FIELDS OF NIGHT

FRAGMENT OF THE BOOK:

“When he was done, blue flower petals lay strewn among the rounded stones of the temple yard and barefoot children stood in the drifts and squeezed them between their toes. The moons had gone off on their separate courses. He looked again at Berthe while the old men undid the long plaits of his hair. She sat in a patch of light by one of the stones that ringed the temple, a brother at her feet, looking inside where the city people danced for the lunar conjunction, or she was looking at Fea, the mother goddess, by the window.

“Fea, halted at a doorway by a suffering woman's cry, her woolen mantle pulled back by a strong right arm, turned from the direction of her motion to look with serene attention at the supplicant. Berthe looked at the sky then looked at Akiva and saw without surprise or modesty or pride that he watched her.”

SPATIAL:

In this paragraph we can clearly deduce where the action is talking place. The village people are celebrating a lunar conjunction, everyone are in the temple yard, surrounded bystones.

There are some sentences that help us verify that the action is taking place in the open air, such as the ones that are underlined and in white.

FRAGMENT OF THE BOOK:

“He walked back to his hut, low grasses parting and rejoining in his wake. Sunlight poured through chinks and windows into the little house. The bed, the desk, the worn place in the floor where Akiva had used to sleep when he was an apprentice, and the highbacked chair all rested under an even layer of dust. Dead leaves and evergreen needles whispered together under the bedstead and below the window. Each time the wind blew, a few more entered. Akiva lived outside the city walls, so close to the mountains between Nichayu province and the west that in winter the wolves howled outside. During the winter he had barred the door and carried a gong in the mornings to wake and set them on their way. That was when his predecessor, Shurat, the people's priest and Akiva's teacher, had been alive.”

SPATIAL:

Now Akiva walks towards his hut, the sunlight poured through the windows and clinks. The house was rather unkept , it was full of dust, each time wind blew more dead leaves entered. The house is outside the citywalls, close to the mountains; that you can hear the wolves howl.

FRAGMENT OF THE BOOK:

“When Shurat was alive, there had been no cessation from working, eating, copying the crumbled scrolls in the archive and studying the Tales of Ayekar. Now Shurat was dead, the days of his most ravenous appetite were gone, the archives closed to him by nervous hight priests after the disgrace surrounding the old man's death. It seemed he had nothing to do but brood over his full-grown body and remember old tales, and yet the house they had kept so ordered in their hurry was now, in his idleness, all disarray. He ate by taking handfuls of bread and cheese and drank from a jar dipped straight in the well. When he could not bother to go to the city to draw water, he went to the stream or merely lay in the brush outside his hut and drank the abundant summer dew.”

SPATIAL:

This house belonged to Shurat who was the people’s priest and Akiva´s teacher, who had passed away. After his death the house which had always been well kept now all disarray

FRAGMENT OF THE BOOK:

“More dolls lay beside the door, bald unconsecrated heads leaning together. He took his ceremonial bag from under the bed and tossed a doll inside. There was a sick eldest child nearby whose family had decided to sell what could be sold and send for the priest, so Akiva had a rare professional call to make. The priest is always the last, he thought as he set out on the broad dirt path that led away from the city. Last, after the neighbors, after the charlatans, after the witches and grannies with their damning herbal cures.

Someone came out of the underbrush ahead of him, carrying a pronged wooden lever for prying up stones […] Akiva walked on. She continued beside him, light and shadow racing over them as they walked faster and faster, each trying to breathe normally, both almost running. At last, tired by the heavy plank across her shoulder, Berthe turned off the road, panting, "I go through the fields from here. Good morning, Father Akiva."

"Good bye," Akiva said. He broke into a run. She watched him.He could not stop running. He ran faster, his back and neck held stiff by her gaze. When he rounded a curve and was out of her sight, he sat on a rock and sobbed in exhaustion.”

SPATIAL:

Akiva left his house in order to visit a dying child to help with his passing , before leaving home, he took his ceremonial bag from under the bed and tossed a doll inside.

While Akiva was going to see the child, Berthe appeared from the underbrush.

FRAGMENT OF THE BOOK:

“The boy was dying. Akiva saw from the moment he entered the hut would be vain.

