29.
I need a ticket for the next flight, said Korin at the desk, and when he leaned across it to explain the matter to the clerk who was staring into her computer, making it clear to her that this was no ordinary journey, nor he an ordinary traveler, meaning he was not a tourist, not on a family visit, nor was he a businessman, all she said, after a lot of hemming and hawing and shaking of heads, was that she would be grateful if he would stop leaning across her desk, and that his one very faint hope of success lay in a so-called “lahsminih” flight, though he would have to wait for that too in order to discover whether it was in fact worth waiting, and so, if in the meantime, he would be so good as to return to his seat … but Korin begged her pardon, asking what that meant, and she had to enunciate it clearly, syllable by syllable, “lahs-min-ih” while he kept turning it over and over in his mind, aloud, until his English lessons of the last few months kicked in and he realized that what she meant to say was probably “last minute,” yes, that was it, now he understood, he said, though he was far from understanding anything until, on his puzzled return to the bench, the stewardess explained it to him, though it transpired that he would also need a “so-called visa,” and naturally he didn’t have one, at which point the stewardess’s beautiful face darkened for a minute, and everyone looked at him repeating, Visa? does he, Korin, mean to say he has no visa? but does he know what this means? does he understand that it can take up to a week to obtain a visa? and how can he present himself at the desk with an on-the-spot request for a ticket? indeed, too bad, the stewardess nodded in melancholy fashion, then, seeing how Korin had sunk back beside her in desperation, advised him that he shouldn’t despair and that she would have a go, and, so saying, she stepped across to the nearest telephone and began phoning, ringing first one place then another, though because of all the noise Korin couldn’t understand a word she was saying, and after half an hour or so someone appeared announcing that it would be all right, sir, regard the problem as solved, and Korin solemnly declared that the stewardess was not only enchantingly lovely, but that she could work magic in other ways too, until the man returned to inform Korin that the visa would cost him fifteen thousand, fifteen thousand! Korin repeated aloud, the color draining from his face as he stood up, but the man merely repeated fifteen thousand, saying Korin could, if he wished, try going to the consulate himself, and stand in the long queue on his own, perhaps returning after three or four days, he might have the time to spare, but if he didn’t this was the price, there was not much chance of anything else turning up, in consequence of which Korin excused himself and popped into the toilet, took three five-thousand bills from the lining of his coat, came out and handed the money over to the man who told him that everything would be all right, he could relax, for he would fill the necessary parts of the form out for Korin, then take it in and go through all the proper procedures which meant he could stop fretting, it was all in the safest possible hands, he would have his darn visa by that afternoon and could therefore, he winked before disappearing with the appropriate information, take it easy for the next ten years, sleep soundly for ten years; and so Korin told the desk clerk that he would after all have need of a ticket for the next flight, then sat down again beside the stewardess and confessed that he had no idea what would happen to him if the old lady in the wheelchair happened to arrive, for, to tell the truth, he had never flown before, had no idea what to do, was in constant need of advice and his prospects, which had brightened so dramatically, would immediately cloud over again if she was required to attend on the old lady with the wheelchair and so leave him.
30.
All eyes in the office were directed at them, from the woman sitting behind the reception counter, through the agents at their desks in the background to the scattered individual browsers of brochures desirous of travel; not a pair of eyes but was fixed on them, on the whole incident, or rather what it signified, for there was no ready explanation for it: for the extraordinary beauty of the stewardess, since how could someone so beautiful be a stewardess or, indeed, a stewardess so beautiful; for the unwashed, smelly figure of Korin in his rumpled greatcoat, for how could someone traveling to America present such an appearance, or conversely, how could someone presenting such an appearance aspire to visit America; and above all for the fact that two such people could be in easy commerce with each other, on the best of terms, lost in a conversation so deep that its ultimate subject was beyond conjecture for it was being conducted in such passionate terms that it conveyed nothing beyond the passion itself, not even hinting at whether they were meeting for the first time or renewing an old acquaintance, both possibilities, as far as the office was concerned, remaining open: in other words the sight of such beauty borne with such regal modesty in combination with a figure of such beggarly degeneracy represented a serious disturbance in the even tenor of official life, indeed, as far as this sphere of existence was concerned, it signified a slowly developing scandal, since the stewardess was certainly no kind of queen, nor Korin a beggar, and therefore all anyone could do was to watch and wait, wait for this curious still life to disintegrate, to be snuffed out, liquidated, since there could be no doubt that scene on the bench was in fact a kind of still life, Korin with his degenerate beggarly appearance, his defenseless otherworldliness, and the stewardess with her enchanting body, that body’s simmering sensuality; a still life therefore with peculiar rules of its own meriting the peculiarly intense interest of its environment, as the stewardess herself explained later on the plane, an interest that she herself finally noticed, and when she saw how everyone was looking at them, it confused her, she said, and there was even something frightening about it, about everyone’s eyes, the way they were looking at them, how should she put it? as if it were one single face staring and in a truly frightening fashion, frightening and comical, as she told them all about it on the way to Rome.
