War & War

II THAT INTOXICATING FEELING

On November 1997, in the staff conference room of Terminal 2, Ferihegy Airport, having gone over all the standard procedures with the crew and acquainted them with the expected weather conditions, the passenger numbers, as well as the nature and status of the cargo, the captain summed up by telling them that he expected a smooth, trouble-free journey, and so Flight MA 090—a Boeing 767 equipped with two CF6-8 °C2 engines offering a maximum operating distance of 12,700 kilometers, fuel capacity of 91,368 liters, wingspan of 47.57 meters and capable of carrying a load of 175.5 tons, including 127 tourist-class and 12 luxury-class passengers — taxied down the runway and, having reached the average takeoff speed of 280 km/hour, rose above the ground at 11:56 precisely, attaining its full cruising height of 9,800 meters near the city of Graz by 12:24, at which point, the north-northwesterly headwind not exceeding the usual thresholds, it aligned itself along the Stuttgart-Brussels-Belfast axis that would lead it out over the Atlantic Ocean, where it adapted itself to the given coordinates, so that within 4 hours 20 minutes it arrived at the South Greenland checkpoint, and being four minutes short of an hour from its destination, began its descent, at first by 800 meters, then, having received its instructions from the Newfoundland center, dropping gradually and smoothly from a height of 4,200 meters, by now under the command of New York and district Air Control, according to the given timetable, arriving on the terra firma of the New World at Gate L36 of John F. Kennedy Airport at precisely 15:25 hours local time.

Oh yes, yes, Korin nodded enthusiastically at the black immigration officer, then, the question being repeated time and again with ever greater irritation, when it had become quite pointless referring to his documents, and it was useless nodding and saying yes and yes over and over again, he spread his arms, shook his head and said in Hungarian: Nekem te hiábo beszélsz, én nem értek ebböl egy órva szót sem, in other words, Its no use you talking to me, I don’t understand a single word you’re saying, adding, usefully, in English, No understand.

The room into which they led him down a long narrow corridor reminded him of nothing so much as the kind of closed boxcar in which they used to carry corn, the walls being lined with gray steel, not a window anywhere and the doors capable of being opened only from outside, which was why it was like suddenly being dumped in an empty boxcar, Korin explained later, because there were two things, he said, that suggested such a boxcar: an unmistakable smell and the way the floor was gently vibrating, which, once they closed the door on him and left him alone, really did make him feel as though he had found himself in a stinking freight car, an American one, but a freight car all the same, for as soon as he stepped in, he explained, he could smell the corn and feel the floor vibrating under him, the corn smell quite unmistakable since he had plenty of opportunity to experience it on his way to Budapest, and the vibration, likewise, he was convinced, was not a trick of the senses brought on by the flickering of the neon light, for there was nothing incidental or uncertain about it, it was a decided tingling he felt in the soles of his feet, and what’s more, when he accidentally touched the wall he could feel that it too was vibrating, and you may imagine, he added, how a man feels under such circumstances, as he indeed did feel, since he understood precisely nothing of what was going on or what they wanted of him, what it was they were asking of him, and what on earth this whole thing was about, and so he took out the notebook in which he had jotted the most important words while still on the aircraft, because he didn’t like the idea of using the phrase book, the one in his pocket, feeling it wouldn’t help him when he got into conversation with someone, being too formal, too inconvenient, too slow with all those pages you had to flick through, looking words up, and in any case he found with this particular phrase book that he tended to flick past the place he wanted, or that those specific pages of the selected letter were somehow stuck together so whole sections flicked by in one go, and when he deliberately tried to slow the movement of the pages for fear of going past them, his anxiety and solicitude made him so nervous that he flicked past the page anyway, which meant that he had to start all over again, fiddling impatiently, holding the phrase book in a different kind of grip, searching through page by individual page, the entire process, in other words, resulting in a dramatic slowing down, that being the reason he took to the notebook, writing out the likely most important words, finding a system that would facilitate their recovery, speeding up the leafing-through process, and had indeed discovered such a system and had prepared everything on the long journey, though of course had to take it out again, and most pressingly now, if he wanted to get out of these dire straits; he had to take it out to find an English sentence that would help him make up something, to find an excuse, so it shouldn’t spoil that intoxicating feeling, the delight he felt surging in him, for here he was, he had succeeded, succeeded in the face of what he might have described as impossible odds, and for this reason, if for no other, he had to find a comprehensible phrase which would make it clear to the authorities why he was there and what he wanted, moreover a phrase that referred exclusively to the future, for he had decided, and was determined, to speak of nothing but the future, as he had told himself, and later explained, having resolved to keep quiet about anything that might have dampened his spirits and soured this intoxicating feeling, though he would never, under any circumstances, he to himself about the fact that there was indeed something sad about it, something that hurt him when he got off the plane and attempted to look back in the direction of Hungary, hurt because Hungary was invisible from here, for apart from the sense of arriving in a place where no pursuer could reach him and the fact that he, this tiny dot in the universe, an insignificant archivist from the depths of a dusty office two hundred and twenty kilometers from Budapest, was actually standing here, in A-me-ri-ca! and that he could now look forward to putting his Great Plan into immediate operation — because all these things were genuine occasions for the delight he felt as he descended the steps of the aircraft along with all the other passengers — and yet, while the others were rushing onto the bus he gazed back across the concrete runway in the booming wind and sighed that never again would he cut his ties with such an overwhelmingly glad sense of arrival, never again would there be a past, never again Hungary, in fact he said it out loud when the stewardess ushered him onto the bus with the rest and he looked back for a last time to where Hungary should have been, the Hungary that was now lost forever.

There’s nothing wrong with the guy, the airport security official entrusted with the interrogation of Central European immigrants reported to his superior, it’s just that he arrived without any baggage, not even a scrap of hand-luggage, just a coat, in the lining of which he himself had very probably, as indeed he confirms through the interpreter, sewn a strange document and an envelope containing some money, and since he had nothing else, no backpack, not even a plastic bag, no nothing, it constituted a problem — go on, Andrew, his superior nodded — because it’s possible that he might have had baggage that had disappeared, but, if so, where was it, that’s why they decided to interrogate him, and the guys did interrogate him, absolutely, thoroughly, according to the rule book, with a Hungarian interpreter present, but they found nothing suspicious, the guy was, for all intents and purposes, clean, and it looked as though he was telling the truth about the baggage, that he really had traveled without any, so, as far as he was concerned, the security man said, he could be allowed through, and yes, he had cash, quite a lot of it in fact, but Eastern Europeans weren’t expected to carry credit cards, and his visa and passport were in order, besides which he was able to show them a business card with the name of a hotel in New York City, where he intended on staying, a fact they would check within twenty-four hours, at which point the matter would be closed because in his personal opinion — go on, Andrew, his superior encouraged him — that would be enough, the guy was just some innocent, perfectly ordinary, crackpot scientist who can sew what he likes where he likes, and if he wanted to stitch his asshole together — the security guard flashed his blindingly white teeth — that was up to him, they should leave him alone, in other words his recommendation would be to wish him a nice day and let him through — OK, that’s one problem less then, his boss assented — as a result of which, within half an hour, Korin was free again, though clearly not entirely conscious of the process that had led him thus far, his mind having been otherwise preoccupied, especially toward the end of the interview when he noticed how the interpreter had begun to pay close attention to what he was saying, a line of argument he was keen to pursue to its conclusion, the burden of which was that, perhaps, later, if he succeeded in doing what he set out to do, even the United States of America would have cause to be proud of him, because this country was precisely the place where his Great Plan became a reality, but no, the interpreter stopped him in his tracks, slowly running his hands through his snow-white hair which was parted in the middle and sticking to his scalp, to say, however nice a guy he was, Korin should understand that there wasn’t time to go into that now, to which Korin replied that, naturally, he completely understood, and he would not detain him any longer, and would only add, one, that it was a matter for him of something perfectly wonderful concerning his place in the scheme of things, in other words the reason he had flown here constituted less of a danger, if he might so express it, than did the flight of a butterfly above the city, that is to say, he explained, from the city’s point of view; and two, he said, he would like to be permitted to offer a word of thanks, if no more, to the kind interpreter on whose assistance he had been forced to rely in the moment of his predicament, and that he would hold him up no longer, and that all he wanted was to thank him, to thank him once more, or, as they say here, Korin consulted his notebook, thanks, many thanks, mister.

I gave him my card, the interpreter recalled with irritation, later, in bed, furiously turning his back on his alarmed lover, only to be rid of him, because there was no other way, but the skunk kept blabbering on, blab-blab, and fine, I said, fine pal, we don’t have the time right now, here’s my number, give me a call sometime, OK? that’s all, no more, I mean what is that? so he gave him the card as a piece of courtesy, just a lousy business card, the kind you leave anywhere, in a sad kind of way, sowing your seed like some piece of fertilizer shit, though he wouldn’t do that anymore, said the interpreter shaking his head as if terminally embittered by the experience, because he’d had it, nothing worked out for him, there was no hope, he’d never come to anything in this place; after four whole years in America, nothing but shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, he cried beating his pillow: the Immigration Office job was shit, and yet he had to be grateful for them taking him on like that on a part-time contract basis, yes, grateful for that shit, and he was but what the hell did it all add up to, since one moment was all it took and they sacked him, without a word, with such greased-lightning speed that it wasn’t until he was outside that he took it in, that it was all on account of a stinking business card, but that’s how it was, that’s what it’s like with scum, that’s what it’s like interpreting in such a shit institution, interpreting for shitheads and dumb asses, you really deserve what’s coming to you for that, it takes just a split second and they’ve kicked you out on your ass, because these shitheads, and these shithead Hungarians really are shitheads, dumb asses, and the passport officers were the dumbest of the lot, them and the customs staff, the security guards and the rest, the whole filthy lot of them, asses, terminal idiots, the interpreter repeated, his head bobbing up and down with hysteria, shitheads, shitheads, shitheads, everyone, and thank you, Mr. Sárváry, they said, but, as you know, this is a serious breach of protocol here, initiating or accepting the offer of personal contact like that, it’s regulations, etc. etc., which is shit, the interpreter exclaimed, on the point of tears in his fury, that’s what this fucking animal says to me, pronouncing it Sárváry all the time, though he knows perfectly well it is pronounced Shárváry, the bastard, the fucking animal, and what can you do with fucking asses like that, there’s no end to it, ever, and so saying the interpreter buried his head in the pillow again, because he just can’t take the filthy routine any more, he is a poet, a poet, he suddenly screamed at his lover, a poet and a video artist, not an interpreter, is that clear? and he could wipe his ass with the lot of them, people like that, like that filthy nigger, his ass, that’s how little they’re worth compared to him, because, do you think, he bent over his lover’s face, do you think for a moment that they have the foggiest idea who or what he is, because if you really believe it, go up close to one of them and have a good look and you’ll see that they are all asses, asses or shitheads, he choked and turned away again, throwing himself on the bed-covers, then, turned back to face his lover and continued once more: and he had helped him, helped the idiot, that shithead idiot, because he himself was the biggest shithead of them all, on this whole filthy continent, because why should he help anyone, who had asked him to help, who would pay him a fucking dime more for helping, just because he tried to help that helpless shithead, precisely this particular fucking halfwit, who was probably still standing there, holding his lousy business card instead of sticking it up his ass and fucking off up some shit’s creek, yes, he was willing to bet that the guy was still standing there, as if rooted to the ground, with his simpleton’s face, like some cow, because he had no fucking idea what even “baggage” meant, though he had explained it to him, but he still just stood there; and it was as if he were standing in front of him now, he could see it so clearly, standing there like a guy who had shit himself once and for all without anyone nearby to wipe his ass for him, like all those of his kind, now please don’t be angry darling, the interpreter lowered his voice, addressed his lover, asking her not to be angry on account of him losing his self-control like that, but it wasn’t just his self-control he had lost but his job too, and why lose it, darling, all on account of some shithead, like all the rest, all of them, really, every last single one of them.

