Tainaron: Mail From Another City (7 page)

'They are no bonfires,' he said, and his voice did not grow any milder. 'They are not intended to delight the eye, and their ashes are not used for baking root vegetables.'

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'What are they, then?' I asked, and I realised my voice had dropped to a whisper.

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'Burnt offerings, sacrifices. They are sacrifices,' he replied.

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I felt I had known before I asked.

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'Who is sacrificed?' I asked. In admiring the blaze, had I not noted a light smell hovering over the city?

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'Why do you keep asking?' Longhorn cried, growing angry. 'They set fire to themselves.'

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But I could not stop; I went on, stubbornly: 'But who are they? What do they want?'

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Longhorn had turned his back to me and was pretending to examine my books. The conversation seemed repugnant in the extreme to him, and I was ashamed of my own tactlessness. Nevertheless, I felt that if I could solve the mystery of the fire I would also understand why some people chose destruction as if it were a privilege.

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But Longhorn shrugged his back-armour wearily.

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'What do they want, you ask. They are sectarian delusions. To redeem Tainaron, I suppose that is what they want. That the Tainaronians should live differently from how they do. That they should wake up from their sleep; that is what they say. Mad!'

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And he shook his fists at the mist-clad mountain that bowed over the city. 'How many innocent souls will they yet take with them to the pyre?'

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Yesterday it was new moon once more. Early in the evening, I had done exactly as Longhorn had instructed me: I had drawn the curtains across my windows. But after I had gone to bed I could not sleep, and it seemed to me that a red colour was shining through the curtains.

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Then I got up, went on to the balcony and immediately saw the balefire, high on the mountain in the darkness of the new moon. None of the lights of Tainaron - not its neon colours, not the lights of its Ferris wheel - burned as brightly as the fire on the mountain. There it blazed, attracting the gazes of the city-dwellers as a lamp attracts moths. Even from miles away it was dazzling, and made my face glow.

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Last night was calm, and the sacrifice burned evenly. It was a candle on the table, the night's focus and its terrible purifier. Who was he who was burning with such a high and unwavering flame? What did he believe he knew that no one in the valley of Tainaron knew, which was more than life, more than his own boiling tears and his scalding eyes? Was it as clearly visible to him as the fire on the mountain was to me? To me, lingering on the balcony; to me, who could not take my eyes off the fire, was no justification to him, no expiation, no comfort.

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And I had gazed on the blaze as if it were a midnight flower, rejoicing!

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No, as long as the sacrifice burned, I could not go to sleep, could not concentrate on anything. I stood on the balcony until he, whoever he was, had turned from fire into embers and from embers into ashes.

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Will there ever be a new moon when there is no need to light a fire high on the hill?

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Their innumerable dwellings - the eighth letter

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Tainaron is full of voices of a kind I have not heard anywhere else. Here I have come to realise that there is no clear dividing line between music and language. For the citizens, you see, secrete their voices from themselves which can be interpreted sometimes as speech, sometimes as music. I do not mean they sing; that is, at least, not very common here. Neither do they play instruments of any kind; instead, their voices are created with the help of muscles, glands and guts or chitin armature.

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Their voices may well up from a surprising depth, as if from leagues away, so that it is no wonder that they are often so difficult to locate. For, you see, the Tainaronians' way of life is a very curious one. You will perhaps not have heard that they often have a number of dwellings, but not only in the way that we have city apartments and summer villas. No: the people here are able to live in many dwellings at the same time, as in a nest of boxes. Some of them carry their innermost apartment, a one-roomed flat which fits their dimensions like a glove, with them everywhere. But this has the drawback that one cannot always make sense of what they say, for it echoes and reverberates from the walls of their private apartments. It is also vexing to me that I cannot always tell where the dwelling ends and its inhabitant begins.

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Poor things, who never come among people without this innermost shield. It reflects the terrible vulnerability of their lives. Their little home may be made of the most diverse ingredients: grains of sand, bark, straw, clay, leaves.... But it protects them better than others are protected by armour, from every direction, and it is a direct continuation of themselves, much more so than clothes are to you or me. But if it is taken away from them, they die - perhaps simply of shame, perhaps because their skins are too soft for the outside air, or because they do not have any skin at all.

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Who would be so cruel as to tear from them this last shield! Oh, I have heard that such things, too, happen here in Tainaron; I have been startled by the moans of death-throes in the deeps of the night.

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But I have my own theory concerning why this happens. For, you see, those who constantly drag their houses with them remain unknown to other people. Once can gain only a brief glimpse of them, if that; they are always in hiding.

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And then there are those who cannot bear such a situation, those who wish to see everything face to face and to reveal, open, show the whole world the nakedness of things.... Now and then the temptation becomes overwhelming to them, and they split open the house of some poor unfortunate. I awake to shrieking, sigh and turn over - and soon fall asleep again.

  
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Like burying beetles - the ninth letter

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You do not reply. It is something that stays in my mind almost incessantly. The reasons for this silence are perhaps independent of you; or then again not. But I continue writing - that freedom I do allow myself - and I believe, I trust - well, no more of that!