War & War

by Krasznahorkai, László

  23.

  They were waiting by the shrine to Mercury, about a hundred to a hundred and fifty yards from the Porta Appia, Bengazza sitting down, Falke standing and Toót with his right foot on a stone, his arms folded and propped on his knee—nothing else happening, the very image of expectancy—expectancy in the heart of things, said Korin, for when the text was examined in greater detail it seemed that time had ceased and history itself had come to an end, so whatever appeared in those huge inflated sentences, whatever new element entered them, none of it led anywhere or prepared the way for anything, it was neither preamble nor closure, neither cause nor effect, simply one glimpsed element of a picture moving at unprecedented speed, a detail, a cell, a chunk, a working part of an indescribably complex whole that stood immobile in those gigantic sentences, to put it another way, said Korin, if he was not mistaken—and he did not wish to mislead—the sixth chapter was ultimately nothing but an enormous inventory, there was no other way to describe it, and the contradictions in it had, from beginning to end, always unnerved him, for what was he to do with those mutually exclusive statements, that were both true yet impossible, and no, no, no he knew he wasn’t getting anywhere with it yet that’s how it was, he said with a slight smile, the three of them standing there without Kasser, at one end of the Via Appia, watching the road as it approached them from the south, and, as they stand there, the monstrous inventory begins, from Roma Quadrata to the Temple of Vesta, from the Via Sacra to Aqua Claudia, and in one way it really does work, but in another, said Korin, his eyes beginning to burn, it really doesn’t, it really does not work at all.

  24.

  He got up, left the room, then returned a moment later with a big wad of paper, sat down beside the woman, picked up the manuscript and searched through it for a while, then, begging her pardon for just this once having to have the text in front of him, chose a few pages, glancing over them and continued from where he had left off last time, at Rome, and how the road to Rome was filled with slaves, the libertus and the tenuirs, with makers of staircases and makers of women’s shoes, with smelters of copper, blowers of glass, with bakers and workers at brick ovens, with Pisan weavers of wool and potters from Arretium, with tanners, barbers, quack-doctors, water-bearers, knights, senators, and fast on their heels, accenti, viators, praeca and librarii, then ludimagisteri, grammatici and rhetors, flower-sellers, capsarii and pastry-cooks, followed by innkeepers, gladiators, pilgrims and, bringing up the rear, delators, with libitinarii, vespiilons and dissignatori all coming their way, or rather they had come their way for they were no longer actually coming, said Bengazza looking up the deserted road, while Falke agreed, saying no, because there’s no Farum, no Palatinus, no Capital, no Campus Martius, nor is there a Saepta, an Emporium on the banks of the Tiber, no gorgeous Harti Caesaris, no Camitum and no Cura, nor is there an Arx, a Tabularium, a Regia and no shrine of Cybele; no more marvelous temples such as those of Saturnus or Augustus, or Jupiter or Diana, for grass covers the Calasseum and the Pantheon too; nor is there a Senate to bring in laws, nor is there a Caesar in place, and so on and so forth ad infinitum, Korin explained; they just went on saying these things, one picking up where the other left off, the words pouring from them, words about the immeasurable quantity of gifts the earth had bestowed on them, for it brought forth corn, continued Toót, and it gave us firewood and stump-wood by way of the Vicus Materarius and honey, fruits, flowers and precious stones by way of the Via Sacra, cattle for the Forum Baarium, and swine for the Farum Suarium, fishes for the Piscatarium, vegetables for the Halitorium, and oil, wine, papyrus and herbs to the foot of Aventinus and the banks of the Tiber, but there is no incentive for this infinite store of earthly goods to flow in our direction, Bengazza took over, for there is no more life, no more festival, and never again will there be chariot races, or Saturnalia, for Ceres and Flora are forgotten; and there is no Ludi Ramani to organize, nor Ludi Victariae Sullanae either, for the baths are in ruins, the thermals at Caracalla and Diacletians are wrecks, and the pipes to carry the water are dry, dry as the Aqua Appia, empty as the Aqua Marcia, and who cares, said Toót, where Catullus, or Cicero or Augustus once lived, and who cares where those vast, imposing, peerless palaces used to stand or what wine they used to drink there, the Falernian, the Massilion, the Chiasi and the Aquileian, it’s all the same now, no longer interesting; they no longer exist, no longer flow, nor is there any reason for them to, and that’s the mad way it goes on from page to page, said Korin, leafing through a little helplessly, and he, of course, he added, was quite incapable of conveying the tight discipline that drove the whole thing, since it wasn’t just a case of one thing after another, because, he should explain, alongside the inventory there was a sense of a thousand other incidental details, for, say a man reading about what the cisiarii were doing with their coaches between the Farum Baarium and the Caracalla Thermae, or some guards closing the gate—the iron bars and the wooden panels—at the Parta, then, for example, a pile of ceramic figures in relief glittering between the Aquae, the Saturnaliae and the Holitorium, and the dust settling on the leaves of cypresses, pines, acanthus and mulberry bushes on either side of the Via Appia, and, yes, that’s precisely it, sighed Korin, details all and yet all part of a single thing, some cipher engraved in the heart of each long list, so you see, young lady, it isn’t just a simple sequence, a row of items on a list, say, of the crowds flowing into Rome, followed by, let us say, the dust on the cypresses and then an endless catalogue of the goods arriving at their depots, and then, for example the cisiarii, no, it’s not that, but the fact that these are all part of a single monstrous, infernal, all-absorbing sentence that hits you, so you begin with one thing, but then a second thing comes along and then a third, and then the sentence returns to the first thing again, and so on, so the reader’s hopes are continually raised, said Korin glancing at the interpreter’s lover, so that he thinks he has got some kind of hold on the text, believe me when I say, as I said before, he said, that the whole thing is unreadable, insane!!! and Korin trusted that the young lady understood by now that the whole thing was extraordinarily beautiful, and in fact moved him to an extraordinary degree every time he read through it, moved him deeply, until, about three or so days ago he got to this sixth chapter, until he arrived here, just a few days ago as he was typing up, by which time he had believed that it was finished, that the whole thing was doomed to remain obscure, when, ah yes, then, said Korin, his eyes shining, having typed the first few sentences of the sixth chapter, the manuscript—and there was no other way to put it—opened up before him, for how else could it have been that three or so days earlier he simply found himself with an open door in front of him, and that, wholly unexpectedly, after so much reading, astonishment, effort and agony, he should understand it, and it was as if the room were suddenly filled with a blinding light, and he leapt off the bed into the light and started walking up and down in his excitement, and he kept leaping and walking and understood everything.

