ I said. ‘This is truly delicious, sir.’

  I had learned on previous visits to America, what had been America, that the use of the term ‘sir’ was very common.

  ‘So tell me, Gavin, how is Gardenia going along these days?’ He was studying me carefully as he spoke. This may have been because I was studying him very closely too. I was looking for something, some recognisable trait that he may have inherited from Beth. An English woman who had lived two hundred years earlier. It was a bit pointless, this man was clearly such a mixture of the various races of the world any Anglo Saxon heritage was well mixed in.

  ‘Very well, I think. Everyone I have met there seems very happy, most of the time.’ I chewed the lovely muffin for a while, feeling slightly awkward as the old man stared at me. ‘I’ve only just arrived. I came by the pod, to Grand Central Station, but it all seems so different to me. Can you tell me what has happened here? What’s happened to New York?’

  ‘Whoah, New York! Not been called that for a long time. I think you mean Manhattan.’

  ‘Yes, Manhattan, sorry. I came here many, many years ago.’ I wasn’t sure what to tell him. He stared at me expectantly, his face open and receptive despite his obvious age.

  ‘There used to be many buildings, big ones like the few towers still here. There used to be streets and millions of people, noise, cars, trucks, lights, subways.’

  ‘Subways,’ said the old man, like he had just heard a word he understood. He pointed out of the flap we had just entered through. ‘Well, we still got those – there’s a subway station right over there,’ he said.

  I looked out but all I could see were trees and his small garden.

  ‘How long have you lived here?’ I asked, deciding on a different tack.

  ‘Pretty much all my life, a hundred and twenty-six years I guess,’ said Mike. I watched him move across the floor with energy and good balance. He did not look like a hundred and twenty-six year old.

  ‘Sure,’ he said slowly. ‘There was a big city here once. I remember some of it.’

  ‘You do!’ I gasped.

  ‘Sure, but so many people just upped and left – the water kept coming in, the sea. They built bigger and bigger walls but the sea just kept lapping over. Most people gave up and left. They’ve either gone north a ways, south a ways or they’ve gone over to Midwest.’

  ‘Midwest, like here in America?’

  ‘Whoah,’ said Mike again. He smiled as he said it. ‘You sure you ain’t from Midwest, son? I’ll grant you don’t sound like you come from there – you sound Gardenian to me – but no one here calls this place Merica no more. It’s a shame, but that’s the way it goes I guess. Folk in Midwest, they still call it Merica.’

  ‘So this isn’t America anymore?’

  ‘Not for a long time; longer than I’ve been alive. Midwest is very different – I don’t think they’d let you in. You got the right colour on your skin and all, that bit they’d like, they’re real funny about the colour of your skin, but don’t take it personal: they just don’t like to let people in, they don’t like to let people out. It’s just the way they are. They ain’t bad people, just different to the rest of us. Take a seat.’

  He gestured to a rolling area of floor behind me. I sat down on a curve of the floor still holding my half-eaten muffin.

  ‘We’re simple folk here, just get along fine and try not to rely on anyone too much. The young folk come and go, always moving around, but once they get a bit older, they find somewhere to settle. Been like that for years. We got lots of houses – that’s what we call the buildings here, houses. Anyone can live in a house. I used to. I lived in lots of different houses, some here, some over on Long Island, some up north. Thing is, sometimes they get rowdy and noisy, and I’m an old fella; I like a bit of peace. So they set me up in this place about thirty years back. This place suits me just fine.’

  ‘So people don’t own the houses they live in?’ I asked. Mike slowly took a seat on another curved bit of floor opposite to where I was sitting. It took him some time to lower himself and he grunted a bit when he finally made contact.

  ‘I’m not sure I follow you, son. The houses get built by everyone, then folks live in them, they look after them good, sometimes they stay, sometimes they move on. We’re a pretty peaceful bunch but some of the young folks like to make music and such. I don’t mind music, but I like to sleep and listen to the birds more.’

  I smiled and nodded. He was an extraordinary-looking old fellow, his face so lined and wrinkled, very tanned although that could have been the natural colour of his skin. Like old tea. However, unlike the very old people I’d seen in Gardenia he really looked weather-beaten and ancient.

  ‘So how are things organised here?’

  ‘You sure have some peculiar questions, son.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Please forgive my inquisitiveness, I’m just getting used to things.’

  ‘Hey, no offence taken here, just assumed you’d kind of know how things shake down. I guess it’s the same as Gardenia: we just live, we grow food, some of the real clever folks help with stuff. Like my lungs, I got new lungs back in 98. Really great lady over on Jersey, she grew ’em for me. She grows all sorts in a lovely house. Big white place. She is one clever lady; lots of people go and see her.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘New lungs.’

