(after Frank R. Stockton)
Once, as it were, long ago and in a far-off land, there was a great city that had fallen into decay and ruin, after ages of alternate prosperity and decline, so that its inhabitants struggled to make each day last unto the next, and looking up at the mighty monuments of past giants and heroes, cursed their ancestors for bequeathing them a barren and waning subsistence in what should have been a prosperous and enviable prospect.
For the city had been built upon a sunken reservoir, and its former glory had been the gift of its limitless water, and its fountains had been the envy of all who visited it, but its strength had been the roots of its trees and the roots of its cornfields, which never weakened or faded in the heat of the day, not even at the height of summer.
But the powerful lords and ladies of the city were not satisfied, and built it ever higher, with its markets and its palaces and its temple towers, so that ever more water must be drawn to reach the gardens upon those terraces and to fill the basins and fountains of those towers. Wise scholars warned them, that so careless and unthankful a draught, when thirst needed not quenching, without care for the gift of earth should bring a doom, but they did not heed, and made no return of water back into the earth.
And it came to pass that all the water was drawn from the greater part of the reservoir, and the stones above it were weakened by virtue of the great weight of the towering city upon its foundations, and the fall of that hour was great.
So much was the weight of the fine houses and temples and the stone statues and steps that fell into the cavern under the city, that the stone beneath it was broken, into a deeper cavern, and what was left of the water rushed away into the depths of the earth.
And all that was left of the city was broken and small, the lesser parts that were about the great reservoir, and they much damaged.
And so the people dwindled, and the descendants of those proud and foolish made their burdensome journey through life, but a brief one, and many departed for other lands, but many might not, for lacking of sufficiency, or fearing the dangers of the way, or from doubt that any other place should prove so much improved as to warrant the exigiencis of travel.
And many had ideas as to how the ruin of the city might be repaired, but none was successful in finding the lost channel, and so all the efforts which began with such enthusiasm at the dawning, shriveled into bitter ash swiftly, and the city baked in the sun like the bleached bones of an ox fallen in its traces.
But one day, one returned from among those who had left the city for other lands, and he came with ideas, and also great skill, for he had studied all that there was to know of the arts of the builder, and all the lost lore that had departed out of the city with its waning, found in scattered archives, and many new things he had discovered of his own cleverness, for he was of passing wisdom and dedication. And he sought with care for the source of the waters that had hollowed out the cavern beneath the reservoir, and with his great skill he found them, and with his arts learned of other cities, in far off lands, he raised their levels and made a conduit that diverted some to the ruined city, so that through this tunnel the reservoir might fill again, and though the water flow out again, ever it would flow in, too, and replenish it, without wearing down the stone so that such a terrible fall might never happen again.
And the city was built anew, some like to that of the old remaining, and much more that was unlike what had been there before, so that the sunken holes and causeways became great pools and lagoons and channels, and the canals for the irrigation of the fields were restored, and the fountains of the city ran again, so that there was always a pleasant air about the streets, and they stank no more of weariness and decay.
And the people prospered, and many came from far off to this new city, that was greater than the one that had stood their before. And the man who had found the secret courses of the water was called the Great Reformer, and those who came there and those who had seen their city rescued praised him daily.
In the time after the Great Reformer, however, his descendants did not all remain in the city he had restored. Many went far and wide, some to take the arts of irrigation and construction abroad, and some to pursue other trades, and time passed as it does. And one day, many generations having passed, it so happened that one of these descendants, being young and disatisfied with his position among the prospering but not mighty of their new homeland, bethought him to return, to that great city that their ancestor had restored, and where, it seemed to him, being a descendent, he should be welcomed with great honor and delight, and assured of a place among the highest rank.
So he bade farewell to his family and set off, and when he got far from the home of his birth, but still far from the home of his ancestors, he found that he received many curious glances and strange looks, and stranger jests that did not convey sense to him, when he would tell of his destination. But he thought it merely the peculiarity of strangers, and perhaps they did not understand him, or he them, and thought no more on it.
But he thought it curious, that the nearer he came to the place, the worse the roads grew, and the fewer the people travelling thereupon, until he was all alone, save for a donkey-cart laden with oddments of firewood, and a man walking beside gathering brush and sticks from along the roadside.
