Chapter 5 chapter Five

From the royal balcony, the Great Khan watched over the high balustrades as the empire expanded, at first the frontiers accommodated the newly conquered lands, and then the advancing armies entered sparsely populated areas of hut villages where no rice grew. swamps, sick people, dried up rivers, reeds. "Empire has grown too outwardly," thought the Khan, "now let it grow inward," and he dreamed of clusters of pomegranate trees and split ripe fruit, barbecue spits with dripping beef, fallen The ground reveals gleaming veins of gold. Years of good harvests have filled the barn to the brim.The overflowing river brought large quantities of timber to support the bronze roofs of temples and palaces, and teams of slaves carried mountains of serpentine marble across the continent.The Great Khan sees his empire of cities, pressing down upon the earth and man, of riches, of traffic, of ornament and office buildings, of complex machinery and hierarchies, bloated, tense, and heavy.

"The empire is overwhelmed by its own weight," Kublai Khan thought, and he dreamed of a city as light as a kite, a city as transparent as lace, a city as transparent as a mosquito net, a city as pulse-pulling, and a city as wrinkled as a palm. Citadels, and elaborate citadels inlaid with metal, can be seen through their dull imaginary thickness. "I will tell you about last night's dream," he said to Marco Polo. "A yellow plain covered with meteorites and irregularly shaped rocks, and in the distance I could see the spiers of cities rising up. These slender spiers seemed to be resting for the moving moon in turn, or dangling on the cables of the cranes. .”

Polo replied: "The city you dreamed of was Lalaki. Its inhabitants arranged these resting places in the night sky because they hoped that the moon would give power that all things grow and grow." "Unbeknownst to you," the Khan added, "the Moon also grants an even rarer privilege to the city of Lalaki: to keep its weight ever decreasing." skinny city five If you're willing to believe me, that's fine.Now I will tell you how Octavia, the city of the web, was built, a precipice between two steep mountains: the city was in mid-air, with ropes, chains, and drawbridges tied to the sides of the hills.You walk on a small plank, fearful of losing your feet, and you can hold on to the rope.The soles of the feet are thousands of feet of emptiness: only a few clouds drift by, and looking down is the bottom of the abyss.

This is the base of the city: a net that is both passage and support.Everything else hangs from below instead of standing on top, rope ladders, hammocks, sack-like houses, coat racks, boat-like landings, leather water bags, gas pipes, barbecue spits, wire baskets, movable food trays, showers Water pipes, swings and hoops for kids, cranes, chandeliers, potted vines. The residents of Octapona, after being born on the abyss, feel less restless than other cities.They know how long that web lasts. The Four Cities of Trade In Asilia, the life of the city is sustained by relationships, and to establish these relationships its inhabitants pull ropes from the corners of their houses, either white or black or black and white, according to the nature of the relationship—blood relationship. , trade, power, representation—it depends.The number of ropes grows until it becomes impossible to walk, and the inhabitants leave: only the ropes and the things to tie them remain.The Alsilia refugees who brought their belongings and slept in the open, looking back from the side of the mountain at the maze with wooden posts and tight ropes on the plain, it is still the city of Alsilia, and they are nothing.

They recreated Ashelia in another location.They weave another similar web, hoping that it will be finer and more regular than the previous one.Then they gave up and moved the house further afield. Therefore, when traveling in the territory of Asilia, you will see the ruins of some abandoned cities, the weak walls have been lost, and the dead bones have been swept away by the wind: some tangled, The cobweb of relationships seeks form. The City and the Eye Part 3 The traveler to Persis walked seven days in the woods and could not see the city, but he had arrived.The city is supported by some slender brackets, the brackets are far apart, and they go straight into the clouds.You climb them up the ladder.Residents are rarely seen above ground: there is everything necessary on it, and they are reluctant to step down.Everything in the city is off the ground, except for the red legs with long legs, and the angular black shadows with holes cast on the grass blades on a sunny day.

