Orpheus on the Underground and Other Stories, page 13
Something strange, I mean. The café collapsed, shrank, folded itself in his embrace, reduced its dimensions until it was no bigger than a paperback novel, and all the planes of architecture were the pages of that book. Then the man slipped the café into his pocket, nodded apologetically to us, and strode away.
I was in a state of mild shock. ‘What happened?’ I cried.
No one was inclined to give me an answer, so I shuffled into the space where the café had stood and glared at the emptiness as if it had betrayed me. I felt as if a chess piece had gone missing before it had been taken; and this seemed unfair, a malicious trick, some joke at my expense.
‘You can’t stand there all day,’ someone commented at last.
‘Why not?’ I demanded, facing the man.
‘Because,’ he said, ‘you’re stopping a new business being established there. Obstruction is bad for the economy.’ And I saw he held a shape in his own hand that resembled a book, but wasn’t one. ‘This is my hardware store,’ he said defiantly, following my gaze. ‘If you’ve got a shop of your own, find another space, don’t interfere with mine.’
‘There are rules; there’s a pecking order,’ a woman said.
‘Be a gentleman,’ added a third voice.
Automatically I stepped out of the space. The man cast down his book and it began to unfold itself into a shop with a series of alarming jerks. As he had claimed, it was a hardware store. He entered through the door and a few customers followed him. I had no pressing need for a spanner, bolts or hacksaw blades, so I resumed my walking tour.
Clearly the way that business was conducted in the city had altered to an extreme degree in my absence. Undoubtedly I ought to have been less perturbed by this than I was, for one of the major consequences of war is to change things left behind by the war itself. We can never go back to what was, only to distortions of our past.
If I wanted to survive and flourish in the city, I had to live and act more in tune with the new reality. It became my ambition to possess a store of my own, a shop that I could carry around in my pocket and set up as often or rarely as I wished. But how might a soldier unschooled in business manage to acquire such an establishment?
In order to relax and steam away the chill that had gripped me, I went into a sauna. It had been unfolded only an hour earlier and the water was disappointingly tepid. The man who owned it was wrapped in a monstrous towel, but his sweat was contrived. I refused to disrobe and rubbed my hands together to mock the temperature.
‘Heat is a matter of dislike!’ he cried.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘A matter of dislike, nothing more,’ he confirmed. ‘When an object is warm, its molecules are further apart from each other than when it’s cool. So heat is about distrusting your neighbours, wanting distance from them, needing space! Don’t ever open a sauna. Your business must fail, as mine is doing, however scalding you make the vapours.’
‘Don’t people care to be broiled?’
‘Yes, but for free, in the overlapping swamps to the south of the city. It is a curious region where ice and fire meet and mix. Go there instead to open your pores and scour yourself clean!’
I turned and left, still unable to imagine the store I ought to possess, for I lacked the mercantile instinct.
At last I chanced on the answer to my dilemma—a shop that sold shops. It was tucked away down a thin alley, and I was the only customer. In the extensive but cluttered interior, the clerk who hurried to attend to me was mostly an unseen voice behind irregular outcrops of folded shops. Then he loomed from behind a ziggurat of stacked cubes.
‘How may I assist you?’ His voice was hoarse, as if he hadn’t had the chance to speak for a brace of long centuries.
‘I want to purchase a shop,’ I told him simply.
‘What kind of shop interests you?’ He spread his arms in a weary gesture to encompass the entire range of compressed retail outlets. ‘There is something here for every feasible commercial taste. Grocers, chandlers, milliners, jewellers, vintners, bookshops and more, so much more. I have shops that sell clocks, magnets, cushions, chairs, puppets, machinery and bottles. I even have a few good delicatessens.’
‘I want a shop that sells—shops!’
He shrugged and reached down behind a low counter of warped wood on which were carved meaningless runes. He offered me a trapezoid on the palm of his hand. It was both larger and apparently denser than other folded shops. I took it with an eagerness that was false but involuntary, as if some other man standing inside my body was controlling my movements. The keeper of the shop that sold shops didn’t bother asking for payment; he vanished among the mounds.
