The Other City

Is it possible that we live in close proximity to a world teeming with strange life, a world which perhaps has been here since before our city existed and yet which we know nothing about? The more I have thought about it, the more I have been inclined to admit that it is very well possible, that it goes with our way of life, with how we live within demarcated circles we're afraid to leave. The dark music from the other side of the frontier corrodes our order and fills us with anxiety; we fear the outlines of forms we discern in dusky corners, we do not know whether they are broken, decomposing forms of our world or the embryos of a new fauna that will one day turn cities into its hunting grounds, the spearhead of an army of monsters that will advance with stealthy deliberation on our homes. So we prefer not to see the forms that originate on the other side and not to hear the sounds that, at night, come from behind our walls; for us, reality is only what has become rooted in our world, what interacts with the other things and events of the few games we keep monotonously repeating, whose interconnections we refer to as cause, reason, sense. These games, which constitute the tissue of our world, are no less strange or alarming than the nighttime festivals of glass statues; and should someone be watching from the other side, for example, through the gaps between the books in our library, he would probably experience the same disquieting amazement at the fascinating and oppressive ritualism that I experienced while watching the fish festival from the darkness of the arcade. "What amazing monsters!" he would whisper, peering at us anxiously and with dark admiration.

Yet the world into which we have locked ourselves is actually most confining; even within the space we consider our own, there are places beyond our power, dens settled by animals whose home is in the darkness beyond the frontier. We know the strange uneasiness that overcomes us when we encounter the hidden side of things and their inner hollows, which refuse to join in our games: when, while house-cleaning, we pull out an armoire and are suddenly looking at the ironically indifferent face of its back, which stares off down a dark hall reflected in its surface; when we unscrew the cover of a TV set and run our fingers along the tangle of wires; when we crawl under a bed to retrieve a pencil and suddenly find ourselves in a mysterious cave, its walls covered with magical, quivering balls of dust, a cave where something evil is slowly ripening, something which one quiet afternoon will crawl out into the daylight. What exists for us is only what has a part to play in our games: no wonder we know nothing about the world that extends beyond the edge of these games. We probably wouldn't even notice it if it were celebrating its festivals right in the midst of our daily bustle.

I was remembering how the linguist at the University Library insisted that what lives beyond the frontier is invisible to us, because the beings from those regions sate themselves at a different fountain of reason and thus elude our gaze. But I grew more and more convinced that this invisibility was more likely the result of how perfectly we have succeeded in mastering our gaze and keeping it on a short tether. The severity with which we restrict the roving of our eyes seems rather to indicate that we are aware of the fact that our gaze vaguely recognizes the monsters on the margins and that we fear it might encounter some familiar beasts and strike up a conversation that would recall an old friendship and a forgotten common language.

From The Other City by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Tatiana Firkušný and Veronique Firkušný-Callegari. Included in Daylight in Nightclub Inferno (Catbird Press, 1997).

I remember reading this selection around 2000 and hoping I would someday be able to read the entire novel. Fortunately Dalkey Archive will release Gerald Turner's translation of The Other City in June 2009. I'll post again about the book in June.


I was able to dig up another Ajvaz story in my collection, this one translated by Michael Henry Heim and included in Prague: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Whereabouts Press, 1995; check out the contents -- a great anthology). Here's the end of "The Past":

Why is it we constantly drag around with us in our handbags and briefcases the weapons of our nocturnal wars, crystals of solidified poison in boxes lined with scarlet velvet, the head of the Gorgon Medusa, a tongue ripped from a dragon's maw, the mummy of a homunculus, compromising correspondence in Sumerian? Why is it we drag around the terrifying innards of the past, fearing them as we do, smelling the pus they exude, knowing full well that in a bar, a cafe, or a friend's flat Moira the Inexorable will spill them out on the table?