The traveller had stopped trying to understand the city.
This was not the same as giving up.
She had discovered that understanding, as she had previously practised it, required things to remain still long enough to be understood.
The city did not cooperate.
So she had adopted a different method.
She walked.
She walked without a map.
She walked without asking where a street would lead.
She walked without assuming that the building she had left would still be the building she returned to.
For several days, this worked surprisingly well.
Then she found the corridor.
It was not remarkable.
That was the first thing she noticed.
It was simply a long passage running between two buildings.
The walls were made of pale stone.
There were three windows on the left.
Two on the right.
At the far end was a door.
The traveller stopped.
She had seen the two buildings before.
They stood on opposite sides of a narrow courtyard.
She remembered them because they had seemed unusually close together.
Yet they had always been separate.
The building on the left contained a library.
The building on the right contained a bakery.
She had visited both.
She had entered the library through a red door.
She had entered the bakery through a green one.
There had been no connection between them.
Now there was a corridor.
She approached the entrance.
An old man was sitting beside it.
“Was this here yesterday?” she asked.
The old man looked at the corridor.
“No.”
“Then when did it appear?”
“Today.”
“Who built it?”
“Nobody.”
She looked at him.
“Nobody?”
“No.”
“Then how did it get here?”
The old man smiled.
“It became necessary.”
“Necessary for what?”
“To connect the two buildings.”
“They were already next to each other.”
“Yes.”
“So why did they need connecting?”
“They didn't.”
The traveller frowned.
“But there is a corridor.”
“Yes.”
“So something must have caused it.”
The old man shrugged.
“Perhaps.”
She decided not to pursue the matter.
She entered the corridor.
It was longer than it looked from outside.
She walked past the first window.
It overlooked the courtyard.
She walked past the second.
It overlooked the courtyard too.
The third showed the library.
She stopped.
She had expected the bakery.
She walked on.
The fourth window showed shelves of books.
The fifth showed ovens.
She stopped again.
She looked back.
The windows had changed.
There were now two on the left and three on the right.
The old man was still sitting outside.
“Does this corridor change?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why?”
“Because the buildings change.”
“But the buildings don't change.”
The old man looked at her.
“They do now.”
She continued walking.
At the end of the corridor was a door.
She opened it.
She found herself in the library.
She turned around.
The door was still there.
She opened it again.
The corridor.
She closed it.
The library.
She stood still.
There was something peculiar about the arrangement.
The corridor did not seem to lead from the library to the bakery.
It seemed to lead from the library to a place that could sometimes become the bakery.
She walked back.
At the middle of the corridor she heard a sound.
A bell.
She opened one of the windows.
The bakery was ringing its morning bell.
She could smell bread.
She opened another window.
The library was silent.
She walked on.
When she reached the far end, the door opened before she touched it.
The baker stood there.
He was holding a loaf of bread.
“Would you like one?”
The traveller accepted it.
“Thank you.”
The baker looked past her.
“So it has finally happened.”
“What?”
“The connection.”
She glanced back.
“The corridor?”
“Yes.”
“Why did it happen?”
The baker thought.
“We started needing things from the library.”
“What things?”
“Books.”
The traveller smiled.
“Books aren't usually needed by bakeries.”
“These are.”
“What for?”
“Recipes.”
“There are recipes in books.”
“Exactly.”
“But surely you could have carried them across the courtyard.”
“We did.”
“So why the corridor?”
The baker shrugged.
“After a while, carrying became walking.”
“And?”
“Then walking became going.”
“And then?”
He smiled.
“Then there was somewhere to go.”
The traveller looked at him.
She thought of the first door.
The room that had appeared when the door opened.
The locked door.
The possibility that had not yet become.
Perhaps the city was not merely producing new places.
Perhaps it was producing new kinds of relation.
She followed the baker into the shop.
It was larger than she remembered.
The walls had moved outward.
There were shelves she had never seen before.
A long table occupied the centre.
Books were scattered across it.
She picked one up.
It was a cookbook.
She opened it.
The pages were blank.
“That's strange.”
The baker laughed.
“It hasn't been written yet.”
“But the book exists.”
“Yes.”
“So the recipes are not in it.”
“Not yet.”
She put it down.
A woman came through the door carrying a stack of papers.
She placed them on the table.
The baker looked at them.
“Good.”
“What are those?” asked the traveller.
“Notes from the library.”
She looked towards the corridor.
“So the books are becoming recipes.”
