War & War

IV THE THING IN COLOGNE

If they were worried about security, they could put their minds at ease, since security as far as he was concerned was completely assured, began the interpreter, strictly keeping to the orders he had received at the beginning that he should sit straight in the Lincoln, gaze calmly ahead and not turn round, then added that if there were to be any problem it could only be with his partner but that she was simpleminded, in other words a genuine mental case, and therefore could safely be ignored, for he had rescued her a year ago from some utterly hopeless predicament in the filth of a Puerto Rican swamp where she lived beyond hope, without family or possessions, without a thing in the world at home or indeed in the U.S. when she crossed illegally over the border, without a scrap of ID, nothing, till fate threw them together, and they should know that she owed her life to him, everything, in fact more than everything because she was in no doubt that if she misbehaved she could lose everything in the blink of an eye, as she would fully deserve to: in other words she was no great prize but that’s how she was, and she’d do for him, because while it was true that she was simpleminded, she could cook, sweep and warm his bed, if they knew what he meant, as he was sure they did, and, well, there was someone else living in the apartment with them, but he didn’t count because he was a nobody, a crazy Hungarian, who drifted in and out and was there for only a couple of weeks until he found himself proper accommodation, a guy who was staying in the back room, said the interpreter pointing to the house for they were just passing it, there, and he let it out to him as one Hungarian to another, because they took pity on him, a poor lunatic you wouldn’t even notice because he lacked any distinguishing feature, and that really was all, the mad Hungarian, the Puerto Rican and himself, that’s the way it was, and when he said it was completely secure it was the honest truth, for there were no friends, just them, nor was he part of a group of any sort, there were only a couple of guys at the video store he occasionally talked to, and the people he knew at the airport from the time he worked there, and that really was all, then having got so far he told them they could ask him anything, but no one stirred in the backseat and no questions were asked, they simply continued in funereal silence as they made another circuit of the interpreter’s block, so when he was eventually able to get out and go up to the apartment he had a lot to think about when he met Korin on the stairs, the interpreter on his way up, Korin heading down, saying Good evening Mr. Sárváry, though it was clear that Mr. Sárváry was deeply preoccupied but, if he did not mind, he would like to tell him here on the stairs, since they hardly ever met otherwise, that he regretted the unfortunate incident, the misunderstanding, which as far as he was concerned was utterly innocent, for he felt no compulsion at all to pry or interfere in others’ lives, that being completely alien to his character, and if there had been a misunderstanding it was entirely his fault, it truly was, Korin shouted after the interpreter; in vain however, since his last words were directed at the wall alone, the interpreter, who was already on the next floor, having dismissed him with a wave of his hand as if to say, for God’s sake leave me alone, so that Korin, after a moment or two of confusion, continued on his way downstairs and at ten minutes past five precisely, stepped out into the street, because he was starting again, that is to say he could start anew, for the rainy, stormy, intolerable weather of the last few days had vanished to be replaced by a dry cold, and he could go out again and carry on walking around New York in search of the mysterious secret, as he had described it to the woman, taking the subway to Columbus Circle, then stretching his neck to gaze up at the skyscrapers as he trudged along Broadway, Fifth Avenue or Park Avenue to the towers of Union Square, turning down toward Greenwich Village, making his way on foot into SoHo, along Wooster, Greene and Mercer Streets, beyond Chinatown, toward the World Trade Center where he caught the subway returning to Columbus Circle and Washington Avenue, utterly exhausted by then, and as ever, not having solved the mystery, back to the apartment on 159 th Street to read over what he had done that day, and if he found it satisfactory, to save it with the appropriate key, that is to say, as he remarked, doing everything properly, according to a system that was correct and reassuring, or rather, he said, as the story grew and lengthened and the days passed, but he felt no anxiety or terror on this account, rather the opposite in fact, for he was perfectly content knowing this was his last home on earth, that everything would remain in this fatal state of balance between eternity and the march of time, that it was all going according to plan, ever growing on the one hand, ever diminishing on the other.