Just head for the Exit signs, Korin said to himself aloud, it’s Exit you want, there where it says Exit, head for there and don’t be diverted, because he was likely to get lost, and there it was, yes, Exit, here, this way, straight on, and he took care not to disturb anyone, though who the hell cared whether he spoke to himself or not, after all there were thousands of people here who were doing exactly the same, hurrying confusedly this way or that, keeping their eyes on boards and signs indicating directions, turning now left, stopping, waiting, turning back, then heading right, stopping, then back again, eventually going straight on, onward and onward to ever more and ever new confusion; just like Korin, in fact, who had to keep his eye on the word Exit and nothing else, everything being postulated on the position of the Exit sign which must not be lost sight of, a task that required all his concentration, for nothing must disturb that concentration, because a moment’s inattention in this crazy traffic and all would be lost, gone forever, and he would never find the right way again, nor should he allow any uncertainty in his procedure, he told himself, but to keep going, all the way down corridors and steps, not bothering his head with doors, corridors and steps on either side of him, not even glancing at them, and even if he did catch sight of them, to make as if he were blind as he passed those side doors opening out either side, and refuse to be distracted by facts like the word Exit appearing on one or other of them, albeit in different lettering, to move past them and ignore them, for he felt he was in a crazy warren, not any old warren, he later added, but one in which even the pace was crazy, everyone moving at a furious pace, so he always had to make spur-of-the-moment decisions, such decisions being the hardest of all for he had to choose one of two possible routes in a split second, and every so often, as he proceeded down the corridors and stairs, such snap decisions had to be made, and each time he made one he would happily have gone on but for some sign that planted a seed of doubt in him so he had to stop again, disconcerted by a confusing sign in a disorientating place, and had to decide again in the blinking of an eye, which of the damn corridors was the main one, this one or that one; in other words what was confusing was not so much the question of the most direct route, it was having to decide so quickly, under conditions of such tension, constantly to be seeking and moving and making headway without ever stopping, and, what is more, moving in the certain knowledge that the whole idea of stopping was impossible for stopping as a possibility was absolutely out of the question, a fact etched on each and every occasion for the Door Out of There was perpetually about to be closed and one had to hurry, to positively dash, each according to his capacity, but in any case without stopping, moving, seeking, making headway toward the Exit, which — and this was the second problem — was an utterly mysterious concept since it was impossible to know what was understood by the idea of an exit, which for him meant primarily a way of getting out of the building into open space, to a bus or taxi that would take him into town, providing the taxi was not too expensive, though he would have to wait and see about that, but whether his idea of the whole exit thing as a passage through to an open space was correct or not was impossible to say so he was forced to move forward with ever greater uncertainty, as he later explained, making uncertain progress along corridors and stairs, not knowing whether they were the right corridors and stairs, and feeling pretty frightened by then, he admitted, until, at a certain point, he suddenly felt his feet slipping from under him, when it occurred to him that he had probably been taking the wrong route for quite some time, and that was when he got really scared and in his state of fright he could no longer even think straight, in fact did not think at all, but did what his instincts were urging him to do, which was to trust to the crowd, to accept its judgment and go with the flow, adapting himself to its pace, drifting with it, like a dried leaf in autumn, if he might be allowed such an antique turn of phrase, like a leaf in a fierce gale, hardly seeing anything anymore because of the speed and fury, everything about him being too agitated, too heavy, too flickering, so the only thing clear to him in all this, in the pit of his stomach, was how utterly different it was from what he had been expecting, which meant that he was more scared than ever, he told them, for fear was what he felt, fear in the land of the free, terror even while celebrating a remarkable triumph, because everything hit him all at once, and he had to understand it, to grasp it, to see it clearly, and then had to try to find his way out of it, while all the time corridors and steps came at him, one after another without end, and he was driven along with the rest in a maelstrom of conversation, weeping, shouting, screaming and some kind of wild laughter, and, every so often, through waves of drumming, growling and the general din, noting the word Exit, yes, there, that way, straight ahead of him.

Before the widening entrance to the arrivals hall, in the four corners of an area of roughly four by four meters, four black-uniformed and helmeted guards, clearly trained for special duties, equipped with handguns, tear gas, rubber truncheons and God knows what else, stood motionless, each capable of looking in thirty-six directions at once; four guards with stony expressions on their faces, their legs spread, in an area roped off with a piece of red tape that was just long enough to get round the four by four square meters and keep the crowd at bay, which was all the evidence of the clearly unique security system that first greeted the constant flow of people: no visible cameras, no sign of detachments behind the walls ready to leap out at a word of command, no peculiar collection of vehicles at the entrance to the airport, nor a squad of chief inspectors based somewhere in the building, keeping watch over all eighty-six thousand and four hundred seconds of the day, and this must have been unique, a truly unique security concept, to involve only four visible guards and four lengths of red tape for what these had to defend from which was constantly flowing their way, a whole horde of people comprising people from town, people passing through, aliens, assortments of professors, amateurs, collectors, addicts, thieves, women, men, children, the aged, all, all coming and going, for everyone wanted to see it, everyone tried to push to the front in order to get a really good view of it, of those four lengths of tape, and what the guards were guarding, which was a massive pillar covered in black velvet and lit from above by white spotlights, protected by bulletproof glass, for everyone wanted to see the diamonds, as they were referred to for the sake of simplicity, those diamonds that added up to the world’s most valuable diamond collection according to the advertisements, and there they really were, twenty-one miracles, twenty-one incarnations of pure carbon, twenty-one brilliant and matchless stones with the light imprisoned in them forever, their presence arranged by the Gemological Institute but drawing on the kind offices of various other corporations and well-disposed individuals, not forgetting, since it is diamonds on a global scale we are talking about, the publicly acknowledged guiding hand of De Beers Consolidated Mines in the background, twenty-one rarities, as the catalogues had it — which, in this case, was no exaggeration, for they were assembled according to the four classic categories of diamond quality, that is to say, Color, Clearness, Cut and Carat, qualities that, apart from the FL and IF classed groups, would not be applicable to any lower class of diamond — a list in which they attempted to give a comprehensive account of the terrifying world of facet, dispersion, brilliance and polish in twenty-one stars, as the text had it, of an entire universe, the very intention of so doing, or so they wrote, being unusual, since it wasn’t just one or two matchless beauties with which they intended to enchant the public but the idea of matchless beauty itself, beauty in twenty-one distinct forms that were not only extraordinary but utterly different from each other, and here they were, practically every sort you could imagine within the River, Top Wesselton, and Wesselton color range, the twenty-one perfect gems as measured by the Tolkowsky, Scandinavian and Eppler scale, including those cut in Mazarin, Peruzzi, Markiz and emerald fashion, in Oval form, Pear-shaped, Navette and Seminavette, from fifty-five carats through to one hundred and forty-two carats, and, of course, the two sensations, the sixty-one carat amber-colored TIGER’S-EYE in an ORLOV silver clasp, all offering a truly extraordinary, mind-blowing radiance under the bulletproof glass, and all this in the most unexpected place, at the most vulnerable point of the busiest airport in the United States of America, precisely where such a billion-dollar splendor was plainly least secure, though it was under the care of four hefty security guards standing with legs spread and four lengths of red official tape.

