To begin, is only to begin again: they’d often lived scattered amongst the Others, interspersed among the general population, sometimes in houses Otherowned, never their homes, oftentimes forced into an exchange, though it’s explained that’s only when they’d been allowed out, allowed to mingle, to mix: emancipation, the Enlightenment, you’ve heard of it, I’m sure, read the thick books under thin covers amid the springs of your lives — a great flinging open of doors, an airing, we’re talking…when some left, many purchased houses and businesses, too, on the Square, becoming assimilated, intermarried, became unto others; though that’s not what the Sandersons want to do, not what they’re wanted to do, that’s not in the Schedule today’s what they’re told: not enough local color there, no flavor for the bud of the tongue — they want In, the clusters, the cloister…O follow the shivering river! the thaumaturgical thatching of roofs, their walls below a blessing for the prevention of breath, before falling: the Ghetto, is meant, and soon, in a matter of steps, there they are — a narrowed network of streets, the grid of Diaspora, the matrix of Exile left. Are we there yet? Is this it? What about this?
One more street, one last step — here we are.
Many times a city would have two ghettos, says Miriam though I don’t think that’s her real name.
Whatever, she their Guide.
If there were two, she says, they’d be situated at opposite ends — at the limits, we’re talking walls within walls…
How do you know? asks a Mister Johnson, where’s it marked?
And Miriam umbrellas to the Gate they’re just passing — unknowingly — through, higher and lower and narrower and wider than all.
Here, she says, there, this was the boundary, the border, this, the limen, the threshold — in one world out the other, you with me, keep up…
Now, if you’ll just follow me.
Often in the absence of a gate, she says, you’ll encounter wickets, relatively unobtrusive, or a highwire strung across the street at the height of first floors.
One step more, one last step.