31.
My predecessors were, on the whole, relaxed, said Korin after a period of silence, then, pulling a sour face, he scratched the top of his head and carefully accenting every word, added—but I was always fraught.
32.
The nipples delicately pressed through the warm texture of the snow-white starched blouse while the deep décolletage boldly accentuated the graceful curvature and fragility of the neck, the gentle valleys of the shoulders and the light swaying to and fro of the sweetly compact masses of her breasts, though it was hard to tell whether it was these that drew all eyes inexorably to her, that refused to let the eyes escape, or if it was the short dark-blue skirt that clung to her hips and bound her long thighs tightly together while indicating the lines of her belly, or indeed if it was the lush and sparkling black hair that tumbled over her shoulders and the clear high brow, the beautifully sculpted jaw, the thick soft lips, the pretty slope of the nose, or those shining eyes in the depths of which two unquenchable spots of light glowed and would glow there forever, that arrested them; in other words men and women caught in that moment in the office were quite unable to decide what it was that had such a spellbinding effect, so spellbinding that they could do nothing but stare at the several parts constituting this fever-inducing beauty, and what was more—bearing in mind the contrast between such a bountiful display of loveliness on the one hand and their own commonplace existence—they stared at her quite openly, the men with crude, long-suppressed hunger and naked desire, the women with a fine attention to the accumulation of detail, from top to bottom and back again, dizzy with the sensation but, driven by a malignant jealousy at the heart of their fierce inspection, surveying her with ever less sympathy, ever greater contempt, remarking, once the thing was over, or rather once this scandalous pair had disappeared separately through the exit of the MALÉV office, the women first, that it wasn’t a matter of prejudice, for they too were women, and one woman always regards another in that light, so there could be no question of prejudice, but it was a little much the way this little strumpet of a stewardess, as one or two of them quickly interject
ed, pretended she was an innocent little angel, a meek, ready-to-please little princess, while, so the women in the office snorted once it was possible to get together behind the desk and address the subject properly, that tight blouse, the ultra-short skirt clinging to her ass giving an occasional glimpse of the long thighs and the white panties between the thighs, and the very fact that every part of this body, literally everything, was clearly on display, and was practically screaming for attention … well, they had seen quite enough of such apparent artlessness before and knew all too well how to work the little dodges that brought out the best but hid that which should be invisible, nor would they say anything but, really! the shameless deception of it, a blatant whore parading herself like some refined, regal presence, that! they all agreed, no one would be taken in by nowadays, and later on, before they went home, stopping for a brief chat in the park or a bar, the male employees who had witnessed the scene, a customer or two, or managers further up the chain, contributed to the ongoing discussion by adding that such women were on to a winner every time, that she had a fantastic body, and these huge tits that really thrust themselves at you, and what’s more, they added, she had a sweetly swaying round ass, and tits like that, and an ass like that, not forgetting, they added, a snow-white set of teeth and a charming smile, and given those shapely hips and a bit of graceful movement, and, to top it all, a glance, a perfectly timed glance that told you, you whose throat was quite parched by the sight of her, that you would be wrong, seriously wrong, if you thought that you would be at the receiving end of all this, because the glance also told you that the woman confronting you was a virgin, and what is more precisely the kind of virgin who has no idea what she has been created for, in other words, taking it all into account, the men declared as they sat in the park or in the bar, if you took her on, they jabbed their fingers at their listeners, that would be the end of you, and they set out once more to describe the woman they had seen at the MALÉV office from her nipples down to her slender ankles, set out but could never finish what they started, since this woman, they kept repeating, was quite beyond words, because what did they achieve by telling you about the skirt glued to the hips and those long thighs, no more than the hair tumbling over her shoulders, those soft lips, the brow, the chin, the nose, really now, what did it add up to? they asked, for it was impossible, simply impossible to capture her in words, because what one ought to capture in beauty is that which is treacherous and irresistible, or, let’s be perfectly honest: she was the vision of a truly magnificent, majestic female animal in a dismally synthetic world of sickness.
33.