Korin entered the last of the corridors, saw the arrivals hall in the distance, and as soon as he had seen it, or so he recalled in the course of a conversation later, he knew at once that he had taken the right route, the right route throughout, and that’s it, as he said to himself, thank God, he had left the warren behind and could walk a little faster now, feeling a degree more liberated and less anxious with each step, steadily regaining his good spirits, that intoxicating feeling, setting about the last few hundred meters in this state of mind, until, about a third of the way down, as he was approaching the hall with its light, noise and promise of security, he suddenly spotted a figure among the oncoming crowd, a short, rather scrawny young man of about twenty or twenty-two years of age, more a boy really, in checkered trousers, with a strangely dancing sort of walk, who seemed to have taken particular notice of him, who having got within ten paces of Korin suddenly looked at him full in the face and smiled, his face brightening at the sight, showing the kind of surprise and delight one feels when one unexpectedly comes across an acquaintance one hadn’t seen for a long time, his arms spread wide in greeting, accelerating toward him, in response to which Korin too, as he said, began to smile uncertainly, with an enquiring expression, while, in his case, slowing down, waiting for the point of meeting, but when the moment arrived and they came up level with each other, something quite unbelievable happened as far as Korin was concerned, something because of which, his view of the world immediately darkened, something that made him double up and squat down on the ground, because the blow affected him precisely in the solar plexus, yes, that was exactly what happened, said Korin, the boy, probably out of sheer devilment, on the spur of the moment, had chosen some arbitrary victim from among the new arrivals, had raised his eyebrows and approached him in an apparently friendly manner, then smacked him in the solar plexus, without saying anything, without a word, without conviviality, without any sign of recognition, without any of the warmth you might expect when meeting an old acquaintance, and simply fetched him a blow, but a big one, as the Trinidadian boy told the bartender in his local bar, just like that, biff, he demonstrated with a violent movement, properly fucking the guy over in the pit of his belly, with such power, said the Trinidadian boy to the bartender, that the guy clutched his stomach, doubled up, and without a sound, not a peep, but he was flat out on the floor, as if lightning had struck him, said the Trinidadian flashing his decaying teeth, like he was a piece of shit dropped from a cow’s ass, you understand, he asked the bartender, just one biff and the guy didn’t say so much as moo, but collapsed, just like that, and by the time the guy looked up, he himself had disappeared into the crowd, like the earth had instantly swallowed him, vanished, as though he had never been, while Korin just stared, dumbstruck, slowly being scraped off the ground, blinking this way and that, utterly astonished, seeking explanation in the eyes of the two or three people that had hoisted him up by the arms, but they gave no explanation, nor did anyone else as he went on his way, and it clearly did not seem to have meant anything to anyone, since they were wholly unaware of his presence, or where he had been, or that he had appeared one-third of the way down the corridor leading to the arrivals hall of JFK airport.

It was still hurting when he reached the diamonds, and when he stepped into the hall with a painful expression etched into his face he entirely failed to notice either the diamonds or the seething crowds as he approached them, nor did the presence of the diamonds have anything to do with the hand with which he covered his stomach, for the pain was such that he was quite incapable of removing it from that spot, the pain affecting his stomach, his ribs, his kidneys and his liver, but still more his sense of injustice at the wickedness and sheer unexpectedness of the assault on his person, and that was a pain that infected every cell of his being, which was why the one idea in his mind was to get out of there as quickly as possible, looking neither left nor right, just moving in a straight line, onward and onward, not even noticing when the significance of the hand on his stomach changed from being a physical comfort and protection to an emblem of general, unconditional uncertainty in the face of dangers facing him, dangers that singled him out, but in any case, as he explained a few days later in a Chinese restaurant, that’s how it happened, his hand just assumed this position, and when he eventually succeeded in fighting his way through the packed chaos of the hall, and arrived, if not in the fresh air, at least under some concrete arcade, he was still using his left hand to ward off anyone in his vicinity, trying to communicate to everyone near to him the fact that he was extremely frightened and that in this state of fear he was prepared for any eventuality, that no one should approach him, and in the meantime he walked up and down, seeking a bus stop before he realized that while the place abounded in bus stops there was in fact not a single bus in sight, and so, fearing that he might be condemned to stay there forever, he crossed over to the taxi stand and joined a long queue at the head of which was a commissionaire of some sort, a big man dressed like a doorman at some hotel, and this was a very wise thing to have done, as he said later, throwing his lot in with the queue opposite the concrete arcade, because this meant he was no longer lurching this way and that in an ever more advanced state of helplessness, for having got so far he had arrived at a point in the vast institution of the airport where he no longer had to explain who he was and what he wanted, since everything could be decided in his own good time, and so he waited his turn in the queue, slowly shuffling forward to the big commissionaire, the natural end point of his despairing, yet fortunate decision, because it was all likely to be smooth going from here once he showed him the slip of paper he had received from the stewardess in Budapest, with the name of a cheap, often tried and trusted hotel on it, after examining which the commissionaire nodded and told him the cost would be twenty-five dollars, and without any further ado sat him in a huge yellow cab, and there they were moving past street cleaners, having already rushed down the lanes of the highway that led to Manhattan, Korin still holding his stomach, his hand clenched into a fist, unwilling to move it from there, prepared to defend himself and beat off the next attack just in case the space between himself and the driver should suddenly be barred off and someone throw a bomb in through the cab window at the next red light, or in case the driver himself should lean back, the driver who at first glance he took to be Pakistani, Afghan, Iranian, Bengali or Bangladeshi, and grabbing a great blunderbuss cry, Your Money — Korin nervously consulted the phrase book — Or Your Life!

The traffic made him dizzy, said Korin in the Chinese restaurant, and he was in constant fear of assault at every road and traffic sign that flashed before him and remained in his mind as if engraved there — Southern State Parkway, Grand Central Expressway, Jackie Robinson Parkway, Atlantic Avenue, and Long Island, Jamaica Bay, Queens, Bronx and Brooklyn — because as they journeyed further and further into the heart of town, he said, it was not the unimaginable, hysterically pounding, mortally dangerous totality of the whole as exemplified by the Brooklyn Bridge, say, or by the skyscrapers downtown that he had read about and the effect of which he had anticipated from the information given in his heavily thumbed travel guides, but odd small details, the apparently insignificant parts of the whole, that struck him, the first subway grille next to a sidewalk from which the steam was perpetually pouring, the first, swaying, wide-bodied old Cadillac they passed by the gas station and the first enormous shiny steel fire truck, and something beyond that, that silenced something in him, or, something that, if he might put it that way, burned its way into his mind without burning it quite through, for what happened, he continued, was that as the taxi swept on without a sound, as if they were slicing through butter, while he was still holding his left hand in the defensive position, looking out of the window, now left and now right, he suddenly felt, and felt most intensely, that he should be seeing something that he wasn’t seeing, that he should be comprehending something he was not comprehending, that there was, from time to time, right in front of his eyes, something he should be seeing, something blindingly obvious, but that he did not know what it was, knowing only that without seeing it he had no hope of understanding the place he had arrived at, and that as long as he failed to understand it he could only keep repeating a phrase he had been repeating to himself all afternoon and evening, something to the effect of Dear God, this really is the center of the world and that he, there could no longer be any doubt about it, had arrived there, at the center of the world; but he got no further with this thought and they turned from Canal Street onto the Bowery and soon enough braked to a halt outside the Suites Hotel, that being their destination, said Korin, and that’s how it had been ever since, he added, meaning that he still hadn’t a clue what it was he should be seeing in that vast city, though he knew full well that whatever it was, was right there before him, that he was actually passing through it, moving through it, as indeed he had been when he paid $25 to the silent driver and got out in front of the hotel, when the taxi started back again, and he was left gazing, simply gazing at its two receding red lights until it turned at the crossroads and set off in the direction of the Bowery, toward the heart of Chinatown.

Twice he turned the key in the lock and twice he checked the security chain, then stepped to the window and watched the empty street for a while, trying to guess what was going on down there, and it was only after he had done that, he explained several days later, that he was capable of sitting down on the bed and thinking things through, his whole body still trembling, and he couldn’t even begin to think of not trembling, because as soon as he tried he started remembering, and there was no way but to sit there and tremble, unable to calm down and think things through, for it was achievement enough, after all, to simply sit down and tremble, which is what he did for minutes on end, and, he wasn’t ashamed to admit it, in the long minutes that followed the trembling he cried for a full half hour, for he was, he admitted, no stranger to crying, and now that the trembling had begun to diminish the crying took over, a kind of cramp-inducing, choking form of sobbing, the kind that makes the shoulders shake, that comes on with excruciating suddenness and stops excruciatingly slowly, though that was not the real problem, not the trembling and weeping, no: the problem was that he was obliged to face so many issues of such gravity, of such variety and of such impenetrable complexity that when it was over, that is to say after the concomitant hiccupping had also stopped, it was as if he had stepped into a vacuum, into outer space, feeling utterly numb, weightless, his head — how should he describe it? — clanging, and he needed to swallow but couldn’t, so he lay down on the bed, not moving a muscle, and started feeling those familiar shooting pains in the nape of his neck, pains so intense that at first he thought his head was about to be ripped off, and his eyes started to burn and a tremendous tiredness overcame him, although it was not impossible, he added, that all these symptoms had been there for a long time, the pain, the burning and the tiredness, and that it was only that some switch had been turned on in his head to turn the lot on, but, well, never mind, said Korin, after all that you may imagine what it felt like to be in such outer space, in this state of pain, burning and fatigue, and then begin, at last, to get his head together and deal with everything that had happened and attempt to cope with it systematically, he said, all this while sitting in a cramped-up position on the bed, going first through each and every symptom, saying, this is what hurts, this is what burns, and this, meaning everything, is what exhausts me, then attending to the events, one after another, from the very beginning if possible, he said, from the surprisingly easy way in which he managed to smuggle money through Hungarian customs without any official intervention, this being the act that made everything possible because, having sold his apartment, his car, and the rest of his so-called effects, in other words when he had converted everything to cash, he had had to think about converting that cash, little by little, into dollars on the black market, but knowing that the chances of getting official permission to take the accumulated sum across the border were negligible, he had sewed the money, along with the manuscript, into the lining of his coat, and simply walked through Hungarian customs, out of the country, without so much as a dog sniffing at him, thus relieving himself of the most terrible anxiety, and it was this success, in every sense, that facilitated the untroubled flight across the Atlantic, and there hadn’t been a major hurdle since, not, at least, that he could remember, apart from the less than major issue of a pus-filled zit at the side of his nose and the problem of constantly having to look for his passport, for the slip of paper with the hotel’s name on it, for the phrase book and the notebook, to check constantly that he hadn’t lost them, to see if they were still where he thought he had put them, in other words, but there had been no problem with the flight, his very first experience of flying, no fear, no pleasure, only an enormous relief, that was until he landed and that was where such problems as he had began, starting with the Immigration Office, the boy, the bus stop, the taxi, but chiefly the problems in his own mind, he said, pointing to his head, where it was as if everything had clouded over, where he had an overwhelming feeling of being suspended in transit, a fact he understood once he had arrived on the first floor of the hotel, just as he understood that he had to change, to change immediately, and that that change must be a wholesale trans-for-ma-tion, a transformation that should begin with his left hand which he must finally relax and to relax generally, so that he might look ahead, because, in the end — and at this point he stood up and returned to the window — everything, essentially, was going well, it was only a case of finding what people referred to as peace of mind, and of getting used to the idea that here he was and here he would stay; and having once thought this he turned back to face the room, leant against the window, took in what lay before him — a simple table, a chair, a bed, a sink — and established the fact that this was where he would be living and that this was where the Great Plan would to be put into effect, and having made a firm decision in this respect he felt strong enough to pull himself together, not to collapse and not to start crying again, because he very easily could have collapsed and started crying again, he confessed, there on the first floor of the Suites Hotel, New York.

