The Search

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

He travelled there the next day. It was a city of empty piazzas, red towers and the endless perfect arches of arcades. Mustard-coloured walls, ochre streets. He noticed red towers and arcades but mainly he was aware of the space between things, as if there were more space here than was possible. There was no distance or direction, only perspective and white walls, mustard-coloured streets. The city looked the same in every direction — arcades, piazzas, towers, long shadows — but each new view was unfamiliar, strange. Whenever he turned a corner a new but identical vista of arcades and towers opened up before him. Only one sense mattered here. Everything was arranged for the eye.

The sky was turquoise, becoming lighter, greener, close to the pencil-line horizon. The light made the walls of the buildings glow amber. On the other side of the square was the city hall, a tower and clock face that told nothing. Time slid across the piazza in angular shadows. Always it was the shadows, dark as a girl’s hair, that he noticed first. Even a stone in the middle of the piazza cast a shadow the length of a man. Shadows peeked from the edge of a wall and when he turned the corner to see what cast them his attention was held by another shadow, projected from beyond the next corner. Something seemed always to be going on just beyond the edge of his vision, around the next corner. Everything happened in the distance. In this way the city lured him through itself.

Between the mustard walls of a building he caught a glimpse of the sea. He wandered in that direction but did not get any nearer. Space swallowed him up. Shadows slid into the cool arcades. Up ahead was a red tower with flags flying. He turned a corner and there was the sea. Flat, opalescent, lapping gently beyond the low wall. Near the horizon was a triangle of sail, brilliant white. A white cane had been left propped against the wall. A statue gazed out to sea. On the sea-wall was a book, pages flapping in the wind — except there was no wind. Everything was still but the pages were flapping as if in a spring breeze. He moved closer to the book, listened to the rustle of the pages: as if the book were alive, like a creature whose breath had only the strength to make this faint flutter.

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a shadow emerge from an arcade. A figure stood in the piazza where Walker himself had been standing minutes earlier. They stared at each other, each mirroring the other’s reaction, neither displaying shock or alarm, and then moved on. The sky was an even deeper turquoise than before. Instead of becoming darker, the light had been squeezed, concentrated. Beyond the city was the low swell of Renaissance hills.

Walker was passing by a broken statue when, through the arches of an arcade, he saw the figure again, by the quay where he himself had been standing. Again there was a pause, a lingering surprise, and then they moved on, both looking back once. Later — time was as difficult to judge as distance — it happened again: on this occasion the figure was standing by the broken statue.

Each time they occurred the mood of these encounters changed, imperceptibly, until they were virtually stalking each other round the city. The figure had a similar realization simultaneously, for now he looked at Walker with suspicion. Walker felt the first twinge of unease and the figure’s movements immediately acquired an edge of urgency. Walker began sweating; he had an impulse to run and saw the figure trot across the piazza and disappear from sight.

He continued walking through the bewildered city, uneasy now. He glanced round and saw the figure looking at him. Walker ran across the piazza and into the darkness of an arcade. When he emerged into sunlight the figure was silhouetted, his back to Walker. Immediately, he looked around and ran off. So a pattern was established with Walker alternating between fleeing from the figure who would suddenly appear behind him and surprising this same person who would run from him.

The situation petered out exactly as it had begun. Walker felt confident he could outrace the figure who simultaneously reacted less nervously when Walker came up on him unawares. As their sense of mutual alarm diminished, so did the frequency of these encounters until they spotted each other rarely, harmlessly, at a distance, and Walker resumed his stroll through the city.

Later, lodged in the stone fingers of a statue, he found a card showing the piazza he was now walking across. He pocketed the card and walked on. At the top of a tower a flag fluttered in the absent breeze. In the distance a train steamed silently into the station. A cloud drifted over the train as if it had always been there. The light remained suspended between late afternoon and early evening, the sun never quite setting, the city receding all around.

Walker found himself once again by the quay, the sea lapping green and clear, the statue gazing calmly, the book still lying there, the cane propped by the wall. He picked up the book and leafed through it. On each page, blurred and smudged by spray from the sea, was written the name of one of the cities he had passed through, in the order he had visited them. Imbria was the second last name in the book. The last city, the only one he had not been to, was called Nemesis. Next to it, was what he assumed to be a date, 4.9.—, with the year an illegible blur of ink: five days from now.