The Light Switch

Orange, blue, yellow, and green lights flickered in the second story window. They would be followed by other flashes in lavender, pink, periwinkle, and apricot. Sometimes the rhythms resembled code; at other times they flickered fast enough to invite photoepilesy. The gendarmes arrived one night, and let themselves in with a skeleton key borrowed from a belligerent, heavy-set building manager spewing nonsense. The apartment was cleany; the hardwood floors sparkled with fresh wax; there were almost no furnishings. In an old, upholstered black chair by the window, a gaunt inhabitant sat, drinking cider and playing with a little box of switches connected by cord to strings of light bulbs in various colors, shapes and sizes adorning a book shelf and wire and metal sculpture of a potted larch in the corner. A fire hazard, said one gendarme. It is not, said the inhabitant. The larch is a sculpture made of non-flammable materials. Why are you wasting electricity every night in this manner? Stop playing with the switch for one blasted moment! The room suddenly fell into deep darkness. Only a dim glow from the street lamps outside shone from the window. What madness to repeat the same thing over and over! the gendarme continued. Switching lights on and off! Are you mad? Night after night, playing with a light switch! It was silent for a long time. The inhabitant in the corner said, I do not think it is anymore repetitive that sleeping with the same tart every night, getting drunk and vomitting in the same gutter on the way home, losing at the same game of cards, telling the same lie to your boss to leave work early, refusing to fix a leaking faucet or burnt out bulb for the same imaginary reasons. It is not more repetitive than rereading old newspapers, washing the same clothes, arresting the same thugs, eating, drinking or breathing. It’s probably less repetitive, statistically even less frequent, quotidian, or ubiquitous. Why do you play this way? another gendarme asked. I watch the lights and think or daydream. Sometimes I remember things; sometimes I write in my notebook. Sometimes I pray the rosary. Sometimes I just have another sip of cider and enjoy the warm colors. There was another long silence. A philosopher and poet, muttered the first gendarme, and he placed the inhabitant under arrest.

The Canaries

In a small corona of lamplight, the miner regarded the man he had bound with ropes. There was something in the eyes that burned, something he could not understand. At times those blue eyes gave him hope; at other times they ignited a furious rage. The man with blue eyes, tied up with ropes, was none other than one of three rescuers who had managed to tunnel into the damaged gallery before being ambushed and assaulted. The other two had already been tossed into a chasm not far from the lamplight. Leaning his back against the coal seam close to the tunnel exit, the last rescue worker calmly repeated what he had said before. The entire mine was collapsing. The miner was not a hideous cerberus who deserved to be pitched into the abyss. He was a good miner, well loved and respected by all. The lamp and timepiece that he had seized from the rescuer were not magic talismans meant to harm. The provisions of wormwood vodka, rye bread and tinned herring were not poisonous. It would be good to eat something. The ropes were meant to help them on their way back out. The rescuer was almost out of breath, more exhausted than he had ever been before. He had to further explain that his warnings were not imprecations or calumnies; his kind words were not diabolical lies meant to trick. Before the last words were out of his mouth, however, the miner struck him in the mouth so hard he swam through excruciating seas of stars. The lamp glowed, and they sat in silence. The miner played with the timepiece and ignored the lamp and the man bleeding by the exit. Throughout the mine, galleries and shafts groaned with the wooden, stony and metallic sounds of disintegration. Below, in other galleries, there were doubtless thousands of other miners, just as helpless and deranged. A canary in a cast-iron cage would have been nice, the rescuer thought, as he slipped into unconsciousness. In the old days there were beautiful canaries. Giant trees full of them. When he was a littlechild, he had dreamed of building a rocket and flying into the amber fires of the morning star. On that planet, in his dream, in a golden landscape of brassy lava and smoking mountains, there had been soot-black trees full of canaries and other birds–the most beautiful birds he had ever seen. On another night, he had dreamed of a white chantry in a dark forest. The walls were covered in icons of indigo and green. Candles flickered and a woman in white with golden hair had held out her hands to an open window, or perhaps a gaping hole in the roof, to feed birds with grains of wheat. One by one, they came–canaries, doves, golden finches, swallows, flickers, blackbirds, magpies. And they ate from her hand before spiralling and soaring back into a starry heaven. One day, he met a beautiful woman just like her and married her. Those were good and beautiful things. It was good to follow the ways of the birds. In the old days, there were beautiful birds.

