I spent my free time, apart from when I was at the library, drawing a map of the town. I’d use time on cloudy afternoons, and though at first it was more like a diversion, I ended up completely absorbed in the task.
The work began as I tried to grasp the outlines of the town, to understand the shape of the wall surrounding it. According to the simple map you had drawn in pencil in my notebook, it was shaped like a human kidney facing sideways (with an indented part at the bottom). But was that the real shape? I wanted to make sure on my own.
It turned out to be a harder task than I’d thought. No one around me grasped the accurate shape—or even an approximate one. Not you, nor the Gatekeeper, nor the old folk in my neighborhood (I got to know several of them and we’d exchange a word or two from time to time) had reliable knowledge of what shape the town was, and they didn’t seem to care to know. It’s kind of like this, they’d say, and sketch out a shape, but these were all vastly different. Some were close to an equilateral triangle, some nearly elliptical, and to others the shape looked like a snake swallowing some large prey.
“Why do you want to know that kind of thing?” the Gatekeeper asked, looking suspicious. “How does knowing the shape of the town serve any purpose?”
I’m simply curious, I explained. I just want to know about it, not because it’s useful or anything…But simply curious seemed a concept beyond the Gatekeeper’s comprehension. He looked at me, dubious, with an expression that said This guy must be up to no good. So I gave up on asking him anything more.
“What I’d like to say to you is this,” the Gatekeeper said. “When you have a plate on top of your head it’s best not to look up at the sky.”
I didn’t quite get what he was getting at, though I did understand that this wasn’t some philosophical reflection, but more of a warning.
Other people’s reactions to my question—yours included—were much the same as the Gatekeeper’s. The residents of the town seemed to have no interest in the size of the place where they lived, or its shape. And they couldn’t grasp the fact that anyone would care. I found this odd. Wasn’t it only natural for people to want to know more about the place they were born, and lived in?
Perhaps curiosity didn’t exist there. And even if it did, it might be rare, its scope quite limited. But that might stand to reason. If a person who lived in the town became curious about all sorts of things, like the world outside the wall, he (or she) might want to see what lay beyond. And if they began to think that way, it wouldn’t be good for the town, since the town had to remain perfectly sealed off inside its wall.
I concluded that if I wanted to know the layout of the town, I had to walk it myself. I wasn’t averse to walking, and I could do with the exercise. But with the handicap of my poor vision, the work proceeded at a sluggish pace. Long walks outside were limited to cloudy days and twilight. Bright sunlight hurt my eyes and made me tear up for a while. But thankfully (I guess I should say that) I could spare as much time as I liked for the task. And as I mentioned, that autumn the weather continued to be overcast.
With my green-tinted glasses, a couple of scraps of paper, and a short little pencil in hand, I’d walk along the inner wall, noting down its shape as I went. I made some simple sketches as well. I didn’t have a ruler or compass (neither existed in the town) but could make out general directions from the position of the sun faintly hidden behind the clouds, and could measure out distances from the number of paces I took. I started from the Gatekeeper’s shack at the north gate and walked counterclockwise, just inside the wall.
The road alongside the wall was in bad shape. There were many places where it disappeared altogether. There was little evidence of people using it. It did seem to have been used a lot in the past (I spied signs of this in places), but now it looked like no one walked along it. Generally, the road ran close to the wall, but occasionally it made a wide detour away from it in another direction, and in some places bushes blocked the way, so that I had to force my way through. I made sure to wear thick gloves.
The land that ran along the wall appeared to have long been abandoned and neglected. Now no one at all resided around the wall area. Occasionally I’d see what looked like a house, but all of these were deserted. The elements had made most of the roofs cave in, the windows were cracked, and walls had collapsed. All that remained for some of the houses was a trace of the stone foundation. A few were still standing, but the outer walls were choked with a vigorous growth of green ivy. But even these ruined homes were not empty inside. When I got closer and peered in, I saw an overturned table, rusty utensils, and what looked like a cracked bucket. All were covered with a thick layer of dust. They had absorbed the dampness and were half falling apart.
It seemed as though, in the past, many more people had lived in this town. And lived ordinary lives here. Yet at a certain point something had happened, and most of the residents had abandoned the town, leaving behind their furniture and household goods.
So what in the world had happened?
A war? An epidemic? Or some huge political upheaval? Had people moved elsewhere on their own initiative? Or were they forcibly deported?
At any rate, something had taken place once and most of the residents had, without delay, moved elsewhere. Those who remained had gathered along the central plain next to the river, or on the western hills, and lived together, shoulder to shoulder, a quiet life, seldom speaking. The rest of the land had been abandoned and left to the wild.
The remaining residents didn’t talk about that something that had happened. It wasn’t that they refused to, but more like it had been erased from their collective memory. Maybe that memory had been completely lost, like the shadows they had given up. Just as the people of the town had no horizontal curiosity about geography, they lacked any vertical curiosity about history.
