It moved. Shift to the side, then gone, off into the trees. No sound at all.
Kevin let out a breath. Little tingle up his spine, around the hair on the back of his neck. What the…?
Long day. Nothing out there but night. He shook his head, went inside.
2
2 March 2012, 8 A.M. I decided that as a gesture to its spirit I would write my book outdoors. Unfortunately it’s snowing today. The balcony above ours makes a sort of roof, however, so I am sticking to my resolve. Roll out computer stand, extension cords, chair. Sit bundled in down booties, bunting pants, down jacket, down hood. Plug in and pound away. The mind’s finest hour. My hands are cold.
“Stark bewölkt, Schnee.” We haven’t seen the sun all year, even the Zürchers are moaning. Suddenly a dream comes back to me: Owens Valley in spring bloom.
Writing a utopia. Certainly it’s a kind of compensation, a stab at succeeding where my real work has failed. Or at least an attempt to clarify my beliefs, my desires.
I remember in law school, thinking that the law determined the way the world was run, that if I learned it I could change things. Then the public defender’s office, the case loads, the daily grind. The realization that nothing I did there would ever change things. And it wasn’t much better at the CLE, or doing lawsuits for the Socialist Party, miserable remnant that it was. So many attacks from so many directions, we were lucky if we could hold on to the good that already existed. No chance to improve things. Nothing but a holding action. Really it was a relief when this post-doc of Pam’s gave me the chance to quit.
Now I’ll change the world in my mind.
Our balcony overlooks a small yard, surrounded by solid brick buildings. A massive linden dominates smaller trees and shrubs. Wet black branches thrust into a white sky. Below me are two evergreens, one something like a holly, the other something like a juniper; the birds are clustered in these, fluffed quivering feather-balls, infrequently cheeping. Between two buildings, a slice of Zürich: Grossmünster and Fraumünster and their copper-green spires, steely lake, big stone buildings of the university, the banks, the medieval town. Iron sound of a tram rolling downhill.
I’m writing a utopia in a country that runs as efficiently as Züri’s blue trams, even though it has four languages, two religions, a nearly useless landscape. Conflicts that tear the rest of the world apart are solved here with the coolest kind of rationality, like engineers figuring out a problem in materials stress. How much torque can society take before it snaps, Dr. Science? Ask the Swiss.
Maybe they’re too good at it. Refugees are pouring in, Ausländer nearly half the population they say, and so the National Action party has won some elections, become part of the ruling coalition. With a bullet. Return Switzerland to the Swiss! they cry. And in fact yesterday we got an einladung from the Fremdenkontrolle der Stadt Zürich. The Stranger Control. Time to renew our Ausländerausweise. It’s down to every four months now. I wonder if they’ll try to kick us out this time.
For now, all is calm. White flakes falling. I write in a kind of pocket utopia, a little island of calm in a maddened world. Perhaps it will help make my future seem more plausible to me—perhaps, remembering Switzerland, it will even seem possible.
But there’s no such thing as a pocket utopia.
The next morning Nadezhda joined Kevin and Doris for the visit to Oscar Baldarramma. They biked over in heavy traffic (voices, squeaky brakes, whirring derailleurs) and coasted down Oscar’s street, gliding through the spaced shadows of liquid amber trees, so that it seemed the morning blinked.
Oscar’s house was flanked by lemon and avocado trees. Un-harvested lemons lay rotting in the weeds, giving the air a sweet-sour scent. The house itself was an old stucco and wood suburban thing, roofed with concrete tiles. A separate garden and bike shed stood under an avocado tree at the back of the lot, and a bit of the house’s roof extended before the shed: “Carport,” Kevin said, eyeing it with interest. “Pretty rare.”
Oscar greeted them in a Hawaiian shirt slashed with yellow and blue stripes, and purple shorts. He ignored Doris’s exaggerated squint, and led them inside for a tour. It was a typical tract house, built in the 1950s. Doris remarked that it was a big place for one person, and Oscar promptly hunched over and took a long sideways step, waggling his eyebrows fiercely and brandishing an invisible cigar: “Always available for boarding!”
Kevin and Doris stared at him, and he straightened up. “Groucho Marx,” he explained.
Kevin and Doris looked at each other. “I’ve heard the name,” Doris said. Kevin nodded.
Oscar glanced at Nadezhda, who was grinning. His mouth made a little O. “In that case…” he murmured, and turned to show them the next room.
When the tour was finished Kevin asked what Oscar wanted done.
“The usual thing.” Oscar waved a hand. “Big clear walls that make it impossible to tell if you’re indoors or out, an atrium three stories tall, perhaps an aviary, solar air conditioning and refrigeration and waste disposal, some banana trees and cinnamon bushes, a staircase with gold bannisters, a library big enough to hold twenty thousand books, and a completely work-free food supply.”
“You don’t want to garden?” Doris asked.
“I detest gardening.”
Doris rolled her eyes. “That’s silly, Oscar.”
Oscar nodded solemnly. “I’m a silly guy.”
“Where will you get your vegetables?”
“I will buy them. You recall the method.”
“Huh,” Doris said, not amused.
They viewed the back yard in a frosty silence. Kevin tried to get Oscar to speak seriously about his desires, but had little success. Oscar spoke of libraries, wood paneling, fireplaces, comfortable little nooks where one could huddle on long winter nights…. Kevin tried to explain that winter nights in the region weren’t all that long, or cold. That he tended to work in a style that left a lot of open space, making homes that functioned as nearly self-sufficient little farms. Oscar seemed agreeable, although he still spoke in the same way about what he wanted. Kevin scratched his head, squinted at him. Buddha, babbling.
Finally Nadezhda asked Oscar about the previous night’s council meeting.
“Ah yes. Well—I’m not sure how much you know about the water situation here?”
She stood to attention, as if reciting a lesson. “The American West begins where the annual rainfall drops below ten inches.”
“Exactly.”
And therefore, Oscar went on, much of the United States was a desert civilization; and like all previous desert civilizations, it was in danger of foundering when its water systems began to clog. Currently some sixty million people lived in the American West, where the natural supplies of water might support two or three. But even the largest reservoirs silt up, and most of the West, existing not just on surface water, had mined its groundwater like oil—thousands of years of accumulated rainfall, pumped out of the ground in less than a century. The great aquifers were drying up, and the reservoirs were holding less each day; while drought, in their warming climate, was more and more common. So the search for water was becoming desperate.
The solution was on a truly gigantic scale, which pleased the Army Corps of Engineers no end. Up in the Northwest, the Columbia River poured enormous amounts of water into the Pacific every year. Washington, Oregon and Idaho squawked mightily, remembering how Owens Valley had withered when Los Angeles gained the rights to its water; but the Columbia carried more than a hundred times the water those states were ever expected to need, and their fellow states to the south were truly in need. The Corps of Engineers loved the idea: dams, reservoirs, pipelines, canals—a multi-billion-dollar system, rescuing the sand-choked civilizations of the south. Grand! Lovely! What could be nicer? “It’s what we’ve done in California for years; instead of moving to where the water is, we move the water to where the people are.”