  25.

  He read the enormous, ever longer sentences and typed them into the computer though his mind wasn’t on it but somewhere else altogether, he told the woman, so everything that remained of the last chapter of the manuscript practically typed itself and there was still a good deal left, for there remained all the stuff about the journey, the modes of transport, and about Marcus Cornelius Mastemann, who by way of farewell, had decided to call himself curatar vìarum—about the journey, in any case, about how the route needed to be constructed, and in the most painstaking explanations of what was a statumen, a rudus, the nucleus and pavimentum, the regulated dimensions of roads, the two obligatory ditches on either side of them and about the positioning of the crepinides and the milliarii, the rules regarding notices, then about the workings of the centuria accessarum velatorum, the famous brigade founded by Augustus for the maintenance of roads, and then the means of transport themselves, about the countless carriages and carts, the carpentum, the carruca, the raeda, the essedum, and al
l the rest including the birota, the petarritum, and the carrusa: vehicles on two wheels, the uncovered cisium and so forth until only Mastemann remained, or, more accurately, a description of the essential powers and responsibilities of any curatar vìarum, but all this, of course, contained in the central image of Bengazza, Falke and Toót standing by the shrine to Mercury, watching the Via Appia in case anyone appeared on it after all, and so, said Korin, he just kept writing, typing the last sentences into the computer while something completely different was going on in his mind, buzzing away continuously, shuddering, clattering, ticking away as he tried to sum up what it was he had seen in that great blinding light, for where did it all begin, he asked himself, but there, at the point when having left the records office, he took the manuscript home and read and reread it, time again, repeatedly asking himself what was the point of it, that it was all well and good, but what was it, and that this was the first question and the last too, holding within it the seeds of all the other questions, such as, for example, seeing the manuscript employed language what was the manner or pitch of it, what form of address was involved, for it was perfectly clear that it was not addressed to anyone in particular; and if it was not a letter, why it did not respond to the pressure of expectation demanded as a bare minimum by other works of literature; and what was it in any case if not a work of literature, for it was clearly not that; and why the writer employed a mass of amateurish devices while having not a scintilla of fear that he might sound amateurish, and besides that, why, in any case—Korin’s agitation was evident in his expression—does he describe four characters with such extraordinary clarity then insert them at certain historical moments, and why precisely one moment rather than another, why precisely these four and not some other people; and what is this fog, this miasma, out of which he leads them time after time; and what is the fog into which he then drives them; and why the constant repetition; and how does Kasser disappear at the end; and what is this perpetual, continuous secrecy about, and the ever more nagging impatience, increasing chapter on chapter, to discover who Mastemann is, and why each episode concerning him follows the same pattern, as does the narrative of the others too; and, most important of all, why does the writer go completely mad, whoever he is, whether he is a member of the Wlassich family or not, and how did his manuscript find its way into the Wlassich fasciculus if he was not, might it by some accident; in other words, said Korin still sitting on the bed and raising his voice, what, in the final analysis, does the manuscript hope to achieve, for there must be some reason for its coming into existence, some cause, Korin kept telling himself whenever he thought of it, some reason for its presence here; and then came the day, hard to say precisely when in retrospect, he couldn’t tell precisely now, three days ago or something like that, when suddenly there was light, and in that instant everything became clear, hard as it was to explain why then and not before, though he did think it was right, then, whenever it was, some three or so days ago, if only because he had thought about it for precisely the right length of time over the past few months, and because his thinking had taken precisely so much time to mature to a point at which it could at last become clear, and he himself most clearly remembered how, when he was having this experience, this blinding light and understanding thing, his whole heart was filled with a kind of warmth as he was unashamed now to say, if he might so put it, and furthermore it might have been better to begin with this, since it was very likely that this was how it began, and that the clarity could be traced back to this source, this warmth flooding through his heart, not that he wanted to get sentimental about it but that was how it happened, meaning that somebody, a certain Wlassich or other, had decided to invent four remarkable, pure, angelic men, and equip these four admirable, floating, infinitely refined beings with the most marvelous thoughts, and if one scanned through the story we are presented with, it seemed he was seeking a point from which he might lead them out of it, said Korin, indeed, he said, his hand trembling and his eyes glowing as if he had suddenly developed a fever, yes, he said, it was a way out that this Wlassich or whatever his name is, was seeking for them, but he could not find one that was wholly airy and fantastical so he sent them forth into the wholly real realm of history, into the reality of eternal war, and tried to settle them at a point that held the promise of peace, a promise that was never fulfilled, though he conjures this reality with ever more infernal power, with ever more devilish fidelity, ever greater demonic sensitivity, and populates it with the products of his own imagination, in vain as it turns out, for their path leads but from war to war, and never from war to peace, and this Wlassich, or whoever it is, despairs ever more of his one-person, amateurish ritual, and eventually goes completely off his head, for there is no Way Out, young lady, said Korin and bowed his head, and this conclusion must be agonizing beyond telling for the person who invented and had fallen in love with these four men—Bengazza, Falke, Toót and the ultimately vanishing Kasser—for they live so vividly in his own heart that he can hardly find the words to tell how he walks, walks up and down in his room with them, how he carries them out into the kitchen then back into his room, because something is driving him, and it is terrible to be so driven like this, young lady, said Korin to the woman, his eyes full of despair, for they have, as you might say, no Way Out, for there is only war and war everywhere, even within himself, and finally, and what’s more, now that it is finished and that the whole text is sitting there on his home page, he really doesn’t know what awaits him, for originally he had thought, and had made all his plans on that basis, that at the end he could set calmly out on his last journey, but now he must embark with this terrible helplessness in his heart, and he feels this is not the way it should be, that he should think of something, something at all costs, for he can’t carry them with him, but should put them down somewhere, but he can’t, his head can’t cope, he is too stupid, hollow, crazy, and it does nothing but ache, and is heavy and wants to drop off his neck, for there is nothing but pain and he can’t think of a damn thing.