The only creatures who inhabited this area after the people had left were the unicorns. They wandered in small groups in the woods near the wall. As I walked along the path, the beasts would hear my footsteps and turn their heads to look at me, but then show no more interest. They’d go back to searching for leaves and nuts. Sometimes the wind would blow through the woods, and the branches would rustle like a clatter of old bones. As I walked through this abandoned, deserted land, I took notes on the shape of the wall.
The wall didn’t seem to care about my curiosity. If it had wanted to, the wall should have been able to put a stop to my exploration. By cutting off the path, for instance, with a fallen tree, or with a barrier of thickets, or by making me lose sight of the path. The power of the wall should have easily been able to do that. Seeing the wall up close day after day I’d gotten the strong impression that this wall has that much power. No, less an impression than a certainty. And for its part the wall watched over every move I made. I could sense its gaze on my skin.
Yet it never put up any of those obstructions in my way. So I was able to make my way along the path by the wall unimpeded, noting down every detail of the wall’s shape. The wall seemed not to worry about my little experiment—or maybe it actually found it of interest. If you want to do that, go right ahead. Because it’s not going to serve any purpose.
My topographical survey/investigation of the wall ended after about two weeks. One night when I came home from the library, I came down with a high fever and had to stay in bed. Was this the wall’s doing? Or did something else cause it? I had no idea.
My fever continued for about a week. The fever left my body covered with watery pustules, and my sleep was filled with long, dark dreams. Waves of nausea would well up periodically, but it just made me feel ill and I never actually vomited. My gums ached dully, and it felt like I had lost the strength to chew. So much so I feared that if the fever continued, all my teeth would fall out.
I dreamed of the wall, too. In the dreams the wall was alive and moving, as if it were the inner wall of some gigantic internal organ. No matter how accurately I might note its shape on paper, or sketch it, soon the wall changed shape, making all my effort meaningless. I’d revise my writing and drawings only for the wall to change once again. In my dreams I was puzzled about how a wall made of such solid bricks could change shape so pliably, yet it was constantly transforming before my eyes, laughing scornfully at my pitiful efforts. In the face of such a formidable presence, all my days of effort were pointless—the wall was flaunting this in front of me.
“What I’d like to say to you is this,” the Gatekeeper said, emphatically advising me. Or perhaps warning me. “When you have a plate on top of your head it’s best not to look up at the sky.”
While I was feverish, it was one old man who lived nearby who stayed with me and took care of me. The town must have chosen him and sent him to help out. It’s not like anyone told people I was sick, yet the town was aware that I was laid up with a fever. Or perhaps this was a fever that was expected, one that all newcomers to the town experienced. And the town had made preparations ahead of time.
At any rate, the old man showed up one morning without warning, and without saying hello marched right on in. (As I said before, no one there locked their doors.) He soaked a towel in cold water, placed it on my forehead, changed it every few hours, wiped the sweat from my body with a practiced hand, and occasionally gave me a word or two of encouragement. After my symptoms improved somewhat, he fed me hot porridge from a portable container he brought, one spoonful at a time. He gave me drinks, too. The fever left me drowsy and only half awake and at first I couldn’t make him out well—to me, he appeared to be something out of a dream—but I remember him tenderly, patiently nursing me. White hair clung like weeds to the top of his egg-shaped head. He was small and thin, but stood very straight, with never a wasted movement. When he walked, he dragged his left leg a little, his steps making a distinctive, unbalanced sound.
One rainy afternoon, when I was finally starting to regain full awareness, the old man sat down on a chair by the window, and as he sipped an ersatz coffee made from dandelions, he told me some stories of his past. Like most of the residents of the town, he remembered little (or perhaps tried hard not to recall past events), though he did remember a few personal facts, disconnected yet clear memories. Probably parts of the past that weren’t inconvenient to the town. You couldn’t completely wipe out people’s memories or a person wouldn’t be able to live. Naturally there was no proof that these memories hadn’t been conveniently rewritten or fabricated. Yet the stories the old man told sounded to me—or at least to my ears, with a mind still a bit fuzzy from the fever—as though they had likely occurred.
“I used to be a soldier,” he told me. “An officer. Back when I was much younger, before I came to this town. So this is a story about another place. There everyone had their own shadow. There was a war then. I can’t rightly recall who was fighting whom. Guess that doesn’t matter anymore. Over there somebody was always fighting somebody else.
“Once I hid in a trench and a shell exploded and a fragment hit the back of my left thigh and I was transported to the rear. Back then we couldn’t easily get anesthetics and my leg hurt like crazy, but at least it was better than dying. Fortunately, they treated me early enough and didn’t have to amputate. I was sent to a small hot springs town in the mountains, where I stayed in an inn while my wound healed. The inn had been taken over by the military as a sanatorium for wounded officers. I’d soak every day for a long time in the hot springs to help heal my leg, and the nurses would take care of me. The inn was an old, traditional one, and my room had a veranda with a glass door. From the veranda you could see a beautiful river valley right below. It was on that veranda that I saw the ghost of a young woman.”