If anyone really and truly wished him success in his venture, it was she, declared the stewardess to the other crew members on board, though she was sure, she added, that once she had left him he would quickly have come unstuck and got pretty well nowhere, and most likely his name would have been dropped from the stand-by list after the Swiss lady in the wheelchair had turned up—almost three and a half hours late—which was when she had taken her leave of him, pushing the woman through the door of the office, yes, they’d have dropped his name off the list, the stewardess repeated with growing certainty, no doubt about it, absolutely none, not that she knew precisely who it was that would do the dropping, the people who are normally responsible for such decisions, she expected, policemen, psychiatric workers, security personnel, the usual suspects, because the way he looked it was a miracle that he had got within hailing distance of the MALÉV office, and no one who had had the briefest contact with him could believe he would get any further, so why should she believe it, however she might wish it were otherwise, for to get across town, out to the Ferihegy airport and past the ticket inspectors, the customs people, the security guys, then to go on to America, no, no, no, the stewardess shook her head, it was unimaginable that he could manage all that, and even now, some two hours later, when she thought back over it, it all seemed like a dream to her, not that she had had a dream as strange as that in a long time, she confessed, nor had she any idea what it all added up to, this memory she now had stored away, for she was still too close to it, she couldn’t really see anything, had no idea who he actually was, or anything about him except that she had immediately started making excuses for him and defending him without being able to make any categorical statements about him, in other words to defend him from some as-yet-unknown accusation, for example that of lunacy, for though he did at first sight appear to be a lunatic, he was, as she had already said, no fool, but, how should she express it, there was something about him, about this man, that was so solemn, so unusual, so—she felt justified in using the word—so startling in its absolute solemnity, that she couldn’t but be struck by his sheer desperation, him being absolutely set on something, even though he couldn’t articulate what it was, and no, she wasn’t joking, she’s not leading them on, not just saying all this, and after a good sleep she would get over the experience, and once she was through it all, she said, pointing at herself, through all this “may I talk to you” business, all this “intensity,” really, it would be she herself who would be thought crazy for getting involved in the first place, right? ah no, not at all, she would quite understand it if her colleagues thought she was crazy, so she would shut up now, leave off the story of this great soul-shaking encounter, and she was sorry to have bored them, and had a good giggle herself among the general merriment, adding only that it was sad the way we meet people by chance, spend time talking to them, acknowledge the fact that they have had some effect on us, then we lose them and never ever see them again, something genuinely sad, whatever anyone says, she repeated, laughing, really very sad.
34.
It was Hermes, said Korin, Hermes lay at the heart of everything, that was his starting point, that was the foundation of his deepest intellectual experiences, and though he had never spoken of this to anyone before he simply had to tell the young lady stewardess that it was to Hermes he had been ultimately led, having time after time attempted to discover that hermetically-sealed beginning, had time after time attempted to understand it, to solve it, to get to the bottom of it, and not least of all, to recount it to those people that fate had so far brought him into contact with, to tell them how it was that he realized that he was not intended to be an ordinary archivist, not that he didn’t want to be an archivist, for indeed he was most sincerely an archivist, but not an ordinary one, and what he sought to discover, what he constantly sought the answer to, was the reason why he wasn’t ordinary; and so he kept going over and over things that had happened, extending his explorations ever further back in time, and there was always something there, something new about his past that made him think, this is it, I’ve got it, or rather he searched and searched for the source, the origo of this revolution in his life which eventually, some thirty or forty hours ago, had led him here, and to ever newer potential sources and origos, ever newer starting points and beginnings, until he reached the conclusion, he was pleased to say, the actual conclusion he had been seeking and the name of that conclusion was Hermes; for truly, he said, Hermes, for him, was that absolute origo, it was that encounter with the hermetic, the day, the hour he first encountered Hermes, when—if he might so put it—he became acquainted with the world of the hermetic and was afforded a glimpse into it, into that which Hermes presented as a world, the world of which Hermes was the ruler, Hermes, this Greek god, the twelfth of twelve, with his mystery, his lack of fixity, his copiously multifaceted existence, his secret forms, the dark side of his being shrouded in a deeply suggestive silence, who had had such a mesmerizing effect on his imagination, or, more precisely, had completely captured his imaginative faculties and made him restless, had drawn him into a sphere from which there was no escape, for it was like being under a spell or a curse or an incantation, since this is what Hermes was to him, not a god who led but one who misled, swept him off course, destabilized him, called him, drew him aside, seduced him from below, whispered to him from the wings; but why him, him in particular,