  ‘Yep, I may be old, but I got the lungs of an eighteen-year-old. They keep me going good.’

  ‘Amazing,’ I said. ‘So there’s no, kind of, well, government here, same as Gardenia.’

  ‘Government. That’s a strange old word ain’t it? Government.’ He sat staring into space for a moment. I waited patiently; I was preparing myself for some kind of political lesson I didn’t really want.

  ‘They sure got government out Midwest, plenty of that – they love government those Midwest boys. They still live in the old ways. You kno
w, the old ways like it was way back. They all got guns, they still use money. You know what that is?’

  ‘I certainly do. I know all about money.’

  ‘That is a strange old idea if ever I heard one,’ said Mike. He was smiling and I could see that he didn’t have many teeth.

  ‘Midwest got plenty of banks and money. They also got religion – you know about that?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve heard of religion. You don’t have that here then?’

  ‘I guess not. Don’t rightly know what it is. I heard folks say religion is meant to make you happy. You know what though, Midwest is not a happy place. I’m not saying that ’cos I been there and felt sad. I’ve looked over the wall a few times. It doesn’t look like a happy place.’

  ‘The wall?’

  ‘You don’t know about the wall?’ said Mike. He shook his head. ‘Where have you been? How come you don’t know about the wall?’

  ‘I realise I don’t know a lot of things,’ I said, feeling slightly awkward. ‘What’s the wall?’

  Mike stood up and moved slowly around the wonderful blue space as he spoke. ‘Well, the Midwest folks built a wall, more like a hill I guess. They still are building it. It’s maybe fifty metres high, runs all the way from Buffalo next to the lake, right on down to Mobile, by the sea. Same on the other side they tell me, though I’ve never seen it. Like a big pile of dirt just chopping the land in two. Strange idea, like we want to go in there and mess things up. We don’t; most of the folks I know are quite grateful for the wall – we hope it keeps the more angry folk out. They just sound so angry and unhappy. They hate some people so much and they always blame other folks when they’ve done something dumb their-selves. You ever come across that kind of notion?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘that was very common where I came from.’

  ‘Gardenia – folks in Gardenia don’t do that.’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ I said, ‘but from what I know of the history of Gardenia, that used to happen in the old days, way, way back.’

  ‘Right enough,’ said Mike. ‘Anyhow, all I’m saying is, Midwest sounds a kind of sad place to me. Not like here.’

  ‘It seems lovely here,’ I said, taking the last morsel of muffin out of the soft cloth it had been wrapped in. The old man gestured around himself slowly; he spoke slowly but without hesitation.

  ‘We all live in a happy place here. On the coasts we live a simple life, we grow food and build nice houses, but we don’t use no guns, we don’t eat dead cows, we don’t have no government, we don’t have no money and lose sleep ’cos we think someone else is going to take it from us. We just share stuff and live together, nice and easy, not too fast. Here stuff happens real good and slow, Midwest is just fast, fast, fast.’

  ‘So, when did the old city disappear?’ I asked. He lifted a stainless steel-looking container, again beautifully curved, poured some red liquid into a stainless steel cup and passed it to me. I raised it to my nose and sniffed. It was some kind of spiced fruit juice.

  ‘Smells good,’ I said and tasted it. ‘Oh wow, that is delicious. What is it?’

  ‘You not had that before?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘That there, we call the happy berry. That is some decent shit you got there boy.’

  I nodded with enthusiasm and took some more gulps.

  ‘So, you ask about what happened to the city. How come you know there was a city once here and yet you don’t know about the wall?’

  ‘I, err…’ I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Okay,’ said Mike. He looked me square in the eye. His eyes were bright, contrasting quite oddly with his incredibly old-looking face, almost as if he were wearing a mask and underneath was a much younger man. ‘You take your time and tell me when you’re ready.’

  He sat down on an enormous blue cushion facing me.

  ‘How come you don’t know? You got books. You look like an intelligent fella; you can read can’t you?’

  I smiled and shrugged. I may as well tell him the truth, I thought.

  ‘I’ve not been here long, in your world. I’ve only been here twelve days. I come from the past.’

  This time Mike shrugged. It didn’t seem to surprise or interest him that much.

  ‘I knew an ancestor of yours, Beth Harris. She’s your great, great, great grandmother I think.’

  ‘Well I’ll be damned. That’s the most peculiar thing I ever heard in all my long days. You knew my great, great grandmother. She was from Gardenia right?’

  ‘Yes she was, although it was called Great Britain back then.’

