That’s how it goes, a problem remains a problem until a solution is found. Sometimes there’s no need to look, the solution comes along on its own, or the problem just disappears, as if by enchantment. And that is what happened: on seeing the two friends moaning with despair at the foot of the colossal wall, a passerby laden with his burden turned to them and said: “If you are looking for the entrance, it’s that way, to the south, roughly three chabirs from here, but it is tightly watched and the inspectors are strict and incorruptible. We have tried, often enough . . . If you’re in a hurry or have things to hide, you can get in through the mousehole, it’s a hundred siccas from here on your right, it leads to the civil servants’ kasbah. We use it to go sell them vegetables and smuggled goods, and to buy documents and authorizations from them, which we sell all over Abistan. If you want to get into a ministry or the Kïïba, you need a summons or a travel permit. You can buy them from Toz, you’ll find him in his workshop, just next to the mockba. Tell him I sent you, Hu the porter, he’ll give you a good price. If you need anything else at all, you can find it at his place. Here in A19 you can move around freely, there are no inspectors, they toe the line, but there are a lot of spies, so watch out. Good luck, and may Yölah be with you.”
And in no time the two friends covered the twenty siccas to their right. The mousehole was there. It must have been for a whopping great mouse, or else over time the hole had grown bigger to let in handcarts and trucks: a few specimens remained of those antediluvian fire-belching monsters which generations of stubborn smugglers had miraculously managed to keep alive.
The City of God was an architectural ensemble that defied the imagination, labyrinthine and chaotic to a fault, it has been said. And very impressive: all the power of Abistan was concentrated behind its walls—and Abistan was the entire planet. According to Koa, who knew a thing or two about ancient history, the Kïïba of the Just Brotherhood was a copy of the great pyramid in the twenty-second province, the land of the Great White River. The Book of Abi informed believers that its construction was a miracle Yölah had accomplished back in the long-ago era when his name was just Râ or Rab. He had come to convince the men of the River to abjure the adoration of idols and worship only him; he had to perform a few miracles to prove what he’d been saying. Which he did. The monument had been erected overnight, with neither fuss nor dust. The effect was immediate, masters and slaves threw themselves to the ground, reciting the formula he had just taught them: “There is no other god but Râ, and we are his slaves,” which would make them into free believers, and before long they would smash the statues of their former gods and break the chains of the false priests. To secure their attachment to him for all time, and to reassure them about the future of their descendants, Yölah promised to send them a delegate, and quickly, who would teach their children the known and the unknown and help them to live in joy and submission.
The ministries and major administrations had grown even larger over time, somewhat randomly, spreading in height and breadth, and Abistan itself did not stop expanding in every direction, to the farthest reaches of the planet. One day, backs to the wall, it became evident that there was not one single square span of open space left in the entire city of the Abigov on which to build any access roads or housing for civil servants. That being the case, the surrounding villages were requisitioned and integrated within the walls of the City of God, and allotted to the civil servants, who had been recruited among the most loyal believers in Abistan and trained the hard way; thus the traffic routes were laid out underground. Security had been designed as if for an ant colony, and the principles of the labyrinth, obstacle, dead end, checkpoint, bottleneck, and constriction had been applied for all they were worth. No one could go in or out without a duly authorized guide, and on that basis a system for transporting personnel had been conceived that would move people freely between kasbah and office along tunnels then up elevators opening directly onto the corridors of the administration buildings. Someone—it could only have been Abi or Duc the Great Commander—deemed that the personnel no longer needed to leave the City of God, which was protected from all want, and by the same token sheltered from any outside influence. As things evolve by force of habit, necessity, or tropism, the civil servants became troglodytes and gradually turned into ants. Veiled in their luminescent black burnis and brought to life by the same signal emanating from a single center, they could show real ants a thing or two.
In his own hesitant, archaic words, Gog had explained that the little he had seen had left him with the impression that the Abigov was a gigantic factory of mysteries; those who served there didn’t know themselves what it was for or how it worked; they had been programmed to execute, not to understand. Gog had used a word that was unknown in abilang and fairly difficult to pronounce: he had said that the Abigov was an “abstraction,” but he had been incapable of providing even a rough definition. It is hard to forgive old people, said Koa with annoyance, age should at least serve to teach a thing or two, otherwise what’s the point in getting old? But there you are, there’s culture and there’s culture, there’s the one that adds to your knowledge and then there’s the more common variety that adds to your ignorance. For a long time Gog had a recurring nightmare: he saw himself wandering through an infernal tangle of corridors, tunnels, and stairways, where there were strange noises, and he was tormented by the impression that a shadow was following him, or was just ahead of him, and sometimes it came and blew down his neck with a disgusting smell. He always woke up at the same time: he was running flat out down a narrow tunnel when suddenly with an infernal racket two heavy grilles fell like blades in front of him and behind him. He was done for. He let out a desperate cry and . . . woke with a start, streaming with sweat. Just the memory left him gasping for breath.
Mustering all their courage, Ati and Koa went through the mousehole to the other side of the wall.
