The traveller woke before dawn.
For several moments she did not know where she was.
The room was dark.
The window was open.
Somewhere below, a cart moved slowly through the street.
She lay still and listened.
A wheel struck a stone.
A horse breathed.
Someone coughed.
A door opened.
Then another.
The traveller sat up.
She had heard doors opening before.
Many times.
But this morning she heard them differently.
The first door did not simply open.
It altered the street.
A light appeared.
A woman stepped outside carrying a basket.
She crossed the road.
Another door opened in response.
Or perhaps not in response.
A man emerged.
The two stopped and spoke.
The woman changed direction.
The man followed her for several steps.
A third door opened.
A child appeared.
The traveller watched from the window.
Nothing remarkable was happening.
That was what made it remarkable.
The city was waking.
She dressed and went outside.
The streets were still grey with early light.
She walked without deciding where to go.
At the first corner, she found a wall where there had previously been a shop.
She did not stop.
At the second, the shop had returned.
She continued.
A baker was opening his door.
The traveller recognised him.
“The corridor?” she asked.
He looked confused.
“What corridor?”
“The one between the bakery and the library.”
He smiled.
“Ah.”
He pointed across the square.
The library was there.
The bakery was there.
Between them was the courtyard.
No corridor.
“Did it disappear?” she asked.
“No.”
She looked at the empty space.
“It isn't there.”
The baker shrugged.
“Then perhaps we aren't using it.”
She watched him carry a tray inside.
A moment later, the librarian emerged from her building holding a book.
She crossed the courtyard.
The baker came out again.
She handed him the book.
He handed her a loaf of bread.
The traveller watched.
“There.”
The baker looked at her.
“What?”
“You're connected.”
He smiled.
“Of course.”
“But there is no corridor.”
“Do we need one?”
The traveller looked at the courtyard.
Yesterday—if yesterday was still the right word—the corridor had seemed essential.
It had changed both buildings.
It had become a place of movement.
Now it was gone.
Yet the relation remained.
Or had changed.
She was no longer sure that a relation required a thing to contain it.
Perhaps the corridor had never been the relation.
Perhaps it had been one way the relation had become visible.
She continued walking.
The city was becoming busy.
Shutters opened.
Carts appeared.
Windows filled with faces.
People crossed streets.
Stopped.
Turned.
Entered buildings.
Left them.
The traveller began to notice how difficult it was to say where one thing ended and another began.
A street became a market because people arrived.
A doorway became an entrance because someone approached it.
A square became a meeting place because nobody left.
A wall became a boundary because something was kept apart.
Nothing seemed simply to possess the identity she had once assigned to it.
Everything was doing something.
Or becoming something.
She stopped beside a fountain.
It was the fountain she had once found missing.
Water moved through its basin.
A child was sitting on the edge.
He was dropping leaves into the water.
The traveller recognised him.
“You found the fountain.”
The child looked up.
“No.”
She smiled.
“No?”
“It found me.”
He dropped another leaf.
She sat beside him.
“Was it here yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“And before that?”
“Yes.”
“Then why wasn't it here when I first arrived?”
The child thought.
“You weren't here.”
“I was.”
“Not here.”
She looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
He pointed towards the fountain.
“Now you are here with it.”
The traveller laughed.
“You've been speaking to the innkeeper.”
“No.”
“That sounds like something he would say.”
The child watched the leaves.
“Things don't happen by themselves.”
The traveller became quiet.
The child continued.
“Not even fountains.”
“What happens with a fountain?”
“Water.”
“Yes.”
“Stone.”
“Yes.”
“People.”
“Yes.”
“Leaves.”
He dropped another into the basin.
“Stories.”
The traveller looked at the water.
The fountain had once been an absence.
Then a memory.
Then a past she could enter.
Now it was simply there.
And yet it was not simply there.
Its being there was entangled with all the ways it had entered the city's history.
She thought of the map.
How absurdly simple it now seemed.
A map had assumed that the city could be represented as a collection of things in places.
Streets.
Buildings.
Walls.
Doors.
But the city was not merely made of things.
It was made of arrivals.
Departures.
Openings.
Closings.
Meetings.
Absences.
Questions.
She looked down at the child.
“What is the city made of?”
He considered this.
“More city.”
The traveller laughed.
“That doesn't explain anything.”
“I know.”
He stood and ran away.
She remained beside the fountain.
For the first time since arriving, she tried to imagine the city from above.
Not as a map.
She had abandoned maps.
She imagined instead the innumerable movements occurring at that moment.
Someone leaving a house.
Someone entering a room.
A baker carrying bread.
A librarian opening a book.
A child knocking on a wall.
A door appearing.
A door disappearing.
A corridor forming between two buildings.
A relation changing.
A possibility becoming possible.
The city seemed less like an object than an event.
No.
Not an event.
Events happened and ended.
The city did not happen once.
It continued.
It was not a thing that existed and then changed.
Its existence consisted in changing.
The traveller stood.
She began walking again.
As she moved through the streets, she noticed work being done everywhere.
A man was repairing a roof.
Two women were planting flowers beside a wall.
Children were carrying stones.
A group of people stood around a doorway, arguing about whether it should be painted.