When he came to the gates of the city itself, he thought that it must be a nightmare, and tried to shake himself awake; but it did not work, and he was forced to concede that the terrible reality was just that, and no dream at all. For it was half-ruins, which is worse than all ruins, with tumbled down walls built back up again with rubble, and cracked down again in places, and there were trees growing upon the walls, and through them, and very few people about its buildings, and it stank of excrement, and stagnant water, and despair. But mostly, of bad water, and mud.
And he walked through it in bewilderment, wondering what terrible disaster had befallen the city of his forebears, and ruined the work of his renowned ancestor, and why he had not heard the news of it, even so far away and long ago as his family had established their own house elsewhere. Such people as he met in the streets were thin and sickly, and their faces were scowling and dark with anger and lined with care, and none of them would give him any time at all, but jostled him rudely out of the way. At this, presently, the young man grew angry, both becaues he was weary and frightened and saddened, and because no one cares to be jostled rudely; but also because it seemed to him that he, being the great-great-great-great-grandson of the man who had given their city a new lease on life, was owed a little more courtesy than this, from those who had benefitted so, and had, it would seem, squandered that beneficence!
And the more he was jostled by them, and the more of them he passed, the more he grew to despise them, for their sickliness and filth, and he would have gone out at once, and returned home, where it was not so grand, but it was home, and safe and pleasant, among people he knew well - but first he needs must discover the why of it, lest he feel a fool when he was gotten home again, and could not answer what had become of the city meanwhiles. So he went farther and farther into the heart of the city, nearer to where the great lagoon and the canals had been, and ever what he saw filled him with amazement and disgust. The streets were mud, and foul mud at that, and the buildings were half-fallen down and patched up crazily with bits and pieces of other buildings, put together without regard for design, so that half of a face of some goddess or heroine of legend was matched with the belly of a cow, or squares of tile, or words that did not say anything now, being broken--
Lines hung from noble pillars, and on them rags of cloth were hung to dry, and they were so dingy that it seemed they had not been washed at all, and that the columns were an orchard of trees overrun with tent caterpillars. He saw no art, no recreation, heard no music to attract him, but only tired, angry people, their faces set and bitter, hastening about with many things, each busy with something, or working together in small groups, and paying him no heed save when he wandered, gawking, into someone's way, whereupon they cursed him roundly, yet tiredly, and forgot him as soon as he was past.
In this wise, the youth came upon an aspect of the watery forum, which had once been (and was so still named upon his maps) a plaza dedicated to the memory of the Great Reformer, his ancestor. And here, in the shade of a tall statue, whose marble was all streaked and plastered with the fouling of birds, even as the walls of the houses and other buildings were streaked and patched with clay and rainy plaster, he found a great many folk toiling toghether, but it was hard to see to what purpose, for walls and wattle fences went this way and that, and holes dug in the ground went up to other holds, and people walked about them on boards, and shouted, and waved their hands, and some had buckets, and some had shovels, and some had wheelbarrows and hods and the stones this one carried away, that one brought back, with much swearing, and it seemed to him that they mostly impeded one another, or that there was no real work being done, but only a madness, as if men had become wasps, and were trying to build a hive of mud.
He drew closer, in a frame of mind to have his questions answered, so that he might spend not an hour longer in this dismal pit, and so he pressed in quickly, seeking someone in a position of authority -- which was difficult, you may believe, to determine, where all were so covered in equalizing clay!
As he strode through the press, between hod carriers and bricklayers, and children carrying away buckets of slurry, he heard many a harsh word directed, not merely at each other, for slowness or clumsiness, but generally, at the watercourses themselves and those who made them in bygone day, and particularly at the Great Reformer, to his great amazement, still greater dismay, and increasing anger. For it was not uncommon to see one or another look up, and curse at the statue which smiled with blank eyes upon the plaza, or spit, and to use the name of his famous ancestor as an insult when berating a fellow-toiler.
As his irritation and outrage grew, he became more impatient with the slowness and obstruction of the crush about the site, and trying to avoid all contact with the muddy garments of the crowd, he was forced to change his path many a time, and the uncertain footing made him even more anxious, and impatient, to reach the place of direction, whence all this was organized. Thus, for this reason, he heard ever more words of anger directed at him, and against his house, his ancestry, and all his kin, by folk who did not have the slightest notion that here stood the great-great-great-great-grandson of the man whose works they so cursed.