There was a crowd on the other side, a friendly crowd; it was market day, the civil servants were stocking up on fresh vegetables that stank to high heaven of polluted earth and stagnant water—scrawny carrots, mushy onions, wrinkled potatoes, and some sort of mutant pumpkin covered in pustules. Lying through their teeth, the vendors touted their wares as perfect and delicious. The market was held in a narrow passage piled high with the rubble left from a construction site, between two windowless buildings. Ati and Koa were impressed by everything they saw in the crush of people. The civil servants’ extreme pallor and the absence of any inspectors nearby suggested secret things: the Apparatus itself must have instigated this marginal trafficking, or encouraged it, because it allowed the civil servants to get some fresh air and improve their sustenance, and because the soulless, parsimonious fare the government provided them with consisted of nothing more than a grayish flour made from who knows what, and a reddish, oily concoction drawn from who knows where. The resulting mixture was a pinkish gruel that smelled of poisonous mushrooms and undergrowth after rain. Ati was already well acquainted with it, as it had been the only meal served at the sanatorium morning, noon, and night, day after day. The gruel wasn’t as innocent as it looked, for it contained secret ingredients: bromides, emollients, sedatives, hallucinogens, and other additives that enhanced an appetite for humility and obedience.
The pap the common people fed on five times a day, hir, was poor in nutrients but rich in taste and aroma; it could be obtained by sprinkling lightly roasted flour with a green liquid, water in which various herbs had macerated, along with two or three substances bordering on poison or other narcotics. That hardly mattered, people loved the stuff, that was the main thing.
From time to time a tradesman might turn up with products that were unknown in Abistan—chocolate, coffee, pepper. The civil servants had grown dependent on these drugs, which they paid for with important administrative documents. Some had developed addictions to pepper or coffee, which they chewed and sniffed with passion; they were sold under the table for up to twenty did
is a gram.
It was a fine opportunity so the two friends seized on it: they could see how happy the civil servants were to be out in the fresh air, gazing at the vegetables—an intoxicating sensation—so they went up to one of them, who seemed slightly more alert than his colleagues.
“We would very much like to stop in and see a friend of ours, a famous man who belongs to the Ministry of Archives, Sacred Books, and Holy Memories . . . You might know him, his name is Nas . . . ”
The good civil servant was startled; he blushed, then mumbled, “I . . . uh . . . no . . . I . . . I don’t know him,” glancing over his shoulder. Then he rushed off without waiting for his change.
Others reacted in similar fashion, giving a start and taking to their heels. Speech does not come easy to people whose tongue has been severed or whose cerebral lobe for language and reasoning has been disconnected. The last person they approached fell over himself in contradictions: “ . . . I . . . uh . . . never heard of him . . . I . . . I . . . don’t know him . . . He disappeared . . . and his family . . . we don’t know anything, leave us alone!” And he disappeared in turn, without even looking back.
Ati and Koa were crushed. The enormous risks they had taken and their extraordinary journey across Qodsabad had been useless. They’d become outlaws, and to no small degree; the stadium would be waiting for them upon their return, they would be the stars of the show; the judges had invested too heavily in Koa’s name, and such mortal humiliation would call for swift revenge of the best kind—the reinstatement of impalement, or of cauldrons of boiling oil. Ati and Koa could not envisage going home again.
Over and over they said, in every tone imaginable: “Disappeared!” . . . “Disappeared?” They didn’t understand the damned word, it was terrifying: “Disappeared,” what did it mean—that Nas was dead, or that he’d been arrested, executed, kidnapped? Or had he run away? Why? What else? Did it mean that people were looking for him, was he wanted? Why? And his family, where were they, in prison, in a mass grave, hidden away somewhere? “Disappeared!” . . . “Disappeared?”
“What to do?” was once again the pressing question. Not at all sure where their steps were taking them, they ended up outside the mockba Hu had pointed them toward. It was tiny, cozy, rustic, the floor covered in fresh straw, and praying in that place was like feeding in a stable. They suddenly felt the fatigue they’d accumulated while crossing Qodsabad; they needed calm and fresh air to stop and think. Their situation was desperate; there was no going back, and no way to go forward.
The mockbi came up to them, as he could see that something was troubling these new worshipers.
“Hu came by and told me about you—I can see you’re upset and don’t have a place to go. You can sleep here tonight, but you’ll have to leave first thing in the morning. I don’t want any trouble, there are spies everywhere. The best thing would be to go and see Toz, he’ll know how to help you. Tell him Rog the mockbi sent you, he’ll give you a good price.”
But who was this Toz everyone was recommending? They would go to see him the next day, and find out if he existed and really had a solution for everything.
