The City & the City: Chapter 11 Summary & Analysis

Borlú and Corwi go to Khurusch’s house, and almost immediately ask him where he got the visa for his van. He gets flustered, and when they ask to see the pass, he stalls, saying it is not in his house. Borlú and Corwi continue to aggressively interrogate him, although they assure him that they do not think he murdered Mahalia or dumped her body. Distressed, Khurusch admits that he usually always takes his pass out of the van, but the one time he “forgot” was when the van was stolen.

Borlú says he knows that this is the reason why Khurusch never reported the van as stolen. He also says it’s a pretty strange “coincidence” that the van was stolen by someone who wanted to go to Ul Qoma with the visa documents left inside. Khurusch denies that he purposefully gave the van to anyone, but Borlú says he’s looked up Khurusch’s border control record and seen that he’s left his documents in the glove compartment before. Khurusch admits he managed to keep his documents because it was a first-time offence, and because he gave the officer a small bribe. All of this is quite normal. Borlú takes Corwi to one side and asks her to look up all the vans stolen in Besźel on the night Mahalia’s body was dumped.  

Corwi completes this task with remarkable speed while Borlú continues his interrogation of Khurusch inside a prison cell. Corwi tells him that a total of 13 vans were stolen that night, three of which were for joyrides. Of the remaining 10, only three were not reported by the end of the next day. All three have papers for travel to Ul Qoma; Borlú comments that this seems like a strangely high number. All three also had previous warnings for failing to take visa documents out of the glove compartment. This leads Borlú to conclude that whoever stole the vans was “visa hunting,” and had access to border control records. They deliberately targeted vans likely to have the passes left in them.  

Both Borlú and Corwi feel freaked out. Borlú says they need to keep investigating, but Corwi reminds him that they now don’t know who they can trust. It is obvious that Mahalia “found something out.” By this point, both Borlú and Corwi are whispering, aware that someone might be listening to them.