If I multiply my daily forty dollars by ten, that gives me four hundred dollars for ten days, and that’s nonsense, Korin said to the angel at dawn, once his jet-lagged sleepless night had eventually yielded him some sleep, but he waited for an answer in vain, there was no answer, the angel just stood there stiffly and continued staring, staring at something behind his back, and Korin turned over and told him, I’ve looked there already. There’s nothing there.

For a whole day he did not move out of the hotel, not even out of the room, for what was the point, he shook his head, one day wasn’t the end of things, and he was so exhausted, he explained, that he could hardly crawl, so why should he rush into action, and in any case, what did it matter whether it was today, tomorrow, the day after, or whatever, he said a few days later, and that’s how it all began, he said, in all that time doing nothing but checking the security chain, and on one occasion, when after failing to get a response to their knocking the cleaners had tried to get in using their own key, sending them away saying No, No, No, but apart from such alarms, he slept like the dead, like one beaten to death in fact, slept through most of the day while keeping an eye on the street at night, or at least those parts of the street he could actually see, watching dazed and for hours on end, letting his eyes graze over everything, identifying the stores — the one selling wood panels, the paint warehouse — and because it was night and there was little movement nothing changed, the street seemed eternal, and the tiniest details lodged in his mind, including the order of the cars parked by the sidewalk, the stray dogs sniffing round garbage bags, the odd local figure returning home, or the powdery light emanating from streetlamps rattling in gusts of wind, everything, all etched on his memory, nothing, but nothing, escaping his attention, including his awareness of his own self as he sat in the first-story window, sitting and staring, telling himself to remain calm, that he would rest during the day gathering both physical and mental strength, for it was no small thing this experience he had been through, it was enough, and if he itemized everything that had happened to him — being pursued at home, the scene on the railway bridge, the forgetting of his visa, the waiting and the panic at the Immigration Office, plus the assault at the airport and the taxi ride with that oppressive feeling of being blindly swept along by events — and added up all these individual experiences, the experiences of a man alone, without defenses or support, was it any wonder he didn’t want to venture outside? he asked himself and, no, it was no wonder he didn’t, he muttered time and again, and so he continued sitting, looking out, waiting by the window, numbed, rooted to the spot, thinking that if this was how things had shaped up on the first day following his arrival, they had shaped up even worse on the second after another fainting fit, or what seemed like a fainting fit, though who knows which day it was anyway, perhaps it was the third night, but whenever it was he had said exactly the same thing then as he had the previous night, swearing that he would not go that day, not yet, on no account that day, perhaps the next, or the the day after that, for certain, and he got used to walking round and round the room, from window to door, up and down, in that narrow space and it would be hard, he told them, to say how many thousands of times, how many tens of thousands of times, he had made the same round trip by the third night, but if he wanted to describe the total sum of his activity the first day all he could say was I just stared, to which, on the second day, he might add I walked up and down, for that was the sum total of it, pacing up and down, satisfying his hunger occasionally with a biscuit left over from the supper he had been served on the flight, continuing to go round and round between window and door until he all but dropped with fatigue and collapsed across the bed without having decided, even now that the third day was in prospect, what he should do.

Rivington Street was where he was and down to the right and to the east was Chrystie Street, with a long windy park at the end, but if he went down and turned left it led to the Bowery, he noted after days of sleeping and nights of watching, uncertain how long he had been there, but on the day, whichever day it was, when he finally ventured out through the doors of the Suites Hotel, because, whatever day it was, he simply couldn’t stay in any longer, he couldn’t keep saying to himself not today but tomorrow, or the day after, but had to emerge and brave the streets if for no other reason than that he had eaten all the biscuits and his stomach ached from hunger, in other words because he had to eat something, and then, having done so, find a new place, immediately, Korin emphasized in the firmest of terms, immediately since paying forty dollars a day made it impossible for him to stay there more than a few days, and he had already stayed those few days as a consequence of which the amount he had permitted himself was exhausted, and while this liberality, he told himself, might have been excused in the light of his early shock, he could not imagine it being prolonged, for four times ten made four hundred dollars for ten days, and three times four hundred, that made one thousand two hundred dollars a month, which is a lot even to think about, said Korin, so definitely no, I don’t have an infinite amount of money, and so he went out but in order to be sure of knowing his way back he twice walked the distance between Chrystie Street and the Bowery, then stepping out into the desultory Bowery traffic and marking out the first useful-looking shop on the far side, nor was he wrong in marking it out, or rather there was nothing wrong with the marking-out, only with his nerve, for he lost his nerve as soon as he was about to enter the shop because it struck him that he had no idea what to say, that he didn’t even know the words for “I am hungry,” that he couldn’t say a single word of English because he had left the phrase book upstairs in the hotel, or so he discovered when he felt in his pocket, and this left him helpless, without the merest notion of what to say however he racked his brains, and so he walked up and down a while considering what to do, then made a snap decision, dashed into the shop, and in his despair picked up the first edible item he recognized among the boxes, which happened to be two big bunches of bananas, then, wearing the same desperate expression as that with which he had barged in, he paid the frightened shopkeeper and was out again in a flash, rushing off, cramming one banana after another into his mouth at which point he noticed something about two blocks up on the other side, a big red-brick building with an enormous sign on the front, and though he couldn’t in all honesty say that the sight of it solved everything, or so he explained later, it did at least make him realize that he should pull himself together, so he stopped there on the sidewalk, the bananas still in his hands, talking to himself, wondering whether this behavior was really worthy of him, for was he not a hopeless nincompoop, an utter fool, to be behaving like this, with such utter lack of dignity, he muttered, muttering “calm down,” standing in the Bowery, holding his head while clutching a bunch of bananas in his hands; was he not in danger of losing the last vestiges of his dignity, when the whole point was that everything would be all right, everything would be just fine, he repeated, if he succeeded in retaining it.

The Sunshine Hotel lay approximately as far up as the point where Prince Street opens on to the Bowery, and where, a little further on, you come to Stanton Street, and there stands the great red-brick building with its huge sign bearing the single word SAVE, picked out in letters of burning scarlet, which is what struck Korin’s eye at that considerable distance, and was the sight that calmed him down, for having dashed out of the shop gobbling a banana, it seemed some benevolent hand had addressed the sign directly to him, he added, though by the time he got to it and read it properly he might easily have been disappointed, since the word written there was not SAVE but SALE, and the store below was simply some kind of car-showroom/auto-rental business — and disappointed he might indeed have been if he had not noticed something less likely to disappoint him, a smaller sign on the left of the building reading The Sunshine Hotel 25 dollars, that was all, no other information such as where The Sunshine Hotel was actually to be found; but the figure quoted and, as with SAVE, the attractiveness of the word, Sunshine, which he found easy enough to translate, exerted a further calming influence and roused his curiosity, since what was it he had decided to look for a little while ago if not some such thing, an immediate change of accommodation, and at a sum of twenty-five dollars, Korin calculated, well, twenty-five, that’s thirty times twenty, which makes six hundred, together with thirty times five, that adds up to seven hundred and fifty dollars a month, which was not bad at all, and certainly much better than paying one thousand two hundred for Rivington Street, and thinking this he immediately began looking for the entrance but the only building next to the big red-brick one was a filthy, decaying, six-story house without any signs or notices at all, only a brown door in the wall, where it was worth enquiring, he decided, for, surely, he could pronounce the words Sunshine Hotel, could he not, and he would, would he not, make some kind of sense of the answer, so he opened the door and found himself descending a steep set of stairs which led nowhere but to an iron-barred door, at which point, he explained, he might well have turned back with a bad feeling about the whole place, had he not heard the sound of human speech beyond the door, hearing which he decided to rattle the bars, and did so, and saw too late that there was in fact a bell available, and actually heard someone cursing the rattling of the bars, at least it sounded like cursing, said Korin, and indeed there, on the far side of the bars, was an enormous, rough-looking, shaven-headed man who took a good close look at Korin, then, without saying anything, returned whence he came, but already Korin heard a buzzing noise and there was no more time to think but he had to step through the opening barred door into a narrow hallway with more iron bars guarding a window and a small office behind it, and a small vent through which he had to speak when someone pointed at him, all he could do being to repeat the words “Sunshine Hotel” to which came the answer, “Yeah, Sunshine Hotel” indicating the other set of iron bars, at which Korin had hardly taken a glance than he started back, for he only saw the people there for the fraction of a second and did not dare catch their eyes again, they looked so terrifying, but the personage beyond the glass and metal grille somewhat suspiciously asked him, “Sunshine Hotel?” to which Korin had no idea what to answer, for should he say, Yes, that was what he was looking for, and add, yes but no thanks, and as he later recalled, he couldn’t remember what the hell he said then, not having the faintest idea what to answer to the question, but what was sure was that a few seconds later he was outside in the street again, putting as much distance between him and the place as he could, as quickly as he could, all the while thinking that he should immediately ask someone for help, a voice inside him urging him on, keeping step with his own pace, telling him to hurry back to Suites Hotel in Rivington Street, seeing only those shady figures and their grinning faces, until he reached the hotel doors, hearing nothing but that buzzing and the cold sharp snap of the lock over and over again, while being pursued all the way from The Sunshine Hotel to Suites Hotel by some terrible indefinable rank smell that had first assailed his nose in there, as if to ensure that there should be, at least, one thing that morning that, if he might so express it, he asked his fellow diners at the table of the Chinese restaurant, he would never forget regarding the moment he first entered the fearsome precincts of New York.