The Notices

The man who handed out papers at the corner of the bridge and the thoroughfare stood grandly, wearing a towering kalpak. Whenever a passerby took one of the papers, he could not fail to notice how the letters were almost still wet and shiny like black snowflakes in an empty sky. The golden streetlamps burned and the coats passed by. A poor kid watched, euphoric, and rushed to the baker to borrow a quill and paper to copy out his favourite poem. It was his favourite because it was the only one he knew. When he had finished copying it and had eaten a croissant gifted by the baker, he ran out into the twilight to present his paper to the giant handing out papers. The man crumpled the gift with one hand, and then another broad, pale hand swung down like a pendulum into the face of the child. The coats passed by, and it was up to the lamplighter to haul away the body while the street sweeps snuffed out the lanterns. Only one lamppost still burned when another giant, also wearing a kalpak and led by the street vendors, came to the corner and swung a broad axe into the cranium of the first giant. The returning lamplighters relieved him of the axe and corpse, and he began to hand out papers by the light of the one lamppost.

The Lawyers

Contrary to common misconceptions, the condemned are rarely excited or violent. The return to the ancient tradition of installing bars into the window sills of the divided visiting rooms, where they meet their counsel in prison, came as a result of the lawyers. For centuries, the prisoners met them in an undivided room, often at a strong, wooden table with inkwells. There they could talk quietly, draft appeals, or make arrangements for family members. Now, they must sit in high-backed chairs facing a window full of iron bars, beyond which lies a poorly lit room, where the lawyer scribbles, soliloquizes to the walls, or hurls lamps and bottles of ink at the condemned man. It was not uncommon, in the last days before this architectural change, for little tragedies to occur. In the middle of reading aloud a noteworthy section of code, the lawyer would suddenly start stabbing himself, the prisoner, or the bailiff with a misericorde–sometimes all three in no particular order and with varying degrees of casualty. Today, the bailiff waits safely with the prisoner. Nothing prevents the lawyer from stabbing himself or lighting himself and all the case files on fire, but thankfully the others are generally unharmed. In the courtyards outside, the work of the sawyers is by contrast quite uneventful. A mystical silence reigns as they cut timber for stages, gallows, and crucifixes, or count out their coins on wooden tables placed beneath the yews and cypresses, where they often dine. The courtyards have no iron bars on their gates or in the colonnades. It is tranquil. Only the constant wind in the leaves and the sound of sawing fills the air.

The Ice Cream Stand

          The lawyer crossed the plaza in front of the palace of justice and walked up to an ice cream truck. Only two flavours were available according to the chalkboard: neaopolitan and spumoni. The lawyer ordered spumoni. The vendor looked at him with narrowed, suspicious eyes and said that there was none left—he would have to survive on rosa. And not just today. After dishing out the ice cream, he turned up the radio, just as the football game became animated with the static of disembodied shouts. “What the hell is this?” the lawyer demanded. “I don’t want rose petal ice cream. I want spumoni. last time you offered limone or fragola and had neither—offering me mandorla instead. The time before it was malaga or zabaglione. I wanted malaga and you gave me amarena. When it was cioccolato and fior di latte, you only had bacio, and the time before that, when it was cannella or menta—you made me take the noce!” Another roar burst from the radio. Switching off the radio, the vendor leaned over and said that one should be very careful about talking that way—especially a man who had eaten nothing but neapolitan for a month in the early summer. Word gets around. Things could happen. The lawyer paid, grabbed his rose petal ice cream, and walked over to a bench, where a bald, thin franciscan sat chain-smoking and staring at the doves strutting on the pavement. It was unbearably hot. The only things that moved were flies, birds and shadows. “It is always c,” said the young scholar. “It is never a or b—never. They do not exist. This is the mystery of the third letter. It is the exact opposite of disappearing ink!” The lawyer ate a mouthful in disgust and watched the franciscan light another cigarette before spitting out, “And don’t even bother with the tobacconists!”

The Corner Store

It was a poorly lit shop, but immaculately clean. The windows had been polished to pure transparence, the gray wooden floors mopped, the shelves stocked with bottles of spring water, wine, wheat grains, ash, salt, and light. Behind the counter, a man in black sat, glancing at a large leather-bound ledger and scribbling numbers on a chalkboard laying flat next to the cash register, all the while clicking an abacus. A man in a striped suit entered and placed several tin cans on the counter. I want your shop to start carrying these items. This is not a canned goods store, said the owner. I only deal in bottled goods—mostly water, wine, salt, ash and light. Sometimes oil, sometimes honey. Sometimes balm. Nobody wants balm, said the other man. Nobody wants breakable bottles. Your merchandise is irrelevant—sales are slow. I don’t want to be involved in the can trade, the owner responded. Everyone is involved in the can trade, the intruder laughed darkly. Every other corner store in this district is stocking canned goods. What’s the matter with you? My faithful customers want bottled items, they pay for them, they return again and again for them, and thus far, I have made a good living and nobody has been harmed. I want to run a bottle shop, said the owner. Nothing more, nothing less. I don’t want to live in a world without glass bottles, just as I don’t want to live in a world without candles, cloth bags or wooden boxes. Interesting, the intruder sighed. I hear the wooden box shop was closed by the health authorities. And the cloth bag store went up in flames. Most unfortunate and most absurd. And without another word, he left, leaving the tin cans and a calling card on the counter.  