‘Shall I bring it back if it’s unsuitable?’ I called after him.
No reply. I left quickly, clumsily.
An hour or so later I found a space to try out my purchase. Casting the object down, I stood back as it brutally expanded, filling the hollow city corner with a haphazard structure that looked as if it belonged to some bazaar and not a modern urban landscape. I entered through a misshapen portal and claimed ownership of my emporium.
I stood in the centre, a sentinel.
Several days later my first customer came in. I was sitting on a chair of folded shops, sighing at the stasis, when the little bell tinkled and I leaped into attendance, trying my best to be fawning and obsequious, but aware that I still betrayed elements of my military bearing and manner. The customer didn’t wish to spend his money, but to complain.
‘You have occupied this spot far longer than is seemly. Someone else deserves a turn. Kindly fold it up and move on.’
I asked bleakly, ‘Are you the police?’
‘How could I be the entire force? I am but one individual. True, I do work for that body and may be described as a policeman, but that isn’t the answer to the question you put to me.’
‘You are devoid of uniform.’
‘I am a secret policeman. The secret is kept only through the integrity of those citizens who pay high taxes; but to pay such taxes they must first make profits; to make profits they must be permitted to conduct their business unimpeded. Yet you are impeding them.’
‘But I have yet to make a sale,’ I protested.
‘Fold up, move on! Put it there.’
And he pointed at one of my empty pockets.
After he left, I rummaged through my stock until I found the same sort of trapezoid that I had been given. Then I went out and cast it into a new space in the uneven geometry of the chrome metropolis. It unfolded into a shop that sold shops, which I entered to select another trapezoid, so I might resume my walk, unfolding that one too.
Every time I planted a shop that sold shops, I stepped inside to select a folded shop that sold shops. I was clogging up the city, blocking the empty spaces, sabotaging the economy by disrupting the nomadic network that traders travelled. Soon only shops that sold shops would exist on the streets.
There was no room left for anyone to unfold any other kind of shop. I had created enough mischief to satisfy a normal villain; but I was hardly happier than before. As I searched for any remaining spaces I might have overlooked, I found myself confronted with an irate man who could have been another secret policeman, or a vigilante.
Without saying a word, he reached out and hugged me, but the illusion of affection was brief; he closed his arms and folded me up, compressing me with great skill into a cube, as if I too was a shop. I remember nothing more. It seems likely I was kept in his pocket for however long it took to convey me to somewhere out of sight and mind.
A long time passed and eventually I unfolded back into a man, one with painful cramp. I was sitting in a municipal rubbish dump on the outskirts of the city and I rubbed my legs until I felt sluggish blood churn through veins and arteries again. Decades had passed, perhaps centuries. I stood and headed toward the distant towers.
The chrome had peeled off them and there was the reek of picturesque decay everywhere. I felt unconfident and lonely.
But there was still a thriving population. I stumbled into the bustle. No point searching for my house: it would have turned into dust a long time ago, inhaled by a million nostrils. So I went shopping instead, as any man in my position should do. And I eventually found a military shop.
I didn’t hesitate but stepped inside.
‘What may I do for you?’ asked the clerk behind the counter.
‘Tell me, is my money still legal tender?’
He peered into my wallet. ‘Yes, it is. And because of the vagaries of fiscal fluctuations, it’s worth more than when you were folded up. I know all about you. My grandfather was told tales by his grandfather of the soldier who constipated our city with useless shops.’
‘How much am I worth?’
‘You are a rich man; or a rich myth, I should say.’
‘But wealthy enough for. . . ?’
He read my expression. ‘Indeed.’
So I did something I thought I would never do.
I bought a war. Cruel and merciless.
In the region of overlapping swamps.
‘One,’ I specified, as he guided me to the broad shelf where the folded wars were kept, ‘with regular troops only.’