Finally it grew too much for him to bear, and when a woman pushing a heavy wheelbarrow drove it against heel and shouted at him to get out of the way, and more besides, he stopped and turned, and took her to task for so maligning the Great Reformer, and for her ingratitude at the efforts he had devoted to the salvation of this city, when all had given it up as a lost cause, and all their folly at blaming their own problems upon those who had only their best interests at heart, and who had left their descendants a wonderful arrangement, which they themselves had let fall into decay so badly.
The woman did not take his reproaches as he thought she would, or should, nor did those of the men and women and children around her, and he was soon the center of a shouting knot of citizens, who might well have come to blows, for each defense of the Great Reformer brought more insults, and stronger, and this only made the young descendent of that architect hotter in his praises.
At this point, an old man, one of the builders, who had been observing the traveller for some whiles, though the youth had not perceived this, came up. He parted the disputants and sent the cityfolk back to their own labours, which they did, if reluctantly, and with disdainful looks at the interloper, and drew the younger man aside.
"I see by your appearance that you are a stranger here. What is your business with us, and your quarrel?"
The latter told him that he was a descendent of the Great Reformer, and had been siezed of the notion to come and visit the monument of his forebear, and had expected to find a welcome here, "--and instead, I find nothing but hate, and anger, and ingratitude towards my family for their services to you people!"
"Well, it has been a thousand years, and more, since the time of the Great Reformer. The amazing works of engineering have now become part of the problem themselves. That woman, there, has lost most of her family to the pestilences, and the man with the bricks, those are from his house, which has fallen down in the last flood, and so he has had to abandon it, and donated what is left to the use of the city. The conduits and sluices which made our city a wonder in bygone day have turned to a poison, eating away at the streets and walls - is it any wonder that we sometimes curse those who made them?"
"But without them, the city would have vanished long ago, and there would be nothing here at all -- you would not be here to complain or blame, for having perished of thirst or departed for other lands."
"Don't take it personally," said the old man, "it is not directed at our ancestor personally either, but at the situation that has been bequeathed to us, cousin, and anger must be directed at some target, that is all."
The young man looked askance at him, for beneath the splashes of earthy water and grit, the complexion of the stranger was of a somewhat duskier hue, and his features, aside and apart from the lines of care graven into his countenance, more pronounced and bold in their delineation, and he declared haughtily:
"Surely you are mistaken. The descendants of the Great Reformer departed long ago from this place." To that the old man but shrugged.
"Not all of us left, indeed. I am your kinsman, for all that there is not much of a family resemblance remaining these days."
"But they pay you no great respect!" retorted the traveller, gesturing about them to those who toiled alongside, with a look that intimated his doubts of that familiar claim upon this ground, alone.
"And wherefore should they?" asked the graybeard, wiping the sweat from his brow with a hand that left more grime than it took away. "I am not the Great Reformer, after all."
"But what has happened, that such a great city, with so wise and prosperous a people, should become such a pitiful den of impoverished wretches, who cannot even help each other without cursing and quarreling amongst themselves?" He was too angry to temper his words, and spoke his thought impolitely, as he would never have done at home; but the old man only shrugged under his ragged garments.
"After your branch of the family departed for other climes, many things changed, and not all of them could have been foreseen, and some of those which were foreseen, could not be dealt with, by reason of those other matters."
"What other matters?" demanded the lad.
"Oh, the earthquakes, for one -- and two, and three," said the older citizen. It was those that broke down the walls and made such a patchwork of the city, for they must be repaired, and what better to mend them with, than with the handy pieces of another broken wall."
"But why did you not do it properly? Why did you not build it again, with cut stone, and proper bricks, the way it was before - the way it is done in all other cities of the world?" he asked hotly, for the angry part of him had gotten the better of the fearful and wounded part of his spirit.
The graybeard shook his head.
"How should we afford it? For the earthquakes which ruined the city shook all the walls, the ones under the ground, and the ones above. And the watercourses were shaken too, and some of them broke, and now water pours everywhere, even where it is not wanted, and it is all we can do to keep it from washing away the foundations of our houses - sometimes. And it stagnates, and breeds pestilence, and the mud is everywhere. We quarrel so much, because our little must be used to repair far too much. No one can keep up with it."
