War & War

III ALL CRETE

According to the manuscript’s superbly honed and supple sentences, the kind of craft the ship most resembled was an Egyptian seagoing vessel, though it was impossible to tell what tides had borne it hither, for while the powerful winds currently blowing might have carried it from Gaza, Byblos, Lucca or indeed from the land of Thotmes, it might just as likely have been swept across from Akrotiri, Pylos, Alasiya, and if the storm had raged particularly fiercely, even from the distant isles of Lipari, and in any case, one thing was certain as Korin typed the letters, which was that the Cretans who had gathered on the shore had not only never seen one like it but had not even heard of such a craft, and that was chiefly because, firstly, they pointed out to each other, the stern was not raised; secondly, that instead of a full complement of twenty-five/twenty-five oarsmen, there were thirty/thirty, originally at least, fully equipped; and thirdly, putting all that aside, they remarked as they studied it from the shelter of an enormous cliff, the size and shape of the sail was now in shreds and its extent could be estimated, though the straining ornamental figurehead on the prow and the unusual positioning of the double row of arching tangles of rope all looked unfamiliar, unfamiliar and terrifying, even in the throes of destruction as huge waves drove the craft from Lebena into the bay at Kommos then cast it against a rock, turning the vessel on its side as if to exhibit the broken body to the frightened locals, saving it from further damage and raising it above the foaming waters, introducing it, as it were to human eyes in order to demonstrate how the combination of water and storm could, should it wish to, deal with such a vast mechanism; how thousands of unstoppable waves could toy with this previously unknown, peculiarly constructed ocean-going trader on which everything had died or at least seemed to have died, and had, indeed, to be dead, the Cretans muttered to each other, for surely no one could survive such turmoil in this lethal gale, not even a god, they added from the shelter of the cliff, for, as they said on shore as they shook their heads, no one could remain in one piece under such catastrophic, demonic circumstances, not even a god newly born, for none such could be born.

They are here for eternity, Korin explained to the woman in the kitchen, while she stood at the stove in her usual position with her back to him, stirring something in a pan, and not giving the slightest sign of having understood or given any heed to what she was hearing, and he didn’t go back to his room for the dictionary as he often had done, but abandoning hope of explaining the notion of eternity and here-ness, tried to move the conversation on instead by pointing to the pan in confusion, asking: Something delicious … as usual?

It wasn’t until the next day that the storm had abated to the extent that a small boat from Kommos dared venture out on the waters and row over to the rock, and so it was only then, Korin wrote, once the wind had dropped, early next afternoon, that they discovered that what had seemed from a distance to be a wreck beyond salvaging, was most certainly a wreck, but at a closer view, not entirely beyond salvaging, and the improvised rescue party was astonished to discover three, and maybe even four survivors in one of the main cabins that had not been flooded: three, they signaled by hand to those on the shore, and a possible fourth lashed to this or that post, the four unconscious but certainly alive, or at least three of them were alive and the heart of the fourth was also possibly beating, so they cut these four free of the posts and brought them out, they being the only four for the rest had been engulfed in the flood and drowned, some sixty, eighty or even hundred of them, they said later, who knows how many dreaming their last by the time they found them, but no longer in any position to feel pain, as they put it; while these three, the rescuers said, or maybe even four, had miraculously survived, and so they quickly brought them out of the cabin and transferred them to the boat immediately, one after the other, and set off back again leaving the rest, the entire ship, just as it was, since they knew exactly what would happen, what would come to pass, as, in two days, it did, when a powerful wave broke the by now utterly shattered wreck into two, whereupon it slid off the rock and, suddenly, almost unbelievably quickly, within a few minutes, sank beneath the surface, so that a quarter of an hour later the last of the waves was sweeping smoothly over the place it had been and across the shore where stood the entire village of the small fishing community of Kommos, every man, woman, child and dotard, mute and still, since within a quarter of an hour nothing, but nothing, remained of that huge, strange and terrifying vessel, not even the very last wave, only the three living survivors and a fourth who might survive the catastrophe, four, all in all, out of the sixty, the eighty, the hundred, only four.

In the days of painful recuperation that followed they pronounced their names differently each time so the locals tended to stick to the names they claimed to have heard on the first day, in other words they referred to one as Kasser, one as Falke, one as Bengazza and the fourth as Toót, feeling that this was probably the most correct version, assuming that everyone took it for granted that the four names — names that sounded peculiar to their ears — were merely approximations, and not within hailing distance of the possible originals, though to tell the truth this was the least of their problems, for contrary to their earlier experience of those cast on their shores, those whose names, origins, homelands and fate would bit by bit, and in fact fairly quickly, become plain, with these people everything — names, origins, homelands and fate — became progressively more mysterious, that is to say their foreignness and peculiarity did not diminish but grew in astonishing fashion with the passing of days, so that by the time they were well enough to leave their beds and ventured with extreme caution out into the open air, that moment being described in that wonderful chapter, said Korin, pronouncing the word chapter in English, in particular detail, there stood these perfectly mysterious four men of whom less than nothing was known because they consistently avoided questions put to them in Babylonian, the language—Korin used the English word again — they shared, albeit both sides spoke it only brokenly, by answering to something different, so that even Mastemann, a recent foreign castaway from Gurnia, to the east of the island, a man not much given to doubts but willing to state his opinions forcefully, appeared to be in doubt, yes, even he, Mastemann, fell silent as he watched them from behind the wagon as they strolled silently through the tiny village, as they ambled behind the fig trees and eventually settled down to dawdle in an olive grove and watch the sun decline on the western horizon.