The Thoughtful Lawyer

The prince wished to improve the commerce of his towns, and sought out a learned man of law to draft his edicts and contracts. Most of his own barristers and solicitors were either corrupt or senile. He entrusted the task to his secretary. The secretary first went to the university, but found it hard to follow what the clerks said. Then he went to the mint, but their discussions of rising and falling prices, monetary theory and the various weights of coins left him numb. In the clothing ward and on the docks, he lost count of the prevarications and outright lies and ended up walking off in quite a steam. Arguments among the medical lawyers at the hospital made his blood run cold. At long last, he came to the court library. The librarian himself was a man who had been an agronomist, an army engineer, a lawyer and now a law librarian, a rueful man of letters who drank bitter tea and smoked cigars in a vast chamber full of books and cats. The law librarian answered his questions in slow but short sentences, and offered to draw up the papers. The secretary almost wept when he read the finished documents–they were as clear and graceful as a sundial casting crisp shadows. Some days later, the prince summoned the secretary and began to scream. What on earth was the trash he had submitted? It is the clarity of sunshine and shadow! the secretary exclaimed, bursting into tears. It is a coffin without breathing holes! the prince thundered. I don’t want clarity! I want ambiguity! Clarity is somnolence, sleepwalking and daydreaming! I want the force of gray clouds filled with rain!

The Railway

The carriages would travel quickly thanks to the steam engines, but the railway was long, stretching indefinitely through forest and steppe. Dining and kitchen carriages provided banquets at all hours of the day. Cafe carriages and lounge carriages provided quiet jazz from phonographs, carafes of dark coffee, smoked vanilla ice cream, rum and vodka and the printed weather reports to read. The sleepers were elegant, the linen immaculate; the showers offered fresh bars of lavander soap and boiling hot water. In the cinema carriages, one could watch black and white films wherein rifle-bearing villains hiding in the shadows of cypresses and colonnades gasped as pale beauties disarmed them. One could not complain. Many could remember the old days of train travel–of lining up to get tickets, of arguing with conductors and other passengers, of huddling around the only cast-iron stove per three carriages, of rusted hinges and tools, of gazing through cracked and frosted glass windows at landscapes of snow and cold stars, of reading bone-white pages of crime novels, history monographs and slender volumes of poetry by flickering kerosene lamps, of sneaking into the dining cars after hours to kiss or forage for matchbooks and cigarettes. Now, the fragrance of cigars, expensive soaps, good upholstery, alcohol, perfume, and ironed clothes followed one from car to car. It was the fragrance of cleanliness, progress and good times. The only curious rule of the new train was that only one side of every carriage had windows. The other side, the same side in every carriage, had been soldered shut with iron sheets–for the safety and comfort of the passengers. The connectors between the carriages had no windows at all. Conductors thankfully never appeared and one could just sink into the luxurious softness of the chairs in deep comfort, enjoying the quiet of the engines, the smoothness of the rails, even the soporific tone of the meteorologists in the railway newspapers. One evening, a magenta and crimson glow filled the twilight of the carriages as signal lamps glowed beyond the open windows. The train slowed to a halt. There was no station in sight–just some leafless trees and the snowbound earth. Disembarking, the passengers were surprised by the sight of hundreds of soldiers in gray coats directing them toward a barbed wire barricade with a checkpoint lit up by intermittent, meteor-red flares and the dull iodine glow of a signal light pointed at those waiting to pass through. Fireworks exploded overhead in celebration of the finished journey. An old margrave asked what lay beyond the gate. The firing squad, a soldier laughed. Through a sudden break in the crowd, the margrave saw a line of passengers fall as blood speckled the snow. Then, turning to a fellow passenger who was a thief, the old margrave asked why some of their traveling companions were not in the line. The other shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets. The only thing the thief could remember was that he had seen some of the missing passengers tampering with the blocked up windows one night, when he had stolen into an almost empty dining carriage to search for matchbooks and cigarettes.

