The World Goes On

by László Krasznahorkai

  I am a simultaneous interpreter, and I have perfect recall—he rose from his humiliating supine position on the pedestrian bridge—everything that needs to be known from a transport-systems point of view about an intersection like this is in my head down to the last detail, and he stood up, and although he had to grab on to the handrail at first, after the first three or four meters he let go of it and took some unaided steps relishing the full dignity of his balance, thus setting out on the pedestrian bridge toward somewhere, but as the bridge right away curved into a turn, leading toward a future that was too uncertain for him, he decided it was wiser to stop, and so he halted, then looked down into the depths, after which he looked up at the heights, as if to make sure that all was well in his head, and by now all was well, his head was clear, his head no longer ached, his head was capable of quite lucidly making inquiries into existence, namely his own, which he proceeded to do, to wit; if he found himself here as the passive subject of some sort of obscure history by now forever destined to remain obscure, obviously there must be a reason—and meanwhile he kept glancing down into the depths and up into the heights—and this reason must be none other than the fact—this realization tore into him—that I have come to a point in my life where I must now declare what I have learned about the world in the course of sixty years, nearly forty of which have been as a simultaneous interpreter, and if I don’t then I will take it to the grave with me, but that, and he continued his train of thought, that, however, will not happen, and I am going to make my declaration right here, and these sentences followed one another in his head smoothly enough, except at this moment he took another look at the depths and another at the heights, in short he looked in every direction that this Nine Dragon Crossing, or as locals called it, Jialonzhu Jiaoji, had extended its innumerable parts, these expressways winding pell-mell in all directions, divided into various levels, shuffling them up and dispatching them on their way, well now, at this point he rubbed his eyes, dug his fingers into his tousled hair a few times, then smoothed it down, and just stared ahead at a certain point in the thick of Nine Dragon Crossing, even as his glance already informed each and every particle of the pedestrian bridge—the handrail, the plexiglass siding, and the entire surface of the walkway—that indeed, he would gladly declare himself here and now, but the problem was that he had learned nothing about the world, and so what was he to say, what indeed: that he was a simultaneous interpreter who had lived close to forty years devoted exclusively to his profession, something, and here he raised his index finger, that made him realize that he was speaking aloud on the pedestrian bridge, which as a matter of fact he had always liked to do, I—and he pointed at himself, as if he were addressing an audience—have always loved simultaneous interpretation, true, it is exhausting—he would be the first to admit, it was very exhausting, in fact for him nothing in the world was more exhausting than simultaneous interpretation, yet he loved doing it; he was not claiming that, for instance when he looked at, say, a deck of cards, he did not have some unanswered questions, because for that matter he did have some, particularly regarding that deck of cards, because aside from his profession he also loved card games, and his question was, well now, was this a full deck of cards, or was it merely any forty-eight individual cards, but they were only those kinds of questions, the one particular question regarding the world itself, which, he was well aware, might be expectable from an experienced simultaneous interpreter in his sixties, that one particular question, no, it had never occurred to him, so that if fate had now cast him here to make a declaration about that then he was in a fine pickle, for he didn’t know anything about anything, there was nothing he could say about the world in general, nothing that he could put in the form of a philosophy of life, no, nothing like that, here he gave a slight shake of his head, what spoke to him is what he saw here, from this pedestrian bridge, but about life in general, alas, he could say nothing, because let’s take this place for instance, here was this pedestrian bridge where he was standing, from here—and his arm inscribed a sweeping arc including the entirety of Nine Dragon Crossing—looking at it from here the whole thing had no meaning whatsoever, none, in fact seen from here this Nine Dragon Crossing gives the distinct impression that the whole business began like this: let’s say, he said, first there was one highway, say, from the west to the east, and that meant the highway also ran from east to west, so that here in our example there happens to be—and he looked down from the bridge—Yan’an Road, well then, this three-lane highway—that is three lanes in each direction—had come to reach this point where its passage was intersected at right angles by a highway arriving from another direction, that happened to be, he went on, in the case of our example, the famous Nanbei Lu, that is to say this meeting created an intersection, but since we are dealing with expressways here, in a metropolitan setting, in the case of such an intersection we may very well count on the arrival of automobiles with a variety of destinations, automobiles that will not necessarily choose to race on straight ahead in the same direction, but, for instance, one might want to turn; instead of heading straight on, one of them might insist on turning, say, to the left, and this sets in motion the whole calamitous rigmarole, since other automobiles with similar intentions will arrive in great numbers at this intersection, thus creating a traffic control problem