Temple of Night by S. P. Somtow

Author:S. P. Somtow [Somtow, S. P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novela, Fantástico
Publisher: ePubLibre
Published: 1999-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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…into the slums in the white Mercedes, stopping when the paved road became dirt too narrow for the car to pass, going on on foot…and all the while keeping up the act of the impartial media man for his producers, who were on the cellular every five minutes, because, my God, this was even better television than ever before.

“Yes,” he was saying, talking fast because talking meant he didn’t have to think about what really troubled him, “now we have an even deeper tragedy…and corruption…and we have the journalist, the observer, suddenly at the center of the controversy as well…the observer altering the thing observed…you see, it’s all very postmodern. The audience is gonna eat this up, you know it, you just know it. And I’m gonna need more money, and you might need to FedEx over some more audiovisual equipment…and the lost tape? The tape, the tape, probably too raw anyway…if I can’t recover it, we might have to go to the old ‘studio recreation’ scenario.”

Night was falling. On one side of the canal was a ten-foot wall thrown up almost overnight a few years back, because the city officials didn’t want the members of an international economic conference to see the slums from their penthouse hotel suites. The side that faced the affluent world was beautifully decorated with children’s murals, lovingly contributed by earnest, environmental-minded art departments in a dozen elementary schools. This side he had never seen. This side was covered with graffiti.

There were no beggars here—there was no one to beg from. Stephen walked alone down the streets that were mere planks suspended above the mud. Children scurried out of the way. Where was Dao’s house? He had been there once, surely he could find it again. But the houses shifted every day, didn’t they? Didn’t they spring up and get torn down in a matter of hours? He saw a toothless old man at a sewing machine…wondered which power line they had tapped into to steal electricity. Somewhere, a portable radio blared out snatches of gangsta rap. From farther away, the tinkling heterophony of xylophones and gongs, perhaps a radio play in folk opera style. The planks he walked on settled uncomfortably into the soft mud. Behind the smell of decaying fish and fruit, and the fumes of pollution, Stephen could detect the scent of jasmine. He knew there were no jasmine groves here…but the fragrance reminded him of Duan and his tray of jasmine garlands, and he followed it, deeper and deeper into the heart of the shantytown.

It seemed that the walkways became ever narrower, the heat and the closeness of the air ever more oppressive. Soon the roofs of the shanties were virtually touching across the path, and there were fewer planks. A little light came from the distant neon billboards and the condo-skyscrapers on the other side of the great wall. The light fell sparsely through the gaps in the corrugated roofing…pools of garish colors…here and there one of the buildings had a little light, from stolen electricity or a guttering kerosene lamp.

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