There was nothing else the interpreter could do, he being the way he was, which is to say someone who took certain things then gave them back, for that was what had happened, he had taken away something then given it back, which was not, of course, to say that this made everything all right, but at least he’d be receiving six hundred a month for a while, and this was still more than before, the utterly drenched interpreter told the wholly uncomprehending Mexican taxi driver, it was better than nothing, although if there was something he had not foreseen, he said, pointing to Korin who was sleeping in the backseat with his mouth wide open, it was him, indeed there were many things he could anticipate, added the interpreter vigorously shaking his head, but he would never have dreamt that this man would have the gall to ring him up, especially seeing that it was precisely because of him that he had been fired, dropped like a piece of shit, but this guy did not fuck around, no, he went and called him up thinking that because he had given him his damned card it meant that he could just call him up, which he did, begging him to see him and help him, because, the halfwit lummox was completely lost in New York, the interpreter went on, lost, you hear? he asked the Mexican driver, lost, would you believe it, he exclaimed and slapped his knee, as if that mattered to anyone in a town where everyone is utterly lost, and he would have slammed the phone down on him and let the stupid asshole go hang himself, when the guy blurts out that he has a bit of money and he needs accommodation and someone to help him out these first few days, the shithead, that kind of thing, in fact precisely that kind of thing, and something about standing by him, adding the detail that he could pay up to six hundred dollars a month but no more, he apologized on the phone, because he had to spread his money carefully, he said, because, Korin didn’t really know how to put it, Mr. Sárváry, but he was a little exhausted by the journey, and tried to explain how he was not an ordinary passenger, that he wasn’t simply visiting New York but had a mission to accomplish there, and that time was really pressing now and he had need of help, someone to assist him, which, of course, didn’t mean doing a lot, in fact practically nothing, only being a particular someone to whom he could turn in difficulties, that was all really, and if it was at all possible, Korin had asked him, could he come for him now, in person, because he still had no idea what was what, or, to put it another way, he had no idea even where to put himself, that he knew neither the how nor why of anything, though when asked where he actually was, he did at least know the name of the hotel, so what else could he do, for six hundred rotten dollars he dashed straight down to Little Italy, because it was there, by the Bowery, that the guy was hanging out, all for six hundred dollars, the interpreter exclaimed and gazed at the taxi driver in hope of comprehension or sympathy, that was why he got straight onto the subway, yes, he jumped to it for six hundred lousy dollars, not that that was how he had imagined it, no, he hadn’t the faintest inkling, that this was the way he would be spending his time when he arrived in America, that this was how he would end up, that all he could call his own would be an apartment on West 159th paid three years in advance, and that, of all impossible things, it would be this guy who’d get him out of trouble, though that was precisely what had happened, for the guy having asked him the question it came to him in a flash that he had a back room for which six hundred was laughable but every little bit helped, so he told him on the phone he’d be there in an hour and Korin had echoed him, crying out in delight, “An hour!” going on to assure him that he, Mr. Sárváry, had saved his life, then went down into the lobby and paid his bill, which was one hundred and sixty dollars, as he rather bitterly informed him some time later, going out into the street and sitting on the corner of a wooden fence by the wood-paneling store opposite the hotel, and blessed the moment when, after his disturbing encounter at The Sunshine Hotel, he finally realized that he had reached the limit, there was no point in hanging around, and if he wanted to avoid complete and utter failure he had to have immediate assistance, and there was in fact only one person on whom he could call, just one, whose number was somewhere on a business card in one of his pockets, and having found it and read the ornate typography with some care, it turned out to be Mr. Joseph Sárváry, at 212-611-1937.

It might be the first time this has happened in the USA but I haven’t come to start a new life, Korin protested right at the beginning, and not being able to decide whether his companion, who, having consumed his beer, had slumped heavily across the table, had heard him at all or was fast asleep, he put down his glass, leaned over and put his hand on the man’s shoulder, carefully looking around him and adding rather more quietly: I would rather like to finish the old one.

He paid for everything: the hot meal at the Chinese, the vast amounts of beer they consumed, the cigarettes that followed, and even for the taxi that took them to the Upper West Side, absolutely everything, and, what’s more, with a joyful equanimity that was the sign of an inexpressible lightening of spirit, for, as he kept saying, he had seen no light at the end of the tunnel, the ground beneath his feet had begun remorselessly to shift, until the interpreter reappeared, and he could only thank him, and thank him again, for minutes on end, which made the whole thing even more intolerable, said the interpreter in the kitchen, for after that the words started pouring from his mouth and he told him everything in the smallest detail from A through to Z, from the point of leaving the airport, in such fine detail he practically described every step, the way he put one foot in front of the other, and the mind-blowing tedium! that was no exaggeration, he said, it really did take hours, because he started with the guy who allegedly knocked him flat before he had even reached the arrivals hall, then how he failed to find a bus that would have taken him downtown, but how he had found a taxi instead and who the driver was, and how his hand was on his groin all the way into Manhattan, and then some strange business about something he should have seen through the window on the journey but didn’t, and so they proceeded, no joking, yard by yard, missing nothing on the way, into Manhattan, and then what it was like at the hotel, seriously, going through each item of furniture and every little thing he did through the days he spent there, how he didn’t dare leave the room though he eventually did so in order to buy some bananas, and that’s no joke either, laughed the interpreter leaning on the kitchen table, though it sounds like a joke, but believe me, it wasn’t, that’s the kind of guy this guy really was, and he managed to find his way into some kind of prison too, telling me about iron bars, and how he escaped from there, in other words he is utterly screwed up, his head’s screwed up, you can see it in his eyes, he’s some kind of word nut, an absolute blabbermouth, and, what’s more, he has a constant theme, to which he keeps returning, that he has come here to die, and because of this, he says, though it’s an innocent enough matter, he has started to feel a bit uncomfortable with it, because though this spiel about dying is probably part shit, it is, in the end, not altogether to be ignored, because even though the guy looks innocent you have to take such things seriously, so that even she, he said pointing to his lover across the table, has to keep her eyes on him all the time, which is not to say there is any cause for anxiety for if there were he wouldn’t have allowed the guy in, no, there isn’t, for this guy was simply — and he would, said the interpreter, swear on it if he had to — talking out of his ass and you couldn’t take anything he said seriously, though one could never be too careful, there’s always that chance in a thousand, and what happens then, what if the guy happens to do it here at his place, the interpreter sucked his teeth, that wouldn’t be nice, but what the fuck else was he to do, for just this morning everything had looked hopeless, he couldn’t get a hundred together for the evening, and now, if you please, it’s not even three o’clock yet and here are six sweet hundred-dollar bills, a full Chinese meal, plus fifteen beers, a pack of Marlboros, not at all bad going given his black mood that morning, seeing that it had all dropped into his lap, just like that, this guy with his six hundred, this little moneybags, grinned the interpreter, that’s six hundred dollars a month, which is nothing to sneeze at, not a sum you can just say No to, because, after all, what’s the situation, the guy crashes here, said the interpreter, giving a wide yawn and leaning back in his chair, and it’ll be all right, he’ll survive, and this guy, Korin, is not going to get under his feet, since his needs seemed to be minimal, meaning a table to work at, a chair, a bed to sleep on, a sink, and a few common household items, that was all he wanted, no more, and he knows he has been provided with all these things, and he can’t thank him enough for them, or stop telling him how he has relieved him of a great burden, and you can have enough of this shit, he said, he had no wish to hear it all again, so he had left Korin in the back room, which is where he had stayed, alone, running his eyes over and over the place, this back room, his room, he had said aloud, but not too loud, not so that Mr. Sárváry and his partner should hear him, for, really, he didn’t want to be a nuisance to anyone, nor would he, he decided, be a nuisance, then sat down on the bed, got up again, went over to the window, then sat back down on the bed once more, before getting up again, and so it went on for several minutes, since the feeling of joy continued welling up in him, overwhelming him, so time and again he had to sit down or stand up and eventually achieved complete happiness by pulling the table ever so gently over to the window, turning it so the light should fall fully on it, drew up the chair, then sat on the bed and stared at the table, at the arrangement of it, stared and stared, gauging whether the light was falling on it in the best possible way, then turning the chair a little so that it was at a different angle to the table, so it should fit better, staring at that now, and it was plain that the happiness was almost too much for him, for he now had somewhere to live, a place with a table and a chair, because he was happy that Mr. Sárváry existed in the first place, and that he should have this apartment on the top floor of 547 West 159th Street, right next to the stairs to the attic, and without the resident’s name on the door.

In his childhood, Korin began in the kitchen the next morning while the interpreter’s lover was busily working at the gas burner with her back to him, he had always found himself taking the loser’s side, though that was not quite right, he shook his head, for to put it more precisely, it was the story of his entire childhood he was talking about: being with losers, spending all his time with losers, not being able to deal with anyone else, only with unfortunates, the failures, the mistreated and the exploited, they being the only ones he sought out, the only group to whom he felt drawn, the only people he felt he understood, and so he strove to follow them in everything, even in his school textbooks as Korin recalled now, sitting on the edge of the chair by the door, recalling how even in literature classes it was only the tragic poets that moved him, or, to put this more precisely, the tragic ends of the poets themselves, the way they were neglected, abandoned, humiliated, their life-blood ebbing away along with their secret personal knowledge of life and death, or that, at least, was the way he visualized them while reading the textbooks, having, as he did, an inborn antipathy to life’s winners so that he could never be part of any celebration or feel the intoxication of triumph, for it just wasn’t in him to identify with such things only with defeat, and that identification was immediate, instinctive, and ran to anyone at all who had been condemned to suffer loss; and so that’s that, said Korin, as he rose uncertainly from the chair, addressing the immobile back of the woman, though this condition, the pain he felt at such times, had about it a peculiar sweetness that he experienced as a warm sensation running right through him, irradiating his entire being, whereas when he met with victory or with victors, it would always be a cold feeling, an icy-cold feeling of repulsion that seized him, that spread through his entire being, not hatred as such, nor quite contempt, but more a kind of incomprehension, meaning that he could not understand victory or victors, the joy experienced by the triumphant not being joy to him, nor was the occasional defeat suffered by a natural victor truly a defeat, because it was only those who had been unjustly cast out by society, heartlessly rejected — how should he put it? — people condemned to solitude and ill fortune, it was to them only that his heart went out and, given such a childhood, it was no wonder that he himself had constantly been swept to the side of events, grown reserved, timid and weak, nor should it be surprising that as an adult, having been easily swept aside, having grown reserved, timid and weak, he had become the personification of defeat, a great hulking defeat on two legs, although, said Korin taking a step toward the door, it wasn’t simply that he recognized himself in others similarly fated, that wasn’t the only reason things had turned out as they did, despite such a self-centered and infinitely repulsive beginning: no, his personal lot could not entirely be regarded as particularly harsh, for after all he did actually have a father, a mother, a family and a childhood, and his deep attraction to those who had been ruined and defeated, the full depth of it, had been determined not by himself, far from it, but by some power beyond him, some firm knowledge according to which the psychological condition he had experienced in childhood, which sprang out of empathy, generosity and unconditional trust, was absolutely and unreservedly right, although, he sighed, trying to get the woman to pay minimal attention as he stood in the doorway, this might be a somewhat tortuous and superfluous attempt at explanation, since, there might be nothing more at the bottom of all this than the fact, to put it crudely, that there are sad children and happy children, said Korin, that he was a sad little child, one of those who throughout his life is slowly, steadily consumed by sadness, that was his personal feeling, and perhaps, who knows, that is all there is to know, and in any case, he said as he quietly turned the handle of the door, he did not want to burden the young lady with his problems, it was time he got on with things back in his room, and this whole account of sadness and defeat just sort of came out, and he didn’t quite understand why it should have done so, what had got hold of him, which was ridiculous, he knew, but he hoped he hadn’t intruded on her time, and that she could happily carry on cooking and so, he added by way of farewell to the woman still standing with her back to him by the burner, he was off now, and so … goodbye.