The whole document, Korin said to the woman, seemed to be speaking of the Garden of Eden, every sentence of the manuscript that described the village and the shore, he said, dwelling on the unsurpassable beauty of the place, as though it were not some message it was conveying but more as if it were wanting to conduct itself back into paradise, for it not only mentioned this beauty, elaborated on it and proclaimed it, but lingered on it, in other words it established, in its own strange way, the fact that this peculiar beauty, Korin stressed the word “beauty” in English, was not simply an aspect of the landscape but all it contained, that calm, and, yes, delight, the calm and delight it radiated, suggesting that whatever was good was indisputably eternal, and in this way, Korin continued, embellishing the picture for her, it established the fact that, having been created good, everything continued very good, all of it, the brilliant red sunlight, the dazzling white of the cliffs, the subtle green of the valleys and the grace of the people inhabiting it, commuting as they did between the cliffs and the valleys, or, to put it another way, said Korin, everything — the red and white and green, the grace of the mule-drawn wagons as they trundled along, the octopus nets drying in the wind, the amulets around people’s necks, the ornamental hairpins, the workshops offering pots and pans, the fishing boats and the mountain shrines, in a word the earth itself, as well as the sea and the sky (the sky, he said in English) — but really everything was calm and delightful, and, what was more, real, real in the full sense of the word, or that at least was how Korin described the state of affairs, when, having finished the morning’s work, he attempted to sketch the place out for her, though his efforts as usual were doomed since it was clearly pointless describing anything to her in whatever painterly detail, now or at any time, for she not only stood there as indifferent as ever, but, as he saw when she happened to turn a little, she had been thoroughly beaten up, in other words it was not just a matter of having no idea in what language to speak to her, that is if she was listening at all to the monologue Korin had been trying to deliver in Hungarian since about eleven that morning to about half-past twelve, going on to one, that afternoon — a monologue supplemented with the odd English word he had gleaned from the dictionary — but that the blown veins were clearly visible on her face, her eyes were swollen and there were abrasions on her brow, possibly because she had ventured out at night and had been attacked by someone on the way home, it was impossible to tell, though it was deeply disturbing to Korin, who, for that very reason, pretended not to have noticed anything and went on speaking, picking up his monologue in the evening until the interpreter finally appeared in the kitchen when, summoning his courage, he rushed over to him and asked him what had happened, and who was it who had dared assault the young lady: assaulted her! the interpreter expostulated, beside himself, to his lover, her! he bellowed at the figure crouched, wide-eyed with terror at the end of the bed, while he paced furiously up and down the room, for God’s sake, who does he think he is? what business was it of this dumb asshole what they did or didn’t do with their lives, for God’s sake, who does he think he is, does he think he can sniff around us like some damned dog and try to hold us to account about our lives! well, excuse me, but that’s not okay! he growled at his lover, yes, he sent him on his way all right, the sly pitiful asshole, let him rot up someone else’s ass, he told him all right, until there was hardly any breath left in him, left him gasping, saying he only meant to this or only meant to that, to which he, the interpreter, replied simply that if he wanted to avoid a busted nose like hers, he will shut the fuck up right now with questions, at which point, naturally, Korin slid off like some damn snake, into his own room and closed the door behind him so quietly it would not have disturbed a fly, the interpreter insisted, for that door made no noise, no sir, no noise whatsoever.

Night fell and the stars came out, but the four of them would not return to Kommos, for after carefully and repeatedly checking the security of the place they remained where the sunset found them, to the north of the village and a little above it in the olive grove where they leaned against an ancient tree trunk and sat for a long time, silent, in the deepening darkness, until Bengazza spoke in that low murmur of his and told them it might be as well to say something to the villagers, he had no idea what, but didn’t they think it would be proper to invent something assuring about what they were doing here, to which, for a long time, he received no answer, for it seemed no one wanted to break the silence, and when it was broken it was on a different subject, a remark of Kasser’s to be precise, to the effect that there was nothing lovelier than this sunset over the hill and the sea, to which Falke replied that nothing could be finer than these extraordinary colors in the deepening darkness, this wonderful spectacle of the interplay between transition and permanence, for all interplay between transition and permanence has a remarkable theatricality, being like an enormous performance involving a beautiful fresco of something that does not exist and yet suggests evanescence, mortality, that sense of dying away, perfectly encapsulating the idea of extinction; not forgetting the ceremonial entrance of color, added Kasser, the breathtaking glory of scarlet, lilac, yellow, brown, blue and white, the demonic aspect of the painted sky, all this, all this; and so much else, suggested Falke, since they had not yet mentioned the thousand significant tremors of the soul such a sunset occasions in the viewer, the deep trance-like state certain to be produced in the viewer by contemplation of the phenomenon, in other words, said Kasser, the sense of hope suffusing the moment of parting, the setting forth, the spellbinding image of the first step into darkness; yes, but also the sure promise of calm, rest and the approach of dreams, all this, all at once and so much more, added Falke; and how much more, echoed Kasser, though by that time the grove was cooling, and since the linen loincloths they had been lent by way of raiment were inadequate against the chill they started back toward the village, making their way down the narrow path between the tiny stone cottages to occupy the one that had stood empty at the time of their arrival and which they had been offered by their brave rescuers and the squid fishers of Kommos as a temporary shelter for as long as they needed it, they were told; and so they entered and lay down on the beds, on what, inside the shelter, felt like a pleasant evening at Kommos, their entering and lying down being followed, as usual, by a short uninterrupted sleep, by which time it was dawn already, the new day arriving rose-hemmed, the very first light of course finding them up and about, outside the hut, beside a fig tree on the dew-drenched grass, all four of them squatting and staring at the early veils of sunlight, watching the sun rise across the bay in the east, for they all agreed that the earth had nothing lovelier to offer than sunrise; dawn, in other words, said Kasser, that miraculous ascent, the breathtaking spectacle of the rebirth of light, the distinguishing of objects and outlines, the wild celebration of the return of clarity and vision; in fact the celebration of the return of everything, of the very idea of wholeness, said Falke, of order, of the rule of law, and of the security they both offer; of birth, and the primal ritual of the dawn of things in general, and nothing surely can be more beautiful, said Kasser; and they hadn’t yet spoken of what happens to a man who has seen all this, the silent observer of this entire miracle, said Falke, for even if all this meant the going down of the sun, dawn, with its own reason and clarity, would still signify a beginning and appear as the wellspring of some benevolent power; and of security too, added Kasser, for there was this sense of complete security about each and every morning; and so much more, put in Falke, though by that time it had grown bright as daylight and the morning had entered Kommos clad in its own splendor and magnificence, and was bidding it welcome, so one by one the castaways slowly stirred themselves, returning to the hut, for they all agreed with Toót when he quietly remarked that yes, indeed, it was all very well, and it was all true, but perhaps it was time to start on the food the people of Kommos had presented to them, the food — the dates, the figs and the grapes, time, in other words, to eat.

