Tainaron: Mail From Another City (22 page)

'Ah,' he said thoughtfully. 'There was a time when a peculiar festival was held in Tainaron at the time of the autumn equinox, the day when day and night are equally long. These festivals gave employment to an entire profession: mask-makers. For the revellers had three kinds of mask: the first represented their faces as they were when they were quite young, the second showed their faces as they were at the midpoint of life, and the third mask as they would be when they were very old. They used the first mask in the morning, the second at midday and the third from evening to midnight.

537  

'So at some time of the day their mask was like their own face?' I understood. The custom seemed very strange to me.

538  

'Yes, it was the day of the equinox,' Longhorn said. 'It spanned a whole life.'

539  

'And when were the masks taken off?' I asked.

540  

'The masks were taken off at midnight,' he replied. 'They had fasted all day, but then they were allowed to eat and drink. There was everything in profusion, and beggars, too, were permitted to come to any table they wished.'

541  

It was late at night by the time I returned from the city, and the vault of the sky was as black as the calotte which I had admired during the day. But behind the reflections of the city I could sense the promises of other lights, perhaps as deceptive as they. Here, too, their distance is as flabbergasting and strange as on the harbour pier where once, pierced by them, we lingered.

542  

But I shall need no other gate of evening.

  
543

The umbellifers - the twenty-seventh letter

544  

We grow cold and look inward, for the frost has breathed on us and the city is making ready for a long hibernation. The season is over and the city people withdraw to their homes, doors are locked, conversation decreases. In the streets there are fewer and fewer people and vehicles, and all of them have particular destinations.

545  

In many shop windows I have already seen a careless scribbled notice announcing that the shop will next open in the spring. Only one in three or four street lamps are lighted in the evenings, and later - so I have been told - only squares and crossroads will be lit.

546  

Tourists are scarcely to be seen any longer. Who would be amused, after all, by touring a cold, dark city.

547  

It is sad, sad. I think the lights of Tainaron should shine now that the sun is seen only seldom, more plentiful and colourful than before, but instead the city becomes dimmer and more impoverished. Life stops in a thin crust of ice like frozen water and in the eyes of the few passers-by there is only the glimmer of the need for well-earned rest, but I am restless and wish to live. I wish to come and go, I wish to do something with these hands I see before me on the table so pale and helpless; I wish to debate important questions and eat and clink glasses.

548  

Too late! Longhorn, if I mention my wishes to him, merely shakes his head and reassures me: 'In the spring! When the winter has gone.'

549  

And I see, of course I see exhaustion in his black jewel-eyes, I see that he himself would already prefer to withdraw to his home and stays on his feet only because I am here and in a way his guest. Always, before I meet him, I intend to say: 'Go, do go, you do not have to stay awake for my sake; I shall manage very well here.' But the words stick in my throat, for I know I shall be lost when he is gone.

550  

And one cannot even see the fireflies here any longer; they have completely disappeared from the streets, and that, more than anything else, shows what hard times await us. Even the house of the Queen Bee looks bolted, and I cannot imagine where all the Oddfellows have scattered. But today when I went past the house's battened-down shutters, I saw a little light coming out of one of the cracks. I got up on tiptoe and peered inside, but I did not see the Queen Bee. But the empty room was filled with a warm, rosy glow whose source is in the honeycombs of memory. Perhaps its warmth will suffice for the Queen Bee, however long and hard the winter.

551  

The Dangler's balcony, too, is empty, and the street below it, one of Tainaron's busiest thoroughfares, cuts through the city, empty and clean. Just occasionally a hawkmoth or two rushes past me in its late refitting. Elsewhere it is quiet, but in my head clatter the melancholy words: chippings and clay! Chippings and clay!

552  

The spring tide is over, and Oceanos is murmuring its winter story. It is unlikely that I shall ever again come to gaze longingly over its swelling waters.

553  

If now it were to happen that a letter were to drop on to my doormat, I know what it would say. You would write: 'Why do you not go away?'

554  

I can hear you say it, rather coldly and a little didactically, as if you were offering me something on a plate, but looking away at the same time. And I admit that I have heard those words before; I have asked myself the same question. And perhaps, if someone were to say the word, I would go. I taste the word in my mouth; how fresh and pure it tastes.

555  

I had my reasons for coming to Tainaron; I am sure they were important reasons, but I have nevertheless forgotten what they were.

556  

'Come!' What if I were to say that to you? It would be in vain, quite in vain, for all I could show you would be the wintry stalks of the umbellifers in the meadow at the Botanical Gardens.

557  

Upright like them, I remain in this land of sleepers.

  
558

Date as postmark - the twenty-eighth letter

559  

Today I opened the door, and before me rose the Rhinoceros beetle, as gloomy and simple as a mountain. He is a friend of Longhorn, but I have only met him in passing before.

560  

'Come inside,' I asked, but he went on standing on the spot, swaying, and I could not fathom what he wanted.

561  

'Have you seen Longhorn recently?' I asked at length, for I had not seen Longhorn for many days.

562  

'It was Longhorn who sent me here,' he responded, and fell silent once more.

563  

'And how is he?' I asked, becoming a little impatient.

564  

'He told me to come here and ask if there is anything I can do for you,' the Rhinoceros Beetle managed to say, swaying in ever greater circles. I think he must weigh more than one hundred kilograms.

565  

'Thank you, but I do not need anything,' I said in astonishment. 'But where is Longhorn himself?'