The City & the City - China Mieville [17]
“I’m thinking, look, she’s not in her area, it’s a weird situation, we can’t get any beep. I was talking to a guy I know in Dissident Unit, and he was saying how secretive the people he’s watching are. It’s all Nazis and reds and unifs and so on. Anyway it got me thinking about what kind of people hide their identities, and while we’ve still got any time I’d like to chase that a bit. What I’m thinking is—hold on I’m just looking at some notes … Okay, might as well start with unifs.
“Talk to the Kook Squad. See what you can get by way of addresses, chapters—I don’t know much about it. Ask for Shenvoi’s office. Tell him you’re on a job for me. Go by the ones you can, take the pictures, see if anyone recognises her. I don’t need to tell you they’re going to be weird with you—they’re not going to want you around. But see what you can do. Keep in touch, I’ll be on the mobile. Like I say, I won’t be in. Okay. Talk tomorrow. Okay, bye.”
“That was terrible.” I think I said that aloud too.
When I had done that I called the number of Taskin Cerush in our admin pool. I had been careful to take a note of her direct line when she had helped me through bureaucracy three or four cases ago. I had kept in touch. She was excellent at her job.
“Taskin, this is Tyador Borlú. Can you please call me on my mobile tomorrow or when you get the chance and let me know what I might have to do if I wanted to put a case to the Oversight Committee? If I wanted to push a case to Breach. Hypothetically.” I winced and laughed. “Keep this to yourself, okay? Thanks, Task. Just let me know what I need to do and if you’ve got any handy insider suggestions. Thanks.”
There had not been much question about what my terrible informant had been telling me. The phrases I had copied and underlined.
same language
recognise authority—not
both sides of the city
It made sense of why he would call me, why the crime of it, of what he’d seen, or that he’d seen it, would not detain him as it would most. Mostly he had done it because he was afraid, of whatever Marya-Fulana’s death implied for him. What he had told me was that his coconspirators in Besźel might very possibly have seen Marya, that she would not have respected borders. And if any group of troublemakers in Besźel would be complicit in that particular kind of crime and taboo, it would be my informer and his comrades. They were obviously unificationists.
SARISKA MOCKED ME in my mind as I turned back to that night-lit city, and this time I looked and saw its neighbour. Illicit, but I did. Who hasn’t done that at times? There were gasrooms I shouldn’t see, chambers dangling ads, tethered by skeletal metal frames. On the street at least one of the passersby—I could tell by the clothes, the colours, the walk—was not in Besźel, and I watched him anyway.
I turned to the railway lines a few metres by my window and waited until, as I knew it would eventually, a late train came. I looked into its rapidly passing, illuminated windows, and into the eyes of the few passengers, a very few of whom even saw me back, and were startled. But they were gone fast, over the conjoined sets of roofs: it was a brief crime, and not their faults. They probably did not feel guilty for long. They probably did not remember that stare. I always wanted to live where I could watch foreign trains.
Chapter Five
IF YOU DO NOT KNOW much about them, Illitan and Besź sound very different. They are written, of course, in distinct alphabets. Besź is in Besź: thirty-four letters, left to right, all sounds rendered clear and phonetic, consonants, vowels and demivowels decorated with diacritics—it looks, one often hears, like Cyrillic (though that is a comparison likely to annoy a citizen of Besźel, true or not). Illitan uses Roman script. That is recent.
Read the travelogues of the last-but-one century and those older, and the strange and beautiful right-to-left Illitan calligraphy—and its jarring phonetics—is constantly remarked on. At some point everyone has