Twelve days had passed since the ship ran aground in the storm, but the people of Kommos, wrote Korin, knew no more about the four survivors than they had that first day, from the single answer they had succeeded in eliciting from one of them, other than which they hadn’t much clue how to set about the matter, for when they asked them to say something about their original destination or at least how they had got here, they were told that this was the very place they had set out for, since, as far back as they could remember, all four castaways, this was the shore they had always desired to wash up on, and they smiled as they answered the people of Kommos, then promptly began questioning them, with pretty specific questions at that, such as where the strategically most important defense works of the island were situated, about how many troops comprised the regular armed forces, what the locals generally felt about war, and what their opinion was of the martial prowess of the Cretans, this kind of thing and when the Kommosians answered that there were no defense works, no regular army just a fleet at Amnissos, and that weapons tended to be used only on ceremonial occasions by the young men, the castaways nodded and smiled knowingly as if these were precisely the answers they had been expecting, and having finished this conversation all four of them were in such good spirits that the fishermen were at a loss to understand why, and so they went on, observing them as, day by day, they grew steadily calmer and more at ease, as they tended to spend ever more time with the women at the mill and at the oil wells and with the men in their boats or their workshops, always offering to lend a hand, so that every blessed evening they could climb the hill above the olive groves and spend part of the night under the starry sky, though what they did there and what they talked about remained a complete mystery to the villagers, and even Mastemann could do nothing but continue listening, sitting all day by his cart in the square at Kommos, simply sitting and staring while the cats he kept in their various cages occasionally let loose a maddening squall of yowling because, as people explained to the four castaways on the boats and in the workshops, Mastemann, who was supposed to be this cat-dealer from Gurnia, tended to pretend that he was waiting for a customer to buy a cat off him, though the cats he had first brought with him were all gone, though really, said the Kommosians, he was waiting for something else, but what it was, he, naturally, refused to reveal, so Mastemann’s appearance in Kommos, Korin pointed out, was generally regarded as a sinister phenomenon, and they looked on him now with apprehension even though he was only sitting there next to his cart, stroking a ginger cat on his lap, for since he had come things had gone badly in the village: there were no fish in the sea and there was no luck to be had in the olive grove either, which had begun to dry out, or so the women muttered among themselves, and even the wind there was acting strangely however they climbed to the highest shrine bearing sacrifices, however they prayed as they had been taught to Eileithyia, for nothing changed, Mastemann remained casting his shadow across Kommos, though they very much hoped that whatever Mastemann was waiting for might come to pass, because Mastemenn might leave then, and they might perhaps have their old lives back along with the luck, and even the birds in the sky might find some rest, for just imagine, as their frightened husbands said, even the birds, the gulls and the swallows, the lapwings and partridges were flying hither and thither, banking and swooping, screeching and flying into the houses as if they had lost their minds, seeking some corner as if they wanted to hide, so no one could understand what was happening to them, but everyone hoped the day would arrive when Mastemann left together with his ginger cat and those others in their cages, that he would get into that cart of his and vanish down the road he had come by, that led to Phaistos.

