The Four-Gated City. Doris Lessing

his couch – his place. Martha sat at the desk – hers. They were drinking brandy, were a little tipsy, felt safe for the time, the sense of threat shut out. This was, after all, a warm, gay room. Once it had been a warm and gay house. Mark, seen thus, could be imagined as a warm, easily responsive young man. Even now his face was relaxed, and was smiling as he teased Martha.

      ‘Well, how do you want to live then? Everything you say, all the time, implies there is another way to live? Did you know that?’

      ‘There isn’t then? Everything has to go on and on, as it does. Nothing better is possible?’

      ‘Very well then. But you haven’t said, you know.’

      ‘I don’t want to have to split myself up. That’s all …’ He maintained a quizzical smile. ‘Yes. Any sort of life I’ve been offered in London – I’d have had to put half of myself into cold storage. Pretend part of me didn’t exist.’

      ‘And here?’

      And now it was necessary to evade, sidestep. Because it was fantastic he could ask it all: a measure of how much of himself was shut away, or, more accurately, put into cold storage with Lynda.

      It would not have been necessary to have this conversation with Thomas, she could not prevent herself thinking.

      Several times, late, after one of these evenings of talk and friendship, sex had approached – of course. But not straightforwardly, honestly. Slightly tight, they would have got into bed, enjoyed themselves or not, and in the morning, there would have been a note of apology, even of embarrassment. The point being, that they would have made love because they were a man and a woman sometimes alone in this house. Well, that would have been right with some men. But not with Mark. He did not see this, rather, feel it?

      One evening, before Christmas, she had telephoned Jack. A voice she did not know said that Jack was in hospital somewhere in the north. He had trouble with his lungs. No, he did not want his address known. He did not want letters forwarded. Of course not: Jack, all his pride in his body would not wish to do anything but crawl into a dark hidden place, until it got better.

      ‘Well,’ he said, and again with the unfair reproach: ‘You’re going off. You’re right.’

      ‘I’m not what’s needed here!’

      ‘Yes, but what is! Oh, very well – I don’t want to … so you’re going off to find … do you know what it is you’re really wanting, Martha?’

      And he proceeded to tell her. She was seeking, without knowing it for the mythical city, the one which appeared in legends and in fables and fairy stories, and (here he laughed at her, but affectionately) it was a hierarchic city, which is why she refused even to consider it. He proceeded to describe it, as clearly as if he had lived there; and she, laughing affectionately at him, who knew this archetypal city so well yet said he believed in nothing but a recurring destruction and disorder joined him in a long, detailed, fantastic reconstruction which, by the time they had finished, was as good as a blueprint to build.

      Great roads approached the city, from north and south, east and west. When they had fairly entered it, they divided into arcs, making a circling street, inside which were smaller ones: a web of arcs intersected by streets running in to a centre. All these streets were wide, paved with stone, lined by trees. The centre was planted with trees and had buildings in the trees. These were schools and libraries and marketplaces, but their functions were not over-defined. People might teach in the market; and in what looked like a temple, or a place of worship, goods could be bought or bartered for. Carpets for instance, or jewellery, or poems. There was no central building to the city, yet the people maintained that somewhere in it was such a lode-place or nodal point – under the city perhaps; perhaps in some small not apparently significant room in one of the libraries, or off a market. Or it could have been that the common talk about this room was another way of putting their belief that there existed people, in this city, who formed a kind of centre, almost a variety of powerhouse, who had no particular function or title, but who kept it in existence. The city had been planned as a whole once, long ago: had been built as a whole. It had not grown into existence, haphazard, as we are accustomed to think of cities doing. Every house in it had been planned, and who would live in each house. Every person in the city had a function and a place; but there was nothing static about this society: people could move out and up and into other functions, if they wished to. It was a gardened city. A great number of the inhabitants spent their lives on the gardens, and the fountains and parks. Even the trees and plants were known for their properties and qualities and grown exactly, in a relation to other plants, and to people and buildings; and it was among the gardeners, so the stories went, that could be found, if only one could recognize them, most of the hidden people who protected and fed the city.

      ‘And all this,’ said Mark, stating his position, ‘went on for thousands of years – until, one day, there was an accident, something as senseless and stupid as an earthquake which swallowed the city, or a meteor from space.’

      ‘Oh no,’ said Martha, stating her position, ‘around that city, just like all the cities we know, like Johannesburg for instance, grew up a shadow city of poverty and beastliness. A shanty town. Around that marvellous ordered city, another one of hungry and dirty and short-lived people. And one day the people of the outer city overran the inner one, and destroyed it.’

      Next day Mark did not go to the factory. He sat in his study, and by evening had produced a short story, a sketch merely, of this city. It was for Martha. He was excited by it and so was she. They thought it should be longer. He took back the pages, and went to work.

      The second version was quite long – longer than a short story. In the first version sudden dust storms had buried the city. In the second, outside the central gardened city rose the encircling shadow city of people who looked enviously in at the privileged one. They always talked of attacking it. But they were afraid to – they didn’t know why. Centuries passed. The outer city was growing rich and strong. It was even built on the plan of the inner city, in emulation of it. It had gardens and fountains and – a temple, with a hierarchy of priests. But the outer city was not like the inner one, no matter how often or loudly it claimed it was. Inside was harmony, order – joy. Outside people fought for power and money and recognition, they were soldiers, and a constant growing and overthrowing of dynasties based on the army. Then, one of the ruling families, wanting an advantage over the others, sent envoys into the centre, asking to buy their secret. But the reply came back that the secret could not be sold, or taken: it could only be earned, or accepted as a gift. The rulers of the outer city were angry: they did not understand this answer. They overran the inner city, killing everyone. They looked for the hidden people, of whom the legends had reached the outer city. They could not find them. When the sacking of the city was complete, a story started, they said among the soldiers, that someone had indeed found an octagonal white room under a library. Something about this room, no one could say what, had made an impression. They tore down the roof, pulled up the floor – but there was nothing there. It was empty.

      Now the new rulers announced that everything would go on as before: this was the magical city, it was open to everyone. They were going to run it, with their priests and their soldiers.

      But of course, they hadn’t the secret, and now the old city of the legend became exactly as the outer city had been. But it was from this time that the city in fact reached history – before that it had not been known, except to the people who lived in it and around it. Now it reached a great climax of fame and power; and it spread out into a kingdom and then an empire, which attacked other cities and countries. It had a fine literature, and an art of its own, and was envied for its richness and achievements. And a whole branch of its learning was to do with the history, based on legends which persisted, of the old lost city; and this particular aspect of its culture was in the hands of a priesthood.

      In this version the original city was built in a desert, in North Africa perhaps, or in Asia. Nothing but hundreds of miles of sand under a blazing sun. Then the oases became more frequent. Then, starting in the desert, so that the great roads running inwards began, literally, in sand, was the city.

      Travellers coming in from the