THE CONCISE PICARESQUE ADVENTURES OF THE WANDERLUST BRIDGE
I WAS ADVISED to write my story in the same way as human authors, but to be honest my familiarity with the literature of men and women is so poor that I doubt my ability to attempt such a task with any degree of conviction. I know that I need a title first of all. It also seems to be the case that my work should be divided into chapters.
My knowledge of these processes is purely theoretical and I’m sure my efforts to implement them in a real narrative will be misjudged. No matter. I have a trusting soul and I am convinced that readers will overlook any glaring deficiencies that appear in the telling of my tale, for nobody can reasonably expect polished fiction from a bridge.
I
I am constructed
My name is the Puente de Toledo and I was planned and raised in Madrid a long time ago. My father was the architect Pedro de Ribeira. My first stone was laid in 1718 and I was officially opened in 1732. I remember little of my early bridgehood apart from the fact I was often teased by the people who crossed over me. They remarked to each other—but always within range of my hearing—that I was too grandiose a structure for the Río Manzanares. How could I agree? Yes, the Manzanares is a pathetic trickle of a river, but my duty was to span it convincingly.
I shrugged off all criticism and mockery with my arches. My arches are always shrugging at something, they are in a permanent state of shrug, even when I am not feeling particularly cynical, but my surface betrays nothing of this resigned geometry. Smooth and straight I present no obstacle to even the least steady or most reckless pedestrian, who is free to skate safely on his smooth soles, in these days of winter ice, right from one side to another. But I no longer cross the Manzanares. Let me explain. It began while the lovers’ moon glittered on ripples beneath me.
I knew it was a lovers’ moon and no other because each time it rose, full and coppery and maybe slightly dusty, as if from a big tea chest beyond the horizon, young couples would gather to watch it from my low walls. Other kinds of moon seemed to hold less attraction for them. Thieves and rascals liked the thinnest moons, or no moons at all, while merchants preferred half moons, with just enough light to conduct business by, but not quite enough to reveal grins of avarice and cynicism.
‘A novel needs an outline!’ cries an urgent voice.
Excuse me, that is my resident drunk, and he often gives me unasked for advice. He calls himself Hesper, but whether that is his real name or merely a title self-granted during one of his deliriums is presently unknown to me. He is prone to delusions, poor ruffled Hesper, and under the creased brim of his hat, with its sorry yellow plume, his crumpled face conceals a mind that believes, or at least encourages his tongue to insist, that he was once a king who fell from the far star Arcturus.
II
An Outline to Satisfy My Drunk
Early days, callow youth: a stony upbringing but one not necessarily devoid of affection or tender footfalls.
Witness to scenes of wistfulness and moon-related love thoughts.
Interrupted by drunk, given advice.
Constructs this outline, unaware of the metafictional trickery of it all.
Returns to main story: one fateful night, moon bigger than it has ever been, a truly vast moon, an illusion caused by excessive pollution.
Brief digression on the refraction and reflection of light.
Remains unaware of that reason for the (big moon) phenomenon.
Hears rumours of a wonderful bridge, somewhere in a distant land, a bridge that must be beautiful because of its name.
Decides to fall in love with this bridge.
Decides to seek out my true love and so uproots myself from my current position and sets off.
Difficulties of walking on stone pillars instead of legs.
Citizens of Madrid outraged by my disappearance: the authorities send troops and hunters to bring me back.
An insane and suspenseful chase begins:
Runs into an orchard, loses my pursuers there, emerges covered in blossom and/or fruit depending on season.
Many adventures thereafter:
* Vagrants sleeping under my arches
* Fugitives hiding there
* Bandits making me their base
* Bicycle experiments
* Cool taste of the salty sea.
Finally attains my goal in that distant land, but learns a lesson suitable to a badly-written fable, in other words a cheap moral.
Decides not to use some of these scenes in my actual novel.
