War & War

by Krasznahorkai, László

  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.

  5.

  It was the name of Voigtel, the Dombaumeister, that most often came up, that and Dombouverein and Dombau-fonds, not to mention terms like Westfassade and Nordfassade, and Südturm and Nordturm, and most importantly how many thousand tallers and marks were spent yesterday and how many today, this was what the grumpy Hirschhardt spouted day after day, continuously and unstoppably, while admitting that the cathedral, should it ever be finished, would be one of the wonders of the world, and the world of art, as he put it, was sure to turn its immediate attention to it, although, as he immediately pointed out, that would never happen, since the building would never be completed, given such a Dombauverein and such a Dombau-fonds and the constant bickering between the Kirche and the Staat about who should pay for what, and he couldn’t see any good coming from it, despite the fact that it was supposed to be one of the wonders of the world, and so on and so forth, though this was Hirschhardt’s manner generally, to be running things down, to be moaning, full of acid remarks and skeptical about everything, cursing now the stonemasons, now the carpenters, now the transporters, now the quarries at Königswinter, Staudernheim, Obernkirchen, Rinteln and Hildesheim, the point always being to curse someone or something, or so it seemed, said Korin, though equally there was no one who knew better what was happening outside his window, so he knew, for example, that at any particular moment there were 368 stone-carvers, 15 stone-polishers, 14 carpenters, 37 stonemasons and 113 assistants engaged on site, was aware of what had gone on at the last negotiations between representatives of church and crown; was informed about disputes between carpenters and stone-carvers, stone-carvers and stonemasons and between stonemasons and carpenters; knew who was sick and when, about shortages of provisions, about fights and injuries, in other words about truly everything there was to be known, so while Kasser and his companions had to put up with Hirschhardt and his grumbling, they were, nevertheless, obliged to him and to no one else for the information in whose light they could interpret events outside, events that might have remained hidden from them, for Hirschhardt also knew about Voigtel’s predecessor as Dombaumeister, Zwirner, a man of inexhaustible energy who nevertheless died young, and about long-dead characters like Virneburg and Gennep, Saarwerden and Moers, and not only them but obscure ones like Rosenthal, Schmitz and Wiersbitzky, as well as being able to tell them who Anton Camp was, who Carl Abelshauser and Augustinys Weggang were, how the winches, pulleys and traction equipment worked, and how the carpenters’ tools, the hoists and the steam engines were constructed; in other words you couldn’t catch Hirschhardt out on anything, not that Kasser and his companions even tried of course, in fact they hardly ever asked questions at all, knowing well that they would only be submitting themselves to one of Hirschhardt’s latest rants, merely nodding now and then as he spoke, for what they appreciated above everything else in the beer-hall was silence, that and a tankard of light ale from the tap, in other words the early and midmorning when there was hardly anyone but themselves in the bar and they could sit by the window, sipping at their beer, watching the work on the cathedral outside.

  6.

  In Boisserée’s Ansichten there was already a drawing of the west front, dated 1300, most probably by Johannes, son of Meister Arnold, that was a work of outstanding beauty in itself and revealed something of the remarkable ambition behind the design of the building, but the deciding factor, first for Falke and then, following his summary, for the others, was the print they had seen displayed throughout the empire, a print hung in barbershops and on the walls of inns, that Richard Voigtel colored in after the etching by W. von Abbema for the Verein-Gedenkblatt, probably to draw attention to events in Cologne, in other words a print of 1867 originating from the Nurenberg workshop of Carl Meyer, that was all, and it was this that informed their decision where to go, because through their eyes, said the manuscript, the vast scheme depicted in the print immediately revealed the remarkable possibilities of this monumental shelter, a shelter, added Korin, that the four of them, as Kasser told a stranger who had been more successful than others in pursuing the question of who they were, that is to say merely a set of obsessed fugitives, though that was not how they described themselves that day, a week later, to Hirschhardt for example, but as simply expert defe
nse-works engineers, in Kasser’s words when it seemed he had to say something to Hirschhardt, and that was all there was to it, he said, that was the chief reason the four of them had come, not simply to research, not only to analyze, but primarily, in fact above all, to admire all that was happening here, and in saying so they were not saying anything they would have had to deny elsewhere, for they did genuinely admire it from the moment they got off the mail-coach, caught their first glimpse of it and could not help but admire it, admire it there and then, the sight immediately and wholly captivating them, immediately for there was nothing with which to compare with it, because imagining it from Boisserée’s book, working it out from the drawing and the print, was entirely different from standing at the foot of the south tower and seeing it in real life, an experience that confirmed all they thought and imagined, though they had to be standing precisely where they were, at the precise distance, at a precise point and a precise angle to the south tower, Korin explained in the kitchen, so that there could be no mistake, but they did not mistake the distance, the point or the angle, and saw it and were convinced that it was not simply the building of a cathedral at stake, not just the completion of a Gothic ecclesiastical monument that had been abandoned centuries ago, but a vast mass, a mass so incredible as to surpass any building they might have imagined, one of which every detail would be finished—altar, crossing, nave, the two main aisles, the windows, the gates in all the walls—according to plan, though it was not what this or that aisle looked like, nor what this or that window or gate looked like that mattered but the fact that it would be an entirely unique, immensely high, incredible vast mass, relative to which there would be a point, as Gerhard had said to himself some six hundred years earlier, a specific point, as every Dombaumeister right down to Voigtel whispered, a point from which this beautiful piece of Amiens-work would appear to be a single tower mass, that is to say an angle from which the essence of the whole would be visible, and this was what the four of them had discovered by studying the legend of Gerhard, the drawing by Johannes, the Abbema-Voigtel print, and now, following their arrival, the reality itself, when, astonished, they sought out the ideal place where they might contemplate their own astonishment, a point that was not difficult to find, the beer-hall in other words from where they could watch each day’s progress and so be ever more certain that what they were seeing was not something they had imagined after seeing an architect’s plan but true, extraordinary, real.

