17.
They saw the palace of Phaistos in the distance, said Korin, and marveled at the famous steps quite close to them on the western side, but took their leave of the Kommosians who, bearing their news and fears, hurried inside, and having obtained directions to the harbor, set out down the steep twisting path, and it was still the morning, soon after sunrise, just as the four of them were making their way to the sea, Korin told the woman, that it happened, that suddenly the sky above them darkened, that there was darkness in the morning, a dense, heavy, impenetrable darkness that covered them all in an instant, and they stared at the sky terrified, stumbling on through the incomprehensible dark, hurrying ever faster, finally in a desperate dash as fast as their legs could carry them, and it was pointless gazing at the sky in blind, hopeless fashion, because the darkness was total and terminal, there was no way out of it, no escaping it, because it was eternal night that had enveloped them, Bengazza cried out in terror, his whole body trembling, perpetual night, Korin whispered to the woman by way of explanation, at which the woman, who was still standing by the oven, possibly because of the unexpected whispering turned around in fright before attending to her pots and pans, giving them a stir, then sighed, stepped over to the ventilation window, opened it and looked out, wiping her hand across her brow, then closed the window again and sat down in her chair by the oven with her back to Korin and waited patiently until the food in the pan was ready.
18.
Down in the harbor it was impossible to move for the crowd: there were local Luvians, Lybians, Cycladesians and Argolisians, but also people from Egypt, Cythera, Melos, Cos, and, a number from Thera who were a considerable throng by themselves, in other words, a very mixed gathering, said Korin, all in the same state of panic and confusion, and maybe it was precisely the way they were rushing to and fro, shouting, falling to their knees then running on that calmed Toót and his companions sufficiently for them to gain an advantage over those who had lost their heads, so instead of dashing into the sea as so many of those who had streamed to the harbor had done and were still doing, they withdrew from the general hysteria into an obscure corner, and remained there a good while, and for a long time could think of nothing but how best to prepare for death; but eventually, when they saw that the catastrophe had not yet overtaken them, they began to calculate the chances of escaping, of running away, and, according to Bengazza, there was some such chance, the odds today being no longer than they had been yesterday, for there was the sea in front of them, said Bengazza, and all they had to do was to discover whether there was a boat that could accommodate all four of them, and they should at least try, he said, pointing to the torchlit harbor, the bay, and so, by merely speaking about the possibility of escape, he succeeded in encouraging the others, all but Kasser, who fell silent as though Bengazza’s words had had no effect on him, but hanged his head not saying a word, and when the others agreed that they should make the effort, that they should after all try and set off for the shore, he continued sitting in that corner, hanging his head, not moving, showing no desire to leave, so that in the end they had to pick him up bodily, for, as he explained a good deal later once they were safely on board a ship bound for Alasiya, he felt that the terrible darkness above them and the ash that began soon enough to fall on their heads signified the imminent coming of the last judgment, and that they should not hope or try to escape, nor weigh the chances of doing so, and he personally abandoned hope once he saw the flakes of ash drifting in the air, for he felt, and afterwards knew, knew authoritatively, that the whole world—and he was thinking particularly of Knossos—was in flames, was certain that the earth was on fire, as were the worlds above and below it, that this really was the end, the end of this world and of worlds to come too, and, knowing this, he could not speak, could not explain, and therefore allowed himself to be carried by the others to the shore, allowed himself to be cast this way and that by the maddened crowd, let himself be thrown on board a ship, though he was not aware of what was happening to him or around him, then sat at the front of the ship, at the prow, said Korin, and, Korin added, this was how the chapter ended for him, with Kasser sitting at the prow, gazing into vacancy, the prow rising and falling along with him as the whole craft rises and falls in the waves, and this is how I still see him, said Korin, swaying and dipping at the prow of the ship, Crete enveloped in utter darkness behind them, and somewhere in the uncertain distance, Alasiya, their refuge, ahead of them.
19.
One thing the young lady should know, said Korin as he entered the kitchen the next day to take his place at the table, was that when he first arrived at this point of the narrative back in the far-distant records office, the point when they disappear on a boat to Alasiya, he was somewhat puzzled, for while he found the story, or whatever it was, utterly enthralling, as he had already said, he understood nothing of it, and believe me, young lady, this is no exaggeration, for as the young lady herself might have discovered, a person might think he has understood what he has read the first time, but doubt everything the second time round, even to the extent of doubting whether he had had the feeling of understanding in the first place, and he, he being the person in question, had found himself in such doubts the second time round, questioning the authenticity of his first reading, for Toót’s speech was fine in itself and he had noted the fact of the four of them being pulled from the water, had seen them enjoying a few delightful weeks getting to know an earthly paradise, then watched them facing the last judgment, and this was all very interesting, for people do write this kind of thing, but having considered the totality, he did still want to ask what it was about—so what were Korin’s English words—and admittedly this was a crude way of putting the question, perhaps even a little coarse, but this was precisely the form in which the question had arisen at the time, in as rough and ready form as that, in the feeling that this was all very wonderful, brilliant, wholly engrossing etcetera, but in the end, so what, what did it mean to anybody, what was it all about, why should anyone invent something like this, what was the writer secretly or overtly trying to do, was he retreating from the world by bringing these four characters out of the mist and thick fog, tossing them to and fro in a timeless universe, in an imagined world lost in the mists of legend?; what indeed was the point of it he asked himself, said Korin, and continued asking the question for a long time with much the same result, which was in fact no result at all, for he had no better answer to it now than he had back then in the records office where he first read it, raising his head from the manuscript for a moment to take breath and think, just as he had raised his head a few moments ago when he was busily transferring the document to his home page, and now this All Crete episode was there on his home page, Korin triumphantly announced, open to the world’s inspection, or to be truly precise, open to the inspection of eternity, and the young lady would know what that meant, that is to say anyone could now read the Cretan episode, by which he meant, the young lady should understand, that anyone at any time in eternity could read it, for all they had to do was to click on the site in the Alta Vista search engine, one click and they were there, and there it would remain, Korin enthused, his eyes fixed on the woman, thanks to Mr. Sárváry who had helped him set up the site, the whole first chapter was there for eternity, just a few clicks away, he raved, but if he thought this news would brighten the life of the woman sitting by the oven he was sorely mistaken because he hadn’t even succeeded in getting her attention, and she continued sitting bent over in her chair, occasionally turning to the burner, removing a pot or turning the heat up under it, shaking or stirring with a wooden spoon whatever was bubbling inside it.
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.
IV • THE THING IN COLOGNE
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.
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