why this archivist working some two hundred and twenty kilometers from Budapest, he could not tell, nor should he seek after reasons, he felt, but simply accept that that was the way it was; it was the way he had learned of Hermes, possibly through the Homeric Hymns, or maybe from the psychoanalyst Kerényi, possibly from the marvelous Graves, who the hell knew or cared how, said Korin, this being, if he might so put it that way, the induction phase which was quickly followed by the next phase, the phase of deeper exploration in which the towering, unrivalled work of Walter F. Otto, that is to say his Die Götter Griechenlands, was the sole guide, and in that book, exclusively one specific chapter in the Hungarian edition, which he read and reread until it came to pieces in his hands, which was the point at which restlessness and anxiety entered his life, when things were no longer as they were, the day after which everything looked different, had changed, when the world showed him its most terrifying face, bringing on a sense of dissociation, offering the most terrifying aspect of absolute freedom, since knowledge of Hermes, said Korin, entails the loss of one’s sense of being at home in this world, of the sense of belonging, of dependence, of certainty, and this means that suddenly there is an uncertainty factor in the totality of things, because, just as suddenly, it becomes clear that this uncertainty is the only, the sole factor, for Hermes signifies the provisional and relative nature of the laws of being, and Hermes brings and Hermes takes such laws away, or rather allows them liberty, for that is the whole point of Hermes, said Korin to the stewardess, for whoever is granted a glimpse of him can never again yield himself to any ambition or form of knowledge, because ambition and knowledge are merely ragged cloaks, if he might use such a poetic turn of phrase, that one may adapt or cast off at a whim according to the teachings of Hermes, the god of the roads of night, of night itself, a night whose domain the presence of Hermes extends into day, since as soon as he appears anywhere he immediately changes human life, appearing to let days be, appearing to acknowledge the powers of his Olympian companions, and allowing everything to appear as though life continued to proceed according to the plans and schemes of his own, while whispering to his devotees that life was not quite like this, leading them into the night, showing them the inconceivably complex and chaotic nature of all paths, making them confront the unexpected, the accidental, the out-of-the-blue, the dangerous, the deeply confused and primitive states of possession, death and sexuality, expelling them, in other words, from Zeus’s world of light and thrusting them into hermetic darkness, as he had thrust Korin ever since Korin had understood that a glimpse of him had induced a restlessness in his heart, a restlessness that could never cease once Hermes had revealed himself to him, a revelation that quite ruined him, for if there was one thing he did not wish to suggest it was that this discovery, this glimpse of Hermes, indicated that he felt any love for Hermes, said Korin, no, he had no love for Hermes whatsoever but was simply frightened of him; and this is how things were, this is what happened and no more than this, that he had been scared by Hermes as would any man have been, any man who had realized at the moment of his ruin that he had been ruined, that is to say had come into the possession of such knowledge as he did not at all wish to possess, as was precisely the case with him, with Korin, for what did he desire that others did not? he had no desire to be different, to stand out from the crowd, he had no such ambitions, preferring relationships and security, homeliness and a clear and simple life, in other words absolutely ordinary things, though he lost these in the blinking of an eye the moment Hermes entered his life, and made of him, as he is happy to admit, a servant, an underling, since from that moment the underling began rapidly to distance himself from his wife, his neighbors and his colleagues, because it seemed hopeless even to try to explain, elaborate, or confess to the fact that it was a Greek god that lay at the root of the unmistakable changes in his behavior, not that he had any chance of getting others to sympathize with him, Korin told the stewardess, for just imagine him turning one day to his wife, or to his colleagues at the archive and saying to them, I am aware that you will have noticed a peculiar change in my behavior, well, it’s all on account of a Greek god; just imagine the effect, said Korin, the way his wife would react to such a confession, or his colleagues to this explanation, in other words things could not have turned out otherwise than they did, a quick divorce, the rapid progress from peculiar looks at the office to being ignored, in fact some went so far as to avoid him altogether and refused to acknowledge him in the street, which was, said Korin, deeply hurtful, coming as it did from his own colleagues, people he met every day of his life, being utterly ignored in the street by them, thanks to Hermes, and everything flowed from that right down to the present moment, not that he was complaining, merely establishing the facts, for what cause had he for complaint, though there was a time when he was no more than a simple, perfectly orthodox archivist who had every hope of progressing to the post of chief archivist, but now instead of that, would you believe it, said Korin, here he was in Budapest, in Budapest, if he might be allowed to jump forward in time, at the Budapest offices of MALÉV where he trusted and genuinely believed that he would receive a visa and a ticket enabling him, Korin, not only to get to the world-famous city of New York, but in doing so to achieve, and here he dropped his voice, the chief aim of his hermetic state of uncertainty, not to mention the fact, he added, that should he desire compensation, which he did not; or should he wish to exchange his state for some other, which he did not; an exchange of states might serve as a form of compensation, and though this kind of exchange was against the rules it was not in fact impossible, for it was not impossible that he might, any day now, get to see the deity, Hermes, personally, at some moment, for such moments did exist, moments when things were really calm, moments when he glanced toward a shady corner, afternoons when he had fallen asleep and woke to a flash of light in the room, or perhaps when it was getting dark and he was rushing somewhere the god might be there beside him, keeping pace with him, visible as the moon, waving his caduceus at something that was not him, in the distance before disappearing.
War & War Page 5