  26.

  The interpreter’s lover looked at Korin and quietly asked him in English, What’s there on your hand, but Korin was so surprised that she said anything at all, and in any case she spoke too fast for him to understand, that for a while he was incapable of answering, just kept nodding and staring at the ceiling as if he were busy thinking, then put the manuscript aside and took the dictionary instead to look up a word he hadn’t understood then suddenly slammed it shut and cried out in relief that he had understood, that it was a matter of “what’s” and “there” not “Whatser,” or what the hell, of course not, no, he nodded, it was clear now: “what is there on your,” well, “hand” and he held both his hands out and inspected them but couldn’t see anything unusual on them, until it occurred to him what the woman wanted to say, and he sighed and pointed with his left hand to a scar on the right which had been there for ages, an old thing, he said in English, not interesting—no interesting—the result of an incident a very long time ago, at a time when he felt bitterly disappointed, and he was almost embarrassed to mention it now for the whole disappointment was so childish, but what happened was that he had shot through it—perforate with a colt, as he put it, peeking into the dictionary, but it was nothing, it didn’t cause him any problems and he had got so used to it he hardly noticed it anymore, though he would carry the mark around for the rest of his life that much was sure, as the young lady most certainly noticed, but what was a much bigger problem was that he had to carry this head around on this weak and aching neck, a neck that was groaning—he pointed to it and started massaging it with his palm and swiveling his head from right to left—under too great a burden, or rather the same problem kept recurring, for after a short transitional period of easement the old agonizing weight returned just as before so that he has felt, particularly in the last few days, as though the whole thing was genuinely ready to drop off, and having said this he stopped massaging and swiveling his head, picked up the m
anuscript again, shuffling its concluding pages while adding that he couldn’t in fact tell where it ended because the text had grown so dense and impenetrable, one couldn’t even decide precisely when it was taking place, at what point of history to locate it, for though the earthquake of 402 is mentioned in one bitter monologue, and a few crazy sentences take a melancholy turn in referring to the terrible victory of the Visigoths, to Geiserich, to Theodoric, to Orestes, to Odoacer and even, at the end, to Romulus Augustulus, mostly there were just names, said Korin, spreading his hands, references, flashes, and the only thing certain was that Rome was dying there at the Porta Appia, over, over, declared Korin, but was unable to continue because suddenly there was a loud noise outside, the drumming of feet, a rattling and banging, and some cursing as well—after which there was not much time left to meditate as to who it was, or what it was, for the drumming, rattling, banging and cursing soon revealed their source to be a man, bellowing on the staircase, crying Good evening, darling, a man abruptly kicking the door open.