War & War (18 page)

20.

The Minoan kingdom, said Korin—along with the Minotaur, Theseus, Ariadne, the Labyrinth, the one thousand, five hundred once and once-only years of peace, all that human beauty, energy and sensibility, with the double-axe, the Camera vase, the goddesses of opium, the sacred caves—the cradle of European civilization, or as they refer to it, the first flowering, in the fifteenth century
BC
, then Thera, he added bitterly, then the Mycenaean and Achaean hordes, the incomprehensible, agonizing and utter destruction, young lady, that is what we know, he said, then fell quiet and since the woman who was sweeping the floor had just reached him, he raised his feet to let her sweep under his chair, having done which she started toward the door to continue her work, but then stopped, turned and very quietly, as if to thank Korin for raising his feet, addressed him in a strange Hungarian accent, saying jó, meaning “right,” then continued to the door, sweeping the corners of the room, and gave the threshold a brush before sweeping everything carefully into a heap and brushing it onto the pan then opened the ventilation window and emptied the lot into the strong wind so the sweepings drifted past the miserable roofs and ragged chimneys up into the sky, and when she closed the window they could still hear one empty can bouncing as it was blown away, the noise falling away, falling silent behind the window, silent among all those rooms and chimneys, under the sky.

21.

There’ll be snow soon
, said Korin in Hungarian, staring out of the window, then rubbed his eyes, cast a glance at the alarm clock ticking on the kitchen cupboard then, without a word of good-bye, left the kitchen closing the door after him.

1.

If they were worried about security, they could put their minds at ease, since security as far as he was concerned was completely assured, began the interpreter, strictly keeping to the orders he had received at the beginning that he should sit straight in the Lincoln, gaze calmly ahead and not turn round, then added that if there were to be any problem it could only be with his partner but that she was simpleminded, in other words a genuine mental case, and therefore could safely be ignored, for he had rescued her a year ago from some utterly hopeless predicament in the filth of a Puerto Rican swamp where she lived beyond hope, without family or possessions, without a thing in the world at home or indeed in the U.S. when she crossed illegally over the border, without a scrap of ID, nothing, till fate threw them together, and they should know that she owed her life to him, everything, in fact more than everything because she was in no doubt that if she misbehaved she could lose everything in the blink of an eye, as she would fully deserve to: in other words she was no great prize but that’s how she was, and she’d do for him, because while it was true that she was simpleminded, she could cook, sweep and warm his bed, if they knew what he meant, as he was sure they did, and, well, there was someone else living in the apartment with them, but he didn’t count because he was a nobody, a crazy Hungarian, who drifted in and out and was there for only a couple of weeks until he found himself proper accommodation, a guy who was staying in the back room, said the interpreter pointing to the house for they were just passing it, there, and he let it out to him as one Hungarian to another, because they took pity on him, a poor lunatic you wouldn’t even notice because he lacked any distinguishing feature, and that really was all, the mad Hungarian, the Puerto Rican and himself, that’s the way it was, and when he said it was completely secure it was the honest truth, for there were no friends, just them, nor was he part of a group of any sort, there were only a couple of guys at the video store he occasionally talked to, and the people he knew at the airport from the time he worked there, and that really was all, then having got so far he told them they could ask him anything, but no one stirred in the backseat and no questions were asked, they simply continued in funereal silence as they made another circuit of the interpreter’s block, so when he was eventually able to get out and go up to the apartment he had a lot to think about when he met Korin on the stairs, the interpreter on his way up, Korin heading down, saying Good evening Mr. Sárváry, though it was clear that Mr. Sárváry was deeply preoccupied but, if he did not mind, he would like to tell him here on the stairs, since they hardly ever met otherwise, that he regretted the unfortunate incident, the misunderstanding, which as far as he was concerned was utterly innocent, for he felt no compulsion at all to pry or interfere in others’ lives, that being completely alien to his character, and if there had been a misunderstanding it was entirely his fault, it truly was, Korin shouted after the interpreter; in vain however, since his last words were directed at the wall alone, the interpreter, who was already on the next floor, having dismissed him with a wave of his hand as if to say, for God’s sake leave me alone, so that Korin, after a moment or two of confusion, continued on his way downstairs and at ten minutes past five precisely, stepped out into the street, because he was starting again, that is to say he could start anew, for the rainy, stormy, intolerable weather of the last few days had vanished to be replaced by a dry cold, and he could go out again and carry on walking around New York in search of the mysterious secret, as he had described it to the woman, taking the subway to Columbus Circle, then stretching his neck to gaze up at the skyscrapers as he trudged along Broadway, Fifth Avenue or Park Avenue to the towers of Union Square, turning down toward Greenwich Village, making his way on foot into SoHo, along Wooster, Greene and Mercer Streets, beyond Chinatown, toward the World Trade Center where he caught the subway returning to Columbus Circle and Washington Avenue, utterly exhausted by then, and as ever, not having solved the mystery, back to the apartment on 159 th Street to read over what he had done that day, and if he found it satisfactory, to save it with the appropriate key, that is to say, as he remarked, doing everything properly, according to a system that was correct and reassuring, or rather, he said, as the story grew and lengthened and the days passed, but he felt no anxiety or terror on this account, rather the opposite in fact, for he was perfectly content knowing this was his last home on earth, that everything would remain in this fatal state of balance between eternity and the march of time, that it was all going according to plan, ever growing on the one hand, ever diminishing on the other.

