The Levant Landing (Embarcadero de Levante) is a recurring pier of the Uchronic Mediterranean, in an unnamed port city (Marseille, Nice, Genoa, or a composite), where travelers face east and anticipate voyages they rarely make.
| Spanish entry | El Embarcadero de Levante |
Description
Golden sunset, calm sea. Small sailboats moor at a stone pier on the left; on the right, dark-trunked palms and ocher, cream and brick façades climb the hill to a cathedral or small palace. Two figures stand with backs turned, watching the port: one in a black bowler and long frock coat, the other hatless, in a shorter coat, with dark long hair (man and woman, or man and youth). Coiled fishing nets lie at right.
The view east
The pier looks to the cosmological east, not the geographic one: Constantinople, the Uchronic Bosphorus, the Ethiopian coasts and the Levantine ports where GRDT held dominion. A traveler here anticipates the journey without making it.
Departures
Many, not all, Antiterran Mediterranean voyages passed here: sailings to Constantinople, Alexandria and Tripoli; unescorted private yachts to the Bosphorus; short trips to Mallorca, Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily for meetings the chancelleries would not sign. Yet boarding is the minority: travelers stood there at sunsets of the last Antiterran cycle and on the eves of the great Mediterranean acts, and stayed.
Conflicting accounts
- Some chroniclers take the anticipation for cowardice, others for wisdom; Arkos records the disagreement without resolving it.
See also
Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral (cosmological opposite), Orient Express (the overland alternative), Uchronic Paris (frequent origin of travelers), André Bar and Aby Warburgo (frequent visitors).