America, what his task was, why and, should he succeed in accomplishing it, what the result of that would be, and all this he had revealed and repeated many times, there was one thing he had never mentioned and that was what they, and particularly the young lady, meant to him personally, in other words he just wanted to say that as far as he was concerned this apartment and its occupants, and particularly the young lady, represented his one contact with the living, that is to say that Mr. Sárváry and the young lady were the last two people in his life, and she was not to be cross with him for speaking in such an excitable and confused fashion, for it was only in such turgid manner that he succeeded in expressing himself at all, but what could he do, it was only like this that he could convey how important they were to him, and how important was anything that happened to them, and if the young lady were a little sad then he, Korin, could fully understand why that might be and he would find it painful and would deeply regret it if the people around him should appear sad and this was all he wanted to say, that’s all, he quietly added then stopped speaking altogether and just stood behind her, but because she glanced back at him for a moment at the end and, in her own peculiar Hungarian accent said simply értek, I understand you, he immediately turned his head away as if feeling that the person he had been addressing could no longer bear his proximity, and stepped away to sit down at the table and tried to forget the decided confusion he had caused by returning to the usual subject of his conversation, that is to say the carriage and how as it was nearing the outskirts of Padua, all the talk was of names, a range of names and guesses as to who would be the new Doge, who would be elected, in other words, following the death of Tommaso Mocenigo, who would rule in his place, whether it would be Francesco Barbaro, Antonio Contarini, Marino Cavallo, or perhaps Pietro Loredan or Mocenigo’s younger brother, Leonardo Mocenigo, which was not unimaginable according to Toót, though Bengazza added that any of these were possible, Falke nodding in agreement that it was all possible, with one exception, a certain Francesco Foscari, who would not be elected for he was in favor of the alliance with Milan and therefore, problematically, of war and Kasser, glancing at Mastemann, agreed it might be anyone but him, the immensely wealthy procurator of San Marco, the one man against whom Tommaso Mocenigo, in that memorable speech, had warned, indeed successfully warned, the republic, for the forty-strong election committee had immediately responded to the power of Mocenigo’s argument and demonstrated their own wisdom, by giving this Foscari fellow just three votes in the first round, and he would no doubt receive two in the next and then would shrink to one, and while they could not be certain of this, Kasser explained to Mastemann, for they had received no fresh news since the first round of the elections, they felt sure that a successor would already have been chosen from among Barbaro, Contarini, Cavallo, Loredan or Leonardo Mocenigo, or at any rate that the successor’s name would not be Francesco Foscari, and since two weeks had elapsed since the first round people in Padua would probably know the result already, said Kasser, but Mastemann continued to refrain from comment and it was evident by now that it was not because he was asleep for his eyes were open, if only narrowly, said Korin, so it was likely that he wasn’t sleeping, and he maintained this attitude to the extent that no one felt bold enough to persist with the conversation, so they soon fell silent and it was in silence they crossed the border of Padua, such silence that none of them dared break it, it being completely dark outside in the valley for a good while now, one or two fawns scattering before the carriage as they reached the city gates where the guards raised their torches so they could see the occupants of the seats and explained to the driver where their intended accommodation was to be found before stepping back and snapping to attention, allowing them to continue on their way into Padua, and so there they were, Korin summed up for the woman, late in the evening in the courtyard of an inn, the landlord and his staff running out to receive them, with dogs yapping at their heels and the horses swaying with exhaustion, a little before midnight on the April 28, 1423.
10.