The child was so worn that the grandmother who sat mopping his brow with a wet cheesebag looked in the darkness like his daughter. He stared at the fire, moving occasionally in the tiny gestures Akiva knew were the soul preparing to flee the body. Something hampered it. They must have given him herbal medicines. It is we who sleep and he who wakens, Akiva thought. When the first man Rani grasped the hands of Fate and demanded prophecy, the reply was torn forth, "Man, you sleep, but you will waken." Torn forth in agony. The prophecy bespoke knowledge even Fate himself could barely stand.”

SPATIAL:

Aklva arrived at the hut where the boy was dying and he realized that all his efforts were going to be vain. because the boy was about to die, so he started to sing the farewell chant and later he left for home.

FRAGMENT OF THE BOOK:

“It was late afternoon when Akiva returned to his hut. Low-lying rainclouds, tinged deep with blue and purple, gathered at the eastern horizon. The sky faded behind them from pink to grey. Wind among the grasses promised rain and new growth. The roof's shadow pointed up the broad trunk of the uko that shaded the house at midday, the shadows of its near leaves cast upon the ones behind to leave the edges shining. The leaves are transformed, Akiva thought. Possessed. The soul embraces them although they are nothing.

The light had faded. Akiva went inside and lit a taper to study. He was a priest, he would cure them both. His legs trembled while he removed his sandals at the door.”

SPATIAL:

Akiva arrived home at late afternoon , the wind was blowing and it looked like it was about to rain.

FRAGMENT OF THE BOOK:

Some nights ago Akiva had dreamed that he was talking with Berthe in the temple, safe and calm, he seated behind the ceremonial screen and she before it as was proper, but suddenly the screen became invisible. She talked on and he watched as her words trailed to the floor in flowering vines that swayed with her movements. Her face shone in the light of a torch behind him. Leaves drifting in through the window blew past. He heard the sound of rushing water and the leaves turned to fish. The flowering vines floated toward him, then wrapped tight around Akiva's legs and surged upward, seeking his throat. He groaned aloud and dropped the taper […] PONGO MAS SUEÑO?????

SPATIAL:

Akiva had a dream about Berthe in the temple, suddenly something caught on fired, the leaves turned into fishes and the vines seemed to choke him , and the he woke up.

FRAGMENT OF THE BOOK:

“At East 76th walk the subtransit drifted to a halt and Clarkwell Brockhurst emerged into a crowd of gaily dressed Eyimalians. They diffused sedately out the doors, past the changing patterns of the videomosaic posters, into the moonless night. They were very tall. Elongated bodies surrounded Clark and drew him along, bobbing down and up like sea plants at each step to alleviate the strain on their legs. Voices called back and forth above his head.

"You know it's perfectly safe," one said. "The guarding eye does not need light."

"Yes, but..." An arm tightened around a waist and someone laughed, but all were slightly uneasy in the modernistic darkness. Back on Eyimalia the city streets were still brightly lit at night. They pressed close after those who had lanterns.

Clark strolled along comfortably. Nights here reminded him of the winter his family had spent in town on the homeworld while his brother was in the hospital. The farm kids, left alone while the grownups battled to save the dying boy from the final horrors of his allotted treatment, had careened through the capital, swiped vegetables from the starlit rooftop gardens and sang the deadcaller in the darkened streets. Magic confronted them at every turn. They swam through water lines, bathed in municipal laundry-fluid pipes, tapped the commercial scent carriers until they stank of perfume, rode the subtransits back and forth and the lift tubes up and down all day and nobody cared what they did. Then in spring the child died and they all went home, the case neither lost nor won. The treatment was either involuntary medication or rescue, or both because the boy changed his mind every fifteen minutes until he lost consciousness.”

SPATIAL:

There is a change of characters. Everybody was in the street, it was dark, there was people with lanterns and they all grouped together to be able to see. They made their way to Eyimalia house (which, form my point of view is a interplanetary embassy).

Eyimalia house was the best kept house on the block.

