China Miéville - Looking for Jake and Other Stories

Anyway, you see my point. It’s the only way one can make sense of it all, of all this that I’ve been going on about for so long. The Viae are fighting, and I think they always have.

And there’s no idiot nationalism here either, as

[ And here is the end of the page. And there is another message added, clearly referring to this letter, from CM’s nameless interlocutor. ‘I believe it’, he says, or she says, but I think of it as a man’s handwriting though that’s a problematic assumption. ‘It took me a while, but I believe Edgar’s bellum theory. But I know you, Charles, “pure research” be buggered as far as you’re concerned. I know what Edgar’s doing, but I cannot see whereyou are going with this.’]

Wednesday June 17th 1992.

We are receiving repeated reports, which we are attempting to verify, of an international visit.

Somewhere between Willesden Green and Dollis Hill (details are unclear), Ulica Nerwowosc has arrived. This visitor from Krakow has been characterised by our comrades in the Kolektyw as a mercurial mediaeval alleyway, very difficult to predict. Though it has proved impossible to photograph, initial reports correlate with the Kolektyw’s description of the Via. Efforts are ongoing to capture an image of this elusive newcomer, and even to plan a Walk, if the risks are not too great.

No London street has sojourned elsewhere for some time (perhaps not unfortunate—a visit from Bunker Crescent was, notoriously, responsible for the schism in the BWVF Chicago Chapter in 1956), but the last ten years have seen six other documented visitations to London from foreign Viae Ferae. See table.

[ There is a thick card receipt, stamped with some obscure sign, its left-hand columns rendered in crude typeface, those on the right filled out in black ink. ]

BWVF collection.

Date:

7/8/1992

Name:

C. Melville

Curator present:

G. Benedict

Requested:

Item 117: a half-slate recovered

from Scry Pass, 7/11/1958.

Item 34: a splinter of glass

recovered from Caul Street,

8/2/1986.

Item 67: an iron ring and key

recovered from Stang Street,

6/5/1936.

[ This next letter is on headed paper, beautifully printed. ]

20 June 1992

Dear Mr Melville,

Thank you for your message and congratulations for have this visitor. We in Paris were fortunate to have this pretty Polish street rest with us in 1988 but I did not see it.

I confirm that you are correct. Boulevard de la Gare Intrinsèque and the Rue de la Fascination have both stories about them. We call him le jockey, a man who is supposed to live on streets like these and to make them move for him, but these are only stories for the children. There are no people on these rues sauvages, in Paris, and I think there are none in London too. No one knows why the streets have gone to London that time, like no one knows why your Importune Avenue moved around the area where is now the Arc de la Défence twelve years ago.

Yours truly,

Claudette Santier

[ There is a handwritten letter. ]

My Dear Charles,

I’m quite aware that you feel illused. I apologise for that. There is no point, I think, rehearsing our disagreements, let alone the unpleasant contretemps they have led to. I cannot see that you are going anywhere with these investigations, though, and I simply do not have enough years left to indulge your ideas, nor enough courage (were I younger...Ah but were I younger what would I notdo?).

I have performed three Walks in my time, and have seen the evidence of the wounds the Viae leave on each other. I have tracked the combatants and shifting loyalties. Where, in contrast, is the evidence behind your claims? Why, on the basis of your intuition, should anyone discard the cautions that may have kept usalive? It is not as if what we do is safe, Charles. There are reasons for the strictures you are so keen to overturn.

Of course yes I have heard all the stories that you have: of the streets that occur with lights ashine and men at home! of the antique costermongers’ cries still heard over the walls of Dandle Way! of the street-riders! I do not say I don’t believe them, any more than I don’t—or do—believe the stories that Potash Street and Luckless Road courted and mated and that that’s how Varmin Way was born, or the stories of where the Viae Ferae go when they unoccur. I have no way of judging. This mythic company of inhabitants and street-tamers may be true, but so long as it is also a myth, you have nothing. I am content to observe, Charles, not to become involved.

Good God, who knows what the agenda of the streets might be? Would you really, would you really, Charles, risk attempting ingress? Even if you could? After everything you’ve read and heard? Would you risk taking sides?

Regretfully and fondly,

[ This is another handwritten note. I think it is in Edgar’s hand, but it is hard to be sure. ]

Saturday 27th November 1999.

Varmin Way’s back.

[ We are near the end of the papers now. What came out of the package next looks like one of the pamphlet-style reports of sightings. It is marked with a black band in one corner of the front cover. ]

Walkers: FR, EN, BH (author).

At 11:20 p.m. on Sunday 28th November 1999, a Walk was made the length of Varmin Way. As well as its tragic conclusion, most members will be aware of the extraordinary circumstances surrounding this investigation—since records began, there is no evidence in the archives of a Via Fera returning to the site of an earlier occurrence. Varmin Way’s reappearance, then, at precisely the same location in Plumstead, between Purrett and Rippolson Road, as that it inhabited in February 1988, was profoundly shocking, and necessitated this perhaps too-quickly-planned Walk.

FR operated as base, remaining stationed on Rippolson Road (the front yard of the still-deserted number 32 acting as camp). Carrying toolbags and wearing Council overalls over their harnesses and belay kits, BH and EN set out. Their safety rope was attached to a fencepost close to FR. The Walkers remained in contact with FR throughout their three-hour journey, by radio.

In this occurrence of Varmin Way, the street is a little more than 100 metres long. [ An amendment here: ‘Can you imagine Edgar going metric? What kind of a homage is this?’] We proceeded slowly. [

Here another insertion: ‘Ugh. Change of person.’ By now I was increasingly irritated with these interruptions. I never felt I could ignore them, but they broke the flow of my reading. There was something vaguely passive-aggressive in their cheer, and I felt as if Charles Melville would have been similarly angered by them. In an effort to retain the flow I’ll start this sentence again. ]