The gentlemen would, he felt sure, forgive him this late and somewhat lengthy statement, said Mastemann’s driver at the crack of dawn next day when having woken the staff he sounded his horn to gather the passengers together at one of the tables at the inn, but if something could serve to make his master’s journey unbearable, that is beside the terrible quality of the Venetian roads which made his master feel as though his kidneys were being shaken out of his body, as though his bones were being cracked, his head split wide open and his circulation so poor that he feared to lose both his legs, that is on top of the tribulations already mentioned, it was the impossibility of talking, socializing, indeed of merely existing, so it was unusual for his master to commit himself in this way, and he had undertaken the exercise only because he felt it his duty to do so, said the driver, on account of the news, the good news he should emphasize, of which he had been instructed to speak this dawn, for what had happened, he said, drawing a piece of paper from an inner pocket, was that having arrived last night, Signor Mastemann—and they might not be aware of this—did not ask for a bed to be prepared for him, but ordered a comfortable armchair complete with blankets to be set opposite an open window with a footstool, for it was well known that when he was utterly exhausted and could not bear even to think of bed, it was only like this that he could get any rest at all, and so it was that once the servants found such an armchair for him, Signor Mastemann was escorted to his room, undertook certain elementary ablutions, consumed a meal, and immediately occupied it, then after three hours or so of light sleep, that is to say about four o’clock or so, woke and called him in, him alone, his driver, who by his master’s grace was literate and could write, and honored him by effectively raising him to the rank of secretary, dictating a whole page of notes that amounted to a message, a message whose written contents, the driver explained, he had this dawn to pass on in its entirety and what was more in a manner that was clear and capable of withstanding any enquiry, so that he should be prepared to answer any questions they might have, and this was precisely what he would now like to do, to carry out his orders to a T by attending to them in full, and therefore he requested them, if they found any expression, any word, any idea less than clear the first time round, that they should say so immediately and ask him for elucidation, and having said all this by way of preamble, the driver extended the piece of paper toward them in a general kind of way so that no one actually attempted to take it from him at first, and only once he had offered it more directly to Kasser, who did not take it from him, did Bengazza accept it, seek out its beginning and start to read the single side of text that had been inscribed in the driver’s finest hand, then having done so he passed the sheet on to Falke who also read it, and so the message circulated among them until it was returned to Bengazza once more, at which point they fell very silent and could only gradually bring themselves to ask any questions at all, for there was no point in asking questions, nor was there any point in the driver answering them, however patiently and conscientiously, for any answer would have failed entirely to touch on the meaning of the letter, if letter—letter—it might be called, added Korin to the woman, since the whole thing really consisted of thirteen apparently unconnected statements, some longer, some shorter and that was all: things like DO NOT FEAR FOSCARI and when they enquired after its significance the driver merely told them that as concerned this part of the message Signor Mastemann had merely instructed him as to the correct stressing of the words, telling him that the word FEAR was the one to be most heavily stressed, as indeed he had just done, and that was all the explanation they received, further probing of the driver being useless, as was the case with another statement, THE SPIRIT OF HUMANITY IS THE SPIRIT OF WAR, for here the driver started a recitation in praise of war, about the glory of war, saying that men were ennobled by great deeds, that they longed for glory but that the true condition required for glory was not simply a capacity to undertake glorious d
eeds but the glorious deed itself, a deed that might be attempted, planned and carried out only under circumstances of great personal danger, and furthermore, the driver continued, clearly not in his own words, a person’s life was in continuous and extended peril only under the conditions of war, and Kasser stared at the driver in astonishment, at an utter loss, then glanced across at his companions who were just as astonished and at an equal loss, before running his eyes over the third statement saying VICTORY IS TRUTH, asking the driver if he had something to add to this subject too, the driver then replying that the election committee, as far as Signor Mastemann was aware, had sat in the election chamber for ten days in the course of which they had come to the conclusion that Cavallo was too old and incapable, that Barbaro was too crippled and vain, that Contarini was dangerous as he had autocratic tendencies, and that Loredan was required to be at the head of a fleet, not at the Palazzo Ducale, in other words that there was only one candidate worth discussing, the one man able to help Venice maintain her honor, the one man capable of victory, the one man chosen by twenty-six clear votes after ten days of debate to be the Doge of Venice, and that man, naturally, was the great Foscari, in response to which Kasser could only repeat the name: Foscari? are you sure? and the driver nodded and pointed to the bottom of the sheet where it was stated, and twice underlined, that Francesco Foscari, the noble procurator of San Marco, had been elected by twenty-six clear votes.
