Chapter 8 chapter eight
At the foot of the Great Khan's Throne is a tiled passage.In this aisle, the dumb messenger Marco Polo displays the items he brought back from the border of the empire: helmets, shells, coconuts, fans.He placed these things in the black and white grids of the tiles according to certain rules, and moved them contemplatively from time to time to illustrate the changes he experienced during his journey, the state of the empire, and the power situation in the border areas.
Kublai Khan was an avid chess player; observing Marco's movements, he noticed that certain pieces moved along certain lines and could block or facilitate the movement of others.He ignored the different shapes of the pieces, but was able to appreciate that moving one piece on the grid had an effect on the other pieces.He thought to himself: "If every city is a game of chess, although I will never be able to fully understand all the cities, as long as I learn the rules, I can still truly own the empire."
In fact, Marco does not need these gadgets to express what he wants to say: a chessboard and its original pieces are enough.He could assign appropriate meaning to each piece: a horse might represent a cavalry, a caravan, a march, or a monument to a knight; the queen might be a gazebo on a terrace, a fountain, a church steeple, or a quince tree.
When Marco Polo returned from his latest mission, Khan was already sitting at the chessboard waiting.He beckoned to the Venetian, let him sit down opposite, and described the cities he had been to with chess pieces.Marco didn't back down.The khan's chess pieces are carved from polished ivory and are of great size: Ma Ke arranges tall rooks and gloomy horses on the board, lists the formation of soldiers, and follows straight or crooked lines like the queen's guard of honor Move, and then constitute the perspective space of black and white city under the moon.
As Kublai Khan surveyed these landscapes, he wondered in his mind the invisible order that sustains the cities, the laws by which they were established, formed and developed, how they adapted to the changes of the seasons, and how they decayed into ruins.Sometimes he felt that he was only a little short of grasping a rational and harmonious system beneath the surface of infinite divergence and dissonance, but no model can compare with a chess game.Perhaps, instead of relying on the meager help of ivory chess pieces and searching for images that are doomed to disappear, it is better to simply play a game of chess according to the rules, and regard the evolution of each step of the game as countless images that are systematically formed and destroyed.
Khubilai now did not have to send Marco Polo: he told him to keep playing chess.The cross-corner movement of the horse, the diagonal movement of the bishop when attacking, the step-by-step movement of the emperor and pawns, and the advantages and disadvantages of each game of chess all hide the news of the empire.
Khan tried to concentrate on playing chess: but what he couldn't figure out now was the purpose of playing chess.The outcome of the chess game is either winning or losing: but what does the winner gain, and what does the loser lose?What are the real stakes?At the end of the game, when the king is captured, the winner removes the emperor, and what remains is a black or white square.Khubilai Khan dismembered his victories one by one until they were reduced to their most basic state, and then he performed a major operation: a final conquest with the illusory appearance of the imperial treasures.When it comes down to it, it's just a square of planed wood: nothing.
Cities and names five
When the lights are on, if you lean out on the edge of the plateau, the city you see is Irene, spread out far below you in a light red through the clear air: in some places the windows are densely arranged, and in the dark alleys In the garden, the lights gradually faded, the garden was thick with shadows, and there was a signal fire on the tower; if there was fog at night, the dim light would rise like a sponge full of milk.
Travelers on the plateau, shepherds driving sheep, bird catchers guarding nets, hermits gathering herbs: everyone is looking down and talking about Irene.The wind sometimes brings the music of bass drums and trumpets, the sound of fireworks at festivals;Those who look down from a high place will speculate on what is happening in the city, speculate that if they spend the night in Irene that day, the result will be pleasant or unpleasant, they have no intention of entering the city (anyway, the detour around the valley is very difficult to walk ), but to those above, Irene always attracts their eyes and minds.
At this point, Kublai thought, Marco would tell about Irene he had seen in the city.But Marco could not do this: he had not yet discovered the city that the mountain people called Irene.It doesn't matter: what you see in the city is another city; Irene is the name of a city far away that changes as you approach it.
Those who pass by without entering see one city, and those who are trapped in it and never leave see another city.What you see when you first arrive is one city, and what you see when you never return is another city.Every city should have a different name; perhaps I have spoken of Irene by other names; perhaps I have spoken of Irene all along.
The City and the Dead Part 4
Algea is different from other cities because it has mud instead of air.The streets are full of dust, the houses are filled with mud from bottom to top, and every staircase leads to another staircase on the opposite side, and the roofs are thick rock formations like a cloudy sky.We do not know whether the inhabitants can move about the city by squeezing into the tunnels of insects and ants and the crevices where the roots of trees grow: the moisture destroys the human body, they have no strength, and it is better to lie still; total darkness.
