Story:Invisible Cities/Aisyt

CITIES & MEMORY

Before the metal wings from another moon invaded its sphere, Aisyt was already a city enamored with its own monumentality. Such is the impression you obtain from eight brochures aggressively proffered at you immediately upon disembarking at its brightly lit harbor. Come worship at ancient cathedrals that once rivaled their onion-domed, seven-shaded cousin far to the west. Come prowl among the imposing statues of Panthera tigris tigris, bone-white replicas of a species long extinct. Come imbibe rice-distilled spirits of a far heartier sort than the softer stock of those sunrisen islands across the Sea of Japan. Remember life wistfully.

Yet do not forget to honor the other side of the inflection point. When the war rose and fell, when the extraterrestrials deigned to lie down with their hosts, Aisyt remained a lone sentinel among vast expanses of flattened tundra - and yet, it remained. Aisyt’s more somber flyers wish to remind you of the city’s survival, beg you to recall its peoples’ sacrifices. The Siberian Festival of Independence draws near; pray, plan to attend and celebrate the day we threw off Moscow’s yoke. Gaze in awe at the gallery of 21st century fighter planes, attend a ceremony in honor of the pilots who survive still into the 22nd.

A city map is quickly pushed into your hands by a well-meaning local. You move to acknowledge your silent benefactor, though the faces around you appear monochromatic in their quiet plasticity. The inhabitants of Aisyt appear to value you in a way that is not quite welcoming. You are a visitor, of course: you cannot understand what it truly means to live here, this star-crossed city that endures all manner of blizzards and monsoons. Your empathy is optional; your appreciation is mandatory. And, if nothing else, give us your business at the local open market - the map will show you how.

The industry of novel and sentimental things has all but extinguished others. There are more manufactured, animated sea cucumbers (the city mascot) screaming from garish shelves in storefronts than those harvested from a once thriving ocean. Ranks of memorial walls proudly bear once-honored names in row after faded row, graveyards of too-large tombstones and too-small epitaphs. Shopkeepers repeat the same flagging calls to entice tourists into their mazes of wares. You elbow through a throng of parka-clad people, who ebb uniformly in your wake.

Outside the market, a heavily-garbed woman puffs into an ancient puzzle of an instrument likely invented when Ivan the Terrible still reigned. He likely would have executed anyone he heard playing it. You approach to the street performer and deposit a few akşa coins into his basket, as is expected of you. As politely as possible, you then depart the city square for a more secluded change of scene. Slowly, the languid bustling of downtown Aisyt is left behind, until you arrive at a neatly manicured park at the beginning of its suburbs. A single statue stands in its midst, displaying an orb suspended by slender stalks. Sputnik. Aisyt appropriates even memory it did not politically possess at the time. Yet the statue is humble, somehow. It alone knows what it has accomplished. Maybe here you will find folk of a similar simplicity.

Ask one passerby at the trace of dawn what shelter the lonely city provides, and she will shake her head, staring only upwards. There is no meaning, she says, in all these tired testaments. Eventually, another wonder will dredge itself up to replace the last, heap after heap of discarded metal and discontinued heroes. The immaculate, boreal sky, with all its distant stars, are reflected starkly in her eyes. When she faces you again, she intones flatly that you should leave for warmer climes. When you do not, she glides away in a haze of indigo shawls and sleeves. Your face is already wiped from her memory, overburdened with nostalgia.

Ask a second passerby at the height of day what significance the lonely city possesses, and he will give the faintest of smiles, sweeping his gaze across the rows of obelisks and museums. That Aisyt still stands, he says, is proof of its community’s perseverance... and the sustained generosity of visitors such as yourself. Its historic sites illustrate a respectable continuity of history, and he intently indicates which of these might be of the most interest to you. When you thank him for his time, he will nod demurely and disappear into a jade-plated building. It may indeed be in your best interest to follow his advice, for all his eyes are upon you.

Ask a final passerby at the break of eve what sights the lonely city offers, and he will grin stupidly at his feet, as if concealing some delectable secret. When he finally speaks, he only asks of what guidance you have been given from those who came before. He considers your account of previous denials and recommendations, shrugging his shoulders with a heavy lightness, an asystolic rhythm, his silhouette darkening in the deepening gold of sunset. He does not usher you towards any aforementioned landmarks, nor does he bid you to depart. His only suggestion, voiced in an almost-giggle, is to visit a local pancake house, assuredly the best one for hundreds of kilometers.

There is no other pancake house in such a radius. The now absent man knows this, you know this, and Aisyt knows this. If there is anything else Aisyt knows, it is its own abandonment, its own essentiality, its own existentialism. Yet it does not understand how to coherently process the external. It seeks to push away, to pull inwards, to run circles stagnantly around what it deems alien. It believes itself a shrine, but it plays the part of pilgrim. Perhaps someday, when it pauses to truly meet the world around it, Aisyt will find herself.