2.

In the corner of the room, opposite the bed, the TV was switched on and turned to a permanent advertising channel where a cheerful handsome man and an attractive cheerful woman were offering diamonds and diamond-encrusted wristwatches to viewers who were invited to phone in and order the items at declared-to-be-sensational prices via a telephone number continuously scrolling in the right-hand bottom corner of the screen while the jewels and watches, as well as the precious stones set in them, regularly flashed and sparkled in a carefully directed beam of light, for which first the woman then the man jokily begged pardon, apologizing for the fact that no one had yet provided them with a camera that would eliminate the glare, and so the jewels would have to carry on flashing and glimmering, laughed the woman looking directly at the viewers, and yes, they’d just have to twinkle and blind people, the man laughed along with her, nor was their laughter in vain, in this room at least, for while the interpreter’s partner went about her business without showing the slightest sign of amusement, he, having lain for days, fully dressed, on the unmade bed staring at the television, regularly gave a little smile despite having heard these jokes a thousand times before, and when the female host said this or that and when the man said something else, or when the sign TELESTORE, TELESTORE, TELESTORE started flashing, he regularly smiled, not being able to help it, watching the woman flounce into view followed by the man running on to the sound of mechanical applause and the first items of jewelry appearing between the waves of artfully folded red velvet that glowed as though it were on fire, while the mindless twittering about weight, value, dimension and price continued, to be followed by the woman’s quip about the camera, and the man’s on the same subject, the lighting and the flashing, then the whole thing ended in a blur of music and waving good-bye, at which point the whole thing would start all over again from the beginning, from entrance through applause, through red velvet and the two quips, again and again, each time from the beginning with all the unbearable indifference associated with repetition, the effect of the whole being to impress on the viewer’s mind the notion that this entering, applauding, flashing the red velvet and quipping were part of an eternal cycle, while he continued watching it from the bed in the darkened room, watching as if he were under a spell which dictated that he should laugh every time they laughed.

3.

The cathedral was magnificent, said Korin to her one day in the kitchen, simply magnificent,
enthralling
, they were enthralled and really it was impossible to say what was more spellbinding, the description of the cathedral, that is to say them being enthralled by the cathedral or the fact that the manuscript after the Cretan episode—you’ll remember, he reminded her, that they were on the boat to Alasiya, leaving the dark apocalypse,
the day of doom
, behind them—in other words once the manuscript had finished with Crete, it did not move on or continue, did not explain itself or develop, but provided a
resumption
, a new start, and this was, he was quite convinced, the original, indeed unique thing about it, that a … what should he call it, a story? should begin and then go on by starting again, for what we must understand is that the author, this anonymous member of the Wlassich family, decided to start this narrative of sorts and proceeded with his main characters up to a certain point, but then decided against continuing, and therefore started the whole thing all over again, as if this were the most natural thing to do, a matter of course, not, he should add, regretting and throwing away what he had written so far, but simply starting again, and that is exactly what happened, said Korin, since the four of them, after the voyage to Alasiya, appear in a completely different world, the strangest thing being, he added, that the reader feels neither frustrated nor annoyed when this happens, nor does he complain about the tired literary cliche of time travel, thinking that was all he needed, more damn time travel from one epoch to another, doesn’t the ham-fisted author realize we have had enough of such long-defunct literary devices, no, that’s not what the reader says, no, he accepts it immediately and finds nothing wrong with it, finds it somehow natural that these four characters should have emerged from the clouds of prehistory to sit at a table by the window of a beer-hall on a corner of the Domkloster, which is in fact where they were sitting, gazing at what, for them, was a magical building, watching it go up day by day, seeing it rise one stone after another, and nor was it by chance that they were sitting in that particular beer-hall on the corner day after day either, for it was precisely this table in this particular beer-hall that afforded the best view of the construction, as close as you like and from the southwest; and it was from here that they could see most clearly that the cathedral, once completed, would be the most magnificent cathedral anywhere, and the key term here, stressed Korin to the woman, since the manuscript heavily emphasized it, was southwest, it was from the
southwest
that it had to be seen, from the foot of the so-called south tower, from a fixed point relative to it, from almost precisely where they sat at their table in fact, at a large table made of solid oak, their regular table as they felt fully entitled to refer to it, especially since Hirschhardt, the proprietor of the inn, a crude, rough-spoken fellow, had formally allowed it to become their regular table and reserved it for them, given his blessing to their appropriation of it in a wholly unexpected and most courteous manner, saying, by all means,
meine liebe Herren
, let it be reserved for your exclusive use, repeating this over and over again, which signified not only favor but a proper commitment,
a fact
, because that was the table they always took on entering from the moment Hirschhardt opened his doors, the table there by the window that gave the best view, and it must have seemed that they had been watching Hirschhardt from close quarters ever since they had woken at dawn for the moment Hirschhardt opened up they immediately appeared, having returned from the long morning walk they took at precisely the same time, a walk of many hours in the cold wind, from Marienburg, down the bank of the Rhine, left at the Deutz Ferry and into the Neumarkt, then cutting between St. Martin’s Church and the Rathaus, through the Alter Markt, finally reaching the
Cathedral
by way of the narrow alleys of the Martinsviertel, making a circuit of the building, having exchanged not a word all the while, for the wind by the Rhine was chilly indeed and by the time they crossed the threshold of Hirschhardt’s beer-hall at about nine they were pretty well frozen.

