Invisible Cities

Kublai Khan anxiously smokes and listens to Marco Polo’s stories. Sometimes he insists that Marco’s cities don’t exist and laments that his empire is rotting and infecting everything around it. Marco agrees that the empire is ill but says that, even worse, the empire is trying to get used to it. He seeks to find where there’s still happiness and suggests that if Kublai wants to measure the darkness, he needs to look for the light.

Other times, Kublai is euphoric about the state of his empire. He boastfully says that his empire is made up of crystals and chastises Marco for telling sad and disappointing stories. To this, Marco replies that while Kublai builds his final city, he’s busy collecting ashes of the possible cities that vanish to make room for the final one. He says that when Kublai is so unhappy that he can’t recover, he’ll be able to measure his sadness and use that measurement to build a diamond big enough to overcome it. If he doesn’t, he’ll be wrong from the start.

Cities and Signs. 5. Addressing Kublai Khan, Marco Polo says that no one knows better than he does that cities can’t be confused with the words people use to describe them, but that cities and words are linked regardless. As an example he offers Olivia, which is prosperous. It has palaces and lawns with sprinkler systems and white peacocks. However, the words also imply that Olivia is covered in grease and soot, and that pedestrians are crushed in the streets. People are industrious, but he insists that Kublai, being an emperor, thinks of industry in a different way.

Marco says that Olivia is free and refined and that women in canoes glide along at night, but that is only to remind Kublai that when men and women convene on the banks, someone always bursts out laughing sarcastically. Marco insists that he can’t use different words to describe Olivia. If Olivia really did have peacocks and industry, it would be a “fly-ridden hole” and Marco would have to describe it by talking about soot and sarcasm. He declares that falsehood is always in things, never in words.

Thin Cities. 4. Sophronia is composed of two half-cities. One half has a roller coaster, a carousel, and a big top. The other half is made of stone, marble, and cement and includes factories and palaces. One half is permanent and every year, the other half moves to find a new half-city. Every year, the half of stone and marble packs up to leave, abandoning the Sophronia of delights to wait until its other half returns so it can be whole again.

Trading Cities. 3. When travelers enter Eutropia, they’ll find a number of similar cities. Eutropia is all of these cities, but only one is inhabited at a time. When Eutropia’s inhabitants feel weary, they all pack up and move to the next Eutropia to get a new job, spouse, and hobby. There aren’t major distinctions of wealth or authority, so the system works well. Marco Polo says that Eutropia exists on an empty chessboard. Inhabitants repeat the same things over and over again with different actors. Eutropia is always the same. The god Mercury, who is fickle, worked this miracle and is worshiped in the city.

Cities and Eyes. 2. How a person feels influences how they see Zemrude. A person who walks through whistling will look up and see curtains and fountains. A person who goes along hanging their head will become fixated by the gutters, fish scales, and garbage. Neither aspect of the city is truer, but it’s more common to hear about the upper Zemrude from people who only remember it. Before too long, everyone looks down. It’s not impossible to learn to look up again, but it’s rare, so people walk along, looking at cellars, foundations, and wells.

Cities and Names. 1. Marco Polo can’t say much about Aglaura, except to repeat what residents say about it. Ancient people decided Aglaura’s qualities. Marco suggests that the Aglaura that people talk about and the Aglaura in real life haven’t changed much since ancient times, but odd things are now normal and virtues are now faults. Because of this, nothing people say about Aglaura is strictly true, even if those accounts create an image of a city. As a result, the city people talk about has most of what it needs to exist, but the city that’s there exists less. Marco says that the real Aglaura is colorless and dull. And while sometimes he catches something magnificent, he can’t voice it because of what people say about Aglaura. People there don’t understand that they live in an Aglaura entirely separate from the one in real life.

Kublai Khan says that he’s going to describe cities to Marco Polo so that Marco can tell him if they exist, but the cities that Marco visits are always different from those in Kublai’s imagination. Kublai says that he’s figured out how to construct a model city from which to deduce all other possible cities. It contains all the normal aspects, so he just needs to figure out the exceptions. Marco answers that his model city contains only exceptions. If his city is the most improbable, they only need to subtract exceptions until they get to real cities. However, this has a limit, as he’d eventually end up creating “cities too probable to be real.”