  7.

  Sometimes I would really like to stop, to abandon the whole thing, said Korin on one occasion in the kitchen, then, after a long silence, staring at the floor for minutes on end, raised his head and hesitantly added, Because something in me is breaking up and I’m getting tired.

  8.

  The day began at five in the morning for him, the time he naturally woke, which he did in a moment, his eyes snapping open, and he sat straight up in bed, fully conscious of where he was and what he had to do, that is to wash at the sink, draw a shirt over the undershirt in which he slept, grab his sweater and his plain gray jacket, slip on his long johns, climb into his trousers fixing the suspenders, and, lastly, to pull on the socks warming on the radiator and the shoes parked under the bed, all within a minute or so, as if time were continually pressing, so that he could be at the door listening out for any other movement—not that there ever was any at this time—before slowly opening it so it shouldn’t creak or, more importantly, that the handle should not click too loudly, for the handle was capable of making a terrible racket if he didn’t handle it properly, then out, out on tiptoe, into the connecting hallway and thence into the kitchen and the stairwell to knock on the door of the toilet—not that there was anyone in there at that time—to take a piss and a shit, return, put the water on to boil in the kitchen, prepare the coffee grounds the tenants kept by the tin of tea over the gas oven, brew the coffee, add sugar and, as quietly as possible, sneak back into his room where things would proceed according to a permanent, changeless routine that was never broken, which entailed sitting straight down at the table, stirring and sipping at his coffee, turning on the laptop and beginning work in the permanently gray light of the window, not forgetting to check first that all he had saved the day before was safe now, then he’d lay the manuscript open before him at the current page on the left-hand side of the machine, and scanning through, slowly trace the text word by word, using two fingers to type up the new material, till eleven when his back would hurt so much he had to lie down awhile then stand up and perform a few vigorous waist movements and some even more strenuous turns of the neck, before returning to the desk and continuing from where he had left off, until it was time to run down to the Vietnamese for that day’s lunch, after which he would go to the kitchen to join the woman and spend a good hour or so, sometimes as much as an hour and a half with his notebook and the dictionary in his lap, talking to her, keeping her informed of each new development, then return to his room to eat and work again solidly till about five, but sometimes only till half past four, because by now he felt obliged to stop at half past and lie down on the bed again, his back, his head and his neck being too painful, though he only needed half an hour of rest by this stage, then he’d be up again to listen out at the door, for he didn’t want to run into his host unless it was absolutely necessary to do so, and having assured himself that they wouldn’t meet, he went out, wearing his coat and hat of course, into the stairwell, down the stairs, and as quickly as he could, out of the house altogether so he shouldn’t meet anyone at all, for greeting people, when the occasion arose, was still a problem for him since he didn’t know whether Good evening, or Good day or a simple nod and Hi was the most appropriate, in other words it was best not to have to decide, and once he was outside in the street he’d take his usual route into New York, as he thought of it, having finished which he would return the same way, enter the house, climb the stairs, often stopping a long time by the door if he heard the rumble of the interpreter’s voice, waiting there sometimes a few minutes but occasionally a whole half hour before slipping down the connecting hallway into his room, closing the door so gently it created hardly a draft before relaxing and letting the air out of his lungs, before daring to breathe again once it was safe to do so, then remove his coat, his jacket, his shirt, his trousers and the long johns, place them on the chair, hang his socks over the radiator, tuck his shoes under the bed and finally lie down, dog tired, but still concerned to breathe as quietly as he could and to turn his body under the blankets with great care so the springs shouldn’t creak because he was afraid, constantly afraid of being heard, for the walls were paper-thin and he regularly heard the voice of the man shouting.