A
few wise men have handed down the knowledge of the brick liver to each
other from generation to generation, but the rest of the inhabitants are
ignorant of its existence. They alone know that every vicissitude of
the city's condition is traceable to that source--its sadness, its
merriment, its carnivals and its lents, its health and its disease, its
prosperity and the hideous plagues which at distant intervals kill one
in ten of the population. Is it not a pretty thought?"
"I do not understand you," said Kafka, wearily.
"It is a very practical idea," continued Keyork, amused with his own
fancies, "and it will yet be carried out. The great cities of the
next century will each have a liver of brick and mortar and iron and
machinery, a huge mechanical purifier. You smile! Ah, my dear boy, truth
and phantasm are very much the same to you! You are too young. How
can you be expected to care for the great problem of problems, for the
mighty question of prolonging life?"
Keyork laughed again, with a meaning in his laughter which escaped his
companion altogether.
"How can you be expected to care?" he repeated. "And yet men used to say
that it was the duty of strong youth to support the trembling weakness
of feeble old age."
His eyes twinkled with a diabolical mirth.
"No," said Kafka. "I do not care. Life is meant to be short. Life is
meant to be storm, broken with gleams of love's sunshine.
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