Читать книгу The Grand Dark онлайн | страница 13

But even the rich can’t entirely keep ahead of it. The dust invades homes, offices, and churches, drifting down chimneys, snaking through cracks in window frames and under doors. The outdoor cafés and markets that display fruits and bread in the open air employ troops of ragged children armed with horsehair brushes and dustpans to wipe every surface clean. They throw the soot into the sewers, where it mixes with the city’s waste and drifts out to sea in a black tide that stains the hulls of fishing boats and smuggler ships alike a uniform gray. People call the color “city silver” and laugh it off because what else is there to do?

Thus, the citizens of Lower Proszawa have learned to live with the dust, even be amused by it. Of course, in the postwar elation that’s gripped much of the city, almost everything is amusing. Besides, it rains frequently and when the clouds part, the streets are washed clean, if just for a day or two.

Rain or shine, however, the power plants are nothing compared to what truly fills the skyline. Dominating much of the city are the cluster of immense foundries and assembly lines that make up the armaments factory. Unlike the streets, it is never completely clean. The coal dust clings to its sides and roofs. When the rains fall, they leave strangely beautiful ebony streaks and rivulets down the exteriors of the buildings, making the factory look ancient—like a mountain range that has been rooted to the spot forever.

Districts such as Kromium and Empyrean are kept pristine by cleaners who work in clouds of filth. Ironically, in some ways these workers are the lucky ones. While they go about their jobs, the crews wear surplus gas masks left over from the war. That means that for a few hours every day, they breathe air cleaner and sweeter than that of even the wealthiest industrialist or banker. Still, not everybody has the means to cope with the gray air so easily. It is a particular problem in the Rauschgift district.

Among the people I interviewed for this piece, Frau Mila Weill’s story is typical of the area. She lives in a cramped apartment with her children and grandmother. Herr Weill died suddenly from the Drops a few months earlier, leaving Frau Weill as the sole breadwinner. There are many explanations for the Drops among the ignorant class in these poorer districts: that foreigners from the southern colonies put it in the food shipped north or that chimeras that gobble trash in the gutters spread it with a bite. Frau Weill saw her husband die in agonizing convulsions and wonders if that is her fate too. She has a chronic cough, which is typical in the area, and it has advanced to the point where there is often blood in the sputum. Unable or, perhaps, afraid to go to one of the city’s hospitals for the indigent, she relies on the advice of her grandmother. The old woman tries to comfort Frau Weill using the only tools she has: folk remedies from the ancient past. She assures Frau Weill that she merely has a “touch of Rote Lungen,” and that “thistle-root tea will clear that right up.”