If we ignored the toilet that was next to the steps leading up to the attic in the stairwell, the apartment consisted of three adjoining rooms plus a kitchen, a shower and a small store-cupboard of some sort, that is to say three plus one plus one plus one, in other words six spaces, but Korin only poked his nose round the other doors when the occupiers went out in the evening and when he would finally have the opportunity of examining his surroundings, to see where he had wound up a little more closely, but he hesitated here, he hesitated there, at every threshold and was content merely to cast a desultory glance inside, because, no, he wasn’t interested in the dreary furniture, the torn wallpaper with its patches of damp, the empty wardrobe and the four or five collapsed shelves hanging off the walls, nor was he curious about the ancient suitcase employed as a nightstand, or the rusty, headless shower, the bare light-bulbs and the security lock on the front door with its four-figure combination, because, rather than drawing conclusions from such evidence, he preferred to concentrate on his only real concern which was the question of how he should screw up courage and talk to the owners on their return, addressing them to some such effect as, please, Mr. Sárváry, if you would be so kind as to spare a little time for me tomorrow, and it was clear from all that followed that this was the only reason he stumped round the apartment for hours, this being the only thing he wanted, and the only thing he was preparing himself for, practicing for, so when they came home at about one in the morning he should be able to appear and present his latest, and, as he now promised, his really last request, pleading, Mr. Sárváry …, which he practiced aloud, and finally succeeded in actually saying at about one in the morning, appearing in front of them as soon as they entered and starting, Please, Mr. Sárváry, asking him if he would be so kind as to escort him to a store the next day, a store where he could purchase the items necessary for his work, since his English wasn’t, as they knew, quite good enough yet, and while he could somehow piece together a sentence in his head he’d never be able to understand the answer, for all he needed was a computer, a simple computer to help him with his work, he stuttered while fixing him with his haunted eyes, and this would entail, he imagined, an insignificant investment in time to Mr. Sárváry, but to him, said Korin, grabbing hold of his arm while the woman averted her head and went off into one of the rooms without a word, it would be of enormous benefit, since he didn’t only have this ongoing problem with English but knew nothing at all about computers either, though he had seen them at the records office, of course, back home, he explained, but how they worked he was sorry to say he had no idea, and was equally clueless as to what kind of computer he should buy, being certain only of what he wanted to do with it, which was what it depended on, retorted the interpreter who was obviously ready for bed, but Korin felt it natural to check that it depended on what he wanted to do, to which the interpreter could only reply: yes, on what you want to do, what, I, enquired Korin, on what I want to do? and spread his arms wide, well, if the interpreter had a moment he would quickly explain, at which point the interpreter pulled a long-suffering face, nodded toward the kitchen, and went through with Korin close behind him, taking the seat opposite him at the table, the interpreter waiting while Korin cleared his throat once, said nothing, then cleared his throat again and once again said nothing but kept clearing his throat for an entire minute or so, like someone who had got into a muddle and didn’t know how to get out of it again, because Korin simply didn’t know where to start, nothing came, no first sentence, and though he would dearly have loved to begin something kept stopping him, the something that got him into the muddle that he did not know how to get out of, while the interpreter kept sitting there, sleepy and nervous, wondering why, for God’s sake, he could not get started, all the while stroking his snow-white hair, running his finger down his center parting, checking whether this line that ran from his crown to his forehead was properly straight or not.

He stood in the middle of the records office, or rather he had advanced into the more powerfully lit area having emerged from among the shelves, with no one around, everyone having gone home since it was after four, or possibly even half past four, advancing into the light clutching a family file, or to be more accurate, the sub-file or fascicile containing the historical documents of the Wlassich family, stopped under the big lamp, unpacked the sheaf of papers, separated them out, riffled through them, examined the material revealed with the intention of getting the files into some order if that were necessary, for after all they had lain undisturbed for many decades, but going through the various leaves from journals, letters, accounts and copies of wills, somewhere between the miscellanea and other official documents, he discovered a pallium or binder, under the reference number IV. 3 / 10 / 1941 -42 that, as he immediately noted, did not seem to fit, that is to say to fit the official description “family documents” because it wasn’t a journal entry or a letter, not the estimate of a financial estate, not a copy of a will, nor any kind of certificate, but something he immediately recognized, as soon as he picked it up, as altogether different, and though he knew this as soon as he set eyes on it he did nothing at first, just looked at it as a whole, casually leafing through, to and fro, observing the year of entry, picking out names of individuals or institutions, and riffling through again to get some handle on the kind of document it was so that he might be able to conduct further work on it and so recommend an appropriate course of action, this entailing a search for some number or name or anything that might help him place it in the right category, though this proved fruitless since the one hundred and fifty to one hundred and eighty pages, or so he calculated, carried no accompanying note, no name, no date, no clue in the form of a postscript as to who had written it or where, in fact not a thing, nothing, as Korin observed with furrowed brow as he sat at the big table in the records office, so what on earth is it, he wondered as he set to examining the quality and nature of the paper, the competence and idiosyncracies of the typing and the style of the layout, but what he found did not match anything that related to other material either in the fascicule or the various palliums, in fact it was clearly unrelated, distinct from anything else, and this being the case he realized it required a different approach, so he actually decided to read the text, taking the whole thing and starting at the beginning, sitting himself down first, then, slowly, carefully, making sure the chair did not slip from under him, sat and read while the clock above the entrance showed first five, then six, then seven, and while he did not once look up, proceeding to eight, nine, ten, eleven o’clock already, and still he sat in exactly the same place in exactly the same way, until he did glance up and saw that it was seven minutes past eleven, even remarking loudly on the fact, saying, what the heck, eleven-o-seven already, then quickly packing the things away, tying up the string once more, leaving that which had remained unidentified or could not be identified in another file bound up with string, putting it under his arm, then going round, still holding the package, turning off the lights and locking the glazed entrance door behind him with the idea that he would continue his reading at home, starting all over again from the beginning.

Back home, so Korin broke the momentous silence that had descended on him, back home he used to work in an archive where the day generally ended at about half past four or a little earlier, and one day on one of the back shelves he found a file that contained a mass of papers that hadn’t been disturbed in decades, so, having found it, he brought it out to get a better idea of its contents, took it to examine under the big lamp over the main table, opened it up, spread it out, nosed around in it, leafed through it, and investigated the various palliums, intending, he told the sleepily blinking interpreter, to put them into order should they require ordering, when suddenly, while examining various journals, letters, accounts and copies of wills referring to the Wlassich family, along with other miscellaneous documents the file contained, as he was looking through these he came upon a pallium registered in the system as number IV.3 / 10 / 1941 -42, a number he still remembered because it didn’t fit, which is to say it didn’t fit the family-documents category that the Roman numeral IV indicated in the archive, and the reason it didn’t fit was because what he discovered there was not a diary, not an estimate of the financial estate, not a letter, not even the copy of a will, nor was it a certificate of any kind, or indeed a document as such, but something quite different, a difference that Korin actually spotted straight away, as soon as he started turning the pages, examining it all, turning the papers to and fro in order so that having discovered some clue as to its nature he might be able to furnish it with the appropriate note of advice or suggest a correction, which was a way, he explained to the interpreter, of preparing the file for further work, and that was why, he said, he was seeking a number, name or anything at all to help him assign it some known category, but however he looked he didn’t find one among the one hundred and fifty or, at a rough estimate one hundred and sixty-odd typed but unnumbered pages that, apart from the text itself, contained no title, date or indeed any information as to who had written it or where, nothing at all in fact, and there he was staring at the stuff, Korin continued, completely puzzled, embarking on a closer examination of the quality and weight of the paper and the quality and typeface of the script, but he found nothing there that accorded with other “palliums” in the fasciscule, “palliums” which did however accord with each other and therefore made a coherent package: apart, obviously, from this single manuscript, as Korin emphasized to the interpreter who had started to nod off in his exhaustion, which had nothing to do with the rest and made no coherent sense whatsoever, so he decided to look at it again from the beginning, he said, meaning he sat down to read through it from the start to finish, sitting and reading, as he recalled, for hours on end while the clock in the office moved on, unable to stop reading until he reached the end, at which point he turned off the lights, closed up the office, went home and started reading it once more because there was something about the way the whole thing had fallen into his hands, so to speak, that made him want to reread it straightaway, indeed immediately, as Korin stressed in a significant manner, because it took no more than the first three sentences to convince him that he was in the presence of an extraordinary document, something so out of the ordinary, Korin informed Mr. Sárváry, that he would go so far as to say that it, that is to say the work that had come into his possession, was a work of astonishing, foundation-shaking, cosmic genius, and, thinking so, he continued to read and reread the sentences till dawn and beyond, and no sooner had the sun risen but it was dark again, about six in the evening, and he knew, absolutely knew, that he had to do something about the vast thoughts forming in his head, thoughts that involved making major decisions about life and death, about not returning the manuscript to the archive but ensuring its immortality in some appropriate place, for he understood as much even at such an early point in the proceedings, for he had to make this knowledge the basis of the rest of his life, and Mr. Sárváry should understand that this should be understood in its strictest sense, because by dawn he had really decided that, given the fact that he wanted to die in any case, and that he had stumbled on the truth, there was nothing to do but, in the strictest sense, to stake his life on immortality, and from that day on, he declared, he began to study the various repositories, if he might so put it, of eternal truth so that he might discover what historical methods had been employed for the preservation of sacred messages, of visions, if you like, concerning one’s first steps on the road to eternal truth, in quest of which methods he considered the possibility of books, scrolls, films, microfiches, encryptions, engravings and so forth, but, finished up not knowing what to do since books, scrolls, films, microfiches and the rest were all destructible, and were in fact often destroyed, and he wondered what remained, what could not be destroyed, and a couple of months later, or he might just as well say a couple of months ago, he was in a restaurant when he overheard two young people at the next table, two young men, to be precise, he smiled, arguing about whether, for the first time in history, the so-called Internet offered a practical possibility of immortality, for there were so many computers in the world by then that computers were for all purposes indestructible, and, hearing this and turning it over in his mind, the personal conclusion that Korin himself came to, the conclusion that changed his life, was that that which was indestructible must perforce be immortal; and thinking this he forgot his food whatever it was, needless to say he couldn’t now recall what it was he was eating, though it might have been smoked ham, left it on the table and went straight home to calm down, going down to the library the next day to read the mass of material in the form of books, papers and discs available on the subject, all of which were replete with technical terms hitherto unfamiliar to him, but seemed to be the work of excellent and less-than-excellent authorities, reading which he grew ever more convinced about what he should do, which was to establish the text on that peculiar sounding thing, the Internet, which must be a purely intellectual matrix and therefore immortal, being maintained solely by computers in a virtual realm, to lodge or inscribe the wonderful composition he had discovered in the archive there, on the Web, for in so doing he would fix it in its eternal reality, and if he managed to accomplish this he would not have died in vain, he told himself, for even if his life was wasted, his death would not be, and that was how he encouraged himself in those early days, by telling himself that his death had meaning, even though, said Korin dropping his voice, his life had none.

