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The Language of the Night: The City & The City [1]
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Date: 2025-03-10
Tonight’s Language of the Night diary is on China Miéville’s The City & The City. I will give away the ending of the book so please, read it if you haven’t- it’s a good read- this is your one and only spoiler alert!
The writing uses a number of diacritical marks, such as, the name of our protagonist is Tyador Borlú; one location is Besźel. That’s kind of important! In the subtle use of these alien marks- to English speaking eyes- you can feel how they place you, the reader, in a different place. Hold onto this thought.
We open on a murder scene in Besźel, a vaguely Eastern European city. Our detective Tyador Borlú arrives on the site. You know the type. Think Lennie Briscoe of Law and Order. He’s been around, he’s seen it all. He’s a good detective, solves cases, treats his female co-workers respectfully, doesn’t abide incompetence or police brutality. (If that’s all it was, this book wouldn’t be a LOTN diary…) The body of a young woman has been found, abandoned on the run-down edge of town, her throat slashed. The reader gets this impression of her, p. 7:
She looked up at us from below a fluttering fringe. Her face was set in a startled strain: she was endlessly surprised by herself. She was young. She was heavily made up, and it was smeared across a badly battered face. It was impossible to say what she looked like, what face those who knew her would see if they heard her name. We might know better later, when she relaxed into her death. Blood marked her front, dark as dirt.
Later, in the first chapter, we get an inkling not all is as it seems. As Borlú leaves the site, p. 12:
As I turned, I saw past the edges of the estate to the end of GunterStrász, between the dirty brick buildings. Trash moved in the wind. It might be anywhere. An elderly woman was walking slowly away from me in a shambling sway. She turned her head and looked at me. I was struck by her motion, and I met her eyes. I wondered if she wanted to tell me something. In my glance I took in her clothes, her way of walking, of holding herself, and looking. With a hard start, I realised that she was not on GunterStrász at all, and that I should not have seen her.
Besźel is a city-state coterminous with another city-state, Ul Qoma. However, on a map their territory is complexly mapped over each others’. A space can be total- belonging entirely to one city, which to the other city’s dwellers is perceived as alter, not there at all; or cross-hatched: shared. From childhood on, the citizens of each city-state are conditioned to carefully behave as, dress as, monitor their surroundings, and only recognize and be outwardly cognizant of their specific nationality type. Violations of this code are punished as breaching and enforced by a hidden, feared secret force who disappear the transgressors. Long ago in the distant past the two cities were one but an unclear historical schism has caused them to now have different languages, foods, religions, even architecture. Ul Qoma is modern and prosperous; Besźel is old and decaying. Even so, there are leaks through the mental blocks that Borlú has set in his mind, p. 21:
I walked away to the sounds only of my own steps and some frenzied backstreet dog, towards where the grey glare of our lamps was effaced and I was lit by foreign orange light.
The investigation proceeds as these things go, we’ve all read or seen enough police procedurals to know what to expect. A breakthrough comes when Borlú gets a call from an anonymous informant, “long-distance,” from Ul Qoma. The dead girl is identified as an American archaeology student working in a dig in Ul Qoma. Here’s a twist: this is breach. From this point on, acting on this information puts Borlú at risk of transgression of Breach. He needs to find a way to present this case to Oversight- a combined board of Ul Qoma and Besźel personages. If he can (carefully) present and get this case passed along to Breach then he, himself, will not be disappeared. Oversight declines to pass it to Breach and Borlú ends up having to cross the border to Ul Qoma, after orientation to overcome his life-long mental unseeing of Ul Qoma. Once in Ul Qoma the script is different (no acute accents) and read right to left (I think) instead of left to right, the food is spicy (nom!), the color palette is brighter. I won’t go into all the twists and turns, there’s a definite red herring, and human venality is involved. There’s nasty local politics (reminiscent of our present day) in the form of rabid nationalists, Besźel’s “True Citizens” vs. “Qoma Firsters.” The denouement happens when the murderer appears in a cross-hatched area, p. 295:
He walked with equipoise, possibly in either city. Schrödinger’s pedestrian.
Neither city’s enforcement can see him, therefore arrest him; he is “grosstopically” on Besźel’s ByulaStrász and WarszaStrász; for the other city, Ul Qoma’s Illya and Suhash. His mannerisms mark him of neither city. The murderer taunts Borlú, saying he could murder him where he stands and get away with it and Borlú’s body would rot on the street because no city, or Breach, would be able to touch it.
As a murder mystery, it’s a good solid story (certainly an easier, more accessible read than Miéville’s other works). On another level, it asks the question how do we chose to see what we see and do not see; the homeless on the street, the piles of garbage, the immigrant: for example? On a national level, who is us, and, well, not US? Who decides and what does it mean for this way to be in-group and in-think and seen. In the end, Borlú leaves the old, familiar surroundings behind, enters Breach and aids them in investigations. As, in a way we all have to make the choice to enter a new world: whether or not of enforced homogeneity, or of the past (make America great again?), or (as mentioned in last week’s LOTN) of uncaring; of seeing: with eyes fully open.
I’ll close with some bits of trivia I thought interesting.
Until I did some research on the book, I was unaware the author wrote it as a gift for his terminally ill mother (Wikipedia). I am not ashamed to say that hit me right in the feels. And, kudos to the author for always enhancing my vocabulary, I think had to look up at least seven words, could’ve been more but I got lazy! This scene struck me, p. 25:
I lived east and south a bit of the Old Town, the top-but-one flat in a six-storey towerlet on VulkovStrász. It is a heavily crosshatched street—clutch by clutch of architecture broken by alterity, even in a few spots house by house. The local buildings are taller by a floor or three than the others, so Besź juts up semiregularly and the roofscape is almost a machicolation .
There was a 4-episode BBC limited series, with David Morrissey as Inspector Borlú (who’s a fine actor). (You can watch it streaming on Britbox, etc.) It’s a different slant than the book- it’s more police procedural and a new story line was put in; less of the ramifications of seeing/unseeing. Visually the juxtaposition of the two cities is done quite nicely. (In my opinion, I wouldn’t want to watch the series until after reading the book; and then enjoy it as a related, separate endeavor).
One of the subplots- I think Angmar will enjoy- is greedy American industrialists want to plunder the archeologist’s pre-Cleavage excavations, the relics have mysterious and unknown properties… akin to the Greek Antikythera mechanism but moreso…
There was mention in the book that there had been wars between the two city-states. Of course, they exist in a constant state of tension and monitoring. It’s a reminder that under the surface, we separate into tribal divisions in a way we can never, ever forget. Bosnia vs Serbs. Hutu vs. Tutsi. I came across this science OND (see how much we learn from each other here at DailyKos?) that blew my mind as I was re-reading; of neighboring communities that were culturally similar but genetically distinct, which seemed to me so, so possibly like this book: East Asia Meets Europe in Lower Austria
As always, thanks to our host DrLori for sharing this space with me tonight! And to Angmar for being so much help!
[END]
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