He had read it through countless times, thought Korin as he sat in the kitchen next day — when, after a long period of silence behind the door, he judged that the interpreter must be out of the way — for really, he had been through it at least five, maybe as much as ten times, but the manuscript’s mystery was by no means diminished, nor did its inexplicable meaning, its curious message, become any clearer, not for a second, in other words, he said, his position now was as it had been in the beginning, for that which he did not understand at the first reading was precisely what he failed to understand at the last, and yet it cast a spell on him, and would not allow him to escape the sphere of that moment of enchantment which constantly drew him in, even as he continued devouring the pages, and as he devoured them the conviction grew ever stronger, as it would in any man, that the mystery obscured by the unknowable and inexplicable was more important than anything else could possibly be and because this conviction was, by now, impossible to shake he felt no great need to try to explain his own actions to himself, to ask why he should have dedicated the last few weeks of his life to this extraordinary labor, since what after all did it consist of, he asked the woman rhetorically, but getting up at five o’clock in the morning (five o’clock, he said in English), a time he had naturally woken at for many years, drinking a cup of coffee, hoping not to disturb anyone with the minimal chinking and tinkling this involved, and by half past five or going on six to be sitting at the laptop, pressing the appropriate keys, everything going hunky-dory until about eleven when he would rest his back and neck, lying down for a while, and, as she knew, this would be the time that he gave an account of his morning’s activity to the young lady, keeping her up to date with his progress, and once he had done so he would grab some canned food at the local Vietnamese downstairs, have it along with a roll and a glass of wine, then carry on working flat out till five when, according to their agreement, he would turn the computer off, pass the line to his kind host, the interpreter, put on his coat and go for a walk in town till about ten or eleven, not, he must confess, without a touch of fear, for he felt afraid but had got used to it because, in any case, he wasn’t frightened enough to abandon this daily five o’clock excursion, because … and he couldn’t remember if he had mentioned this or not, he had this feeling, how to put it, that he had been here before, or rather, no, he shook his head vigorously, that wasn’t the best way of putting it: it was not that he had actually been here but rather that he seemed to have seen the town somewhere before, and he knew how ridiculous this must sound, since how could he have seen it from Körös-part, but what can he do, however ridiculous it sounded it was the truth, he said, that he had a quite extraordinary feeling when he was walking around Manhattan gazing at these enormous mind-boggling skyscrapers, no more than a feeling it is true but one he could not forget or dismiss, which was why, every day at five, he made the decision to explore it all, though exploring it all, in the literal sense, was of course out of the question, for he was dog tired by then, and at ten or eleven at night he would return and there was the computer so he could read all he had written that day, and it was only then, after he was finished, having checked that there was not one single mistake just before he went to bed, only then could he put it from his mind, as they say, and that was how days passed, or rather how his life here in New York passed, that is what he would write home if there were someone to write to, and that is what he is saying now, that the fact is he would never have thought the last weeks could have been so beautiful, he said, stressing the words the last weeks in English, after all he had gone through, but that he did not think about at all now, which was precisely why he was telling the young lady all this, since it might happen to the young lady too, that there might be a bad time in her life, a bad period, said Korin, but then would come a change, a turning point, when, from one day to the next, life would be different and everything would work for the good, for whatever might occasionally happen to a person, Korin said to the woman consolingly, this change, this turning point could happen to anyone from one day to the next, that was the way things were, for you can’t live your whole life, he said gazing at the woman’s thin bent back, under the same terror, that shudder, then, noting with alarm how the woman’s shoulder gradually started to tremble with an ever more violent sobbing, he added that one must believe in the transformation, hope and turning point and shudder, and he now would beg the young lady to try to believe in this kind of turning point, because things would turn out for the best, he said, dropping his voice; for the best, of that you can be sure.

What they were discussing in the grove that evening while watching the vast mass of the sea swaying far below, was the fact that there was a hard-to-define but potent relationship between man and landscape, between observer and the thing observed, a kind of marvelous correspondence by the light of which man could understand everything, and furthermore, said Falke, this was the only time in all human existence when you could genuinely, without the least doubt, comprehend everything, all other attempts at universal comprehension being no more than a fond fancy, an idea, a dream, whereas what we have here, said Falke, is all real and genuine, no fleeting illusion or mirage, not a conveniently fabricated, devised, dreamed-of substitute, but an actual glimpse into the very processes of life, that being what a man engaged with the landscape was offered a brief glimpse of, of life in its winter quietude, of life in the explosive energies of spring, a sense of the greater whole perceived through its details; nature is itself in fact, said Kasser, the first and last of undoubted certainties, the beginning and end of experience and at the same time of rapture too, because if anywhere, it was here and only here, before the unity that is nature, that one could begin, that one could be shaken by something whose essence is beyond our comprehension, but which we know has something to say to us; the only way to begin and be shaken, said Kasser, is in the unique position of being able to observe the radiant beauty of the whole, even if this very observation involved no more than rapt wonder at this very same beauty, for it was indeed beautiful, said Kasser indicating the wide horizon of the sea swaying below them, and beautiful too the unbroken infinity of the waves, the evening light glimmering on the foam, though the hills behind them were beautiful too, and beyond them the valleys, the rivers and the woods, beautiful and rich beyond all measure, said Kasser, for when man properly considers what he means when he talks about nature he finds himself at an utter loss, for nature was rich beyond every measure, and that’s only taking into account the millions of entities that comprise it, leaving out the billions of processes and sub-processes at work in it; though one should ultimately point, added Falke, to the single divine manifestation, the omnipresent immanence, as we refer to the unknown end of that process, an immanence that while remaining beyond proof, nevertheless, in all probability, permeates those untold billions of processes and entities; and so they conversed on the hill in the olive grove that evening when, after a long silence, Toót mentioned that there was something they should discuss regarding the disturbing behavior of the birds, and from that point on, said Korin to the woman a couple of days later, the question of what that behavior meant, what should be done about it and how they themselves should respond to it, cropped up ever more frequently, until the day arrived when they had to admit that these so-called disturbing signs were evident not just in the birds—the birds, he said in English — but in the goats, cows and monkeys too, and that they had to keep an eye on this frightening change in the behavior of animals, on the goats, for example, who could no longer be kept on the mountainside because they’d fall to their deaths, or the cows who for no discernable reason lost control and started running, or the monkeys who swept screaming through the village, but apart from the screaming and the scampering, did nothing else out of the usual; and once this was pointed out of course there remained little of the joy and harmony that had characterized their early days, and while they continued to work beside the men and women, and though they visited the oil mills and took part in the torchlit octopus fishing, when they visited the olive grove after that, they made no secret of the fact that the joy had gone forever, a fact no one could deny, the time being ripe for them to admit it, as Bengazza did in the end, however painful it seemed, for it meant they had to leave this place and he claimed to see the harbingers of some terrible cosmic cataclysm, a heavenly war, he said, in the transformation of these animals, a war more terrible than anyone could imagine, as if there really existed something that could not be identified with nature, something, he said that would not allow this beautiful corner of this beautiful island to remain, that was impatient with these Pelasgians who had founded a peaceable domain and would not give themselves over to destruction, ruin, as they regarded it a scandal, said Bengazza, as something wholly intolerable.