given the four cardinal directions, isn’t that so, and he looked around and up and down in the midst of the insane din, theoretically four times three, that is twelve different directions that become possible, that is to say, and he spread his arms momentarily, let’s take it from the beginning, here comes an automobile on the Yan’an from the west, with its own individual destination, it may on the one hand keep going straight, or else it may turn at a right angle to the left, to proceed in a northern direction on the Nanbei Lu, or of course it may take a ninety degree turn to the right to continue its journey south on this stretch of the Nanbei, so that’s three directions, and this automobile might have three little siblings, because in addition to itself there are three others in the four approaches to the intersection, therefore we may conclude, he went on with his chain of thought, that altogether there are four automobiles, and for each we must guarantee three possible choices, thus giving birth to twelve possible directions, thus creating, he gave an anguished sigh, an infernal clash, for we cannot call what has been created here anything else than infernal—because a simple, straightforward situation gave rise to an infernal structure of a degree of complexity such as THIS, and with increasing horror he now eyed from the inside the concrete mass of manifold expressways arching all around him up above and down below and this way and that, an infernal structure without any rational explanation whatsoever, what else should he, a simultaneous interpreter unqualified to provide answers to the great questions, call it, he was not an expert on transport technology, only a simultaneous interpreter specializing in this, among other things—and he wished to emphasize this among other things, in other words, how should he put it, given that simple starting point, that single automobile approaching from the west and intending to go in one of three possible directions (straight ahead, left to the north, or right to the south), well then, there were three others like it, in a word, given such a clear-cut situation why do we end up with something like THIS?! and once again his eyes swept over the horrific cavalcade of ponderous expressway ramps stretching and arching above and below each other, and he could only gape this way and that way, he tried to follow individual stretches of highway in order to find out what direction they went in, but it proved impossible, at least from here, from the inside, the entire thing had ended up so bafflingly complex, so impossible to survey at a glance that if you looked at it, as he did now, then sooner or later not only your eyes, but your brain started to hurt, because it was all exactly as he had just described and demonstrated on the basis of the technological vocabulary of transport he had proudly referred to, for indeed in the beginning there were only two basic directions, and these two have remained—the eas
t-west directions of the Yan’an Lu and the north-south directions of Nanbei Lu—that is, two major metropolitan traffic arteries intersecting each other at ground level, the vehicles moving on them were regulated by traffic lights and if one arrived as a pedestrian at this intersection, his fate would be relegated to a so-called elevated pedestrian crossing, well enough, this was down at ground level, however oncoming vehicles arrived with various other destinations that could only be provided for by infernal regulations, in other words on top of this straightforward ground-level intersection they had constructed a so-called “complex,” a so-called “stelliform” metropolitan expressway monster, naturally only after performing the in this case indispensable seven-day Buddhist ritual to pacify the Nine Dragons that had been disturbed down below and after this ritual, the builders could go ahead first of all with the central pillar representing the nine dragons, then proceed with the reinforced ferroconcrete columns supporting individual sections of the expressway with their cantilever brackets, braces, buttresses, beams, and half-beams, the superstructures and underpinnings, after which under the alarmed, watchful eyes of the citizens the construction progressed and expanded and sprawled and progressed some more and rose higher and expanded even more and sprawled wider until the entire project was finished, so that today it looks like this: progressing from the bottom up, the first level above the ground-level intersection carries a divided expressway going north-south and south-north, thus replicating what transpires down below in two opposing directions, well enough, but on top of this they were obliged to add another elevated level that was designated, not by simultaneous interpreters specializing in transport technology, but by the traffic design experts themselves as the “first level of intercardinal directions,” by which they meant expressways composed of north-west and south-east indirect connecting ramps and the south-west and north-east direct connecting ramps, which is far from the end of the story, since now we come to the third level, named again not by simultaneous interpreters but by traffic design experts “the second level of intercardinal directions,” meaning the north-west and south-east direct connecting ramps and south-west and north-east indirect connecting ramps, only to crown all this on a fourth level with a so-called “alternate direct thruway,” which means none other than the high elevated replica of the east-west and west-east highway that had already been built in a rational manner at the ground level that was our starting point, so there you see what happens when the experts succeed in creating a solution, namely in this case Nine Dragon Crossing, or as they themselves named it, Jiulongzhu Jiaoji, when they create it and not for instance simultaneous interpreters, which he happens to be, he said this