War & War (22 page)

4.

Korin sat in his room and it was obvious that he didn’t know what to do, what to believe or what he should conclude on the basis of all he had heard in the apartment since that morning, obvious because he kept leaping out of his chair, walking up and down nervously then sitting down again, before leaping up and repeating the procedure for an hour or so, not that there was any need for an explanation as such for he had been scared ever since the interpreter threw his door open, at about a quarter past nine and ushered him into the kitchen which looked as though a war had taken place in it, telling him that they owed it to their friendship to down, there and then, a quantity of ale that was good for you, and followed this with a monologue that seemed to consist chiefly of veiled threats as well as a lot of other unrelated things to the effect that something had come to an end yesterday and that this ending firmly closed a chapter, at which point Korin took over the conversation because he really did not want to know what it was that had brought the chapter to a close, and could see that the interpreter’s mood might any minute swing to outright hostility and so he began talking in as uninterrupted a stream as he could manage, that is to say until the interpreter slumped across the table and fell asleep, after which he scampered back into his room but could find no rest there at all, and that’s where the process of squatting on the bed then stalking the room began, or rather the struggle not to listen out for the interpreter or be too concerned as to whether he was still out there or had returned to his room, a concern that continued to preoccupy him until eventually he heard the sound of clattering dishes and bellowing, and decided it was enough, that it was time to work, work, he said, time to sit down at the computer and pick up the thread where he had left it, and so he continued working, managing to immerse himself in the work, and, he said the next day, he immersed himself in it so successfully that by the time he had finished for the day and laid down on the bed with his hands over his ears, the only thing he could see was Kasser and Falke and Bengazza and Toót, and when, despite the periodic clattering and bellowing, he finally fell asleep it was Kasser and his companions alone who occupied his head, and it was thanks to them that when he ventured out into the kitchen at the usual time the next morning he found a magical transformation, for it was as if nothing had happened there, for that which had been broken had been swept away and that which had been spilled wiped up, and, what was more, there was food in the pans again, the clock was still ticking on the cupboard, and the interpreter’s partner was in her accustomed place, standing immobile with her back to him, all of which meant that the interpreter must be out as usual at this time of day, so, overcoming his astonishment, he took his place at the table in the normal way and immediately launched into his account, continuing where he had left off, saying he had spent the whole evening with Kasser, that Kasser’s was the only face he saw that evening, or rather the faces of Kasser and Falke and Bengazza and Toót, and that was how he fell asleep, with nothing in his mind, but them, and what was more, he was pleased to tell the young lady, they were not only in his head but in his heart too, because this morning when he woke and thought things through he had come to the conclusion that for him they were the only people that existed, that he lived with them, filled his days with them, that he might even say that they were his only contact with the world, no one else, only them, he said, that these were the people who, if for no other reason than that theirs were the histories he had most recently read, were closest to his heart, whom he could see in clear detail, he added, even at this very moment how the carriage was conveying them to Venice, and how should he describe it to the young lady, he visibly pondered, perhaps by simply going through each detail as it arose, he said, and he would attempt to do so now starting with Kasser’s face, those bushy eyebrows, the brilliant dark eyes, the sharp chin and the high brow; going on to Falke’s narrow, almond-colored eyes, his great hooked nose, the locks of his hair that fell in waves down to his shoulders; then there was Bengazza of course, said Korin, with those beautiful blue-green eyes of his, the delicate, slightly effeminate nose and the deep furrows of his brow, and finally Toót with his small round eyes, snub nose and those strong lines running crosswise round his nose and chin that looked as though they had been carved with a knife—that was what he saw day after day, every minute of the day, as clearly as if he could reach out and touch them, and having got so far he should perhaps confess that waking this morning, or rather reawakening, he should say, the sight of them made him suddenly fearful, for after heaven knows how many readings he had gradually formed some kind of apprehension as to what it was they were escaping from, in other words where this strange manuscript was leading them, why it was doing so, why they seemed to have neither past nor future, and what it was that caused them perpetually to be surrounded by a kind of mist, and he simply watched them, he said to the woman in the kitchen, simply watched the four of them with their remarkably sympathetic faces, and for the first time, with a shock of fear, he seemed to know, to suspect, what the apprehension was.

5.