Mastemann remained silent and reserved any opinion he might have had on anything to himself, breaking his silence, wrote Korin, only when he felt like approaching the women who hurried to and fro across the main square, calling them in order to commend the infinite range of choice he offered, a choice lacking nothing, he smiled as he pointed to his cages full of cats, from the Libyan White and the Marsh Cat, the Nubian Kadiz, the Arab Quttha and the Egyptian Mau, as well as the Bubastine Bastet, the Omani Kaffer and even the Burmese Brown, everything the heart could desire as he put it, offering not only what there was in store right now, but also what would be stocked in the future, in a word literally everything they could imagine, he went on, albeit in vain as far as his listeners were concerned, for he did not succeed in holding the attention of any of the busy women, in fact he tended to frighten them as much as his cats did, so the women hurried on, their hearts in their mouths, a little faster if anything, practically running, leaving the tall gangling figure of Mastemann in his long black silk cloak alone in the center of the square, in splendid isolation, to return to his usual place beside the cart as if his wasted words were of no concern to him, to pick up a cat and continue stroking it; and so he would go on all day in the shadow of the cart as if nothing and no one in the whole wide world were of the slightest interest, appearing to be a man incapable of being shaken out of his dour calm by any event whatsoever, even when, as actually happened, Falke stopped by the cages and tried to engage him in conversation, when Mastemann simply kept silent, fixing his light blue gaze on Falke’s eyes, staring and staring while Falke asked him, “Have you been there?” pointing toward Phaistos, “for people tell me they have a most wonderful palace, a remarkable work of art, marvelous architects; or indeed beyond it to Knossos, though I expect you have,” Falke sounded him out, “and you must have seen the frescoes there and perhaps even the Queen too?” he asked, but there was not the slightest flicker in the eyes of the other who continued watching him, “and then there are those famous vases, jugs and cups and jewels and statues, Mr. Mastemann,” Falke enthused, “there above the sanctuary, what a sight, Mr. Mastemann, and this entire one thousand five hundred years, as the Egyptians tell us, is after all, and we should acknowledge it as such, an unrepeatable, unique miracle?” but his enthusiasm had no effect at all on Mastemann’s dour expression, in fact, said Korin, nothing Falke could say made any difference whatsoever so what could he do, meaning Falke, but bow his head in confusion and leave Mastemann in the middle of the square, leave him to sit in the shadow of the cart alone again, stroking the ginger cat in his lap, seeing that he knew not Phaistos, nor Knossos, not the Regal Goddess with her serpents at the very top beyond the sanctuary.

He would find it difficult, said Korin to the woman next day as she was sweeping round the oven, her eyes averted after having finished the cooking, really difficult, he said, to give precise descriptions of Kasser, Falke, Bengazza and Toót, because even now, after everything, after hours and hours of study, following day after day of the most intense absorption in their company, he still could not say exactly what they looked like, who was the tallest for example, who was short, which of them was fat or thin, and to be honest, if he absolutely had to say something he would have attempted to get around it by saying that they were all four of them of middling stature and of average appearance, though he could see their faces and expressions from the moment he started reading as clearly as anything, as clearly as if they were standing before him, Kasser delicate and thoughtful, Falke gentle and bitter, Bengazza tired and secretive, Toót harsh and distant, faces and expressions you see once and never forget, said Korin, and the delicate, bitter, tired, harshness of the four of them so impressed itself on him that he could still see them as clearly as he did that first day, moreover, he was forced to admit before he went any further, that it was enough for him to think of them to feel a tug of the heart, since the reader knew as soon as he came across them that the situation of these four characters, not to put too fine a point on it, was, beyond doubt, vulnerable, that is to say that behind those delicate, bitter, tired and harsh features it was all vulnerability, defenselessness, he said, yes, that’s the kind of rubbish he came out with, imagine it, the interpreter recounted to his partner late next night in bed, he didn’t know, he said, from day to day what delightful tidbit to regale him with and chiefly not, why or in what language, but today, when he was careless enough to walk into the kitchen the man was there and collared him in the doorway, giving him this unbelievably idiotic story, offering it to him like it was lady luck or something, something about these four guys in the manuscript and their vulnerability, I ask you, excuse me sweetheart, but who the fuck cares whether they were vulnerable or not, only God in his infinite mercy cared what the hell they did in that manuscript, or what he was doing in that back room, the only thing that mattered being that he paid the rent on the dot and not stick his idiotic nose into other people’s affairs, because, and here he kept addressing his partner as “sweetheart,” it was their business, and their business alone what they did or did not do, or, to repeat, whatever difficulties they may occasionally encounter, do in fact encounter, was a matter entirely for themselves alone, and he very much hoped that nothing relating to them was adverted to in these kitchen conversations while he, the interpreter was away, that his sweetheart never attempted to give anything away regarding their private life, never even mentioned it in fact, because, to be honest, he didn’t even see what the point was of these great pow-wows in the kitchen, moreover in Hungarian, a language of which his sweetheart was almost totally ignorant, but all right, she can let the fool blather on, he couldn’t forbid that, but the subject of them, or his new job, was out of bounds to her, just remember that, and, propping his head on his hand as he lay in bed, he hoped his sweetheart had made proper note of this, his free hand creeping toward the woman, then, he changed its mind, and moved his hand to the parting of his snow-white hair, tracing the line from the bridge of his nose upward, mechanically checking that no strand of hair had accidentally strayed across from one side to the other to disturb the clean line of the parting in the middle.