11.
If he were to describe their reaction, Korin ventured, simply as indescribable, it would be only an overused, hackneyed form of speech that the young lady should not take literally, for the manuscript was particularly sensitive and precise on the subject of Kasser’s disappointment, dealing with it in great detail, and not only with that but with the whole morning after the exchange with the driver, at the conclusion of which they understood, not without considerable difficulty, that one purpose of the dawn message was to let them know that Mastemann did not envisage continuing the journey with them—and this was the point, explained Korin, this sensitivity, this refined eye, this proliferation of precise detail, the way the manuscript had suddenly become extremely precise, as a result of which an even stranger situation confronted him, for now, because of the valedictory at the end of the third chapter, it wasn’t events at the inn at Padua following the appearance of the peculiarly well-prepared driver with his peculiar mission that he wanted to tell her about, but the description and its extraordinary quality, in other words not about how, having understood the matter, Kasser and his companions themselves considered the idea of continuing their journey with Mastemann to be out of the question, since according to the thirteenth part of the message the road to Venice that they had so desired to take, either with Mastemann or with anyone else, meant nothing to them now, not about that but about all those apparently insignificant events and movements that had now become extremely important, or to put it as simply as he could, said Korin to the woman in an effort to clear the matter up, it was as if the manuscript had suddenly recoiled in shock, surveyed the scene and registered every person, object, condition, relationship and circumstance individually while utterly blurring the distinction between significance and insignificance, dissolving it, annihilating it: for while events of obvious significance continued to pile up, such as that Kasser and his companions continued to sit at the table facing the driver until he rose, bowed and left to start preparations for the departure of the carriage, to secure the luggage, to check the straps and examine the axles, following this, if such a thing was at all possible, the narration focused entirely on minute particulars of utter apparent insignificance such as the effect of the sunlight as it poured through the window, the objects it illuminated and the objects it left in shadow, the sound of the dogs and the quality of their barking, their appearance, their numbers and how they fell silent, on what the servants were doing in the rooms upstairs and throughout the whole house right down to the cellars, on what the wine left in the jug from the previous night tasted like, all this, the important and the unimportant, the essential and the inessential, catalogued indiscriminately together, next to each other, one above another, the lot building up into a single mass whose task it was to represent a condition, the essence of which was that there was literally nothing negligible in the facts that comprised it—and this, basically, was the only way that he could give her some idea, said Korin, of the fundamental change that overcame the manuscript, while all the time the reader, Korin raised his voice, carried on without noticing how he had come to accept and realize Kasser’s disappointment and bitterness, though it was only by registering this disappointment and bitterness that he could foresee what still lay ahead, for of course, much still did lie ahead, he said, the chapter leading to Venice would not abandon its readers at this point, only once Mastemann himself appeared at the turn of the stairs wearing a long dark-blue velvet cloak, his face stiff and ashen, and marched down to the ground floor, dropped a few ducats in the palm of the bowing landlord, then, without casting a glance at the travelers’ table, left the building, got into the carriage and galloped off along the bank of the Brenta while they remained at the table, and once the innkeeper came and placed a small white canvas package in front of them, explaining that the noble gentleman from Trento had commanded him to pass this on, after his departure, to the man they said was wounded, and once they opened the package and established the fact that what it contained was the finest powdered zinc for the healing of wounds, only once that had been recounted did the third chapter end, said Korin standing up, preparing to return to his room, with this mysterious gesture of Mastemann’s, then with their own settling of bills with the landlord, and, he hesitated in the doorway, with their farewells to him as they stepped through the gate into the brilliant morning light.
12.
