Strange Dream

Of his love for his city, he was sure. 

Maybe he was never quite meant for this world. Maybe he was like an islander on a mainland ward - comfortable, at times, with his own soul, but seldom with anyone else’s. But on the subject of the city, his now, he knew he was quite sure. 

So why did he feel so nauseous? Or did he always feel this way, before and after, which is to say sick, sick as truth sometimes, sick like some political virus working its way into the body martial? 

He needed wisdom, advice. Before going back, to the mountains, before returning, to the fight, he needed wisdom fast. His city, his now remember, was under threat. This was why he spent longer than usual pulling himself out of bed, if indeed it was bed, entering and exiting the other room, the so-called room for ablutions, kneeling by the bowl like some half-believer, whom he had almost forgotten, in his attempt the night before to body-surf across the up-raised hands of the city, was this city's man through and through. 

He entered the populous streets and walked alone in a long straight line. Romans. Anglo-Saxons. Danes. (Runestones?) He needed some advice and needed it quick. The air by the river was fresh but no match for the mountains. Even with everyone in both places armed, at least over there you felt nature’s triumph. Here, these days, he found only a kind of former magnitude. And even with the mines over there like seas of jellyfish once the rains had stripped away the upper surfaces of the soil, nature did nothing wrong. Here, within the conurbation, within that which he had up until this very moment thought he knew well, cars continued to target the money, with their businessmen and businesswomen and service-based minds. Credit crunch? A mountain stream, he thought. Fifty million tonnes of cargo on the river each year? How about a place where the angels sing?

Anyway, he felt a swelling in his throat again and began concentrating on the enemies, for this was one of his bents. He thought about deliberately unimposing houses in the suburbs, dissociative glances, here as well as in the mountains, and he thought about stealth. And, he remembered, the quiet, increasing gatherings: the beards, darting eyes, and closing minds. The giant, epic, other bowls, of granite, made of granite, in mountains far away. 

And he wondered why they wanted to kill him so? 

He crossed the floodplain, by this hill and that. He crossed the busiest and oldest road, at least of his world, and saw some of the lights were on in the building. This was his, for now, his building of advice. These lights, he knew, these bulbs, like bulbs, like beacons of enlightened but depressed courage, belonged to this city, too. Even though it is day and the clouds have parted and the sun is sending wave upon wave of ancient heat and light to stoke the city’s heart and stroke the city’s skin, these lights will always remain on. 

He didn’t bother with the lift and kept on walking. He could feel the sweat on his collar and still he kept on walking. One bead ran the length of his back and did a kind of detour passed his scar. Vertigo, he was thinking. He never used to get vertigo and yet two weeks before in the mountains he got vertigo, started trembling - right there, on the mountain. And this was exactly when he saw the city’s enemies. 

It wasn’t like the old days. Not like with the others. Not like when with blazing ants coming at you and screaming like undertakers, you popped behind a rock. Not like when with the this and that and more rocks, you fed their children. Not like when they hit above your heads and you had to lean right back and watch what you thought was the mountains fall. 

He had a pet theory about vertigo and it was this. As you eat your city sandwiches by the river and dream of falling in love again, please remember. They don’t give you vertigo when you are young because you are expendable then. Vertigo is there to save your life when you have children.

The carpet was soft, thick, violety. It was also, in patches, a quiet, almost shy, salmon pink. (Like a salmon, bouncing its bloody belly upon the tooth-like jagged rocks, he was also thinking, I shall reach my goal, I shall make a shoal of my affection... ) Anyway, a woman in the room to his left took her feet off the desk. He couldn’t see who she was, not to talk to, but felt a kind of respect, like they were two sides of the same river. 

He proceeded towards the end of the corridor. This was when everything fanned out like a beautiful idea, like he had always hoped the city would again, and this beautiful idea was like a kind of half-nightclub and half-sitting room in which you might find God. 

He moved cautiously, careful not to crunch the candles underfoot. On the wall to his immediate right - as he checked the cameras in each corner - was a large glass cabinet. Inside were these small sculpted heads, urban voodoo bracelets, handwriting on parchment, and very small pieces of amethyst. 

Amethyst. The Ancient Greeks and Romans wore amethyst because they believed it prevented intoxication. Some of the pieces were also violet and some the colour of purple grapes. 

‘Ah, there you go,’ came a voice. 

He looked around, staring at the cameras first, but could not trace the source of this voice. He looked behind but didn’t see anyone there, either, only a chair, a lime-green, or possibly turquoise, chair. 

‘Is that you?’ he asked the strange voice.

‘Is that who?’

‘Are you ... you know ... the one?’

‘You know the difference between your mountains and your city?’ The city man stepped back a few feet and listened. ‘The city, your city, is built on clay, and the energy, get it, the energy is absorbed, gets absorbed, right into the ground. Your mountains, however. The mountains from where you returned. The place where you say you saw this city’s enemies. They are all rock, the mountains ... all rock. There, there, in the mountains, everything pings straight right back at you, and doesn’t get absorbed at all.’ 

‘Is that it?’

‘You tell me.’

‘No reason for them to want to kill me, though,’ he said. Siren sounds passed through the street outside. ‘More prisoners?’ he asked, hearing them. ‘More people about to be absorbed into the ground.’ 

‘Somebody said to me that you wanted to know why these people wanted to kill you, is that right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well they don’t.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘They don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘Want to kill you.’

‘Is that it?’

‘No. There’s one more thing.’ 

‘What?’

‘They love your city.’