My feeling is that nothing follows it, said Korin quite unexpectedly after a long silence, then, without explaining what it was he was referring to or why the phrase just came to him, he looked out of the window at the desolate rain and added, Only a great darkness, a great closing down of the light, and after that how even the great darkness is switched off.

It was pouring outside, a blast of icy wind blowing off the sea, people no longer walking but rather fleeing down the streets, seeking some warm place, and it might also be regarded as a form of flight when Korin or the woman ran down to the Vietnamese, stopping just long enough to buy whatever they usually bought, Korin his accustomed can of something to heat up, along with wine, bread and some sweet confection, the woman a package of chili beans, lentils, corn, potatoes, onions, rice, or oil when any of these things had run out and a cut of meat or a bit of poultry on top of that, after which they immediately hurried back into the apartment that neither would leave till the next such excursion, the woman settling to her cooking, doing a little cleaning or washing in between, Korin sticking to his strict routine, having bolted his dinner to return to the table in order to work till five, when he saved the file, turned off the set and remained in his room, doing nothing, just lying on the bed for hours without moving as if he were dead, staring at the bare walls, listening to the rain beating on the window, then drawing up a blanket and allowing his dreams to flood over him.

Then one day he burst into the kitchen to announce the fateful day had arrived though the nature and manner of its coming was impossible to predict, he said, even immediately before the event; for of course there would be considerable anxiety in Kommos, a constant stream of visitors bringing every kind of sacrifice to the shrine but questioning the priestesses too, their watching with concern the fate of the animals, looking for signs in the plant world, examining earth, sky, sea, sun, wind and light, the length of shadows, the wailing of infants, the flavor of meals, the breathing patterns of the aged, everything just so as to get some inkling of what was to happen, to discover which day might prove to be the fateful one, the decisive day, though no one anticipated it when it came and only once it had actually arrived did they realize it was here, the circle of attendants recognizing it in an instant and rapidly carrying news of it far and wide, for truly it was enough to catch a glimpse of it in the main square, said Korin, enough to take stock of it, frozen as they were in terror as it appeared in the approach to the square, teetered forward then collapsed in the middle and remained there, perfectly still; enough for them to acknowledge that this was it, the final sign, that there was nothing more to come and that it was the end of all terrified anticipation and agonizing worry: for the time of fear and flight had arrived, since if a lion, a lion, for this is what happened, descended into a place of human habitation only to die in the main square then nothing remained but fear and flight, and asking the gods time and again what it meant, this lion in the main square, what it was doing there clearly in agony, limping and gazing into the eyes of tinkers and oil-workers as they rushed to and fro, gazing, it seemed, into the eyes of each and every person individually and then collapsing, rolling over onto its side on the cobbles, what could all this mean, they asked; and this was the last sign, the very last and clearest sign that told them disaster had struck, for it certainly had struck precisely as they thought it would, precisely as they understood disaster to strike, all of them, everybody, so Kommos fell quiet and children and birds began to squawk in the silence while men and women started packing, getting their things together, storing their belongings away and considering what to do — and carts were already standing by their dwellings, shepherds and cowherds already driving their flocks, and all the ceremonials were concluded, all the farewells said, the prayers said at the shrine before the last hesitation at the topmost bend in the road to look back, to shed a tear, to feel the bitterness and panic of that last look, said Korin, all this happened and within a few days everyone had gone and Kommos was deserted, everyone having gathered in the mountains in the hope of security and better defense, of explanation and escape, and that’s how it happened that within a few days everyone was on the road to Phaistos.

Mastemann vanished, a local fisherman explained to Toót up in the mountains, quite simply vanished from one moment to the next, and the strangest thing of all was that nothing remained of him, not his cloak or his cart, not even a cat hair, though many people were willing to swear that up to the moment before the lion died he was still there but as soon as it died he had vanished, and Toót must understand, said the fisherman, that not one person recalled seeing the cart trundle away anywhere, no one had the faintest clue where the cart was or what happened to the cats, or even heard the cats make any kind of noise, the only thing they were certain of being that by that first evening in all the panic as people set to packing up their houses and drawing up their boats on the strand, the spot Mastemann had occupied was perfectly empty, as empty as if this had been the moment he had been waiting for, as if the dead lion were the sign for him to depart, and in the light of this it was no surprise if people felt that being rid of Mastemann was just as unsettling as his presence had been, and stranger still, said the fisherman, no one felt that they had truly got rid of him, it was merely that he had gone absent, and that’s how it would always be from now on, some people said, for wherever Mastemann’s shadow falls it remains forever, the fisherman concluded, while Toót waited for his companions to pass on all he had heard to them but they were not to be bothered with it at the moment, so he waited to speak until they had finished their conversation, waited so long in fact that he forgot it all, or rather, noted Korin, that he lost the desire to communicate it, because he preferred to listen to Kasser speaking about time and to the squealing of the cart next to theirs as it worked its slow way up the steep path, then turning his attention to the breathing of the oxen drawing the cart, to the buzzing of the wild bees above and the evening light catching the tack and gear close to the ground, and lastly the song of a solitary unknown bird from somewhere in the dark among the dense trees.