  ‘Shit my boots, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, that is one crazy story, you come from the past. How the hell d’you do that?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, it just happened, something to do with an anomaly around a solar kite. Believe me, it’s been very confusing.’

  ‘Bet your butt it’s confusing. I heard tell of such goings on but I sure as hell never met someone in the first person.’

  Mike stood up with ease, approached me and shook my hand.

  ‘It’s an honour, sir, to meet someone from the past. That is some crazy shit if it’s true. So you must-a-seen this place when it was a big old city.’

  ‘I certainly did,’ I said. ‘It was an extraordinary place, it was huge, that’s why I’m surprised. Where did it all go?’

  ‘Okay, Gavin. I’ll tell you how everything happened, as much as I know anyhow. It all started real slow. The city was not a happy place – often there was no power, there were many folks around and a lot of the time not enough food. This was way back when I was a small boy. Plus ’cos the sea level kept going up and up, the floods started and really messed things up. Not all the time, but during high tides, the old place was like waist deep in water. My folks started a community, not on their-selves you understand – a big group of folks got together and started looking after each other. Just small to start, maybe a hundred people. In Brooklyn, over the water yonder, you know it?’

  ‘I’ve heard of it,’ I said.

  ‘Slowly people started to leave. A load of people heard Chicago was way better: no floods; they always had power; they had police and law and religion and schools and cars and roads. All the things that had kind of stopped working here. In Manhattan it had all slowly ground to a halt. It was a terrible mess – I’m not saying it was easy or pretty, it was real ugly and messy. So many people went to Midwest and just left their trash here for us poor folks to clear up. After a while, all the old buildings were empty; no one had a use for them any more. So much energy had been used building this big old city, and we used so much time and energy tearing it all down again. Seems kind of crazy don’t it?’

  This time I shrugged. I’d lost the ability to judge what was crazy and what was sensible ever since I’d come through the cloud.

  Mike continued. ‘So the house where I grew up got bigger’n bigger. That part was easy – there was no one else around saying don’t do this, don’t do that. We took over more houses, the ones we liked and could change into houses that was any good. Then slowly we knocked down the houses we didn’t need. After a while, more people helped knock down more houses. I spent many years knocking down houses. We had so much rubble… you would not believe how much rubble we had to shift. Sure, we had big trucks – we still do – we had earth movers, rubbish pushers and boy did we use ’em. We pushed the piles all around the edge of the island to keep the sea at bay. Higher and higher we made those piles, years and years it took. There was something about this I really loved doing. When a real big building went down, not a house folk could live in, a great big ugly tower with nothing but broken shit inside, I loved to look at the clear air where it once stood. Slowly things started to change: we planted trees, we made gardens, we grew food, we’d talk about it, look at the plan, work out what we could do
with the space, knock down some more big towers, leave some standing, the ones we liked. Nothing happened fast. We’d done fast – everything before I was born was fast, that’s how my folks explained it to me. Everything used to be done real fast; now everything is done real slow. Everyone who might be affected by a change knows about it and can say their piece.’

  He chuckled to himself and wiped his mouth with a cloth.

  ‘Fast is not good; we do real slow.’

  I shook my head in amazement. ‘But you say you still have the subway?’

  The old man smiled. ‘Sure, we still have a subway. I like to ride the subway sometimes. See friends in Brooklyn, see friends in Harlem, in Washington Heights.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ I said. ‘It’s so peaceful and beautiful here.’

  The old man got up slowly and walked to the flap we had entered through. He picked up a trowel that was resting on a circular table beside the opening. I followed him out into the small garden beside his house, watched as he squatted down with ease. He started tending to his neat rows of vegetables, pulling out weeds and eventually making divots to plant something – I don’t know enough about growing things to know what he was going to plant, it had green leaves and was in a pot.

  ‘After a long time,’ he said as he worked, ‘more people start to come back from Midwest. They say it’s not a nice place to live there, a lot of very angry people, only folks with pale skin like you live there, no fellas like me. But it’s a lot of unhappy people. They see us and think, “These people are happy – I’ll live here.” Not just here in Manhattan Island, all along the coast, all up to Maine, right down south to Florida.’

  ‘Wow, so how many people live on Manhattan now?’ I asked.

  Mike stood up and stretched. He scratched his old wattle chin. ‘Oooh, I don’t know, maybe ten thousand, maybe twenty. I guess no more than that.’

  ‘Wow, is that all?’

  ‘I reckon it’s come kinda crowded,’ said Mike with a chuckle.

  I laughed too, then said, ‘So this is more like London. The city has gone, the population has dropped and you’ve become a small farming community.’