by Gheorghe Săsărman
Translated from the Romanian by Monica Cure
*** Editors’ note: We continue publishing the missing entries from Săsărman’s groundbreaking 1975 urban fantasies’ cycle. The original collection of imaginary cities was censored in Communist Romania, and appeared in various states of incompleteness in other languages, incl. translated into English by Ursula K. Le Guin. We are grateful to Monica Cure for her faithful translation of the remaining pieces of the puzzle, hitherto unavailable in English language. For more information, read the introductory note to Motopia, the first entry in the series. ***
He realized from the beginning that it was not some regular city; still, he could not have said what exactly made it different from those he had visited up until then, nor even how he happened to arrive there. He was completely absorbed in looking around, as closely as possible, in order to discover what might be causing the utterly unfamiliar state of mind he was experiencing, which slowly—but implacably—was taking hold of him.
The edifices he saw formed diverse configurations of basic geometrical figures. The details, however, were fairly complicated: the surfaces, far from being smooth, were deeply perforated, furrowed by incisions, they were dotted with dark cavities and multicolored reliefs, of the most bizarre shapes.
Complete silence reigned. At first, he told himself that it was, probably, very early, dawn had hardly broken; he discovered to his amazement, however, that the day’s luminary had risen high over the horizon. He had to admit—rather unenthusiastically, incidentally—that neither the silence nor the persistent emptiness were explicable at that hour, except by the hypothesis that the city was uninhabited. Its founders had lived, at some point, in that land; thus, it could only be an abandoned city—he thought. Indeed, he saw no signs of a possible violent curtailment of life, of destruction. He asked himself what kind of horrific fate could have determined the inhabitants of such a city to abandon their steadfast hearth and go down the path of exile… Or, perhaps, their offspring became extinct gradually, touched by an unknown curse? How much time must have passed since those places had been abandoned?
Having reached this point in reasoning, his amazement suddenly grew: he began to observe that, in all probability, not much time had passed since then. The buildings looked extremely well-kept, with sharp edges, as if barely smoothed over by a trowel, almost perfect, with clean, well-preserved surfaces, without even the lightest covering of dust. This state of salubrity, which any city hall in the world would have envied, contrasted harshly with the typical appearance of an abandoned city. Intent on entering the rooms of the strange edifice—certain that in this way it would be easier for him to figure out the mystery—he began searching for a door, an opening. After a minute investigation, he became convinced that, at least in the case of the construction next to him, the only solution would have been to go through… the walls; given that he was not blessed with such a quality, he found that it would be more reasonable to resume his investigations at another building.
Only then did he discover that he was on a platform with a very limited surface and that in order to move to the nearby building, he would have had to possess the virtues of the most accomplished acrobat, a record holder in long jumps, and a tightrope walker, all on the condition that he were also gifted with the knowledge and the full set of equipment of an elite mountain climber. Angrily, he examined what he had until then thought was a street more closely; in fact, it was a terrifying successions of tilted planes, crevasses, craters, and chasms, whose walls were shaped the same as those of the buildings.
As he looked farther and farther out and discovered new details, a surprising intuition flashed through his mind. He understood that the city was not only uninhabited, it was actually uninhabitable! Its constructions—which were nothing other than colossal sculptures, lacking any doors or windows, or what is normally understood by doors and windows—permitted neither the entrance, let alone the dwelling, of any man. On the streets—which were far from being actual streets—not one person nor any familiar vehicle could have circulated, and in the squares (if they had existed somehow) it would have been impossible for people to congregate. Moreover, in that city— built by who knows who, or why—people never could have survived because it did not seem to contain even a single object that would have been necessary for them, and people gather in cities precisely in order to avail themselves, communally, of a multitude of useful things; and it would have been impossible for them to survive especially because (only now did he fully realize it) they never could have become accustomed to the meaningless shapes that were ready to disintegrate, the masses on the verge of crashing down and crushing their heads, the unsteady stridently colored surfaces which unleashed uncontrollable anxieties.
How had he come to be there?
Engrossed in his disturbing thoughts, he did not observe that, first as a barely perceptible rustling, then increasingly clearer, a strange breathing sound had occupied the sepulchral silence of the metropolis.
He strained his ears but without being able to discern from what direction the sounds were coming. The sound of calm, regular, peaceful breathing filled the entire acoustic space, fascinating him; he was the only human presence in that wasteland. Suddenly, almost at the same time, he was hit with a familiar scent, that of a sweaty body, with a vague hint of jasmine, and he felt the hot, unsettling touch of an embrace. He would have wanted to close his eyes, to allow himself to be carried away by the enchantment of that illusion which—he could hardly dare to hope—might snatch him from an irreversible experience. He noticed, annoyed, that his eyelids refused to obey him; the image of the absurd city continued to bore into his mind, invasively.
Was he, possibly, the victim of a nightmare?
He should have bitten his lips, dug his nails into his flesh, to convince himself of whether he was awake or asleep. But his jaws were clenched, and his hands would not listen to him; he felt paralyzed, incapable of making a single move. Was that a sign he was dreaming? His lips were crushed, but not by his teeth; a painful shiver ran across his flesh, but whose could be the fingers caressing him? He wanted to examine his own fingers, and realized to his horror that his form had disappeared. He remembered now that he hadn’t seen it since finding himself in that city.
Frozen in terror, his mind spun in circles around his only thought: when would his consciousness return from this surreal projection, from the realms which belonged neither to dreams nor to real life? Would he ever become again what he had been before? Would he regain his uniqueness, his complete existence? Could it be, he asked himself, that the never-ending, beguiling games of his imagination were to blame?
Then, as if in answer, he felt the burning of a pair of knees knocking against his knees…
—God, he moaned voicelessly, I can’t take it!
~