It was a slow procession, the path steep and narrow, parts of it only just accommodating a single cart, and in many places narrowing at some water-drenched point, or gulch, that was altogether too narrow to pass through, so they had to support one side of the cart and hold it in the air while the two inner wheels rolled on, first unloading any heavy items, of course, so that the six to eight people following each vehicle could lift it at all, to get hold of it, raise it and convey it past the dangerous stretch, no wonder then that their progress through the mountains was slow, as slow as you may imagine, said Korin, nor should one forget that it was impossible to move at all in the heat of the day, the sun being so hot that they had to withdraw into the shade, lead the animals to shelter and throw damp skins and canvas over their heads so they should not suffer from brain fever; and so they continued, day after day, the weakest among them already dizzy with exhaustion, an exhaustion clearly visible in the animals too, until they finally reached the Messene plain and saw the mountain rise above it with the palace on the mountainside, and here they could comfort their tired children by muttering, see, there is Phaistos, we’ve arrived, encouraging each other too before settling in a shady wooden glade, a grove, said Korin, and spending the entire day staring at the gentle slope of the mountain ahead of them, admiring the palace walls as they glimmered in the sunlight, observing the mass of roofs above, all but Kasser growing silent and meditative, Kasser, from whom, now that they were lying in the shade of a cypress tree, words began to pour in an unstoppable stream, his utter exhaustion being the likeliest cause for this flood of speech, the probable reason why he talked and talked, saying that if a man systematically thought about everything he had to leave behind the list would be practically endless, for one might as well begin with one’s birth, in his opinion, that birth being as much a miracle as the chance of him perishing in this beautiful place, for here, after all, was this wonderful building towering above them, one side of it overlooking the Messene plain, the other facing Mount Ida, with Zakro, Mallia and Kydonia in the far distance, and, of course, Knossos too, never mind the stone shrines, the temples of Potnia, the workshops where vases, rhytons, seals and stamps were made, the jewels, the murals, the songs and dances, the ceremonies, the games, races and sacrifices; for they had heard of all these in Egypt, Babylon, Phoenicia and Alasiya, for the true marvel and the real loss, if everything was indeed to be lost, said Kasser, would be Cretans themselves, the man in Crete, said Korin, that people who had vision enough to bring these wonders into being and who now, it seemed most likely, were about to be lost along with all their ideas, their infinite capacity, their temperament and love of life, their skill and courage: unprecedented miracle! unprecedented loss! Kasser exclaimed and his companions remained silent because they understood that Kasser deeply felt what he was saying, and so they watched the torchlights, said Korin, of Phaistos, as evening slowly descended in awed silence, and even Toót remarked that he had never seen a more beautiful sight, then cleared his throat, lay down on the ground, resting his head on his linked hands, and before falling asleep warned the others that they had had enough awe for one day, because tomorrow morning they would have to find the great harbor, ask whether there was an available ship and find out where it was going; that their task was precisely this and nothing more, that this should be their first concern in the morning, he said, his eyelids drooping before eventually closing.

They saw the palace of Phaistos in the distance, said Korin, and marveled at the famous steps quite close to them on the western side, but took their leave of the Kommosians who, bearing their news and fears, hurried inside, and having obtained directions to the harbor, set out down the steep twisting path, and it was still the morning, soon after sunrise, just as the four of them were making their way to the sea, Korin told the woman, that it happened, that suddenly the sky above them darkened, that there was darkness in the morning, a dense, heavy, impenetrable darkness that covered them all in an instant, and they stared at the sky terrified, stumbling on through the incomprehensible dark, hurrying ever faster, finally in a desperate dash as fast as their legs could carry them, and it was pointless gazing at the sky in blind, hopeless fashion, because the darkness was total and terminal, there was no way out of it, no escaping it, because it was eternal night that had enveloped them, Bengazza cried out in terror, his whole body trembling, perpetual night, Korin whispered to the woman by way of explanation, at which the woman, who was still standing by the oven, possibly because of the unexpected whispering turned around in fright before attending to her pots and pans, giving them a stir, then sighed, stepped over to the ventilation window, opened it and looked out, wiping her hand across her brow, then closed the window again and sat down in her chair by the oven with her back to Korin and waited patiently until the food in the pan was ready.