It’s perfectly all right, you can walk beside me, the interpreter encouraged Korin who was continually hanging back next day as they proceeded down the street, through the subway and finally up the escalators on 47th Street; come along now, catch up, stop hanging back, here, walk beside me, it’s all right, but it was no use calling and gesturing, for Korin, involuntarily perhaps, kept falling ten or twenty paces behind, so in the end the interpreter gave up and thought to hell with him, as he recounted later, if he wants to trail behind then, very well, let him, after all it means damn anything to him where he chooses to walk, the essential point being, as he decided and made perfectly plain to Korin, that this was the last time they ventured out together, for frankly he had no time to spare, he was so busy, and he would help it this time, but that in the future Korin would have to stand on his own two feet, all by himself, right? he snapped, because it very much looked as if this was going in one ear and out of the other as far as Korin was concerned, lurking behind him like some retard, when he should at least listen, the interpreter barked furiously and pointlessly, for Korin was all ears and it was only that he had a hundred, no a hundred thousand other matters to attend to at the moment, this being the first time since his terrifying journey from the airport to The Sunshine Hotel that, thank God, he could look around in anything like normal fashion, the first time that he felt at all capable of comprehending events around him, even while being afraid, as he confessed next morning in the kitchen, afraid then and still afraid, without knowing what precisely it was that he should or should not be afraid of, what he should or should not look out for, and therefore, naturally, in a state of high alert at every step, right from the first, as he followed the interpreter, careful that he should not fall too far behind but at the same time careful not to hurry too much, careful to drop in his subway token at the machine precisely as required, fearing that the expression on his face, which might not be sufficiently indifferent, should call too much attention to him, in other words taking care to behave in an appropriate manner without knowing what an appropriate manner might be, which was why he was following Mr. Sárváry, in this exhausted condition, to a shop with the sign Photo above it on 47 th Street, so tired that he was barely capable of dragging himself along as they stepped in and had immediately to mount some stairs, which meant dragging himself up the stairs too, so that by this time he hardly knew where he was or what was happening as Mr. Sarváry, he told the woman, had a word with a Hasidic Jew behind a counter who replied something to the effect that they would have to wait, though there were very few other people in the shop, in fact only a single customer before them, but even so they waited at least twenty minutes before the Hasidic Jew came out from behind the counter, led them to a mass of computers and started to explain something of which he, Korin, as he said, naturally understood not a word, and only caught on when Mr. Sárváry informed him that they had found the best possible model for his purposes and asked him if he would like to create a home page, when, seeing his clueless expression, he gestured in a hopeless comical manner, said Korin, and, thank heaven, decided the matter for himself, so that all that remained was for him to fork out the sum of twelve hundred and eighty-nine dollars, which he did, in return for which he received a small light package to carry home, and so they started back though Korin did not so much as dare to ask a question on the way, because he was keenly aware of the value of twelve hundred and eighty-nine dollars on the one hand and of the small light package on the other, and so they proceeded silently through the subway, changing trains once or twice, and so forth, making their way toward 159th Street in silence, without a word, and though a word is not much, it was probably the case that Mr. Sárváry was also exhausted by the traveling, for they continued thus in absolute silence, he and the interpreter, the latter sometimes casting a forbidding look at him whenever he felt that Korin was on the point of saying something, for he was determined not to endure another idiotic monologue, preferring silence, at least until they got home, when, the interpreter told him, he would explain how the thing worked and what he had to do, as indeed he did, explaining everything, turning the computer on and showing him which key to press and when to press it, though he was not prepared to do more than that, he said, demonstrating for the last time what each key was for and how he could get the necessary diacritics, then asked him not for the agreed two hundred as he had intended the previous night when he offered to help with the purchase, but for four hundred, straight out, as a loan, seeing the guy seemed to be made of money, not just the cash in his overcoat, he laughed to his partner, sitting with her at the table, saying, just imagine the overcoat, the money being all sewn into the lining like that and him having to poke his hand in and get it out of there so he could pay the store, imagine that, have you ever heard anything like it, as if it were some kind of purse, he roared with laughter, and the guy just peeled off the four hundred greenbacks, like that, which makes a round thousand, sweetheart, then he left him, continued the interpreter, but before leaving he told him, perfectly straight, Mr. Korin, pal, you won’t survive long round here like that, because if you don’t take that money out of your coat lining there are people out there who can smell the stuff, and it’s beginning to stink to high heaven, so the next time you stick your nose out of the door, someone or other will kill you for the sheer smell of it.

A conventional computer, the interpreter explained, normally consists of a monitor in a case, a keyboard, a mouse, a modem and various items of software one has to learn to use, and yours, he told Korin who was nodding without understanding anything, comprises all these items, and beside these has the extra facility, he pointed to the unwrapped laptop, not only of being plugged immediately into the Internet, which goes without saying, but of providing you with a template for a ready-made home page, which is all you need, for having put down a deposit of two hundred and thirty dollars, you have already paid for a provider several months ahead, so there is nothing else left for you to do except — but wait, let’s go from the top again, he sighed seeing Korin’s terrified expression — first you press this, he put his finger on a button at the back of the computer, to switch the set on, and when you do that these little colored icons appear, do you see? he asked pointing at each one of them, do you see all these? and began to go over it all again using only the simplest words and in the least technical detail, because the guy’s level of understanding, he told his partner, was negligible to the nth degree, and that’s not taking the speed of his reactions into account, so, never mind, he said, let’s start at the beginning, from the point at which you see what you do see on the monitor, at which point you should do this and that, and he would have gone on to explain why this or that action was necessary and what various things meant, but quickly realizing that this was utterly useless, he taught him only that which was mechanically required and made him practice it, since, when you came down to it, he told her, the only way was to make him go through the basic actions, everything but everything, time and time again, so as soon as he demonstrated something he asked him to repeat it and in this way, said the interpreter, after some three hours, the guy eventually learned the secrets of creating a home page, so though he hadn’t the faintest idea what he was doing he was capable of opening Word in Office 97 and typing in some piece of text, and, when he had finished for the day, of formatting what he had done as hypertext, saving it, then dialing up his server, typing his code-name, his password, his provider, his own name, etcetera etcetera, just about everything he needed to know in order to send the information to his home page, using his personal password, so that he himself could check that his text had got onto the server and that the material could be searched on the basis of a few key words using the search engine, and this, all this, said the interpreter, still somewhat incredulously, had to be accomplished with the most primitive of methods seeing that the guy’s brains were like cheese, full of holes, in one ear and out of the other, and whenever he was told something new his brow completely creased up with the effort, like the whole guy was one enormous straining mass but you can see the stuff that had just entered his head leaking out again, right out so there was nothing left, so you may imagine, as Korin himself said in the kitchen the next day, you may imagine what he went through trying to learn it all, for not only did he admit that his mind was not what it had been, but confessed outright that, as a mind, it was useless, ruined, kaput, finished, no good for anything anymore, and it was only thanks to Mr. Sárváry’s remarkable, enchanting gift of pedagogy, not to mention, Korin added with a forced smile, his endless patience, that he finally got something right, and, why deny it, there was no one more surprised than he that he should have at his command this miraculous, incredible triumph of technology that weighed no more than a few ounces, and it worked, against all the odds it actually worked, he told her, highly animated, just imagine, young lady, there it was sitting in his room, the machine, on the table, right in the middle of it, adjusted precisely to its central position, and all he had to do was to sit down in front of it and everything was under way, everything functioning as it should, he suddenly laughed out loud, simply because, and for no other reason, than that he had pushed this or that button, and it was all as Mr. Sárváry said it would be, so with a couple more days of practice, he quietly told the woman, who was before the gas burner as usual, with her back to him, saying nothing, he could start work, just a couple more days, he repeated, then after a couple of days of concentrated practice he could get the job properly started, wholeheartedly commit himself to it, put his back into it, make a real go of it, in other words a day or so and he’d be sitting there, writing something for posterity, for eternity, he, György Korin, on the top floor of number 547 West 159th Street, New York, for the price of one thousand two hundred and eighty-nine dollars all told, of which two hundred and thirty was deposit.