FRAGMENT OF THE BOOK:

“The group paused at a corner and moved ahead. Eyimalia House came into view, neatest on the block because the Eyimalian Student Association cared for it and no one cared for the rest. At this house only were the housepane cleaners changed more than once a year, the illuminanes repaired, and the plants on the porch well tended.

Clark shook out his cloak. Though he had kept his formal outfit in inhibitor bath since the day his father gave it to him, the biocloth managed to grow in the Resheborian heat. One sleeve of the tunic was slightly longer than the other. What a place, he thought. Bright sun, bugs, and hot, hot, hot.

A cool breeze fluttered people's clothing. They were on the Cape now, near the sea. Actually, it wasn't a bad planet, just a little too close to its sun.

Guests wandered in and out of Eyimalia House and over the porch and yard, eating hors d'oeuvres and drinking native wine laced with drugs. The party had not yet broken up into groups. People drifted from one conversation to another, stepping carefully over the little garden that lined the walk, greeting friends in sibilant Eyimalian. They all knew everyone. No two collided without a hug or a handtouch and at least a chat. Some people turned to look at Clark, most of them strangers. Could a jet-black cloak and scarlet tunic really conceal a fainting heart? He reached up and pressed the first hand that met his. "My name's Clarkwell Brockhurst. Pleased to meet you."

His new acquaintance was greeting another stranger, so Clark took the opportunity to excuse himself and edge toward the house. Inside, the rugs and couches had been put away to make room for the people, flowers and refreshments. In one corner a dozen men and women in dark vests were dancing by candlelight to nyoda music. Dancing, Clark echoed to himself, and stomping, too, on the eighth notes. Eyimalians were usually so careful with their long bones. Conversation paused on the eighth note when the dancers jumped, arms and legs flung out with no regard for passers-by, so that the dancers were surrounded by a clear space into which they exploded from time to time, until the command of the music pulled them back together[...]

On Clark's left, two men argued and others put in a word when they could. In the corner by the lift, the flowers had inspired a mock funeral. Clumps of people sat and stood talking, hallucinating, singing along with the music or staring out the windows at the stars.

They found Paula's room empty. Only a candle on the floor and some depressions in the counterpane were left of whoever had been there[…]

Let's go downstairs and dance.

The floor was littered with bevbags, glasses, bits of wrapping, crushed pill sacs, corks, crumbs of food and flower petals. Brown stains from beer and pale wines, purple spots from Eyimalian hot sauce and dark wines, white spots from candle wax and scorch marks from the flames decorated the carpet. Someone had left a bright red scarf embroidered with tiny flowers beside Paula and she saw a pair of blue leggings by the music machine, on top of a brown vest and a furniture cover. She backrolled over to them.

When she returned with the tea, Efirr was sleeping. She left it and went upstairs, bringing flowers from the niches in the hallway to put around Sevit's bed. Once in the inviting darkness of his room, however, she forgot the flowers and fell across the billowing anti-gravity plane from which the scent of his body still rose. She waited for him a long time, floating in and out of dreams in the gentle confusion of mild drunkenness, but he did not come. At last she fell asleep while they were moving furniture downstairs. She dreamed about an earthquake she had seen when her father was on a relief mission, and the city where men and women screamed under debris while a small Paula Maxwell dropped tears in the granite dust.

Anxious cries awoke her. Downstairs in the parlor, last night's confusion had trebled. Every bit of furniture was smashed. Every wall panel hung askew as though it had been taken down and looked behind. People swept and glued things sadly, speaking little. Sevit was gone.

SPATIAL:

They are all inside Eyinalia House attending a party, drinking local wine laced with drugs. Everybody knew each other and were conversing. In the parlour the sofas and chairs had been moved to make room for dancing. In a corner, close to the lift, there were a lot of flowers made it look like a funeral.

The main characters were looking to speak to one person in particular. They took the lift and went to Paula’s room which was empty when they arrived with a single candle in the middle of the floor.

After talking they went down stars to dance until the birds announced the morning. The floor was littered with empty glasses, corks, food and stains from drink.

When everyone had left Paula went upstairs to sleep. Later she was awoken by anxious cries. Downstairs in the parlor, every bit of furniture was smashed. People swept and tidied, sadley, speaking little.