Neurological Architecture

As tension arises between the Venetian and the emperor, we begin distrusting Marco Polo. Khan insists that Polo never talks about his own city, Venice, and rather nonexistent places. Polo keeps on describing his cities as if he avoided this discrepancy. "Your cities do not exist. Perhaps they have never existed. It is sure they will never exist again. Why do you amuse yourself with consolatory fables?" (page 59) said Khan to Marco Polo. The cities described up to this point have offered a variety of pathways, being waterways or roads such as the ones in Esmeralda. These are symbols of the lives' situations and possibilities encountered in every journey. The endless possibilities are many, but people only experience one.  For example, in Baucis we see people isolated from the rest of the world because its habitants have everything they need up in the sky, but we also see cities like Adelma, where one sees only the faces of the dead, thinking one is dead. "This means I, too am dead… This means the beyond is not happy," said Marco Polo. People can choose to be alone and find satisfaction in isolation, but others can not handle the grieve of death, enslaving themselves to the dead past. 

Thinking back to the conversations between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, every city described has derived from Venice. "Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice… To distinguish the other cities qualities, I must speak of a first city that remains implicit. for me it is Venice." As daring Khan questions the Venetian, he reveals Polo's cities are all in his brain, but still that does not contain them from continuing talking. Calvino has created a mental puzzle in this conversation, depicting different emotions, thoughts, and conceptions. All these are transformed into physical manifestations, but inexistent.