All is of equal gravity, everything equally urgent, said Korin to the woman at noon the next day, no longer concealing the fact that something had happened to him and that he was on the edge of despair, not sitting down in his accustomed chair but walking up and down in the kitchen, declaring that either it was all nonsense, all of it, that is to say everything he was thinking and doing here, or that he had reached a critical point and was on the threshold of some decisive perception, then he rushed back into his room and for several days did not appear at all, not in the morning, not at five, not even in the evening, so on the third day it was up to the interpreter’s lover to open his door and with an anxious look on her face enquire, It’s oil right? or Okay? for nothing like this had happened before—not even to stick his head out of the door, for after all anything might have happened, but Korin answered with a simple, Yes, it’s all right, rose from the bed where he was lying fully dressed, smiled at the woman, then, in an entirely new and relaxed manner, told her that he would spend one more day thinking, but tomorrow, about eleven or so, he would appear in the kitchen again and tell her everything that had happened, but that wouldn’t be until tomorrow, having said which he practically pushed the woman out of the room, repeating, “about eleven,” and “most certainly,” then the lock clicked shut as he closed the door behind her.
13.
Well then, all is of equal gravity, everything equally urgent, Korin declared the next day at precisely eleven o’clock, taking a long time to pronounce the words and holding his silence for a good while, at the end of which silence, having said all he had to say, he simply repeated, significantly: Equal, young lady, and of the utmost importance.
VI • OUT OF WHICH HE LEADS THEM
1.
They took the wardrobe down first, the big one they used for clothes in the back room, and it wasn’t clear for some time why they were doing so, who had sent them or at first what they wanted, but they went about it, gripping their caps in their hands, gabbling away in a completely incomprehensible pigeon English, showing the woman a piece of paper with the interpreter’s signature on it then pushing their way into the apartment and getting to work at something that seemed to mean nothing
in particular, tramping up and down through the rooms, hemming and hawing, taking the odd measurement, nudging to one side any object that happened to be in their way, in other words clearly taking stock, making lists, arranging the contents of the apartment—from the refrigerator to the dishcloth, the paper lampshade to the blankets used for curtains—into a sort of order, stringing the items together on some invisible thread then classifying them by some specific criterion, but betraying nothing about that criterion, assuming it was known to them, so that, by the end, with an ostentatious look at the clock and a your-obedient-servant look at the inhabitants, all four of them sat down on the kitchen floor and started eating their breakfasts, while both the frightened woman shrinking into the background, and Korin who had been roused from his work at the computer and was now staring this way and that wide-eyed, were too startled to say a word, both remaining in their original states, the first of frightened confusion, the second of idiotically gaping, the interpreter being nowhere to be found and therefore unable to offer an explanation; and nor was he available the next day, so even though they grasped the fact that he must have consented to the process they had not the foggiest idea why the four men, having finished their breakfast, mumbling away in their incomprehensible mother tongue and throwing the odd word at them, began removing all the movable objects in the apartment and loading them onto a truck waiting outside the house: the gas-fire, the kitchen table, the sewing machine, everything down to the last cracked salt cellar, in other words systematically removing every last item from the apartment; nor did they understand the next morning, after the men had ruthlessly taken away the beds they had left the night before, what they wanted when they rang the bell again and threw a huge roll of tape made of some synthetic material down in the corner, and, screwing their caps up in their hands, chorused a brief morning, then continued the previous day’s nightmarish activity, but this time in reverse, removing from the truck parked in front of the block countless numbers of wooden and cardboard boxes, among them certain heavy large items they could only manage between two or even occasionally four of them, using straps, dragging them upstairs for hours on end so that by noon the containers had piled up head high and there was nowhere to lie or sit or even move much, and the interpreter’s lover and Korin stood beside each other, squeezed into a corner of the kitchen, staring at the extraordinary upheaval until, at about four o’clock, the men departed and suddenly there was silence in the apartment, at which point, seeking an explanation, they began tentatively to open the boxes.
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