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the totality was not structurally different from a great spiral staircase, but one that had been pressed flat, except at its extremes, against a single plane. The guide told us that the landings at the ends of the ramps, along with the square recesses that appeared here and there, greater in number all the time approaching the center, were pullouts for carts that crossed paths while descending and ascending, for resting mules, fixing malfunctions, or any other eventuality. Before long we saw water tanks, troughs, and even small gardens, jutting out over the luminous abyss. In places where the rock seemed unstable, the parapet extended in columns to the bridge that formed the ceiling, all of it carved out of living rock, not a single fabricated feature. Our admiration for that prodigious construction increased at each new ramp: I even thought I saw the melancholy dissipate in Nébride’s eyes, replaced by a glow of joy for the past and excitement for great public works. At a particularly lush overhanging garden, on a landing significantly larger than all the others, uniquely adorned with a small columned vista, Nébride stood out like a white stone in the middle of the dense foliage. “Is there, perhaps, a tomb here?” he asked our guide. “Yes, there is a tomb. The tomb of master Susubruz, who built this ramp and oversaw its fifty-two year construction.” The guide parted the foliage and showed us the tomb: the date read 317 of the Isobascos Era, which, accordingly, would mark the date of his death, the guide told us, less than one year after the completion of the ramp, corresponding to the year 232 of the Grágido-Atánida Era: the ramp of the Meseged was completed, then, some eighty years before the Barcial bridge. “So much glory,” said Nébride, “has come to Grágidos and the Atánidas because of the bridge connecting the eastern and western sides of the Barcial, even though the two sides already communicated via raft; and here we have the Iscobascos and this astonishing ramp, which eighty years prior connected the north with the south, upper Barcial with lower Barcial—no other connection between them existed apart from the long circuitous route through the region of the Sovereign Villages or through the Llábrides Mountains—and yet they never received any great recognition for it. Then the guide detailed for us the characteristics of the ramp: the precipice was five hundred vertical units, and as the slope of the ramp was about eight percent, every hundred horses the drop was twelve vertical units,2 such that, to cover the five hundred units of the drop, the total length of the ramp was four-thousand-one-hundred-and-sixty horses. It necessarily had to be supplied with water; this came primarily from the stream that we had been seeing, but also from other springs that the carving of the rock had uncovered. It took a horse four to five hours to make the climb, it could take a cart fifteen to twenty hours, and men and animals had to be able to refresh themselves and to drink; so there were water tanks every six ramps, thirty-one in all; the water was also necessary to wash away excrement that was carried out through sewers to the cliff face. The excess water was used to vitalize the ramp with the cool, overhanging gardens that provided shade and moisture to the stone, burning in the midday sun. Water was such a necessity that when there was none, because of a problem at the source, cart drivers did not even attempt the climb, certain that at the very least their mules would perish, if not they themselves. Then we asked him about master Susubruz. The guide told us that he’d been the brother of the king’s mother, and was only slightly older than his nephew. That he’d begun planning the ramp’s construction even before his nephew took the throne. Some said he’d acted with excessive grace and flattery, hoping that when his nephew was king, he’d be allowed to carry out his project and that later on he’d take advantage of his nephew’s youth to exert his influence. But this was untrue; he was never disloyal nor did he mistreat the king in any way. His whole life had been driven by the desire to build that ramp and his behavior had to be understood in light of that singular passion. But in truth the notion that his passion was such that it robbed him of all human tenderness was refuted by his assertion that the greatest undertaking in the world was not worth a single human life, and by his consequent instructions that absolutely all of the work be done from inside and from above, never allowing a single scaffolding to be lowered over the edge of the abyss. He even managed to irritate his workers with the extreme nature of his precautions. The Sea-bounds, who were much wealthier than the Iscobascos, had supposedly offered significant financial assistance for the project, which would have required of the Iscobascos essentially only a symbolic contribution, such that the project might be finished in one half or one quarter of the anticipated time. But the Iscobascos cared little for this sort of intrusion—although it would alleviate a sizable expenditure for such a poor and austere people—and Susubruz threatened once again to resign from overseeing the project. That’s what he did whenever someone opposed him. And, of course, his departure had to be avoided at all costs; still, he was not always able to sway everyone with this threat, some quickly figured out what sort of thing would actually make him resign and when he was just posturing in order to get his way. The participation of the Sea-bounds would have actually caused Susubruz to abandon the project; so they had no choice but to reject the offer. The project, which lasted fifty-two years, ended without a single fatality and without any injuries more serious than a few men with hands or feet crushed by blocks of stone. Still, it was said, that in the last years of his life, already over eighty, his legs no longer permitting him to walk uphill and downhill, Susubruz commissioned a chair of wood and wicker in which, hanging from a rope and using a pulley, they raised and lowered him outside the parapet, suspended over the abyss, until on one occasion, seeing a strong wind lash him terrifyingly, scraping him and even causing his chair to slam into the rock wall, they’d had enough, and so they approached him claiming that he was not submitting himself to the same cautionary measures that he so harshly submitted the rest of them to, and he answered that the project could be finished perfectly without him and that he was old enough to be allowed certain whims and to satisfy them as he desired. To which the others were silent at first, but then someone even older than him said: “So you’re just an old egoist, because you know that it will be a death you won’t even feel, but it doesn’t even occur to you to think about how unpleasant it would be for us to have to go recover your body, shattered in a thousand pieces on the rocks down below. We can have a couple strong youths here everyday to take you up and down on a stretcher as many times as you like, even though it won’t be as much fun for you as the chair.” And with these words he was convinced to stop using the chair and pulley. [. . .] Because of the nature of the project, master Susubruz was given the nickname “woodworm of the Meseged.” When the guide stopped speaking, Nébride was thoughtful for a moment; then, removing a beautiful enamel pendant that he always wore around his neck, he said to the courtier: “Might I honor the memory of such a great man and great master, by leaving here, on his tomb, this pendant given to me by my grandfather Arriasco?” “Yes you may, and you can be sure that the Iscobascos will be grateful to you for the appreciation you have shown for such a deserving and so honorably remembered man.” [. . .]
XXX. It took us more than four hours, allowing for several stops, to descend the four-hundred-thousand horses of the Meseged ramp that comprised the fifty vertical unit drop of the cliff-face. Before us now opened a desolate territory of scattered whitish deposits formed by the accumulation of detritus that came, mostly, from the Meseged itself, with erosion ditches running through it, converging in sandy ravines that dropped to the banks of the Barcial. Here the path was not at all firm or stable, almost annually it was worn down or washed away, if not erased, by waters that, without a solid bed to retain them, continued to flow torrentially for some time after a downpour ended. Our Iscobasco escorts did not want to return without first seeing us through that desert—which extended a length of some three thousand horses—and putting us on the road to Gromba Feceria. Of course, that stretch was not without frequent traffic, it led to the Iscobasco ramp, which was the obligatory route to the north, because to the right was the path of Atabates, a people that traders generally avoided. That desert itself was vaguely considered an Atabate territory, although that consideration meant nothing. The Atabates populated an area to our right, on both banks of the Barcial, with only messenger rafts to communicate between the two sides, occupying an area of five thousand horses, downriver from the waterfalls. The Atabates were the only people at the bottom of the Meseged not descended from the Sea-bounds, and their bodies were no different than ours, nor those of the Atánidas, nor the Iscobascos. At one time it was speculated that the Atabates were the forefathers of all peoples and that, having previously occupied the lower Barcial much farther downriver, they had been pushed back by the invasion of the Sea-bounds, sending off successive emigrations that had gone
