The streets of Shadalia are crossed by a network of canals which replace the city’s sewer system and provide a source of running water. In recent years, however, something has gone wrong with this system: the fish which inhabit the canals have increased in number and size so rapidly that now they fill the air with their nimble jumps, they clatter against the walls, their scales rattle in the sun. The stench is intolerable; worse still, the Canals Department has been unable to find a solution: every time a pipe or an outlet is blocked, the fish multiply even more. At night fears spread through the city: many believe that at night, when they are asleep, the fish creep onto the beds and bite sleeping humans. The doors of some houses are hung with rows of little bells that warn of the approach of nocturnal visitors - and, some say, to scare away the pesky fish. A citizen’s committee has been charged with studying all possible ways to get rid of the fish. Every day a different specialist is called in: an exterminator who proposes blowing up the canals; a zoologist who wants to classify the unknown species of fishes and study their phylogeny; an aquatic architect who thinks of constructing new channels for the water to run in glass tanks and place them at street level; a philosopher who points out that the stink and the scurrying scales stimulate the city’s sense of uncertainty and insecurity, and that this is good for the inhabitants’ spiritual health; an exorcist who suggests casting the waters out of the possessed canals with an appropriate ritual; a psychotherapist who thinks the problem arises from a repressed complex: the city’s desire to get rid of its sewers; finally, a screenwriter who would like to adapt this plot for the cinema: a horror story with few sets, set entirely in Shadalia’s night; there are only two protagonists, a young couple trapped in their bed by the swarming fish; in order to escape, they have to climb up on the suspended bells that jingle in the darkness. The committee ponders these solutions without discarding any of them; it has even taken the first steps toward some of them (for example, the exterminator has blown up a minor branching of the canals, and the zoologist is certain he will place this new species among the amphibians, between mudskippers and mudminnows). But the city remains full of malodorous fish. The Committee has not been able to satisfy the citizens’ desire for immediate solutions; nor has it succeeded in convincing them that, in any case, nothing is more urgent than studying the problem thoroughly - after all, there may be some truth in the psychotherapist’s hypothesis: Shadalia may be hiding an obsessive need to get rid of its sewers. The only result of all this effort has been the growing conviction that something more must be at stake in the city than just the problem of the canals and their fish. An architect proposes a hypothesis: perhaps the real function of the canals is not to remove waste water but to contain a surplus of spiritual life which, if it were not channeled upward, would well up from below. It is time to look for more reliable evidence about Shadalia’s true nature. I think of exploring the city’s subsoil: perhaps there, hidden in the sewers, the answer will be found. But I am afraid of going down there: a friend of mine who was in the city on business and decided to visit the sewers as a tourist attraction fell ill and is now suffering from delirium. He thinks he saw Shadalia’s true face when, plunging through an open manhole, he entered a vast labyrinth of dank tunnels, with forks and branches where pipes lead down, one by one, the city’s sewage. He was unable to get out; lost in the maze, he was seized by filth and stench, and he believes that he will spend all eternity there. I am afraid of going into the depths of Shadalia: if I visit the sewers, I may risk losing myself among the fish-filled canals and winding up in a delirium like my friend’s. But what other clues remain for shedding light on the city’s true nature? A director is shooting a movie in Shadalia: it is a horror film with many scenes set in the city’s streets at night, full of rumors about the fish and the nocturnal visits. The director says that his story is the true one: Shadalia’s real essence lies in the fright that seizes the inhabitants at night, when they are alone in their houses and think they are alone in the city. It only remains to discover what fears really exist beneath the rumors about fish and visits - to find out if these are just pretexts to give voice to other fears. I should like to interview some of the actors. If they would grant me an audience between one take and another… In the meantime, I am trying to reconstruct Shadalia’s image from the fragments that have reached us: a city on a plain watered by canals that also serve as sewers and are inhabited by fish. Perhaps it is unnecessary to study this city any further; perhaps we already know everything we need to know about it. It is the city of the ratio nundinarius, that lunar phase when, according to the old belief, it rains diamonds. That belief reveals a desire which the city satisfies: Shadalia makes both dreams coincide. A city where rumors run that at night fish invade the sewers and bite sleeping humans. An image of the city has reached us in which a boat sails over the roofs, carrying Ariel, the nymph who loves men. But perhaps it is upside down: maybe the boat is hanging below the streets’ ceilings. I ask myself if it is worth making any more efforts to penetrate Shadalia’s enigmatic essence. If we succeed in gaining access to its heart, we will certainly learn something about the city. But perhaps it would be better to leave the image that has reached us from there intact: a city of canals watering the gardens and taking away the sewage and is inhabited by fish. This image is more eloquent than any solution the city’s scholars and committees have found. If I had to describe Shadalia in one word, I would choose the word ‘in-between’. The city that combines two extremes and makes them coincide: dreams and sewers..

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