VIII - Cities at Night

“Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It’s nothing. Just sad dreams. Or something like that.” One of the most memorable openings of a novel. Even the first three words instantly form a picture in your mind. The picture, it’s worth remembering, is probably very different depending on the cities of your experience. Currently sat in a blue city, which I have warmed to (after the worst possible start); this evening, when my house was all stilled – the babies lulled to sleep by the deeply poetic rhythms of Kipling’s Jungle Book (reading it to children is a great pleasure, the sounds of the words themselves generate the tone and timbre of the story), the book of which has fulfilled the Disney film in its first twelve pages – I took to the streets of Jodhpur, which away from the market is elegant with beautiful buildings rising up from the trash, lame dogs and sweet-smoky street-fires, nestled into the warm lights of the fort above, with a glorious stepwell romantically lit by tea lights dropping below the level of the street. In this case it’s the city that brings Martin Amis’ opening to mind rather than the city brought to mind, but it is a city of men driven by who knows what on their motorbikes’ endless lonely circling. But I am glad to be alone – eating pakora while food is wasted on half my family, I have the guilty freedom of the parent of young children – an escape to an adult place in the rare unallocated hour, where I might be young, free, anyone. And today has been a trial – the most beautiful fort and palace we have so far visited with two tyrants who dictated attention and fury by their maddening inconsiderate energies. But it has been a good day. It nearly capsized – this morning I lost my phone, which has our only bank card that can withdraw cash. An Olympian hero ran 500m to return it to me, leaving me in despair for only five minutes, and afterwards so flooded with relief all things were possible. The kite festival was cancelled but we were instead plunged into a game of cricket with local boys, begging to hear the names of their favourite England cricketers and wildly applauding my unpractised strokes. Minutes later Rhiannon was singing with an Indian military band, playing an Italian socialist song of some sort, proving that sport and music know no boundaries.

But I am writing now of cities at night, and my city is not your city. I was made to think of this as I read morning prayer today. Most Christians don’t read morning prayer and now that Matins has been replaced on Sundays with the Eucharist, most Christians are entirely unfamiliar with what had been the mainstay of Anglican worship for more than four hundred years. For Sundays this matters little – there is more depth in the liturgy of the Eucharist and more variety of movement and action for the work of the Spirit within the sacrament. Something is lost though that has resonated through British Christian worship for centuries. The Benedicite and Te Deum we can live without, but the Benedictus, the axis of matins, the spontaneous hymn of Zechariah, is a great loss to our worship. It’s opening line: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who has come to his people and set them free” sets the context of the people’s worship of God as a liberation. Our faith is nothing if not a liberation, a redemption, and yet I wonder how much of this freedom we really take hold of.

Blue city with Jodhpur fort behind

But I was particularly struck by the set psalm – psalm 8 – which normally I unreasonably loathe. Here the psalmist speaks of God as a fortress, a stronghold against our foes. Across and above me at breakfast rose the might fortress at Jodhpur with its steep entrance and many narrow gates, spiked at 8’ to prevent the battering of Elephants. I visited castles frequently as a child and could still name you all the significant castles of the noble families of England and Wales. They are nothing in comparison with the grandeur and defence of Indian castles. Visitors to Jerusalem will know the thickness of its walls but there is a reason Jerusalem has been overrun time and again, while these Indian forts imperviously rise above our rough keeps and France’s ineffective chateaux. And it occurred to me how far our reading of a psalm, say, is determined by our own mental imagery. You have your city at night, your castle. When you imagine the heavens, the moon and stars seen in London, it is not the firmament observed here in this desert of Thar, second only to great Sahara; our birds are not the eagles that hover around the fort, our wild beasts do not include the panther and tiger. Perhaps this is why English religion is more easily overcome. Our images have faded – a king without power, a ruined castle, the friendly robin, a clouded horizon. At funerals I often remark on how psalm 23 conjures for us a very English picture – a pub garden in Devon, far from its Middle-Eastern setting. I fear that God has let mortals have the upper hand and his glory hidden by the transitory stars of our own making in cities at night where men cry in their sleep and say nothing.