Above, here, Algia is invisible; some say, "It's down there," and we're obliged to believe it.The place is barren.At night, if you keep your ear close to the ground, you'll hear a door slam shut.
City and Sky III
Except for the plank walls, canvas screens, foot platforms, iron frames, planks suspended by ropes or supported by sawhorses, ladders, and viaducts, only a small part of the city can be seen by travelers to Shakra.If you ask, "Why is Shaqla's construction work never finished?" the townspeople will continue to lift bags of materials, hang down horizontal hammers, and swing long brushes up and down, while answering: "In this way, decay will be Impossible to start." If you asked them if they were afraid that the city would collapse once the footsteps were removed, they would hasten to whisper, "It's not just the city."
If one, dissatisfied with these answers, peeps into a crack in the wall, one will see cranes hanging other cranes, platforms surrounding other platforms, and beams erecting other beams. "What's the point of your building?" he asked. "What's the purpose of a city under construction unless it's a city? Where's your plan, your blueprint?"
"We'll show you when today's work is done; we can't stop now," they replied.
Work stopped at sunset and darkness enveloped the site.The sky is full of stars. "The blueprint is there," they said.
Connected Cities II
When I arrived at Chu Lude, if I hadn't seen the big characters with the city name, I would have thought I had returned to the city where I took off.The suburbs they drove me through were no different from suburbs in other places, with small green and yellow houses.Following the same signposts, we go around the same flower beds in the same squares.The merchandise, packages, and signs displayed on the streets of the city have not changed.This is my first time in Chulude, but I am already familiar with the hotel where I stayed; I have heard and recounted the conversations I had with buyers and sellers of hardware; The goblet looked the same as the wiggling navel.
What are you doing in Chulude, I asked myself.I already want to go.
"You can continue your journey whenever you want," they told me, but you'll just arrive at another Truud, exactly the same.The whole world is a Chulude, with no beginning and no end.Just the name of the airport is different. "
one of the hidden cities
In Orinda, if you look carefully with a magnifying glass, you may find a pinhead-sized dot somewhere, and when you zoom in a little, you will see that there are roofs, antennas, skylights, gardens, pools, and flags across the street. The stalls in the square, the racetrack, etc.This point is not static: after a year, you will find that it is the size of half a lemon, then resembles a mushroom, then resembles a soup dish.Then it becomes the real city, hidden within the old one: a new city trying to expand outwards within the old one.
Olinda is not the only city that develops in concentric circles like the rings of a tree.But as with other cities, the old walls surrounding the old spiers, towers, brick houses, and cupolas are all in the center, and the new growth city hangs around like an untied belt. layer.Not so in Olinda: the old city wall stretched and enlarged with the old city, maintaining its original proportions on the wider perimeter horizon; Pushing from the inside out, the newer city was flattened; so repeated, a brand new Olinda appeared in the center of the city. Its scale was relatively small, but it retained the first Olinda and all the successors. The facial features and lymph fluid of the old Olinda, while in this most central circle the next Olinda—albeit imperceptibly—and the many Olindas after it were taking shape.
... Khan tried to concentrate on playing chess: but what he couldn't figure out at the moment was the reason for playing chess.The outcome of the chess game is either winning or losing: but what does the winner gain, and what does the loser lose?What are the real stakes?At the end of the game, when the king is captured, the winner takes away the emperor and is left with nothing: a black or white square.Khubilai Khan dismembered his victories one by one until they were reduced to their most basic state, and then he performed a major operation, the final conquest with the illusory appearance of the imperial treasures; Planed wood.
Then, Marco Polo said: "Khan, your chessboard is inlaid with two kinds of wood: ebony and maple. The square you are looking at now comes from a tree that grew up in the early years: you notice the fineness of its fibers. Texture? Here's a looming nodule: premature buds in spring, shattered by evening frost."
Until now, the Great Khan had never known that the foreigner could express his thoughts so fluently in his language, but it was not the fluency of the language that surprised him.
"This one is denser in pores: perhaps some larvae's nest; not woodworms - which drill holes right after birth - but leaf-gnawing moths, perhaps the tree was felled because of it . . . here There is a carpenter's half-round chisel on the edge of the wood, in order to make it stick to another piece of wood, it is more protruding..."
Kublai Khan was amazed that so much could be seen from a small smooth piece of wood; Polo had now begun to speak of the ebony grove, of the raft carrying the timber down the river, of the pier, of the woman by the window... …