There are three hypotheses about the residents of Bosis: one is that they hate the earth; the other is that they revere the earth, so they avoid any contact with it; A leaf, every stone and every ant, trying to figure out their own lost track. Cities and Names II There are two kinds of gods protecting Leandra Castle.Both kinds of gods are small and invisible to the naked eye, and they are too numerous to count.One of them is outside the house gate and inside the house next to the coat and umbrella racks; when the residents move, they will move with them to the new house.Another kind hides in the kitchen, especially under the cooker, in the chimney, or in the broom cupboard: they belong to the house, and if the original occupants move out, they will stay with the new occupants; Well built, they were already hiding in rusty tin cans among the weeds in the clearing; had the house been torn down and converted into a building housing fifty families, their numbers would have multiplied rapidly to fifty each. Settle down in the kitchen.In order to distinguish these two kinds of gods, we call the former one the patron saint and the latter the household god.

In any house, the household gods and patron saints do not have to be distinct: they pass each other from time to time, walk together on cornices or heating pipes; they comment on the household affairs of the residents; Can live together peacefully for years - if they line up, you won't know who falls into which category.The house gods have seen patron saints with different backgrounds and habits come and go, and the patron saints have to try to get along with different house gods, including the arrogant house gods who live in ruins and the sensitive and suspicious house gods in the tin house.

The nature of Leandra is a topic they can never finish arguing about.Even the Patronuses, who just arrived last year, think they are the soul of the city and believe they will take Leandra with them when they leave.The house gods think that patron saints are uninvited guests, and that the real Leandra, who gives form to all content, belongs to the house gods, which existed before the upstarts arrived and continued after they left. Both gods have one thing in common: they criticize everything that happens in the house or town.The patron saints speak of grandparents, great-grandparents, great-uncles and other ancestors, and the house gods speak of former circumstances, but this does not mean that they only live in memories: they also daydream, and the patron saints imagine their children growing up. As for the career after adulthood, the house god imagines what the house will look like in the hands of someone who is good at housekeeping.If you listen carefully, especially at night, you can hear them talking in constant whispers throughout Leandra's house, interrupting each other, scolding, mocking, sneering and snickering now and then.

one of the city and the undead In Melania, you hear conversations every time you walk into a square: bragging soldiers and parasites who walk out the door meet young dandies and whores, or stingy fathers on the threshold giving their final warnings to Huaichun's daughters. Interrupted by the stupid servant (who was about to deliver a note to the madam).Many years later, you return to Melania, and the same conversation continues, but the parasite is dead, and the bawd and the miserly father are gone, and in their place are the braggart soldier, the daughter of the sage, and the foolish servant, And these people are being replaced by hypocrites, best friends and astrologers.

The population of Melania is endless: those who took part in the dialogue die one by one, and those who take their place are born one by one, playing this or that role.When a person changes roles or leaves the square forever or enters the square for the first time, a series of changes will be caused until all the roles are changed; meanwhile, the angry old man will continue to scold the eloquent maid, and the usurer will continue to pursue. The son who lost his inheritance rights and the nurse comforted the stepdaughter, but their eyes and voices were different from the previous scene. Sometimes one person plays two or more roles at once—tyrant, benefactor, messenger—sometimes one role is divided between two persons, or a hundred or a thousand Melanian inhabitants: three thousand as hypocrites , 30,000 people played the role of parasites, and 100,000 people played the role of the crown prince who lives on the streets and waits to restore his identity.

As time goes by, some characters are not quite the same as before; and despite the twists and turns that make the plot more and more complicated and more obstacles, the show continues towards the final conclusion.If you watched the square in successive moments, you would see how the dialogue changed from scene to scene, but the lifespan of the inhabitants of Melania is too short to know. Marco Polo talks about a bridge, describing every stone in it. "But which stone is supporting the bridge?" Kublai Khan asked. "It is not any single stone that supports the bridge," replied Marco, "but the arches made of stones." Kublai Khan thought for a while, then asked again: "Why do you talk about stones? I only care about bridge arches." Polo replied: "Without stones there would be no arches."