10.
Mastemann remained silent and reserved any opinion he might have had on anything to himself, breaking his silence, wrote Korin, only when he felt like approaching the women who hurried to and fro across the main square, calling them in order to commend the infinite range of choice he offered, a choice lacking nothing, he smiled as he pointed to his cages full of cats, from the Libyan White and the Marsh Cat, the Nubian Kadiz, the Arab Quttha and the Egyptian Mau, as well as the Bubastine Bastet, the Omani Kaffer and even the Burmese Brown, everything the heart could desire as he put it, offering not only what there was in store right now, but also what would be stocked in the future, in a word literally everything they could imagine, he went on, albeit in vain as far as his listeners were concerned, for he did not succeed in holding the attention of any of the busy women, in fact he tended to frighten them as much as his cats did, so the women hurried on, their hearts in their mouths, a little faster if anything, practically running, leaving the tall gangling figure of Mastemann in his long black silk cloak alone in the center of the square, in splendid isolation, to return to his usual place beside the cart as if his wasted words were of no concern to him, to pick up a cat and continue stroking it; and so he would go on all day in the shadow of the cart as if nothing and no one in the whole wide world were of the slightest interest, appearing to be a man incapable of being shaken out of his dour calm by any event whatsoever, even when, as actually happened, Falke stopped by the cages and tried to engage him in conversation, when Mastemann simply kept silent, fixing his light blue gaze on Falke’s eyes, staring and staring while Falke asked him, “Have you been there?” pointing toward Phaistos, “for people tell me they have a most wonderful palace, a remarkable work of art, marvelous architects; or indeed beyond it to Knossos, though I expect you have,” Falke sounded him out, “and you must have seen the frescoes there and perhaps even the Queen too?” he asked, but there was not the slightest flicker in the eyes of the other who continued watching him, “and then there are those famous vases, jugs and cups and jewels and statues, Mr. Mastemann,” Falke enthused, “there above the sanctuary, what a sight, Mr. Mastemann, and this entire one thousand five hundred years, as the Egyptians tell us, is after all, and we should acknowledge it as such, an unrepeatable, unique miracle?” but his enthusiasm had no effect at all on Mastemann’s dour expression, in fact, said Korin, nothing Falke could say made any difference whatsoever so what could he do, meaning Falke, but bow his head in confusion and leave Mastemann in the middle of the square, leave him to sit in the shadow of the cart alone again, stroking the ginger cat in his lap, seeing that he knew not Phaistos, nor Knossos, not the Regal Goddess with her serpents at the very top beyond the sanctuary.
11.
He would find it difficult, said Korin to the woman next day as she was sweeping round the oven, her eyes averted after having finished the cooking, really difficult, he said, to give precise descriptions of Kasser, Falke, Bengazza and Toót, because even now, after everything, after hours and hours of study, following day after day of the most intense absorption in their company, he still could not say exactly what they looked like, who was the tallest for example, who was short, which of them was fat or thin, and to be honest, if he absolutely had to say something he would have attempted to get around it by saying that they were all four of them of middling stature and of average appearance, though he could see their faces and expressions from the moment he started reading as clearly as anything, as clearly as if they were standing before him, Kasser delicate and thoughtful, Falke gentle and bitter, Bengazza tired and secretive, Toót harsh and distant, faces and expressions you see once and never forget, said Korin, and the delicate, bitter, tired, harshness of the four of them so impressed itself on him that he could still see them as clearly as he did that first day, moreover, he was forced to admit before he went any further, that it was enough for him to think of them to feel a tug of the heart, since the reader knew as soon as he came across them that the situation of these four characters, not to put too fine a point on it, was, beyond doubt, vulnerable, that is to say that behind those delicate, bitter, tired and harsh features it was all vulnerability, defenselessness, he said, yes, that’s the kind of rubbish he came out with, imagine it, the interpreter recounted to his partner late next night in bed, he didn’t know, he said, from day to day what delightful tidbit to regale him with and chiefly not, why or in what language, but today, when he was careless enough to walk into the kitchen the man was there and collared him in the doorway, giving him this unbelievably idiotic story, offering it to him like it was lady luck or something, something about these four guys in the manuscript and their vulnerability, I ask you, excuse me sweetheart, but who the fuck cares whether they were vulnerable or not, only God in his infinite mercy cared what the hell they did in that manuscript, or what he was doing in that back room, the only thing that mattered being that he paid the rent on the dot and not stick his idiotic nose into other people’s affairs, because, and here he kept addressing his partner as “sweetheart,” it was their business, and their business alone what they did or did not do, or, to repeat, whatever difficulties they may occasionally encounter, do in fact encounter, was a matter entirely for themselves alone, and he very much hoped that nothing relating to them was adverted to in these kitchen conversations while he, the interpreter was away, that his sweetheart never attempted to give anything away regarding their private life, never even mentioned it in fact, because, to be honest, he didn’t even see what the point was of these great pow-wows in the kitchen, moreover in Hungarian, a language of which his sweetheart was almost totally ignorant, but all right, she can let the fool blather on, he couldn’t forbid that, but the subject of them, or his new job, was out of bounds to her, just remember that, and, propping his head on his hand as he lay in bed, he hoped his sweetheart had made proper note of this, his free hand creeping toward the woman, then, he changed its mind, and moved his hand to the parting of his snow-white hair, tracing the line from the bridge of his nose upward, mechanically checking that no strand of hair had accidentally strayed across from one side to the other to disturb the clean line of the parting in the middle.