At first she thought they were rebuilding the city.
Then she understood that this was not quite right.
The city was not something waiting to be completed.
It was already being built.
And not only by builders.
The argument about the door changed the doorway.
The people carrying stones created a path.
The flowers altered where people walked.
The baker and librarian made a courtyard into a place of exchange.
The child and the fountain made a place into a memory.
Every relation seemed to alter the conditions of later relations.
The city was not merely occupied by its inhabitants.
It was composed through their participation.
She turned into a street she had never seen before.
Or perhaps had seen many times.
A woman was sweeping outside her house.
The traveller stopped.
“Excuse me.”
The woman looked up.
“Can you tell me when this street was built?”
The woman leaned on her broom.
“Which street?”
“This one.”
She looked around.
“It wasn't built.”
The traveller smiled.
“Of course it was.”
“No.”
“There must have been a time before the street existed.”
The woman shrugged.
“There was a path.”
“And before that?”
“Ground.”
“And before that?”
The woman smiled.
“You like beginnings.”
The traveller laughed.
“So I've been told.”
The woman resumed sweeping.
“People began walking.”
“And then?”
“They kept walking.”
“That made a street?”
“Eventually.”
The traveller looked down.
The stones were worn smooth.
“How?”
The woman stopped.
“By walking.”
She continued sweeping.
The traveller stood there for some time.
The answer seemed almost insulting in its simplicity.
A street did not necessarily begin when someone decided to build one.
Perhaps it began when movement became repeated.
When repetition changed the ground.
When changed ground altered future movement.
When the relation between feet and earth acquired a history.
The street had built itself.
Not without people.
Not without stones.
Not without time.
But without requiring anyone to stand outside the process and impose the whole upon it.
She looked along the street.
At the far end stood a building.
She recognised it.
The inn.
She had not intended to return there.
She entered.
The innkeeper was sitting at his usual table.
He looked up.
“You're late.”
“For what?”
He smiled.
The traveller sat opposite him.
“The city builds itself.”
The innkeeper poured her a drink.
“Does it?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
She hesitated.
“Through everything.”
He nodded.
“That is a beginning.”
The traveller laughed.
“You knew.”
“I have lived here a long time.”
“But you never explained.”
“You never asked the right questions.”
She thought about this.
“I asked many questions.”
“Yes.”
“But not the right ones.”
“No.”
“What are the right questions?”
The innkeeper looked around the room.
“Questions that change what you can see.”
The traveller looked towards the window.
The street outside was crowded now.
The city was fully awake.
She watched a man stop before a wall.
He looked at it.
He touched the stone.
She leaned forward.
“Is he going to knock?”
The innkeeper did not look.
“Perhaps.”
“What will happen?”
He smiled.
“Perhaps.”
The traveller laughed.
She had expected more.
Then she realised that she no longer did.
The city had taught her that an answer was not always something one received.
Sometimes it was a relation one entered.
She drank.
After a while she asked:
“Who built the first part?”
The innkeeper looked at her.
“The first part of what?”
“The city.”
He smiled.
“Which city?”
She opened her mouth.
Then stopped.
She looked outside.
The city had no first part.
Or perhaps every part had once been first.
A wall.
A path.
A room.
A door.
A meeting.
A departure.
Something had to become before something else could become possible.
But no single beginning could contain them all.
The city was not moving away from an origin.
It was carrying innumerable beginnings with it.
She looked back at the innkeeper.
“Then nobody built the city.”
He shook his head.
“Everybody did.”
She smiled.
“That sounds like something you rehearsed.”
“I've had visitors before.”
“Did they understand?”
“Some.”
“And the others?”
“They made maps.”
The traveller laughed.
Outside, a bell began to ring.
Then another.
Then another.
The bells answered one another across the city.
She stood.
“Where are you going?” asked the innkeeper.
She looked towards the door.
“For a walk.”
“Where?”
She considered.
“Into the city.”
He smiled.
“You've been doing that for weeks.”
“No.”
She looked back at him.
“Not like this.”
She stepped outside.
The street seemed unchanged.
That was the strangest thing.
The buildings stood where they stood.
The doors opened and closed.
People passed.
Carts moved.
Children ran.
Nothing had been revealed behind the city.
There was no hidden machinery.
No architect in a tower.
No master map.
No secret room from which the whole was controlled.
The city had not concealed its principle.
It had been displaying it everywhere.
A city was not first built and then inhabited.
It was continually built through inhabiting.
A street was not first a street and then walked.
It became a street through walking.
A door was not merely placed between two completed places.
Sometimes it participated in making them distinct.
A room was not simply a space waiting to be occupied.
Its possibilities emerged through the relations that made an inside possible.
The traveller walked slowly.
She no longer needed the city to remain still.
She no longer needed to know where everything belonged.
She no longer needed to ask what was behind every wall.
The city had not become easier to understand.
It had become more possible.
Ahead of her, a child was standing beside a blank wall.
The traveller stopped.
The child raised a hand.
For a moment, she thought he would knock.
Instead he turned and ran away.
Nothing happened.
The traveller smiled.
Then she continued walking.
Behind her, the wall remained blank.
Ahead of her, somewhere she could not see, a door opened.
The city went on building itself.