Berenice

Note

Instead of Berenice, the unjust city, Marco would rather tell of the just city hidden within it: in a cellar, in a back room, those who share its secret recognise one another by a sign. But in the seed of the just city a malignant one is hidden in turn: the certainty of being right turning into injustice. So the future Berenices are all already present in this instant, one inside the other.

In the scene the unjust city is a stepped mass, walls within walls, rising to a crown. Hidden at the foot of the walls glow a few warm seeds of the just city. Each just city in turn, low, open, without a centre, keeps in its courtyards small dark seeds of the next unjust city.

Touch a seed: the world zooms into it, the old city grows past sight and vanishes, and the seed opens into a whole city around you, with its own hidden seeds. And so on, always different, without end.