12.
My feeling is that nothing follows it, said Korin quite unexpectedly after a long silence, then, without explaining what it was he was referring to or why the phrase just came to him, he looked out of the window at the desolate rain and added, Only a great darkness, a great closing down of the light, and after that how even the great darkness is switched off.
13.
It was pouring outside, a blast of icy wind blowing off the sea, people no longer walking but rather fleeing down the streets, seeking some warm place, and it might also be regarded as a form of flight when Korin or the woman ran down to the Vietnamese, stopping just long enough to buy whatever they usually bought, Korin his accustomed can of something to heat up, along with wine, bread and some sweet confection, the woman a package of chili beans, lentils, corn, potatoes, onions, rice, or oil when any of these things had run out and a cut of meat or a bit of poultry on top of that, after which they immediately hurried back into the apartment that neither would leave till the next such excursion, the woman settling to her cooking, doing a little cleaning or washing in between, Korin sticking to his strict routine, having bolted his dinner to return to the table in order to work till five, when he saved the file, turned off the set and remained in his room, doing nothing, just lying on the bed for hours without moving as if he were dead, staring at the bare walls, listening to the rain beating on the window, then drawing up a blanket and allowing his dreams to flood over him.
14.
Then one day he burst into the kitchen to announce the fateful day had arrived though the nature and manner of its coming was impossible to predict, he said, even immediately before the event; for of course there would be considerable anxiety in Kommos, a constant stream of visitors bringing every kind of sacrifice to the shrine but questioning the priestesses too, the
ir watching with concern the fate of the animals, looking for signs in the plant world, examining earth, sky, sea, sun, wind and light, the length of shadows, the wailing of infants, the flavor of meals, the breathing patterns of the aged, everything just so as to get some inkling of what was to happen, to discover which day might prove to be the fateful one, the decisive day, though no one anticipated it when it came and only once it had actually arrived did they realize it was here, the circle of attendants recognizing it in an instant and rapidly carrying news of it far and wide, for truly it was enough to catch a glimpse of it in the main square, said Korin, enough to take stock of it, frozen as they were in terror as it appeared in the approach to the square, teetered forward then collapsed in the middle and remained there, perfectly still; enough for them to acknowledge that this was it, the final sign, that there was nothing more to come and that it was the end of all terrified anticipation and agonizing worry: for the time of fear and flight had arrived, since if a lion, a lion, for this is what happened, descended into a place of human habitation only to die in the main square then nothing remained but fear and flight, and asking the gods time and again what it meant, this lion in the main square, what it was doing there clearly in agony, limping and gazing into the eyes of tinkers and oil-workers as they rushed to and fro, gazing, it seemed, into the eyes of each and every person individually and then collapsing, rolling over onto its side on the cobbles, what could all this mean, they asked; and this was the last sign, the very last and clearest sign that told them disaster had struck, for it certainly had struck precisely as they thought it would, precisely as they understood disaster to strike, all of them, everybody, so Kommos fell quiet and children and birds began to squawk in the silence while men and women started packing, getting their things together, storing their belongings away and considering what to do—and carts were already standing by their dwellings, shepherds and cowherds already driving their flocks, and all the ceremonials were concluded, all the farewells said, the prayers said at the shrine before the last hesitation at the topmost bend in the road to look back, to shed a tear, to feel the bitterness and panic of that last look, said Korin, all this happened and within a few days everyone had gone and Kommos was deserted, everyone having gathered in the mountains in the hope of security and better defense, of explanation and escape, and that’s how it happened that within a few days everyone was on the road to Phaistos.
15.