Down in the harbor it was impossible to move for the crowd: there were local Luvians, Lybians, Cycladesians and Argolisians, but also people from Egypt, Cythera, Melos, Cos, and, a number from Thera who were a considerable throng by themselves, in other words, a very mixed gathering, said Korin, all in the same state of panic and confusion, and maybe it was precisely the way they were rushing to and fro, shouting, falling to their knees then running on that calmed Toót and his companions sufficiently for them to gain an advantage over those who had lost their heads, so instead of dashing into the sea as so many of those who had streamed to the harbor had done and were still doing, they withdrew from the general hysteria into an obscure corner, and remained there a good while, and for a long time could think of nothing but how best to prepare for death; but eventually, when they saw that the catastrophe had not yet overtaken them, they began to calculate the chances of escaping, of running away, and, according to Bengazza, there was some such chance, the odds today being no longer than they had been yesterday, for there was the sea in front of them, said Bengazza, and all they had to do was to discover whether there was a boat that could accommodate all four of them, and they should at least try, he said, pointing to the torchlit harbor, the bay, and so, by merely speaking about the possibility of escape, he succeeded in encouraging the others, all but Kasser, who fell silent as though Bengazza’s words had had no effect on him, but hanged his head not saying a word, and when the others agreed that they should make the effort, that they should after all try and set off for the shore, he continued sitting in that corner, hanging his head, not moving, showing no desire to leave, so that in the end they had to pick him up bodily, for, as he explained a good deal later once they were safely on board a ship bound for Alasiya, he felt that the terrible darkness above them and the ash that began soon enough to fall on their heads signified the imminent coming of the last judgment, and that they should not hope or try to escape, nor weigh the chances of doing so, and he personally abandoned hope once he saw the flakes of ash drifting in the air, for he felt, and afterwards knew, knew authoritatively, that the whole world — and he was thinking particularly of Knossos — was in flames, was certain that the earth was on fire, as were the worlds above and below it, that this really was the end, the end of this world and of worlds to come too, and, knowing this, he could not speak, could not explain, and therefore allowed himself to be carried by the others to the shore, allowed himself to be cast this way and that by the maddened crowd, let himself be thrown on board a ship, though he was not aware of what was happening to him or around him, then sat at the front of the ship, at the prow, said Korin, and, Korin added, this was how the chapter ended for him, with Kasser sitting at the prow, gazing into vacancy, the prow rising and falling along with him as the whole craft rises and falls in the waves, and this is how I still see him, said Korin, swaying and dipping at the prow of the ship, Crete enveloped in utter darkness behind them, and somewhere in the uncertain distance, Alasiya, their refuge, ahead of them.

One thing the young lady should know, said Korin as he entered the kitchen the next day to take his place at the table, was that when he first arrived at this point of the narrative back in the far-distant records office, the point when they disappear on a boat to Alasiya, he was somewhat puzzled, for while he found the story, or whatever it was, utterly enthralling, as he had already said, he understood nothing of it, and believe me, young lady, this is no exaggeration, for as the young lady herself might have discovered, a person might think he has understood what he has read the first time, but doubt everything the second time round, even to the extent of doubting whether he had had the feeling of understanding in the first place, and he, he being the person in question, had found himself in such doubts the second time round, questioning the authenticity of his first reading, for Toót’s speech was fine in itself and he had noted the fact of the four of them being pulled from the water, had seen them enjoying a few delightful weeks getting to know an earthly paradise, then watched them facing the last judgment, and this was all very interesting, for people do write this kind of thing, but having considered the totality, he did still want to ask what it was about—so what were Korin’s English words — and admittedly this was a crude way of putting the question, perhaps even a little coarse, but this was precisely the form in which the question had arisen at the time, in as rough and ready form as that, in the feeling that this was all very wonderful, brilliant, wholly engrossing etcetera, but in the end, so what, what did it mean to anybody, what was it all about, why should anyone invent something like this, what was the writer secretly or overtly trying to do, was he retreating from the world by bringing these four characters out of the mist and thick fog, tossing them to and fro in a timeless universe, in an imagined world lost in the mists of legend?; what indeed was the point of it he asked himself, said Korin, and continued asking the question for a long time with much the same result, which was in fact no result at all, for he had no better answer to it now than he had back then in the records office where he first read it, raising his head from the manuscript for a moment to take breath and think, just as he had raised his head a few moments ago when he was busily transferring the document to his home page, and now this All Crete episode was there on his home page, Korin triumphantly announced, open to the world’s inspection, or to be truly precise, open to the inspection of eternity, and the young lady would know what that meant, that is to say anyone could now read the Cretan episode, by which he meant, the young lady should understand, that anyone at any time in eternity could read it, for all they had to do was to click on the site in the Alta Vista search engine, one click and they were there, and there it would remain, Korin enthused, his eyes fixed on the woman, thanks to Mr. Sárváry who had helped him set up the site, the whole first chapter was there for eternity, just a few clicks away, he raved, but if he thought this news would brighten the life of the woman sitting by the oven he was sorely mistaken because he hadn’t even succeeded in getting her attention, and she continued sitting bent over in her chair, occasionally turning to the burner, removing a pot or turning the heat up under it, shaking or stirring with a wooden spoon whatever was bubbling inside it.

The Minoan kingdom, said Korin — along with the Minotaur, Theseus, Ariadne, the Labyrinth, the one thousand, five hundred once and once-only years of peace, all that human beauty, energy and sensibility, with the double-axe, the Camera vase, the goddesses of opium, the sacred caves — the cradle of European civilization, or as they refer to it, the first flowering, in the fifteenth century BC, then Thera, he added bitterly, then the Mycenaean and Achaean hordes, the incomprehensible, agonizing and utter destruction, young lady, that is what we know, he said, then fell quiet and since the woman who was sweeping the floor had just reached him, he raised his feet to let her sweep under his chair, having done which she started toward the door to continue her work, but then stopped, turned and very quietly, as if to thank Korin for raising his feet, addressed him in a strange Hungarian accent, saying jó, meaning “right,” then continued to the door, sweeping the corners of the room, and gave the threshold a brush before sweeping everything carefully into a heap and brushing it onto the pan then opened the ventilation window and emptied the lot into the strong wind so the sweepings drifted past the miserable roofs and ragged chimneys up into the sky, and when she closed the window they could still hear one empty can bouncing as it was blown away, the noise falling away, falling silent behind the window, silent among all those rooms and chimneys, under the sky.

There’ll be snow soon, said Korin in Hungarian, staring out of the window, then rubbed his eyes, cast a glance at the alarm clock ticking on the kitchen cupboard then, without a word of good-bye, left the kitchen closing the door after him.