Tainaron: Mail From Another City (14 page)

322  

I wanted to ask something, but Longhorn made a gesture with his hand. He has, you see, a habit of moving wonderfully gracefully and elegantly, and his movement silenced me indisputably.

323  

'Now look,' he ordered, and there was no longer anything or anyone in the shade of the tree. But a round knoll had appeared on the strip of lawn beside the wall, and it, too, was as green as new grass.

324  

'Is it...?' I began.

325  

'Yes, he is quick,' Longhorn acceded.

326  

'I do not understand,' I complained. 'Is he someone, then? Who is he?'

327  

'My dear,' Longhorn said, and looked at me, waving the extensions of his antennae, 'do you believe that the Mimic could have a personality? Today he is one thing, tomorrow another. Wherever he is, that is what he is - stone a moment ago, now the summer's grass. Who knows what form he will take tomorrow. But come, let us go; I shall introduce you to one another.'

328  

'No,' I said, feeling an obscure rage. 'I do not wish to. I have no intention of making the acquaintance of such a person. It certainly takes all sorts....'

329  

'Really,' said Longhorn, without showing any kind of sympathy, in fact teasingly. 'So you want everyone to be someone. You want what someone is at the beginning to be what he is at the end.'

330  

'But surely! There has to be some kind of continuity!' I shouted. 'Development, naturally, but at the same time - loyalty!'

331  

I attempted to continue, but I could already feel my irritation slipping away into the summer day that embraced Tainaron from all directions. Soon I was feeling the desire to protect the unknown creature.

332  

'In a sense I understand him,' I said with some considerable forebearance. 'He is seeking his own form.'

333  

'Is that so?' said Longhorn, and we both leaned over the rail and looked downward. There was no longer any kind of hummock in the courtyard, but beside the large tree stood another tree, but much smaller and sturdier.

334  

'Does he know we are here?' I asked. 'Does he do it for us, or for his own amusement?'

335  

'It is his work,' said Longhorn, but I do not know if he was serious.

336  

'Why are you laughing?' asked Longhorn in turn.

337  

'How I love this city!' I said. 'Perhaps I shall stay here for ever.' (What on earth made me say it?)

338  

'Yes, stay here forever,' Longhorn said, but his voice darkened to such a depth that I forgot the Mimic and turned toward him in astonishment.

  
339

The great window - the seventeenth letter

340  

It was evening once, and I was a child, out in the street. All the lights were on, street lamps, shop windows, car headlights; and I was standing in front of a toy shop. You know the shop; it is still there, in the centre of town, and you must have passed it many times, or perhaps you have even been inside it in the days before Christmas.

341  

That window! It was lit with prodigal brightness, and along the glass flowed glistening drops; a rainstorm had just passed over the city and everything was clean, never before seen. In front of the dolls, cars, balls and games, immediately behind the glass, a large selection of marbles had been set out in the shape of the petals of a flower. Some of them were transparent, others brightly coloured, others as white as milk.

342  

I had never owned any marbles, and their glow captivated me; I admired them for a long time, but all of a sudden, from far away and without warning, the terrible knowledge slid between them and me - that one day my mother would die.

343  

When this pain hit me, I was looking at a particularly beautiful shimmering blue marble, and something happened: it changed. Its colour did not vary, its size was the same as before, and it remained steady in its place; but all the same it was quite different from before. Something had fallen away from it, something which only a moment ago had made it desirable, the most important thing of all. The marble was no longer of value; it was merely junk, and there was no longer anything in the entire shop window to interest me. It was as if stage spotlights had been extinguished in the middle of a performance and a curtain had been drawn from earth to heavens in front of all the magnificence, a curtain whose name was VOID.

344  

Even the street in which I stood was now a strange street in a strange city; but I went on standing in the same place. A vague desire for knowledge forced me to make an experiment. I wanted to see whether I could make the marble change back to what it was before. Gazing at it unwaveringly, I began to struggle to disperse the thickness of night which, unseen, dominated everything I looked at.

345  

I did not believe the darkness, I said, it is not true; and soon it was indeed not true; it paled and lifted like a night-mist. And the marble glowed before me, lovely as ever.

346  

But then I understood that the plenty of the shop window, all the jewels of its treasure trove, were only a tiny foretaste of what life would bring me with both hands - no, a hundred hands! a thousand!

347  

And I have never left that shop window. I stand and stand, I look and look at how it shines, and goes dark, and shines again. There is night and there is day, and I see both hell and heaven through the same window.

  
348

The work of the surveyor - the eighteenth letter

349  

Today I have looked through my window at the work of the City Surveyor. I have already watched him in another part of the city, fulfilling his professional responsibilities, and now, this morning, he has reached our street. He measures the lengths and widths of streets, the diameters of squares and the heights of buildings. I do not know why he measures them, but I suppose the information he produces is stored in an archive somewhere and that interested parties can consult them there.

350  

His territory is rather large and he is very hard-working, but he has only one measuring device: his own body. It is a long, green body, and he uses it extremely skilfully; I have previously had the opportunity to admire such agility only in the performances of acrobats. Sometimes his body forms a large loop; the next moment it has stretched out again to a long, straight stretch and he has covered quite a distance along the street. He also has no trouble in climbing vertical brick walls, right up to the eaves, and he does not seem to suffer from vertigo of any kind.

351