THE MAGICIANS [t.r.]

FIVE

act one, chapter five
welcome to vetusta

DEATH CLAIMS: we all dream until we die, we dream that we do not die until we do. then we wake up.

Tom always dreams in black and white, a monochromatic landscape illuminated by a candle's flicker light. he learnt to find delight in the quiet scene portrait in those silent propagandistic films he watched as a child; Tom has a theory according to which it is because of those films that his dreams have no sound. he imagines the phonemes and the sonority of each word, but it is only an illusion.

each time he dreams (not often, Tom realises), the boy discerns the rain falling outside, somewhere, in the middle of the abyss. but it’s another illusion since there are no clouds nor sky when the film begins, there's only darkness. in truth, what he hears is the fragile echo of the author’s typewriter, her nimble fingers pressing the letters as she translates each sentence from her mother tongue. an honest mistake, a human error (the author would say), when Tom prefers to believe it’s rain what he hears when, deep down, he knows it is not.

in the blackness of the cellar a match can be found, remaining lit in the inscrutable darkness. mocking the shadows, mocking the sun. the light makes of the abyss its domain and allows Tom to witness the setting of the play. a charcoal town drawn with greys and whites.

Tom has the sudden certainty that he is dreaming. he reads a sign welcoming him to Vetusta while the author absently describes the fragile-noir landscape of the town located in the steady arms of Morpheus asleep:

the heroic city is resting. the hot, lazy south wind is pushing the whitish clouds, which are tearing as they rushed northwards. in the streets there is no noise but the shrill rumble of the swirls of dust, rags, straws and papers, which go from brook to brook, from pavement to pavement, from corner to corner, fluttering and chasing each other, like butterflies that seek and flee and that the air wraps in its invisible folds.

Vetusta, the most noble and loyal city, court in a distant century, is digesting the stew and the rotten pot, and rests listening in its sleep to the monotonous and familiar hum of the choir bell, which echoes at the top of the slender tower in the cathedral.

it is a beautiful sight, truly. a town standing in the edge of reality and illusion, in that place fools and philosophers alike named as dreams.

but its amicable nature is fragile and rehearsed. Tom steps forward and the resting town awakes and moves into motion, like a clockwork. he finds a path through the plague of chimeras and dantesque abominations and walks through the crowd looking for an answer that satisfies him. T̶o̶m̶ ̶h̶a̶s̶ ̶y̶e̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶s̶k̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶q̶u̶e̶s̶t̶i̶o̶n̶.

Amora and Sdom's Hotel is located on the corner of Arramas Street with Mortu Alley, in a former cathedral debauched to the point of blasphemy by its owners. Tom has lost sight of Judith in the darkness but somehow his steps lead him to the Hotel. the only rooms available there are an accumulation of mite-ridden mattresses piled up in the once sacrosanct corridors. from the street Tom observes (still with the books Judith gave him in his hands) the premises: a church, a hotel, a brothel, a casino, and the only building in all of Vetusta that has a clock.