invisible cities; italo calvino
Cities & The Dead
3
No city is more inclined than Eusapia to enjoy life
and flee care. And to make the leap from life to
death less abrupt, the inhabitants have constructed
an identical copy of their city, underground. All
corpses, dried in such a way that the skeleton re-
mains sheathed in yellow skin, are carried down
there, to continue their former activities. And, of
these activities, it is their carefree moments that take
first place: most of the corpses are seated around
laden tables, or place in dancing positions, or made
to play little trumpets. But all of the trade and profes-
sions of the living Eusapia are also at work below
ground, or at least those that the living performed
with more contentment than irritation: the clock-
maker, amid all the stopped clocks of his shop, places
his parchment ear against the out-of-tune grandfa-
ther's clock; a barber, with dry brush, lathers the
cheekbones of an actor learning his role, studying the
script with hollow sockets; a girl with a laughing
skull milks the carcass of a heifer.
To be sure, many of the living want a fate after 109
death different from their lot in life: the necropolis is
crowded with big-game hunters, mezzosopranos,
bankers, violinists, duchesses, courtesans, generals-
more than the living city ever contained.
The job of accompanying the dead down below
and arranging them in the desired place is assigned
to a confraternity of hooded brothers. No one else
has access to the Eusapia of the dead and everything
known about it has been learned from them.
They say that the same confraternity exists among
the dead and that it never fails to lend a hand; the
hooded brothers, after death, will perform the same
job in the other Eusapia; rumor has it that some of
them are already dead by continue going up and
down. In any case, this confraternity's authority in
the Eusapia of the living is vast.
They say that every time they go below they find
something changed in the lower Eusapia; the dead
make innovations in their city; not many, but surely
the fruit of sober reflection, not passing whims.
From one year to the next, they say, the Eusapia of
the dead becomes unrecognizable. And the living, to
keep up with them, also want to do everything that
the hooded brothers tell them about the novelties of
the dead. So the Eusapia of the living has taken to
copying its underground copy.
They say that this has not just now begun to hap- 110
en: actually it was the dead who built the upper
Eusapia, in the image of their city. They say that in
the twin cities there is no longer any way of knowing
who is alive and who is dead.