III
The Wonderful Rumour
Why the moon was so big that night, I will never know. Lovers’ moons are always more swollen than the moons of merchants and thieves, but this one was exceptional. I was so overcome by its bulging beauty, and by the pressure of its churned light on my stones, that I had to quickly avert my metaphorical eyes—I have no real eyes, but I can focus my attention from any part of my structure—in order to stop the dizziness that threatened to shake the mortar from between my blocks. I looked at the city instead and concentrated on the toxins belching from the chimneys.
For some reason, totally unrelated to this event, I was reminded of a scientific essay I had read the previous month. The memory is a strange companion and its games are often obscure. Where does a bridge get access to scientific essays, you might ask? What happened was that a professor was walking over me in stormy weather, carrying a manuscript under his arm, the product of long research, a treatise on optics. A strong gust of wind scattered the loose pages along my entire length. Face distorted with anxiety, the poor fellow set about picking them all up.
He missed a few, an entire chapter in fact, and these were trodden by the boots of other commuters, and covered with opaque mud and manure from the wheels and rectums of carts and horses. I absorbed the knowledge of his scrawled sentences through a process of absurdist osmosis. I learned about the bending of light rays, the properties of lenses, reflection and refraction, the distorting effects of various kinds of transparency, including the gases in our own atmosphere. Why did a massive moon conjure this memory into my head? I still have absolutely no idea.
A young couple stopped to gaze down at the gurgling river. The man was not especially handsome but he spoke well. ‘Do you like Madrid?’ he asked his companion in a musical voice.
‘It’s very beautiful,’ she replied with a wistful smile.
‘Not so beautiful as many other cities, the cities of Italy for example,’ he insisted, before adding, ‘One day I will take you to Venice, a city so fine and magnetic you’ll never be able to leave.’
‘Have you been there?’ asked the dark haired girl.
The man was very proud of himself. ‘I have,’ he declared.
‘And you managed to return from it?’
The man was flustered briefly. ‘For you, of course!’
‘I have heard much about Venice,’ replied the dark haired girl, touched by his slyness and desperation. She urged him to list some of the charms of that unique city and he obliged, and so I first learned of the Palazzo Ducale, the Ca’ d’Oro, the Basilica di San Marco, La Fenice and many other grand and wondrous sights. I was captivated. A city whose streets are made of water seemed no less than paradise for one such as I, a bridge. And yet I was still a rather sensible span. I was not yet infatuated with imaginary perfection, in distant love. Not yet.
‘Don’t forget the Bridge of Sighs,’ chided the girl.
But at those words my metaphorical head spun like the droplets of blood that sprinkle up from the matador’s blade or bull’s horn—depending on the outcome of one of those savage games—and tumble in the malodorous air before splashing down into the thirsty vermilion sand. There was only one major difference—I did not splash. The Bridge of Sighs! Was it possible that any bridge had such a beautiful name? It seemed perfectly obvious to me at that instant that the bridge in question must be female, winsome, gentle, a trifle melancholy, deeply romantic.
I also realised how lonely I was, standing there over that little river, and I resolved to uproot myself from my spot and set off in search of the Bridge of Sighs, to meet her for myself and fall in love with her, and propose marriage and perhaps even start a family, a clan of pontoons, and live happily until my arches eventually collapsed. And so I waited for a quiet moment, when the city was mostly asleep, and I marched on my pillars northwards, planning to reach the mountains before dawn. The feet of a giant dust mite would create the same sort of footfalls as I.
IV
Pursuit and Escape
Unused to travelling, I grew tired more rapidly than I imagined I would, but please remember that I use the word ‘tired’ as an approximation of the way I felt, for a bridge does not require a physical or mental rest at any point. It simply did not feel right in an existential sense to keep moving. It perturbed me as an example of bad manners, a wilful ignorance of aesthetic duty, and I interpreted this somewhat abstract unease as exhaustion. Perhaps I was naive and dreamy. I wanted nothing more than to stand still for a year, but I forced myself to keep going.