"But you should!" said the youth, indignantly, and proceeded to explain to the older man why it was so important to close up the sewers and clear the stones and maintain a constant uncontaminated flow.
"Indeed, yes," sighed his elder, "and so we are doing, even now."
The young traveller snorted, for it did not look a very efficient or practical way of setting about it -- manifestly wasn't, as one only had to look at the filthy streets and sinking sewers to see -- and said so, and how they had, in the town where he was born, and other prospering cities he had visited, much better
"True," said the old man, "and where have you been, these thousand years and more?"
At this, in heightened temper, the young man stalked off, and moodily began to walk about the project and view the work underway, whilst avoiding such contact with the mire as was not utterly unavoidable. He took care to stay out of the way of the workers, this time, and so received fewer curses, because he did not wish to be jostled into the ditches by accident, or perhaps intention.
As he watched, he noticed that there was perhaps more reason and purpose to the affair than he had at first thought, but as he began to discern the shape of the project in all its various efforts, it seemed to him that so much better could be done, with what they had undertaken, and he began to offer advice, and suggestions, in a polite (he thought) and respectful (as it seemed to him) tone, pointing out places where he would set braces, or install a hand-pump, were it up to him, from the sidelines.
Most simply ignored him, but a few swore at him and told him to go away. He persisted, but when one threw half a brick at him that had been dredged from a blocked channel, and someone else emptied their bucket upon his sandals, he went back and found the old man once more, and complained bitterly of their ingratitude and lack of appreciation for his attempts to help, and restraint at their uncouth, unpleasant ways.
"It is not enough, that you not deride them, nor impede them," advised the elder builder. "For that, you would have them be grateful to you - that you do not make their work more difficult?" And he laughed, and when the boy grew angry, he laughed even more, but not with malicious intent. Which made it, indeed, all the worse.
"But they do not even listen to me, and do not care to learn, when they might benefit from what I have discovered, examining his diagrams and recalling what has been passed down in our family! I would say that such fools deserve their fate, who will not accept the assistance of those who have had the advantages of education and travel."
"But your words do not help, for we have no more pumps to spare, and for all you have studied scrolls and books of our ancestor's Great Work, you have not studied our present problem."
"What am I supposed to do?" scoffed the young man. "I am not my ancestor, to come and transform all this wasteland into a paradise over night!"
"No," agreed the old man, cheerfully, and that made the traveller even angrier. The greybeard became serious then, and asked him, "So, then, do you want the cityfolk to respect you, to honor you, to support and heed you? Do not laugh: it is not impossible."
"What must I do?" the youth retorted sullenly, and "Dig," said his guide in the city, as it now was, and held out his rough spade of wood -- or perhaps mud, for so long had the clay of the streets ingrained it that it seemed to be all one with the lumps encrusting it, handle and blade. And he nodded to the sunken channel, where the man with the buckets was filling the woman's wheelbarrow and the children caught the bits that splashed over the edge, with a most significant look.
"But I will get mud on me, and worse," said the young man, wrinkling his nose. "And it will not accomplish anything, beyond making me as filthy as -- as they."
"True," the old man who claimed to be his kinsman nodded. "That is the way of it: if you would do anything, you must get your hands dirty, and the rest of you besides. --Do you think our great-great-great-great-grandfather did not, when he changed the course of the waters, and dug down into the bowels of the earth, where the bones of all those who perished in the fall of the first city were rotting in the mud with the filth of the years gone by? How do you think he won the assistance of all those whose hands helped to hammer out the tunnels that turned the underground river, and pried the wedges and carried out the diggings, to make it happen? --Or did you think he accomplished it alone, without the willing help of the city's people, in those days? I tell you, that man was not afraid to get his hands dirty!" he ended, admiringly.
And the young man was silent, and looked up at the statue of his ancestor, serenely holding his ruler and plumb line, with not a fold of his garment out of place, and his marble hair plaited neatly, and looked again at the elder builder, plastered with mud, his robe hiked up about his knees and the mortar and slime plastering his wild hair into brambles and thickets!
"Here, take it," the old man urged him again, holding forth the shovel--
Let him who has ears, hear!
(--But what did the young man choose?)
(--I don't know, what will he?)