That Other City

Andrew Bertaina

When it was first built, the bridge was an aesthetic marvel. A technical triumph. Its metal girders stretched across the gorge that had long separated our two cities. Its three circular arches framing the mountains in the distance and the silver thread of river winding below. 

Travel between our cities had been scarce before the construction of the bridge. The other city had been more of a rumor than a place anyone had visited. And then we began to see in the distance the development of something singular which would one day become the bridge joining our worlds together. 

Before, we’d stand at the edge of the cliff and watch the vultures make circles in the sky. In the evenings, we’d retire to the pub and drink our way through the night, talking of the way things were. The way they’d always be. In the distance, we’d hear the sound of the rain and stumble back home to our husbands and wives, our children and lovers. Were we happy then? Any person who poses the question seems to unravel once it’s considered. As though the question itself is a curse. But it’s hard not to ask it now. 

We thought the bridge would bring fresh commerce, travelers from one city to another. But when the bridge was complete—the builders never came back. It was as though they’d built it merely because they could, an exemplar of power and waste, or so we said. We complained to our wives and husbands, said that the other city was full of degenerates and strangers. We gazed out our windows into the darkness, towards the city we imagined, and silently hated them. If our spouses asked us why, we could not tell them. Perhaps it was that anything new is always met with suspicion, or perhaps that we imagined their lives somehow better than ours, and seeing it from afar, we feared the lives we’d missed out on, hated them for living them instead of us. 

For weeks, no one from our city crossed over. If they were too imperious to cross into our city, we certainly weren’t going to travel to theirs. Bands of teenagers sometimes threatened it, but parents discouraged them, reminded them that we had our pride too. 

Sometimes we’d hear a story about someone crossing over the bridge, and the children would run wild all over the town from the news. But  it invariably turned out to be a rumor only, a wisp of smoke climbing up the valley. We could exist with the bridge as easily as we’d existed without it. We continued our quiet lives, tending to the cries of our children, tending to the bleating of the sheep, and the watering of our small vegetable gardens.

A woman, very sad after the death of her husband, snuck out under the cover of night and traveled to that other city. Something radical shifted. In the morning when no one heard from her, we assumed she’d thrown herself from the bridge. But when the sun stained the mountains  red, she returned, joyous as she’d been in weeks. 

“Marvelous. Truly marvelous!” she said to any of us who would listen. We brushed her words off, the ramblings of a sad woman—though a small seed of hope was planted in the minds of some. And in the coming months, people would slip away for a few hours during the middle of the day or scamper across the bridge during a rainstorm. 

We scolded them, reminding them of those strangers who thought they were too good to visit our city, but still, they went. And though we called them foolish, laughed at them behind their backs, they seemed changed by their journeys, though it wasn’t immediately noticeable. 

When people first returned from that other city, they spoke of its beauty, its riotous market, green pears, slices of rich melon, and fresh catch of trout and perch— a rainbow spray of light in the ice. Still, others reported of a cathedral, built four hundred years prior; spires piercing the sky, gargoyles adorning the tops. They spoke of the frescoes—the way the eyes of the Virgin and of the lamb seemed to follow you up to the central square with its solid rotunda and marble staircases leading up to the palace of justice. 

They were impressed, which struck us as no surprise. We brushed it off. Our city too had a church with tall spires. Sure, the square around the church was small, and the pigeons moved en masse, shitting beneath the lonely plane trees, but still, it was ours. As for the market, we had markets of our own—smaller, and less descript. We had no dizzying array of fruits or fish from the river. 

Soon enough, we told ourselves, their stories would abate. The shine of that other city would wear off, and they’d realize the advantages of our city. The narrow streets filled with small columns of light, the way the breeze flowed down from the hills, making the afternoons bearable when we’d sip wine and shout at the children to stay out of the roads. 

Certainly, the other city must have its charms, we admitted down at the bar, sipping on cheap grain alcohol, drunk again in the afternoon. 

But after the drunken praise had subsided, the changes remained permanent. At home, those who had traveled to that other city would stare out the window, gazing at the undulations of blued light, the trees waving in the slightest breeze. They were happiest when alone. With others, a fierce discontentment took hold. Often, you’d see them snapping at their children for having dirty feet or being too noisy, or asking irritable questions of their spouse about the quality of the well water, the thickness of the beams on the house.

We waited for it to pass as a summer’s storm. But the discontent remained. On rainy days, they’d stare out the window again. No one quite remembers who was the first to go, but within weeks, the disappearances were becoming frequent. One day they’d suddenly be gone, walking back across the bridge into that other city, the one that they’d inhabited in their reveries. 

We reminded one another why we stayed, for family, for tradition, for all the things we’d built. But within a year, the trickle had turned into a tidal wave. Whole blocks of the town lay nearly empty. Dogs roamed the streets, howling for their owners. What was the powerful allure of that place that called them away? 

Those of us who remained, an ever-dwindling number, talked about how quickly they’d return, even as shops and businesses began to close around us. Some suggested we shouldn’t have built the bridge at all. Perhaps we should have remained isolated, alone in our little city. Our city had been deemed shabby by comparison. We decided we had been truly happy in the before times, even if we hadn’t realized it. 

We left the bar that night, not in search of our homes, but of the bridge. Someone had a match and some leftover thatch. “Let’s burn the damn thing!” The night grew hazy then. We walked through the streets and toward the bridge, our numbers started to ebb as salmon swimming upstream. Bill suddenly remembered his son, who had left a month prior, and someone else, a beloved uncle. If we destroyed the bridge, we understood that we’d be destroying any hope of reconciliation. 

The winds blew wild through the streets. By the time we’d reached the bridge our numbers were so small that the match and thatch seemed silly and insignificant in the face of that gleaming monolith; that dream of another world. We skulked home in the dark. Slipped into our bedrooms and lay in the silence wondering over the way the shadows flowed across the walls. 

What does it mean to live in a city that has been left behind? 

I awoke to moonlight pouring through the open window. I traced the pale light across the pillow where my wife’s head had once lay. Outside, the whole town lay quiet, and I swore I could  make out the sound of laughter coming across the gorge in the distance.

Down in the bar, there are only four of us who still get together to drink. Everyone else has left, and I can tell by the way they’re avoiding my eyes, my friends will be gone soon too. 

What of sheep? I ask. What have they ever done for us? They answer.

After they leave, I sit in the empty bar and think about the passage of time, about all the ways life is constantly moving, pulling everything along in its wake, save me. 

I get as drunk as I ever have. I howl at the moon and think about burning down the bar, the city, everything that once was and never would be again. 

In the morning, I wake up in an empty city. I stroll through downtown, see the dust sitting on tabletops, a door swinging wildly from broken hinges. Above me, there are long rows of faint clouds, white edges fading into the electric blue beyond. A rooster struts across the empty road and I wonder how long I’ll be able to resist the pull of that bridge—of that other city. If it leads us all out of this life and into the next.

I go home and pack a small bag with a few of my treasured belongings, a painting done by my daughter, a brown clay mug with swirls of delicate green. I close the door tightly to keep my home safe from the incursion of pigs and chickens. I head down the small cobblestone road. The sun still low in the sky, casting long shadows as it passes through a row of ash trees. When I reach the center of the road I see that marvelous bridge, metal glinting in the light, in the distance; that other city. Then I begin to walk. 


Andrew Bertaina is the author of the short story collection One Person Away From You (2021), which won the Moon City Short Fiction Award, and the forthcoming essay collection, The Body is a Temporary Gathering Place (Autofocus). His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Witness Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Orion, and The Best American Poetry. He has an MFA from American University in Washington, DC. His work is available at andrewbertaina.com