If there were just one sentence remaining at the end, as far as I am concerned, dear lady, it could only be that nothing, absolutely nothing made sense
, Korin remarked next morning after his usual period of silence, then stared out of the window at the firewalls, the roofs, and the dark threatening clouds in the sky, eventually adding a single sentence:
But there are a lot of sentences left yet and it has begun to snow
.

6.

Snow, Korin explained in Hungarian, snow, he pointed to the swirling flakes outside, but he had left the dictionary in his room so had to go and fetch it in order to find the word in English, and having done so, repeating the words,
snow
,
snow
, he finally succeeded in attracting the woman’s attention to the degree that she turned her head, and having adjusted the gas under the pans, and washing and putting away the wooden spoon, she came over to him, bent down and took a look out of the window herself then sat down at the table opposite him and they gazed at the roofs together, facing each other for the first time across the table as, little by little, snow covered the roofs, she on one side he on the other for the first time, though pretty soon Korin was no longer gazing at the snow but at the woman whose face at this distance simply startled him so much he was unable to turn his head away and not just on account of a fresh swelling that practically closed her left eye but because the whole face was close enough now for him to see the mass of earlier bruises and signs of beating, bruises that had healed but had left a permanent mark on her brow, her chin and cheekbone, bruises that horrified him and made him feel awkward for staring at her, though he could not help but stare at her, and when this became clearly unavoidable and likely to remain the state of affairs, the sight of her face drawing him back time and again, he tried to break the spell by getting up, going over to the sink and filling himself a glass of water, having drunk which he felt able to return to the table and not stare at the face with its dreadful injuries but concentrate on the story of the carriage, concentrating his gaze not on the woman but on the ever thicker snow, telling himself that while it was winter here it was spring back there,
Spring in Veneto
, the loveliest part of the season in fact, the sun shining but not too hot, the wind blowing but not at gale force, the sky a calm clear blue, the woods covered in dense green on the surrounding hills, in other words perfect weather for the journey, so that Mastemann’s silence no longer weighed on them, for they had accepted that this was how he wanted to proceed and no longer felt inclined to wonder why, content to sit quietly while the carriage swayed gently along the well-worn road, until Kasser picked up the subject of pure love, that wholly pure love,
the clear love
, said Korin, and what was more, he added, spoke only about that, not about the lesser kinds of love, the wholly pure love of which he spoke being resistance, the deepest and perhaps only noble form of revolt, because only love of this kind allowed a person to become perfectly, unconditionally, and in all respects free, and therefore, naturally, dangerous in the eyes of this world, for this was the way things were, Falke added, and if we looked at love from this point of view, seeing the man of love as the sole dangerous thing in the world, the man of love being one who shrinks in disgust from lies and becomes incapable of lying, and is conscious to an unprecedented extent of the scandalous distance between the pure love of his own constitution and the irredeemably impure order of the world’s constitution, since in his eyes it isn’t even a matter of love being perfect freedom,
the perfect freedom
, but that love, this particular love, made any lack of freedom completely unbearable, which is what Kasser too had said though he had put it slightly differently, but in any case, Kasser resumed, what this meant was that the freedom produced by love was the highest condition available in the given order of things, and given that, how strange it was that such love seemed to be characteristic of lonely people who were condemned to live in perpetual isolation, that love was one of the aspects of loneliness most difficult to resolve, and therefore all those millions on millions of individual loves and individual rebellions could never add up to a single love or rebellion, and that because all those millions upon millions of individual experiences testified to the unbearable fact of the world’s ideological opposition to this love and rebellion, the world could never transcend its own first great act of rebellion, because such was the nature of things, it was what was bound to follow any major act of rebellion in a world that really existed and was actually set in ideological opposition, that is to say it did not happen and did not follow, and now would never come to be, said Kasser, dropping his voice at the end, then it was silence and for a long time no one spoke, and there was only the voice of the driver in the seat above as he exhorted the horses up the hill, then just the rattle of the wheels as the carriage rolled and sped along the Brenta valley a long way from Bassano.

7.