Mastemann vanished, a local fisherman explained to Toót up in the mountains, quite simply vanished from one moment to the next, and the strangest thing of all was that nothing remained of him, not his cloak or his cart, not even a cat hair, though many people were willing to swear that up to the moment before the lion died he was still there but as soon as it died he had vanished, and Toót must understand, said the fisherman, that not one person recalled seeing the cart trundle away anywhere, no one had the faintest clue where the cart was or what happened to the cats, or even heard the cats make any kind of noise, the only thing they were certain of being that by that first evening in all the panic as people set to packing up their houses and drawing up their boats on the strand, the spot Mastemann had occupied was perfectly empty, as empty as if this had been the moment he had been waiting for, as if the dead lion were the sign for him to depart, and in the light of this it was no surprise if people felt that being rid of Mastemann was just as unsettling as his presence had been, and stranger still, said the fisherman, no one felt that they had truly got rid of him, it was merely that he had gone absent, and that’s how it would always be from now on, some people said, for wherever Mastemann’s shadow falls it remains forever, the fisherman concluded, while Toót waited for his companions to pass on all he had heard to them but they were not to be bothered with it at the moment, so he waited to speak until they had finished their conversation, waited so long in fact that he forgot it all, or rather, noted Korin, that he lost the desire to communicate it, because he preferred to listen to Kasser speaking about time and to the squealing of the cart next to theirs as it worked its slow way up the steep path, then turning his attention to the breathing of the oxen drawing the cart, to the buzzing of the wild bees above and the evening light catching the tack and gear close to the ground, and lastly the song of a solitary unknown bird from somewhere in the dark among the dense trees.
16.
It was a slow procession, the path steep and narrow, parts of it only just accommodating a single cart, and in many places narrowing at some water-drenched point, or gulch, that was altogether too narrow to pass through, so they had to support one side of the cart and hold it in the air while the two inner wheels rolled on, first unloading any heavy items, of course, so that the six to eight people following each vehicle could lift it at all, to get hold of it, raise it and convey it past the dangerous stretch, no wonder then that their progress through the mountains was slow, as slow as you may imagine, said Korin, nor should one forget that it was impossible to move at all in the heat of the day, the sun being so hot that they had to withdraw into the shade, lead the animals to shelter and throw damp skins and canvas over their heads so they should not suffer from brain fever; and so they continued, day after day, the weakest among them already dizzy with exhaustion, an exhaustion clearly visible in the animals too, until they finally reached the Messene plain and saw the mountain rise above it with the palace on the mountainside, and here they could comfort their tired children by muttering, see, there is Phaistos, we’ve arrived, encouraging each other too before settling in a shady wooden glade, a grove, said Korin, and spending the entire day staring at the gentle slope of the mountain ahead of them, admiring the palace walls as they glimmered in the sunlight, observing the mass of roofs above, all but Kasser growing silent and meditative, Kasser, from whom, now that they were lying in the shade of a cypress tree, words began to pour in an unstoppable stream, his utter exhaustion being the likeliest cause for this flood of speech, the probable reason why he talked and talked, saying that if a man systematically thought about everything he had to leave behind the list would be practically endless, for one might as well begin with one’s birth, in his opinion, that birth being as much a miracle as the chance of him perishing in this beautiful place, for here, after all, was this wonderful building towering above them, one side of it overlooking the Messene plain, the other facing Mount Ida, with Zakro, Mallia and Kydonia in the far distance, and, of course, Knossos too, never mind the stone shrines, the temples of Potnia, the workshops where vases, rhytons, seals and stamps were made, the jewels, the murals, the songs and dances, the ceremonies, the games, races and sacrifices; for they had heard of all these in Egypt, Babylon, Phoenicia and Alasiya, for the true marvel and the real loss, if everything was indeed to be lost, said Kasser, would be Cretans themselves, the man in Crete, said Korin, that people who had vision enough to bring these wonders into being and who now, it seemed most likely, were about to be lost along with all their ideas, their infinite capacity, their temperament and love of life, their skill and courage: unprecedented miracle! unprecedented loss! Kasser exclaimed and his companions remained silent because they understood that Kasser deeply felt what he was saying, and so they watched the torchlights, said Korin, of Phaistos, as evening slowly descended in awed silence, and even Toót remarked that he had never seen a more beautiful sight, then cleared his throat, lay down on the ground, resting his head on his linked hands, and before falling asleep warned the others that they had had enough awe for one day, because tomorrow morning they would have to find the great harbor, ask whether there was an available ship and find out where it was going; that their task was precisely this and nothing more, that this should be their first concern in the morning, he said, his eyelids drooping before eventually closing.
War & War Page 14
