Magdalena Tulli: Dreams and Stones

At that time the machinery of the world worked smoothly, without grinding noises or surprises, like the machinery of a stage that enables practiced hands to move the sky along with the stars and the sun and to turn the earth, flat as a plate, with the aid of a special crank. In this time of the world’s infancy, with the necessary effort the impossible also turned out to be achievable.

In the meantime the city blossomed moment by moment. On the blueprints colonnades reached to the fourth and fifth floors; golden fountains played in the squares while hanging gardens extended overhead and there flew past helicopters which were used by the municipal transit authorities and for which landing pads had been planned on rooftops as big as city squares; while underground, hovercraft moved quietly along barely touching their rails. And trams, trams and more trams ran from dawn till midnight and from one end of the city to the other and back again.

Imperceptibly the network of tram cables grew beyond all measure. The hanging gardens receded before them. Ground waters appeared whose complex system necessitated changes in the subterranean installations connected with the hovercraft traffic; it suddenly transpired that lines drawn on drafting paper could be threatened by water flowing somewhere beneath the earth. In this way, in the city emerging within the plans modifications appeared that could not have been predicted and that curbed the momentum of the city growing in space. Nevertheless the chimneys sprang upward without hindrance and were indeed ever taller and more splendid. They were constantly being observed and also photographed and filmed. They appeared in the posters stuck on fences around each new building site, where, stern and black, resembling exclamation points, they served as a background to vivid red letters. Along with the chimneys there rose lofty slag heaps, silos containing cement, and warehouses. Yet at times it seemed that all this was not enough and that the movement should be even faster, the exclamation point even more emphatic.

Time was barely able to keep up with the rapidity of thought. The days were counted and planned out many years in advance and if these calculations contained any errors, they never involved a surplus. It could be said that the days were used up before they arrived, like anticipated assets against which debts have already been incurred. Time, like electricity, was a good that had a specific value and purpose. Thus everything humanly possible was done to accelerate its passage. It is even likely that use was made of certain possibilities for improving the efficiency of astronomical phenomena. There came a time when the city hurtled round like a carousel; scarcely had it emerged from dawn than it already sank into darkness and with it its factories and steel mills and its plumes of sparks and its smoke filled with fumes and sulfur, which turned black as pitch in the red light of the rising and setting sun. While successive tons of new steel were being forged the old steel was wearing out and rotting upon the earth, beneath the earth and in the air. Newly manufactured paper was delivered immediately to the printing presses, where it was used to print newspapers that the very same day ended up in the trash.

The trams had barely pulled in to the depot before they had to set out on their routes again; the street lamps had scarcely gone out when they had to come on once more; milk bottles and bowls of porridge were perpetually being filled and emptied, while yesterday’s children were already putting on and taking off hats, brassieres and neckties. Men were constantly shaving; their stubble would grow back in the blink of an eye between one morning and the next. Bed sheets appeared and disappeared on foldaway sofa beds with no more than a flash of white; one after another, tanks of gasoline, kerosene and gas were emptied in the thousands and tens of thousands. There was no hope that the speeding cycle of past and future tasks would finally attain its goal — a sufficiency of the paper, steel and other substances the city voraciously demanded — that it would finally be sated and things would be able to slow down.

In this mad rush no one looked carefully enough to also notice what was in the background. Thought was led by appearances and it was hard to recognize the thing that one’s eye lighted upon. In this way all the worlds were mixed together: the world that bordered on this one through the surface of newspaper photographs with its own depth, the world that opened up in mirrors and the world that was visible from the highest floors in which people were as tiny as little toys. Only the world that unfolded inside the stones and could not be seen retained its frontiers.

The momentum of the city was in certain respects becoming onerous. From the incessant clicking of switches the instrument panels wore out; for this reason it was eventually decided not to turn the lights out at all, not to turn the machines off and not to go to bed. The uninterrupted work of factories and power plants in turn made it possible to accelerate the passage of time even more; this opportunity was not passed over. The present shot by at a rate of twenty-four frames per second; at the same speed, amid a low hum, images of the factories and power plants were wound onto massive spools right until movement finally began to cease and against a dark background there appeared a white inscription: THE END.

For everything that has a beginning also has an end. The tape must be of the right length so it can be wound onto the spool and after being shown it can be put away in its flat metal can. If only for this reason time limits both the filming and the projection. The bulb of the projector can shine for a specified number of hours, rather less than more; it was installed in the projector after the previous bulb burned out and in time it too will burn out. What happens to the factories and power plants after the projector is switched off? They are dispersed. A certain aspect of them finds its way into the flat metal can; another aspect remains beneath the eyelids of the moviegoers standing up from their seats. Yet another is expressed in the cable that joins the projector to the electrical outlet and through it to the entire machinery of the world, which for a certain period did indeed work quickly and efficiently and then — it was unclear when — began to slow down. For momentum too has a beginning and an end.

The laws of nature on which the plans for development were at one time based declared that what grows quickly will grow even more quickly, that explosion rules out implosion and that motionlessness is foreign to motion. The calculations that arose from these laws initially produced satisfactory approximations. They continued to be applied for some time, errors being dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders, until it became evident that the approximations being used had ceased to be adequate. For they failed to make adjustments for the wheel of fortune, for the unstable course of the affairs of this world, for the sudden unforeseen vagaries of fate. They did not make allowance for the chance obstacle that will stop an inscrutable thought in flight. They knew nothing of the vibrations that would cause the ever more powerfully thundering megaphones to fall apart. The greater the acceleration a speeding locomotive has the sooner it must begin to brake, otherwise disaster will ensue. A crane that bears record loads will eventually collapse under the excessive burden. Fatigue of the materials, and also arrhythmia and pain, will suddenly manifest themselves in advanced stages. The curve of growth sooner or later will reach the edge of the chart and be suspended in the air.

The consciousness of this state of things emerged gradually and did not shake the foundations of the city. Amazement was spread over a long time, during which some began to have their suspicions and others refused to hear anything about it. Another generalization slowly began to spread which proclaimed that what was large would become small and not larger still, what was full would be empty and what grew tall would sink beneath the earth. In practice the new formula produced approximations that were at least as good as before, if not better; since it was easier it quietly displaced the old one, even though it irritated many. Whoever began to apply it was liberated from pathos, and on their lips appeared an ironic half-smile like a secret stamp. Its ever more numerous adherents, laboring without enthusiasm, accomplished neither more nor less than previously, when they had given their all, working their fingers to the bone. The discovery that a fiasco does not require sacrifices brought relief.