Jó, said the interpreter’s lover in Hungarian, pointing through the window and gave a fleeting smile at the falling snow outside by way of farewell before she winced with pain and touching her bruised eye, rose, went over to the burners and quickly stirred the food in the two pans—and with this the whole snow event ended as far as she was concerned, for from that moment not only did she not move from the burner but did not even glance at the window to see how the weather was doing, whether the snow was still falling or had stopped, nothing, not a movement, not even a glance to show that what had so plainly filled her with joy just now had anything to do with her, so Korin was forced to abandon the hope he had glimpsed in her face, the hope that had found solace in the peacefulness of falling snow, or, more precisely, the hope that this solace might find visible expression, in other words he himself snapped back into the old routine and continued as he would have done, though not quite from the same place in the story, for the carriage had reached Cittadella already, and after a short rest moved on toward Padua, Mastemann apparently overcome by sleep and Falke and Kasser too dropping off, so that only Bengazza and Toót were still in conversation, saying that of all possible modes of defense water was clearly the best and that’s why nothing could be safer than building an entire town on water rather than anywhere else, or so Toót proclaimed, and went on to say that, as far as he was concerned, he desired nothing better than a place where the defense arrangements,
defense viewpoint
, said Korin in English, were so thorough, the whole conversation having begun with the question of what was the most secure place, a problem that arose first in Aquileia, then surfaced again at the time of the Longobard assault, was considered in a more sophisticated way under the rule of Antenoreo, and, appeared to have been solved after Malamocco and Chioggia, Caorle, Jesolo and Heracliana when, as a result of the Frankish advance into the Lido in 810, the Doge moved to the island of Rialto, a perfectly correct decision at the time, that led to the development of the
urbs Venetorum
, and the invention, on the Rialto, of the notion of impregnability; and it was this decision that brought the peace and trade that established the present conditions of the state, the arrival at the decision coinciding with the arrival of a true decision-maker; which was all very well, but
what
precisely did he have in mind, they heard the apparently sleeping Mastemann’s voice asking from the seat opposite, an intervention so unexpected and surprising that even Kasser and Falke woke immediately, while the startled Toót turned courteously to answer that they had always believed that the best, most effective form of defense for a settlement must obviously be water, and that is why it was such a wonderfully unique solution to build a whole city on water, for, muttered Toót, there could be nothing better as far as he was concerned than such a place, a place where the considerations of defense lay as close to the heart of the enterprise as Venice, for, as Signor Mastemann will surely know, that was the way Venice actually came into being, with people asking themselves what was the most secure environment, for the question had first arisen at the time of the Hunnish incursions into Aquileia, and had been presented during the attacks of the Longobards, and had led to ever more sophisticated solutions under the rule of Antenoreo, Signor Mastemann, said Toót, until, after Malamocco and Chioggia, Caorle, Jesolo and Heracliana they finally came up with the real answer, that is to say following the invasion of the Lido by Pepin in 810, as a result of which the Doge moved his residence to the island of Rialto, this being the perfect answer and therefore absolutely correct, and it was only in consequence of this absolutely correct solution that the
urbs Venetorum
came into being; and this discovery of the principle of impregnability on Rialto, that is to say the decision predicated on peace and the development of trade, is what had led to the state of affairs Venice enjoyed today, the arrival at the correct decision having coincided with the arrival of the maker of that correct decision—at which point Mastemann intervened again, to ask yes, but
who
was it they were thinking of, and he frowned impatiently, to which Bengazza replied, explaining that it was he who not only embodied the soul of the republic, but could articulate it too, making it clear in his will that the splendor of Venice could only be preserved under conditions of peace, with
the conservation of the peace
, said Korin, and in no other way, that man being Doge Mocenigo, Toót nodded, it being part of the will of Tommaso Mocenigo, and that that was what they were talking about, that famous will, that magnificent document rejecting alliance with Florence which was, in effect, the rejection of war and the first clear articulation of the concept of Venetian peace, and therefore of peace generally; that they were discussing those words of Mocenigo’s whose fame had quickly spread throughout the local principalities so that it was all perfectly public and no surprise to anyone what had happened a fortnight before in the Palazzo Ducale, and when they set out on their journey, it had been in utter ignorance, not knowing where to go, so as soon as they heard about the last pronouncements of Mocenigo at the end of March concerning the will and about the first results of voting at the Serenissima, they immediately set out, for after all where else should fugitives from the nightmare of war find shelter, they argued, but in Mocenigo’s Venice, a magnificent city that after so many vicissitudes now appeared to be seeking to realize the most complete peace yet known.