The swift and most efficient means of communication in the Blue City was the pneumatic tubes. Of course, you could always pay a market urchin to run an errand or deliver a message. Still, the tube entrances were everywhere, and delivery was almost instantaneous, if not completely accurate. For example, a few steps from our front gate, a small glass door was set in the stone wall. You simply opened the door and inserted whatever you wanted to send, having said aloud the delivery address. There would be a wash of air, and the letter or parcel would be sucked into the system only to reappear at the correct destination.
There was never a misdelivery. That was not the problem.
No one knows how the system worked. It dates back thousands of years to the golden shahs, also called tsars or caesars. Then, the city was ruled by a magician and engineer caste. Their works remained, but all their images and statues were long gone.
My mother, if asked, would say that a person did not need to understand how something worked for it to work. We, her children, plagued her with questions of why, how, what, where, who, and when.
When annoyed, she" 'd demand: "Do you know how the liver works?"
We'd shake our heads.
"Do you even know where it is in your body?"
No.
"But it works, doesn't it?" she'd say. We'd suppose so and give her a few hours of peace.
The problem with the tubes was that sometimes things that were sent were transformed in transit. With market urchins, too, my mother would joke. You'd sent six pastries home with them, and only five would arrive! It was a clever remark, but after all, my mother knew from personal experience just how whimsical the tubes could be.
When we first moved into the city, my mother's great aunt—a very elderly lady of dignity but little mobility—sent her a welcoming package containing a large and brilliant amethyst brooch. My mother was a tall woman with bold coloring, and it would have beautifully ornamented one of her flowing dresses.
However, it was not a brooch that arrived. When my mother unwrapped the medium-sized package, it contained a large slice of Three Colored Cake—the iconic dessert of the Blue City.
Only when I grew up and left did I discover that only some places in the world had a bakery on every corner. The Blue City was a metropolis of sugar and flour. Every neighborhood had its specialities: the quarter of Bird's Nest Pistachio Delight, the one of cream buns in syrup (loved mainly by children), and the confections where everything was dipped in chocolate. But Three Colored Cake was universal: the first layer was blue with berries, the second yellow with lemons, and the third mud brown with dark chocolate. Blue represented the city itself, yellow was the sun as the source of life, and brown was the earth. Our mother, brown, was also most people's favorite layer. Brown was also most people's favorite layer.
It was delicious but not the sort of thing the aunt would send my mother. My mother sent the aunt a message by runner, and the reply instructed her to return the cake slice, which my mother did. But when the aunt opened the package, it contained a small but talkative gray parrot. The aunt was delighted with the parrot, but after that, my mother simply visited in person for tea and the lighter desserts they both preferred, such as candied orange slices and sugared almonds.
The bakeries of the Blue City were a paradise for children but also a hell. My friends were all limited in the amount of sweets they were allowed. Some to once a day, some to once a week. As a rule, parents were indulgent and not too strict. But some were too poor to feed a sweet-tooth, particularly if they had many children. And some feared the cost of the dentist—pulling a tooth was not cheap.
My mother, though, was her usual somewhat unpredictable mix of strict and indulgent. She kept a jar of small coins in the hallway, and we could help ourselves. I never ate myself sick, and I had plenty to share with my friends. My mother's trust in me was well-founded, at least in those days.
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Through the Tubes
by Miriam Sagan
Bio:
Miriam Sagan is the author of over thirty poetry, fiction, and memoir books. Her most recent include Castaway (Red Mountain, 2023), and A Hundred Cups of Coffee (Tres Chicas, 2019). She is a two-time winner of the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards, recipient of the City of Santa Fe Mayor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, and a New Mexico Literary Arts Gratitude Award. She has been a writer in residence in four national parks, Yaddo, MacDowell, Gullkistan in Iceland, Kura Studio in Japan, and a dozen more remote and interesting places. She works with text and sculptural installation as part of the mother/daughter creative team Maternal Mitochondria (with Isabel Winson-Sagan) in venues ranging from RV parks to galleries. She founded and directed the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College until her retirement. Her poetry was set to music for the Santa Fe Women's Chorus, incised on stoneware for two haiku pathways, and projected as video inside an abandoned building during the pandemic under the auspices of Vital Spaces. Her speculative novels include Shadow on the Minotaur (Red Mountain) and Black Rainbow (Sherman Asher Publishing).