He searched for the most secure place possible in the room then, taking the interpreter’s advice, took the remaining money out of his coat lining, attached it to a string and stuffed it nice and deep between the bedsprings, folded the mattress back over it and smoothed out the bedclothes, checking from a variety of viewpoints, some standing, some squatting, to ensure that there should be nothing there to catch a stranger’s eye; and this being taken care of, he was ready to get on with other things, for he had decided that between five in the afternoon and three in the morning, when, the interpreter had warned him, the single telephone line would be unavailable for working on the computer, he would start exploring the town in order that he might have some idea of where things were in relation to where he was, and in what particular corner of the city he now found himself, or, to put it another way, to discover what he had achieved in picking the center of the world, New York, as the most appropriate setting for the execution of his plan to comprehend the eternal truth and die, which was why, he told the woman in the kitchen, he now had to orient himself in it by walking everywhere until he got to know the place, which he did on the day after he had bought the computer and started to learn to use it, shortly after five o’clock when he descended the stairs, left the house and started walking down the street, just a couple of hundred yards and back at first, then repeating the exercise several times, glancing over his shoulder to ensure that he would know the buildings again by sight and later, after a good hour had passed, venturing down as far as the subway on the corner of 159th and Washington Avenue, where he took a long time studying the subway map without daring to buy a token, board a train or explore any further that day, though he had gathered courage enough by the next to purchase a token and board the first available train, riding down as far as Times Square because the name had a familiar ring to it, then walking along Broadway until he was perfectly exhausted by the effort; and this is what he did, day after day, always returning either on the bus the interpreter had recommended or on the subway, the result being that after a week of these ever more intrepid ventures, he had begun to learn to live in the city and no longer felt a mortal fear of traveling or of making a purchase at the Vietnamese store on the corner, and, more importantly, was no longer fearful of each and every individual who happened to stand next to him on the bus or pass him in the street: and all this he learned and it made a genuine difference, though one thing hadn’t changed, not even after a week, and that was his high anxiety level, the anxiety, that is, of knowing that despite all he had so painstakingly learned he still understood nothing of it, and that, because of this, the intensity of his feelings had not abated, and that he was still in thrall to the state of mind he first experienced on that unforgettable first taxi ride, the feeling that, among all these enormous buildings, he should be seeing something, but that however he peered and strained his eyes, he was failing to see it, and he continued to feel this every moment of his various journeys from Times Square to the East Village, from Chelsea to the Lower East Side, in Central Park, downtown, Chinatown and Greenwich Village, and the feeling was gnawing away at him, so that whatever he looked at reminded him with a ferocious intensity of something else, but what that was he had no idea, not a solitary inkling, he told the woman who continued to stand silently with her back to him at the stove, cooking something in a gray saucepan, so that Korin had courage enough to talk to her but not to address her directly nor tactfully to compel her to turn around for once and say something herself, which meant he was restricted to talking to her, genuinely talking to her, on those regular occasions they met in the kitchen at noon, telling her anything that came to his mind, hoping in this way to discover a way of engaging her in conversation or understanding why she never spoke, for he felt instinctively drawn to her, more, at any rate, than to anyone else in the building, and it was plain from his daily noontime exertions that he was seeking to establish some favor with her, talking to her all the time, every noon, telling her about everything from his experiences with the computer to his feelings about skyscrapers, staring at her bent back by the stove, at the greasy hair hanging in bunches over her thin shoulders, at the straps dangling at the sides of the blue apron covering her bony hips, and watching how she used a dishtowel to lift the hot pan from the fire then vanish from the kitchen into her room without a word, her eyes averted, as if she were permanently frightened of something.

He had become quite a different person in America, Korin told her after a week, no longer the person he had been, by which he didn’t mean that something essential in him had been destroyed or mended, but that little details, which for him were not so little after all, his forgetfulness, for example, had utterly vanished after two days, that is if you can talk about forgetfulness vanishing like that, though in his case, said Korin, it really was a matter of vanishing, since he had noticed a couple of days ago that he really had stopped forgetting, that he actually remembered things that happened to him, they stayed in his head, and he no longer had to rummage through a mass of material to find whatever he had lost, though it was true, he said, that he had precious little material to rummage through, nevertheless he could now be sure of finding what he had lost, in fact he no longer had even to look, which hadn’t been the case before when he used to forget anything that happened by the next day, for now he had a perfect recollection of what had happened, where he had been and what he had seen, specific faces, particular stores, some buildings, they all came immediately to mind, and to what could he attribute this, said Korin, if not to America, where, the very air was probably different, and not only the air, but the water too for all he knew, but whatever it was, something was radically different, for he too was different, nor was his neck or shoulder giving him the trouble they had before at home, which must mean that the permanent state of anxiety to which he was prey must have diminished, so he could forget the anxiety about losing his head, and that was truly a relief for it left the way open for him to pursue his necessary goal, and he wondered whether he had told the young lady, Korin enquired in the kitchen, that the entire notion of America had, ultimately, come about as a result of his decision to put an end to his life, and while he was absolutely certain that he should do so he didn’t actually know what means to adopt to this purpose, for all he knew when he first formulated the idea was that he should quietly disappear from this world, collect his thoughts and vanish, nor did he think any different now really, since he wasn’t here to seek fame by devising some peculiarly ingenious way of disposing of himself, advertising himself as the unselfish self-sacrificing sort, the kind we see so many of nowadays, he was by no means one of them, no, that was the last thing on his mind, because what he was interested in was something altogether different, something — and here he recalled the terrible grace of fate that set these thoughts off in his head, and wondered how should he put it, then decided, he said, to put it like this — that from the moment when it was his luck to make the discovery of the manuscript he was no longer just a man determined to die, as until then he had had every right to believe, a fated figure, as the phrase has it, the sort of person who already has death in his heart, but someone who continues working, let us say, in his garden, watering, planting, digging, then suddenly discovers an object in the ground that catches his eye, a discoverer, you see, that’s how the young lady too should imagine it, said Korin, for that is what happened to him, for, from that time on, whatever happened it was all the same to the man working in his garden because the object that glimmered there before him had settled matters, and that’s just what had happened to him in a manner of speaking of course, in a manner of speaking, for he had discovered something in the records office where he had been working, a manuscript for which he could find no source, no provenance, no author, and what was strangest of all, Korin raised a warning finger, without a clear purpose, something that would never have a purpose, and therefore not the kind of manuscript he’d rush to show the director of the institution, though that is what he should have done, but one that made him do something an archivist should never do: he took it away, and by doing so he knew, knew in his bones, that from that moment on he had ceased being a true archivist, because by taking it he had become a common thief, the document being the one genuinely important item he had ever handled in all his years as an archivist, the one undeniable treasure that meant so much to him he felt he couldn’t rightly keep it to himself, as one kind of thief would, but, like a different kind of thief, had to let the whole world know of its existence, not the world of the present, he had decided, since that was wholly unfit to receive it, nor the world of the future since that would certainly be unfit, not even the world of the past which had long lost its dignity, but eternity: it was eternity that should receive the gift of this mysterious artifact, and that meant, as he realized, that he had to find a form appropriate to eternity, and it was following the conversation in the restaurant that the idea suddenly came to him, that he should lodge the manuscript among the millions of pieces of information stored by computers which, following the general loss of human memory, would become a momentary isle of eternity, and now it didn’t matter, he wanted most firmly to emphasize this, it really didn’t matter how long computers preserved it, the essential thing was, Korin explained to the woman in the kitchen, that the thing should be done just once, and that all the extraordinary mass of computers that had once been interconnected, or so he suspected, a suspicion confirmed by much subsequent thought on the matter, would, all together, have given birth to, produced between themselves, a space in the imagination that was related not only or exclusively to eternal truth, and that this was the right place in which to deposit the material he had found, since he believed, or that was the opinion he had arrived at, that once he connected one eternal object with the world of eternity it didn’t matter what happened next, it was all the same where he ended his life, whether it was in darkness, in the mire, Korin dropped his voice, on a footpath, by a canal or in a cold and empty room, it made no difference to him, nor did it matter how he chose to end it, with a gun or by some other means, the important thing was to begin and complete the task he had set himself, here at the center of the world, to pass on that which, if it didn’t sound too portentous to put it like this, had been bestowed on him, to plant this heartbreaking account, of which he could say nothing valuable at this stage since it would be on display on the Internet in any case, other than that, crudely speaking, it concerned an earth on which there were no more angels, that it was set in the theoretical heart of the world of ideas, and that once he had accomplished his mission, once he had finished, it didn’t matter where he ended up, whether that was in mire or in darkness.

He sat on the bed with his coat in his lap holding a small pair of scissors he had borrowed from his hosts in order to unpick the delicate stitches he had used to secure the top of the secret pocket he had sewn into the lining, so that he might finally extract the manuscript, and was ceremonially about to set about his task, when suddenly, barely audibly, the door opened and the interpreter’s partner stood at the threshold with an open glossy magazine in her hand, not entering but looking across the room, somehow beyond Korin, and hovered there for a moment, more timid and tongue-tied than ever, not looking in the least likely to break her perpetual silence but rather on the point of disappearing once more and beating a hasty apologetic retreat, when finally, perhaps because both she and Korin were equally disconcerted by her unexpected appearance, she pointed to a photograph in the open magazine and asked, very quietly, in English: “Did you see the diamonds?” and when Korin, in his surprise, was unable to emit the merest squeak by way of an answer but continued to sit as if rooted to the spot with the coat in his lap, the very scissors frozen in his hand, she slowly lowered the magazine, turned around, and as noiselessly as she had entered, left the room, closing the door behind her.

The eternal belongs to eternity, said Korin loudly to himself, then, since he had taken a long time entering a single page, he perched on the windowsill holding the second, gazing out at the lights on the fire escapes of the building opposite, scanning the flat desert of the rooftops and the furiously racing clouds in the strong November wind, and added, Tomorrow morning, it must be done by tomorrow.