They spent the night thinking. The mockba was full of snoring souls, sound asleep; in every corner there was a shadow wrapped in a burni—penniless travelers, people who were down on their luck, the homeless, perhaps even fugitives. An unpleasant impression came over Ati and Koa: that of a sticky, painful fear, for the future was dark, headed toward tragedy, and they could feel the crushing weight of the mystery in all its power, there at the foot of the monumental Kïïba of the Just Brotherhood. They had never tried to find out what that thing was, whether it was a truly useful institution or rather just an immense mystery between four walls, and to tell the truth, no one really cared, beyond the strict submission it implied, for people had their own everyday woes to deal with. Habit erases anything that initially seems out of place. The two friends were beginning to realize that the Just Brotherhood reigned over Abistan in a strange manner: it was total yet cowardly, omnipresent and distant, and in addition to the absolute power it had over people, it seemed to possess other unknown, enigmatic powers that were turned toward who knew what parallel, higher world. The Honorables were men, but they were like Abi—to a lesser degree, obviously, but they were also immortal, omnipotent, and omniscient. Demigods, basically. How else could anyone explain the extent of their power on earth? There was nevertheless an underlying paradox: if they were gods, or demigods, what were they doing among men, who were such insignificant creatures, full of lice and problems? Do men mingle with bedbugs, worms, and other weak creatures that live for only a day? No, they crush them underfoot and continue on their way. Such comparisons are not always relevant, I’ll grant you that; life is a question, never an answer.
Just before they finally nodded off, they agreed they would go to see the renowned Toz as soon as possible. If he knew everything and could do everything, and if he was as available as was said, then he would help them find out what had happened to Nas—to get to him if he was alive, or to his family, if he was dead or in prison. They would also ask Toz to find them a refuge, which must not be difficult in A19, where order did not seem to have ever been established. Koa had one item that was worth its weight in gold, and a believer could hardly refrain from sacrificing everything to have it: a letter from Abi himself to his grandfather, congratulating him on his commitment to the Holy War.
Toz was a chameleon, you could tell right away; he had the gift of wearing the appropriate face for the circumstance. So he welcomed Ati and Koa as a concerned friend. “Brother Hu and Rog the mockbi have told me about your troubles, come in, come in, make yourselves at home, you’re safe here,” he said, waving his arms. They were overwhelmed with trust.
Another astonishing thing was that Toz did not wear the national burni, and there was nothing indecent about it: he was the first person they had ever seen like this. The burni was not just a piece of clothing in Abistan; it was the uniform of a believer, to be worn the way he wore his faith: he never took the one off, nor did he abandon the other. It’s worth taking a few words to describe it. It was Abi himself who invented and perfected the burni at the beginning of his career as Delegate. It was his duty to set himself apart from the mass of ignorant, flea-ridden people, and to preach with presence and confidence. Legend has it that in order to confront the ungrateful crowd who were demanding an explanation regarding this new god he was trying to sell them, he tossed the first thing that came to hand over his shoulders, which happened to be a green sheet, then he strode out to confront the unruly ruffians of little faith. When he appeared, majestic with his cape flapping in the wind and his long, fiery beard, the crowd were gripped, transfigured, and without further ado they acclaimed him as their prophet. When he came the next morning to the people to edify them, they cried out, “Oh, Abi, where is your cowl? Put in on, so that we might listen to you telling us the truth.” That is how it all started: the people learned that just as the cowl makes the monk, so does faith make the believer. Abi’s improvised cape, tied around his neck with a little string, flared out as it draped toward his calves; it soon became the uniform of the Honorables, then the mockbis, then all agents with authority, and eventually it was de rigueur for everyone—men, women, and children of the people. To signify who was who, the hem of the cape was adorned with three parallel stripes of different colors: the first one indicated gender, white for men, black for women; the second was profession, pink for civil servants, yellow for tradespeople, gray for inspectors, red for clerics; and the third one indicated social class—lower, middle, upper. Over time the code evolved to take into account the diversity of situations; stars were added to the stripes, then crescents. Then there was the headgear—scarves, caps, fezes, skullcaps, or bonnets, and the sandals, and the beard and the way it was trimmed. One day, in the wake of a fever that had decimated several regions, the women’s burni was lengthened right down to their feet and reinforce
d by a system of binding straps that compressed the fleshly, protuberant parts of the body, then finished off with a hood that incorporated blinkers and wrapped the head firmly; it was called a burni qab, the woman’s burni, which made burniqab; it was black with a green stripe for married women, white for virgins, and gray for widows. Burni and burniqab were made from an off-white woolen cloth. Honor to whom honor is due: the Honorables’ burni, known as the burni chik, was made of velvet, caparisoned, gilded, and shiny, with a silk lining and trimmings of gold thread, worn with an ermine cap and sandals of day-old kid leather stitched with silver thread. This vestment was complemented by a royal staff in rosewood, whose crozier was encrusted with precious gems. The Honorables’ scribes and guards were also heavily bedecked. So one single look sufficed for all to know whom they were dealing with. Underlying the principle of submission was the principle of uniformity and branding. But reality was somewhat different; people were not that disciplined, and the poor did not particularly favor colors, still less anything bright and shiny; their burnis were uniformly gray, dirty, and heavily patched, but they were content with them. Abistan was an authoritarian world, but there were few laws that were rigorously enforced.
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