“Some of them.”
“And the recipes are becoming bread.”
“Some of them.”
“And the bread?”
The baker smiled.
“Becoming breakfast.”
She laughed.
The sequence seemed almost too neat.
Yet something about it bothered her.
She looked at the bread in her hand.
“Was this bread always possible?”
The baker shrugged.
“I suppose.”
“Then why did it require the library?”
“It didn't.”
“Then why does the library matter?”
He looked at her.
“Because without it, this bread would not have happened.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No.”
“What is the difference?”
The baker considered.
“Possibility isn't the same as history.”
She said nothing.
He continued.
“The bread may have been possible before yesterday. But this bread has a history.”
The traveller looked at the loaf.
She had never thought of possibility that way.
She had imagined possibility as a set of things that could happen.
The baker seemed to be suggesting something else.
A possibility might become significant only through the relations that bring a particular becoming about.
She returned to the corridor.
It seemed shorter now.
The library door stood open.
She entered.
The librarian was at the desk.
“Why did you build the corridor?”
“We didn't.”
“It appeared because the bakery needed the library.”
“Yes.”
“Then why is it here now?”
The librarian looked puzzled.
“Why wouldn't it be?”
“Because perhaps the bakery no longer needs the library.”
The librarian smiled.
“Perhaps.”
“Then the corridor could disappear.”
“It could.”
“Will it?”
“We'll see.”
The traveller looked around.
The library was different too.
There were fewer shelves.
More tables.
People were sitting together.
One was reading aloud.
Another was writing.
A third was explaining something to a group of children.
The library had become less like a storehouse of books and more like a place where things happened.
She turned to the librarian.
“Did the corridor change the library?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“It gave us somewhere to go.”
“But you already had somewhere to go.”
The librarian shook her head.
“No. We had somewhere to be.”
She waited.
“The corridor gave us somewhere to go.”
The traveller thought about this.
The distinction seemed small.
It was not.
She walked to the window.
The bakery was visible across the courtyard.
A baker carried bread towards the library.
A librarian carried books towards the bakery.
Children moved between the two.
The courtyard that had once separated the buildings was now full of movement.
She looked at the two buildings.
They still appeared separate.
But they no longer seemed to be the same two buildings.
She understood why.
The corridor had not simply connected them.
It had changed what each building could be.
The library was now partly a place from which one could go to the bakery.
The bakery was now partly a place from which one could go to the library.
Their identities had acquired a history that neither had possessed before.
She went outside.
The old man was gone.
In his place was a child.
The traveller recognised him.
It was the boy from the locked door.
He was holding a piece of blue glass.
“You again.”
He nodded.
“Does the corridor belong to the library or the bakery?”
“Neither.”
“Then who does it belong to?”
“The space between.”
She looked at him.
“Where is the space between?”
He pointed.
“There.”
She looked.
The space between the buildings was no longer empty.
It contained the corridor.
She smiled.
“That isn't an answer.”
“It is here.”
She crouched beside him.
“Before the corridor, what was between them?”
“The courtyard.”
“And before the courtyard?”
“Something else.”
“What?”
He shrugged.
“I don't know.”
“So there has always been something between them?”
“Yes.”
“Then what changed?”
The boy looked at the corridor.
“Now the between has become something.”
The traveller stood.
She looked at the buildings again.
For the first time, she saw that she had been imagining relation as a kind of invisible thread stretched between things.
Two buildings.
A connection.
Two people.
A relationship.
Two places.
A path.
As though the things came first and the relation arrived afterwards.
But the corridor suggested another possibility.
Perhaps a relation could become sufficiently organised to acquire its own existence.
And once it did, it could change the things it related.
The library and bakery had not first existed in isolation and then acquired a corridor.
They had become different buildings through becoming connected.
The traveller looked towards the far end of the corridor.
A door had appeared there.
She had not noticed it before.
She walked towards it.
The door was open.
Beyond it was another corridor.
She stopped.
She did not enter.
She looked back at the library.
Then at the bakery.
Then at the space between them.
The city seemed suddenly larger.
Not because there were more streets.
Because there were more ways for things to become.
She turned away from the new door.
Somewhere behind her, the bell of the bakery rang.
A moment later, the library bell answered.
Then, from somewhere neither building had contained before, came a third sound.
A bell she had never heard.
The traveller looked up.
There was now another door in the wall.
It had not been there a moment ago.
She smiled.
Then she began to walk towards it.
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