The Chemist

It was a long way down the colonnades, through labyrinths of high walls with terracotta roof tiles, past gardens with vines, cypresses and cats, and into the shadows behind an old church where he entered the arcade. An icon had been painted on the wall next to the entrance. Candles burned in niches. Passing a cloth merchant, a silversmith, and another cloth merchant, he came to the last shop, the apothecary. Inside, the wooden counter and cabinets were dark, almost black. Brass labels and numbers shimmered from drawers behind the counter. Cabinets and shelves sparkled with bottles and jars. It was a while before the chemist appeared, a statuesque woman in black with fiery red hair. She wished him a good evening, and took out paper and a quill to write down his order. I am not here for medicine, but for a consultation of sorts. It is said that you are not only a great toxicologist, but also the greatest amanthomancer, capnomancer, carromancer, cottobomancer, cryomancer, cyclicomancer, encromancer, eromancer, hematomancer, lampadomancer, letnomancer, lithomancer, logomancer, lychnomancer, oryctomancer, papyromancer, pessomancer, photomancer, phyllomancer, plumbomancer, pyromancer, sideromancer, somatomancer, spodomancer, stareomancer, umbromancer, and zygomancer. The woman laughed, and said, In other words, a good chemist? The visitor did notknow how to respond, and stood thinking for a while. At last, almost tearfully, he asked her if potions could tell anything about the times, the terrain and the tyrants who ruled? That sounds poetic, she said. I am not a magician or medium, but ask me your question, and I will try to answer. What indeed is the question? he thought aloud. Legends say that there is a flower in the east, which changes its colour from dark blue to white to rose depending on the soil it is planted in. And since people themselves have good and bad humours, might personalities or human characters also become either medicines or poisons to society and government? The chemist nodded thoughtfully, and said that it seemed possible that if vice or virtue mastered a soul, just as medicine or poison mastered a body, then a person could either be toxic or therapeutic. And some people were not merely poisons or medicines but reagents that revealed the medicine and poison in the citizens. What is the question? the man exclaimed once more. And how can I ask questions in a time of great lies, whispered secrets, closed doors and burned books? It is not easy, she admitted. Seeing him in such distress, the woman turned to a cabinet, fetched a bottle and poured out a liquid into an elegant but humble green glass goblet. The man took a drink, and asked her what it was. It is wine, she said. Good, he mumbled. It is wine, then. I want to know which tyrant and gonfaloniere is the poison and which is the antidote! The woman began to scribble on the prescription paper, and said softly that apricots are very sweet, but their seeds contain poisons that will kill you. Wolfbane and monkshood are beautiful, but if you touch their leaves too much, you will perish. Some medicines are very bitter, but once administered, cure a person quickly. And some bitter, foul-smelling herbs will cure one problem, but the body cannot tolerate the side effects or the damage done to stomach, heart and liver. And then there is belladonna–wonderful for the eyes and for cramps, harmless in small doses, but deadly in the right dose. Most citizens fear the belladonna, or the bitter herbs, and yet happily swallow apricot seeds by the mouthful as they play with the leaves of wolfbane. It ends before they are even aware of what they have eaten or touched. There is also another kind of sickness–when the body wastes away or its organs break down from excess. The body is broken, and no medicine can cure that. That is about all I know of politics. She fetched another glass and poured herself some wine. It is good talking to a sane person, the visitor said, and placed a mound of silver coins on the counter. She pushed the coins back toward him and sipped her wine.

The Old Vault

For years, the bankers had argued and tampered with the safe codes of their vaults, their security protocols and even their transaction policies, stripping their clients of their wealth, borrowing from other banks what they could never repay, and printing lies in the newspapers to cover their financial crimes. The old vault, their largest vault in the bank, was a repository of some of the finest jewels and riches in the city state, treasures that had secured the very foundations of the law and the republic for centuries, some said. The campanellas, domes, cathedrals and bridges, the glorious paintings and marble sculptures, the florescence of every art and scienceowed something to the gems and bank notes stored therein. Reports began to circulate, however, that items had gone missing under different directors. An ancient crown here, a relic there, rings and swords of mystical value, even most of the coinage deposited by the ancient veterans and the poor citizens of old. One director, exploiting fears of foreign invasion, had all but stripped the clients of their rights in the name of security and had stolen wealth to fund disastrous wars. Another director had stolen more sums to pay off debts and fund his grotesque licentiousness. A third had attempted to reimagine the very articles of incorporation and the structure of the board, as he played off one faction of citizens against another in a dark and predatory game. Last but not least, a director who was passionately hated and loved by the citizenry played the belligerent madman with confusing communiques, unpredictable policies that changed with the wind, and a byzantine game of investigations, of himself and his enemies, that resulted in a revolt and his termination. One night, on the eve of the expiration of his directory, all of the former directors came back and proposed that he join them in robbing the bank once and for all on an apocalyptic scale. They would clear out the old vault, or what was left to steal. Nobody knows what happened, or how the plot unravelled, but the men of law and their gendarmes surrounded the bank just as the robbery was underway. The scrawny former directors made off with their take in the dark of the night, but the last director was caught clinging to a bag of obsolete coins. A mob rushed in and dragged the last director from the bank, hung him on the plaza before the old palace of the signoria, and burned him, blaming him for the many years of crimes and thefts. The old vault was empty.