underneath the expressway, eyeing that notorious pillar, the Nine Dragon Pillar, and in his opinion what happened here had started with a sound concern—automobiles arriving from four cardinal directions intending to depart in twelve intercardinal directions, all these automobiles demonstrating that they were unwilling to wait, unwilling to be slowed down by traffic control lights that alternately permit and prohibit passage in the twelve directions, they (the ones arriving from the four basic directions) were too numerous, and in time would be even more numerous, and with such a multitude no system of traffic control lights would ever be able to cope—and therefore all of you, the devil said to them, will be paralyzed, all of you, the devil grinned at them, will not go anywhere from here, you will remain at ground level as eternal prisoners of traffic lights now red, now green, therefore allow me to suggest, said the devil to the traffic-control designers, that you build Nine Dragon Crossing in light of the above, or as you would call it, the devil said with a shrug, Jiulongzhu Jiaoji, because this is the sole solution that makes possible the speed at which the city is able to operate, and of course the traffic-control designers conceded that building a Nine Dragon Crossing was imperative to handle the increasing speed and so they built it, after which on Nanbei Elevated Road alone, that is on Nanbei Gaojia Lu alone, they constructed seven or so others similar to this, and the situation on Yan’an Elevated Road, that is Yan’an Gaojia Lu, appeared to be no better, in a word, the desired speed was attained, and only he—and here it was the simultaneous interpreter speaking again, the livid-faced condemned man of Nine Dragon Crossing—only he alone didn’t understand why we needed such speed, speed that moreover would soon have to be increased, god is there no one, he now cried into the artificially illuminated firmament of Nine Dragon Crossing, no one who understands that we simply don’t need such speed?!—and he waited a while, but nobody responded, therefore he shoved himself away from the railing against which he had been leaning for the last few minutes, and taking the utmost care he nonetheless set out in the dark on that pedestrian bridge curving away into an uncertain future, until after taking exactly seventeen steps his form disappeared beyond the bend, and thus shortly thereafter all human presence ceased within the interior hell of Nine Dragon Crossing which is no place for a human being in any case, because human beings have no business to be there.

  Your Perrier, sir, said the room-service waiter outside the door, but then he had to send him back for an additional bottle, and he had to request that the first bottle be exchanged for a larger one, then he had two or three fresh pitchers of ice brought up because after he at last arrived in his room and toppled onto the bed, it was not so much that his head began to ache immediately as all of a sudden there was a large bowl of mush in place of a head; he had entered the room, taken off his clothes, kicked off his shoes, and thrown himself on the bed, arranging for everything from there, the phone within reach: his room service order, the modification of the order, the repeat of the order, and so on, meanwhile lying on his back and not moving, resting his head—that bowl of mush—against the pillow, his eyes closed; that’s how it was for a while, until the horrendous stink he himself emanated began to bother him, whereupon he crawled to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, turned on the shower and scrubbed his body with soap and remained under the shower for as long as his strength held out, then toweled himself dry, sprayed frightful amounts of hotel deodorant on himself, pulled on a clean t-shirt and underpants, and before lying back down he took the soiled garments and his light summer leather shoes, stuffed them in a plastic bag that he tied with a tight knot before placing it outside in front of the door, then stretched out on the bed, turned on the TV, merely listening to the sound without watching, for his head continued to remain a bowl of mush, and this was all right, things were all right now, his eyes shut, the TV on, the sound not too loud, and a voice was telling him on the Hong Kong channel last used the night before, the Whole had no purpose, because there was nothing outside the Whole from where anything could lead to here, for there was no place from where . . . and there was no outside, nor could it be its own purpose, for the goal was always beyond the point where someone desires a goal, but the Whole had no meaning, if it had one, the Whole would be subsumed inside a narrative that always possesses one essential feature, that it must have an end, whereas the Whole cannot have an end, and therefore we may say that it has no narrative, thus no meaning, and thus no aim or goal or purpose, and if this is so, then there is no existence either, because there is actually no Whole, this was a man’s voice, softly droning, a singsong voice, on and on, but as he listened with eyes closed, lying supine, close to drifting off, with a full load of mush inside his head, he listened to this or rather let himself hear it, he had the feeling that the voice was not so much trying to say something to him as to lull him, rock him with the southern, musical sound of Cantonese dialect, to smooth away everything inside him that was rough, everything that might spill out, everything that was aching, the sound cautiously enfolded, cooled, and cooled and cooled again that serious load of mush inside his head, and it felt good, and this was precisely what he needed so that he let them keep telling him via this South-Chinese musical instrument dipped in a Cantonese dialect that the Whole had no aim, no meaning, since the Whole could not be enclosed within the causal web of goals and rationality, for then