4.

They were making their way through Lower Bavaria and had stopped at a market when Falke heard that something was happening in Cologne, said Korin, a fact he discovered as a result of the interest he showed in a work by a certain Sulpiz Boisserée at the bookstall where he had stopped to leaf through certain items, and he had become interested enough in one to linger and read more of it when the man at the stall,
the bookseller
, having been assured that Falke had no intention of stealing it but was seriously thinking of buying, told him his choice was a sign of the most refined taste, because something really important was in preparation at Cologne and furthermore that he, the bookseller, was of the opinion that it was of a magnitude to shake the world; and the book that Falke was holding in his hands was the best work on the subject and he was pleased to recommend it in the most earnest terms, its author being the young scion of a long-established family of tradesmen, who had dedicated his life to art, and had made it his chief aim to make the world forget an international scandal, if he may put it that way, by producing something spectacular of international significance to cover it; for the honorable gentleman would no doubt know, he leant closer to Falke, what precisely happened in 1248 when Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden laid the foundation of the cathedral, and would no doubt also be aware what was to be the fate of the divine plan according to which the foundation stone of the world’s highest and most magnificent sacred structure was then laid, because what he was talking about, of course, was the story of Gerhard, the architect and the devil, said the bookseller, specifically the extraordinarily curious death of Gerhard, after which in 1279 there was no one left who was capable of completing the building of the cathedral; not Meister Arnold who labored at it till 1308, nor his son, Johannes who carried on to 1330, nor Michael von Savoyen after 1350, in fact there was no one at all who could make any significant progress with the work, the point being, the bookseller continued, that after 312 years the building came to a halt and had remained in an infinitely sad skeletal condition with only the Chor, or choir, the Sakristei or sacristy, and the first 58 meters of the south tower completed, and rumor had it, as it would of course, that the reason for all this was Gerhard’s pact with the devil, which in turn was to do with the rather confused story of the building of some kind of drain, but whatever the truth of that, what was certain was that in 1279 the architect in a state of
non compos mentis
as they call it, threw himself from the scaffolding, since when a curse had lain on the whole project so that no one over the centuries could really complete the work, the cathedral on the Rhine famously remaining in the condition in which it had been left, with enormous debts in 1437 when they installed the bell, and all the time it was Gerhard, Gerhard, whom people talked about, for that was where, they all suspected and not without reason, the
cause
of the failure lay, the bookseller said, and then came 1814, and in 1814, that is to say 246 years after the complete abandoning of the work, this enthusiastic, virtuous and passionate man, this Sulpiz, somehow succeeded in finding the thirteenth-century drawings of the cathedral, the very
Ansichten, Risse und einzelne Theile des Doms van Köln
that Gerhard himself had used, and had become slavishly devoted to them, thereby subjecting himself to a curse much like that suffered by Gerhard, and here now was the very book, said the bookseller, pointing to the volume in Falke’s hands, and the news that 621 years after the laying of the foundations, the work was under way again, so the honorable gentleman had done well to pick the book up, and to carry on perusing it, and could for a ridiculously reduced price take it home with him and study it further, for this was a work that would bring him great joy in the possession, a discovery like no other, said the bookseller, lowering his voice, indeed there was nothing like it in the world.