I’m working on a new book, called AND NOW, DESTROYER. It is modelled very shamelessly on Italo Calvino’s 1972 Invisible Cities. In it, a man arrives in a ruined city that contains all ruined cities and every act of ruination yet to come. Confused, he is led by a man with an outrageous and strange smile to a still-functioning cafe and shares a drink with Calvino himself. Calvino, over espresso, tells him the stories of buildings that were never built, buildings that were destroyed, and buildings that may come to pass.
This is part one.
FIRST, A PRECIOUS GARDEN
“Weapons are deployed in the interest of maximum destruction of persons and the creation of death-worlds, new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living dead.”
- Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics (39 - 40)
Squatting in the earth, harassed by flies. He took comfort in a mouthful of stolen water, warmed by the desert sun. An unexploded bomb, hanging by tendrils of rebar and gaunt metal and cloth, swaying over the face of a blasted-open bathhouse. A Roman Legionary, fishing a piece of hard stone from his sandal. Cursing, in the Phonecian dialect, in the Latin tongue. Standing, shakily, he made as if to wave but then used the same hand to steady himself against the fire-warm wall. Stretcher-bearers wearing the outfits of milkmen, disappearing into the smog. The walls of the city are coming down, so he walks on streets that will soon be plucked out of the soil like old stitches, and the ground strewn with salt. A column of soldiers, holding their rifles like idiots. Disoriented by the heat, the smog, the sirens, the braying of pack animals. He lights a cigarette, fascinated by the ember of its tip.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Wha”
“Gas. Smell it?”
The figure has an extraordinary mouth, ‘white as snow’. Teeth.
“The biosphere is collapsing,” he says, gesturing, with the lit cigarette. The man seems unconcerned now about the flame, the gas, as if another greater worry has already squatted over them.
“Oh sit with me”, gesturing, now, toward the fog, the billowing smoke, the gnashed and broken teeth of the cathedral.
“Mm!”
He hates the noise, the diluted light, the difficulty of breathing. An entire vast tower has come down, two of them, in quick succession. A fireman moves around in graceful and slow-motion, slaked in grey ash. A jet plane has done this. A volcano, an army. Nobody has done this. Everybody is praying.
“Have you seen her? Have you seen my wife?”
A cafe, French cafe tables, iron chairs with delicate floral backs. Cigarette ash, and human ash, and brick ash, and wood ash. A man, with a tall forehead, folded arms, a tight but welcoming smile. He, too, gestures.
“Give me a light” he says, jokingly, waving for him to sit down, lighting his cigarette on a pile of smouldering embers at his side.
He sits. A waiter brings a glass of water (cold, almost icy, to the touch), a small espresso cup. There is ash floating on its crema, its bruised and honeyed surface.
Shake hands. Smoke. Sit back and survey the damage.
“Are we dead?”
Finger to his lips. Of course.
“I want to talk about it, the, ah”
Siren, of an ambulance. The drone of an aircraft. The whistle of a falling bomb, as if heard in an old movie. A column of Roman soldiers, jogging in their greased and muddy armour. Two of them pause by a half-demolished wall and set about kicking it with their feet, their covered sandals until the brick begins to fall apart and disintegrate.
Somebody is already building their home, across the square, while a slick-looking lorry carries its previous occupants to a camp for displaced persons on the edge of the territory.
“That happens a lot. Everything happens a lot, all the time. You won’t catch a human civilization not doing this when it has the chance.”
“I’d like a biscuit.”
“Sure. yes.” And that silence again.
An egret, a heron, a small and dazzling fox. These creatures flit and play amongst the bracken and the obliterated muck.
“So how did you get here?”
“How did we get here?”
Dust spills, like water, from the ruptured eave of a sliced-in-half building. Wren’s church is gutted. Hawksmoor’s church is gutted. Fire is licking its own mouth, ready to eat again. A plate of asparagus and parsley and shimmering butter is placed before them, and salt, cracked into big flakes. The waiter is assisting the legionaries now, grinding salt onto the smashed stones and earth. Eventually, they grow bored and start kicking a loose brick around.
“Are you feeling better now?”
He nods, dimly, and slowly. Is able to speak.
“Can you tell me what happened - from the very beginning?”
He blows the coffee, even though it is a perfect temperature.