the Whole would of necessity become entangled in a narrative, whereas among other features a narrative has one characteristic, namely that it has to have an end, didn’t we already cover this? that large load of mush now inquired inside his head, no, a voice replied and continued, the Whole cannot have an end and endless narratives do not exist, thus it has no goal, thus it has no meaning, from which it follows that all that we call the world, the universe, the cosmos suspiciously lacks any palpable content, in other words, it does not exist, in other words the Whole has no existence, it does not exist, because if it existed, if it did exist, then every reference to the smaller wholes and to the relationships between these smaller wholes would refer to it as well, but it does not, therefore the Whole does not exist, but at the same time it is also true that from the everyday experience of something always giving rise to something else, that gives rise to something else again, we cannot conclude that from all discernible present, past, and future wholes it follows that there must exist a grand totality of these, this does not agree with the concept of the Whole, and not because there is no infinity, that is not the reason for its nonexistence—here for a few moments someone must have plugged in an electric razor or some other appliance in the adjacent room behind the TV set, because for several moments the TV began to buzz, but really only for a few moments, that was all, and then everything came back as before, the program with the man’s voice in a singsong drone, but it was more than just singsong and droning, it was downright insinuatingly mellifluous, and constantly, during every least fraction of an instant, aiming to persuade, continuously and melodiously seductive therefore, and vivid, as the Cantonese dialect always is, and it was just in the middle of saying, in this sweetly persuasive, ever vivid Cantonese dialect, that the entirety of the Whole is not a sum of the smaller wholes but simply exists . . . if it existed, except that it does not, therefore there isn’t any sense in talking about it, which would be all right, except for one problem, that now the belief in it also has no sense, however, without it our entire way of thinking collapses, for we cannot coexist with a Whole that does not exist, a Whole that does not amount to the sum of its parts, we cannot bear the thought that there is something that does not exist, something we cannot conceive of, something in front of which all our thoughts, all our intuitions, all our ideas collapse into sheer meaninglessness, because the merest thought of it is false, wrong, misleading, stupid, but on the other hand if this is how things stand, and there is no single ultimate Whole that contains all the other wholes, then there are no wholes that are the sum of their parts either, and this is how it could happen that it makes no sense to inquire about the meaning of the smaller wholes, even if, and especially if, we are unable to do without the causal-experimental, that is with the extraordinarily persuasive power of “if I drop it from above, it falls,” the extraordinarily persuasive power of which lies in its simplicity, in its so-called obviousness, this is what we are obsessed with, antecedents and consequences, this is the fashion, said the man’s voice, this is the latest fashion of the mind, the latest fashion of the imagination, the pattern for our thinking and imagining how things are, that is to say we work from patterns, just like trained workers, the only problem being that we have a need for encountering the Unapproachable, and that is how things that are unapproachable come about, and here, at this juncture, alas, faith is least helpful, because faith is the mode of handling our fears, and so our God, our gods, the so-called higher regions, the transcendent, all of these are produced by the outrageously complicated web of errors stemming from our fears, based on our faith, and toppling us into calamitous stupidities, all of that in such a miraculous manner that we could never give them up, we continuously manufacture them even as they keep on creating us, it is a kind of division of labor, the wages are considerable, we receive the Infinite, we receive the Eternal, even though, as Buddhists remind us, these are nonexistent in two ways: on the one hand, they have no reality, and on the other hand they have no unreality either, I must tell you, the TV set droned on in that Cantonese dialect, it is high time I told you, it is late enough that you can bear this thought, the TV set tried joking, that in fact Such Things Do Not Exist, not only do they not exist, they are impossible, and not only impossible, but any speech, thought, imagination, feeling and belief referring to them, that is to It—for It does not exist, is meaningless, after which the only sensible thing to do is to remain silent, to refrain from speaking, that is the only worthwhile thing to do, to refrain from speaking, that is the only meritorious thing to do, so that someone, said the TV set, was not acting meaningfully, worthily, or meritoriously . . . and this was the point where this senseless, unworthy, non-meritorious, melancholy, brooding, but all the while sweet-as-honey and vividly convincing prophetic proclamation began to dissolve into a sound of an entirely different order, the words, sentences, voice, speech, morphing in slow gossamer-light increments into a so-called eternal sound of running water, but no, not really the sound of water plashing, and he pulled the blanket over himself for he was starting to shiver because the air conditioning was set too high, no, this was not water plashing, it was a roar, like the ocean, but no, not the ocean really, reflected that sizeable load of mush inside his head, this was something else, this . . . this sound, he now recognized, before sleep swallowed him up, was a waterfall.