A ghost? I was about to ask but couldn’t get the words out. But still the old man’s large, antenna-shaped ears seemed to pick up on my question.
“Yep, it was definitely a ghost. I woke up suddenly at one a.m. and found that woman seated on a chair on the veranda. Lit up by the light of the white moon. I knew at a glance it was a ghost. No woman that beautiful existed in the real world. She was that lovely precisely because she was not of this world. I was speechless, frozen. And I thought then that I would give up anything for this woman. A leg, an arm, or even my life. I can’t express that beauty in words. That woman embodied all the dreams I ever had, all the beauty I’d ever pursued.”
Here the old man became quiet and stared fixedly out of the window. It was gloomy outside so the slatted shutters were wide open. The smell of wet flagstones crept in coldly through a gap around the window. After a while he emerged from his reverie and resumed his tale.
“The woman appeared to me every night after that. Always at the same time, seated on a wicker chair on the veranda, staring outside. Her perfect profile facing toward me. But I couldn’t do a thing. In her presence, words wouldn’t come and I couldn’t even move the muscles of my mouth. It was like I was paralyzed and could only stare. And after some time had passed, she would vanish, before I was even conscious of it.
“I tried sounding out the owner of the inn about this. Was there, I asked, some tragic backstory related to the room I was staying in? But the owner said he’d never heard of any. And it didn’t sound like he was lying or trying to hide something. So I was the only one who’d seen that ghost, or apparition, of a woman in that room. But why? Why me?
“My wound eventually healed, and though I still limped a bit, I was able to live a normal life again. Because of my injury I was released from the army and allowed to go back home. But even back home I couldn’t shake the woman’s face from my memory. No matter how attractive the other women I slept with, no matter how good-natured the ones I met, it was always that woman’s face that I saw. Seeing her felt like I was walking on top of a cloud. My soul was possessed by that woman, by that ghost.”
My mind was still fuzzy as I listened to the old man’s tale. Rain and gusts of wind lashed the window, like an urgent warning.
“One day, though, it came to me—I had only seen one side of her. She always had the left side of her face toward me, and never moved. Her only movements came when she blinked, or occasionally tilted her head, ever so slightly. Just like those of us living on the earth always see only one side of the moon, I only saw one side of her face.”
The old man vigorously rubbed his left cheek. His cheeks were covered with a white beard he’d trimmed with scissors.
“I could barely think straight, and I just had to see the right side of that woman’s face. It even felt like, if I didn’t, my life would be meaningless. The urge was uncontrollable, and I abandoned everything and headed off toward that hot springs town. The war still continued—it was a long, drawn-out conflict—and it wasn’t easy to get there, but I used my army connections and got a special pass and could stay at that inn. I asked the innkeeper I’d gotten to know and was able to spend one night only in the same room. That room with a glass door to the veranda. And I settled in, waiting, with bated breath, for night to come. The woman appeared at the same hour, in the same place. As if she had been waiting for me to return.”
Again the old man fell silent, and took a sip of his now cold ersatz coffee. A long silence ensued.
So, did you see it? The right side of that woman’s face? I asked, almost inaudibly.
“That I did,” the old man replied. “With all my might I broke free of the paralysis and got up from the bed. It wasn’t easy, believe me, but I was determined. I slid open the glass door, stepped out onto the veranda, and walked around the woman on the wicker chair so I could see her right side. And I gazed at the right side of her face, lit up in the moonlight…Though I wish I never had.”
What was there?
“What was there? Well, if only I could explain it,” the old man said. And he sighed, his sigh as deep as an old well.
“I searched for a long time to find the words to explain to myself what I saw there. I perused all sorts of books, asked all sorts of wise men, but could never find the words I was seeking. And not being able to find the right words, the appropriate wording, made my suffering deeper by the day. Distress was a constant companion. Like a person in a desert dying for water.”
With a hard clatter the old man returned his coffee cup to the ceramic saucer.
“The one thing I can say—is that what was there was a scene from a world a person should never, ever lay eyes on. Yet at the same time it’s a world that everyone has inside us. It’s inside me, and inside you, too. And yet it’s something you should never see. Which is why most of us live our lives with eyes closed.”
The old man cleared his throat.
“Do you get it? Once you see it, a person can never go back to where he was. After you’ve seen it…So you’d better be careful. Very, very careful. Take care to never get anywhere near that kind of thing. If you get close, you’ll want to gaze inside, guaranteed. The temptation is too hard to resist.”
The old man held up his index finger, pointing straight toward me. And he repeated himself firmly.
“So you’d better be careful. Very, very careful.”
Is that why he abandoned his shadow and came to this town? I wanted to ask the old man. But I couldn’t get the words out.
The old man seemed not to have heard my wordless question. Or maybe he did hear but didn’t intend to answer. The hard sound of rain lashed against the window, filling in the silence.