Golden Apples of the Sun. Ray Bradbury
turned triumph to winter ashes. They have built their city’s walls like a great bonfire to burn our stick!”
The Mandarin’s heart sickened within him, like an autumn fruit upon an ancient tree. “Oh, gods! Travelers will spurn us. Tradesmen, reading the symbols, will turn from the stick, so easily destroyed, to the fire, which conquers all!”
“No,” said a whisper like a snowflake from behind the silken screen.
“No,” said the startled Mandarin.
“Tell my stonemasons,” said the whisper that was a falling drop of rain, “to build our walls in the shape of a shining lake.”
The Mandarin said this aloud, his heart warmed.
“And with this lake of water,” said the whisper and the old man, “we will quench the fire and put it out forever!”
The city turned out in joy to learn that once again they had been saved by the magnificent Emperor of ideas. They ran to the walls and built them nearer to this new vision, singing, not as loudly as before, of course, for they were tired, and not as quickly, for since it had taken a month to build the wall the first time, they had had to neglect business and crops and therefore were somewhat weaker and poorer.
There then followed a succession of horrible and wonderful days, one in another like a nest of frightening boxes.
“Oh, Emperor,” cried the messenger, “Kwan-Si has rebuilt their walls to resemble a mouth with which to drink all our lake!”
“Then,” said the Emperor, standing very close to his silken screen, “build our walls like a needle to sew up that mouth!”
“Emperor!” screamed the messenger. “They make their walls like a sword to break your needle!”
The Emperor held, trembling, to the silken screen. “Then shift the stones to form a scabbard to sheathe that sword!”
“Mercy,” wept the messenger the following morn, “they have worked all night and shaped the walls like lightning which will explode and destroy that sheath!”
Sickness spread in the city like a pack of evil dogs. Shops closed. The population, working now steadily for endless months upon the changing of the walls, resembled Death himself, clattering his white bones like musical instruments in the wind. Funerals began to appear in the streets, though it was the middle of summer, a time when all should be tending and harvesting. The Mandarin fell so ill that he had his bed drawn up by the silken screen and there he lay, miserably giving his architectural orders. The voice behind the screen was weak now, too, and faint, like the wind in the eaves.
“Kwan-Si is an eagle. Then our walls must be a net for that eagle. They are a sun to burn our net. Then we build a moon to eclipse their sun!”
Like a rusted machine, the city ground to a halt.
At last the whisper behind the screen cried out:
“In the name of the gods, send for Kwan-Si!”
Upon the last day of summer the Mandarin Kwan-Si, very ill and withered away, was carried into our Mandarin’s courtroom by four starving footmen. The two mandarins were propped up, facing each other. Their breaths fluttered like winter winds in their mouths. A voice said:
“Let us put an end to this.”
The old men nodded.
“This cannot go on,” said the faint voice. “Our people do nothing but rebuild our cities to a different shape every day, every hour. They have no time to hunt, to fish, to love, to be good to their ancestors and their ancestors’ children.”
“This I admit,” said the mandarins of the towns of the Cage, the Moon, the Spear, the Fire, the Sword and this, that, and other things.
“Carry us into the sunlight,” said the voice.
The old men were borne out under the sun and up a little hill. In the late summer breeze a few very thin children were flying dragon kites in all the colors of the sun, and frogs and grass, the color of the sea and the color of coins and wheat.
The first Mandarin’s daughter stood by his bed.
“See,” she said.
“Those are nothing but kites,” said the two old men.
“But what is a kite on the ground?” she said. “It is nothing. What does it need to sustain it and make it beautiful and truly spiritual?”
“The wind, of course!” said the others.
“And what do the sky and the wind need to make them beautiful?”
“A kite, of course—many kites, to break the monotony, the sameness of the sky. Colored kites, flying!”
“So,” said the Mandarin’s daughter. “You, Kwan-Si, will make a last rebuilding of your town to resemble nothing more nor less than the wind. And we shall build like a golden kite. The wind will beautify the kite and carry it to wondrous heights. And the kite will break the sameness of the wind’s existence and give it purpose and meaning. One without the other is nothing. Together, all will be beauty and co-operation and a long and enduring life.”
Whereupon the two mandarins were so overjoyed that they took their first nourishment in days, momentarily were given strength, embraced, and lavished praise upon each other, called the Mandarin’s daughter a boy, a man, a stone pillar, a warrior, and a true and unforgettable son. Almost immediately they parted and hurried to their towns, calling out and singing, weakly but happily.
And so, in time, the towns became the Town of the Golden Kite and the Town of the Silver Wind. And harvestings were harvested and business tended again, and the flesh returned, and disease ran off like a frightened jackal. And on every night of the year the inhabitants in the Town of the Kite could hear the good clear wind sustaining them. And those in the Town of the Wind could hear the kite singing, whispering, rising, and beautifying them.
“So be it,” said the Mandarin in front of his silken screen.
The soft knock came at the kitchen door, and when Mrs. O’Brian opened it, there on the back porch were her best tenant, Mr. Ramirez, and two police officers, one on each side of him. Mr. Ramirez just stood there, walled in and small.
“Why, Mr. Ramirez!” said Mrs. O’Brian.
Mr. Ramirez was overcome. He did not seem to have words to explain.
He had arrived at Mrs. O’Brian’s rooming house more than two years earlier and had lived there ever since. He had come by bus from Mexico City to San Diego and had then gone up to Los Angeles. There he had found the clean little room, with glossy blue linoleum, and pictures and calendars on the flowered walls, and Mrs. O’Brian as the strict but kindly landlady. During the war he had worked at the airplane factory and made parts for the planes that flew off somewhere, and even now, after the war, he still held his job. From the first he had made big money. He saved some of it, and he got drunk only once a week—a privilege that, to Mrs. O’Brian’s way of thinking, every good workingman deserved, unquestioned and unreprimanded.
Inside Mrs. O’Brian’s kitchen, pies were baking in the oven. Soon the pies would come out with complexions like Mr. Ramirez’—brown and shiny and crisp, with slits in them for the air almost like the slits of Mr. Ramirez’ dark eyes. The kitchen smelled good. The policemen leaned forward, lured by the odor. Mr. Ramirez gazed at his feet as if they had carried him into all this trouble.
“What happened, Mr. Ramirez?” asked Mrs. O’Brian.
Behind Mrs. O’Brian, as he lifted his eyes, Mr. Ramirez saw the long table laid with clean white linen and set with a platter, cool, shining glasses, a water pitcher with ice cubes floating inside it, a bowl of fresh potato salad and one of bananas and oranges, cubed and sugared. At this table sat Mrs. O’Brian’s children—her three grown