In the corner of the room, opposite the bed, the TV was switched on and turned to a permanent advertising channel where a cheerful handsome man and an attractive cheerful woman were offering diamonds and diamond-encrusted wristwatches to viewers who were invited to phone in and order the items at declared-to-be-sensational prices via a telephone number continuously scrolling in the right-hand bottom corner of the screen while the jewels and watches, as well as the precious stones set in them, regularly flashed and sparkled in a carefully directed beam of light, for which first the woman then the man jokily begged pardon, apologizing for the fact that no one had yet provided them with a camera that would eliminate the glare, and so the jewels would have to carry on flashing and glimmering, laughed the woman looking directly at the viewers, and yes, they’d just have to twinkle and blind people, the man laughed along with her, nor was their laughter in vain, in this room at least, for while the interpreter’s partner went about her business without showing the slightest sign of amusement, he, having lain for days, fully dressed, on the unmade bed staring at the television, regularly gave a little smile despite having heard these jokes a thousand times before, and when the female host said this or that and when the man said something else, or when the sign TELESTORE, TELESTORE, TELESTORE started flashing, he regularly smiled, not being able to help it, watching the woman flounce into view followed by the man running on to the sound of mechanical applause and the first items of jewelry appearing between the waves of artfully folded red velvet that glowed as though it were on fire, while the mindless twittering about weight, value, dimension and price continued, to be followed by the woman’s quip about the camera, and the man’s on the same subject, the lighting and the flashing, then the whole thing ended in a blur of music and waving good-bye, at which point the whole thing would start all over again from the beginning, from entrance through applause, through red velvet and the two quips, again and again, each time from the beginning with all the unbearable indifference associated with repetition, the effect of the whole being to impress on the viewer’s mind the notion that this entering, applauding, flashing the red velvet and quipping were part of an eternal cycle, while he continued watching it from the bed in the darkened room, watching as if he were under a spell which dictated that he should laugh every time they laughed.

The cathedral was magnificent, said Korin to her one day in the kitchen, simply magnificent, enthralling, they were enthralled and really it was impossible to say what was more spellbinding, the description of the cathedral, that is to say them being enthralled by the cathedral or the fact that the manuscript after the Cretan episode — you’ll remember, he reminded her, that they were on the boat to Alasiya, leaving the dark apocalypse, the day of doom, behind them — in other words once the manuscript had finished with Crete, it did not move on or continue, did not explain itself or develop, but provided a resumption, a new start, and this was, he was quite convinced, the original, indeed unique thing about it, that a … what should he call it, a story? should begin and then go on by starting again, for what we must understand is that the author, this anonymous member of the Wlassich family, decided to start this narrative of sorts and proceeded with his main characters up to a certain point, but then decided against continuing, and therefore started the whole thing all over again, as if this were the most natural thing to do, a matter of course, not, he should add, regretting and throwing away what he had written so far, but simply starting again, and that is exactly what happened, said Korin, since the four of them, after the voyage to Alasiya, appear in a completely different world, the strangest thing being, he added, that the reader feels neither frustrated nor annoyed when this happens, nor does he complain about the tired literary cliche of time travel, thinking that was all he needed, more damn time travel from one epoch to another, doesn’t the ham-fisted author realize we have had enough of such long-defunct literary devices, no, that’s not what the reader says, no, he accepts it immediately and finds nothing wrong with it, finds it somehow natural that these four characters should have emerged from the clouds of prehistory to sit at a table by the window of a beer-hall on a corner of the Domkloster, which is in fact where they were sitting, gazing at what, for them, was a magical building, watching it go up day by day, seeing it rise one stone after another, and nor was it by chance that they were sitting in that particular beer-hall on the corner day after day either, for it was precisely this table in this particular beer-hall that afforded the best view of the construction, as close as you like and from the southwest; and it was from here that they could see most clearly that the cathedral, once completed, would be the most magnificent cathedral anywhere, and the key term here, stressed Korin to the woman, since the manuscript heavily emphasized it, was southwest, it was from the southwest that it had to be seen, from the foot of the so-called south tower, from a fixed point relative to it, from almost precisely where they sat at their table in fact, at a large table made of solid oak, their regular table as they felt fully entitled to refer to it, especially since Hirschhardt, the proprietor of the inn, a crude, rough-spoken fellow, had formally allowed it to become their regular table and reserved it for them, given his blessing to their appropriation of it in a wholly unexpected and most courteous manner, saying, by all means, meine liebe Herren, let it be reserved for your exclusive use, repeating this over and over again, which signified not only favor but a proper commitment, a fact, because that was the table they always took on entering from the moment Hirschhardt opened his doors, the table there by the window that gave the best view, and it must have seemed that they had been watching Hirschhardt from close quarters ever since they had woken at dawn for the moment Hirschhardt opened up they immediately appeared, having returned from the long morning walk they took at precisely the same time, a walk of many hours in the cold wind, from Marienburg, down the bank of the Rhine, left at the Deutz Ferry and into the Neumarkt, then cutting between St. Martin’s Church and the Rathaus, through the Alter Markt, finally reaching the Cathedral by way of the narrow alleys of the Martinsviertel, making a circuit of the building, having exchanged not a word all the while, for the wind by the Rhine was chilly indeed and by the time they crossed the threshold of Hirschhardt’s beer-hall at about nine they were pretty well frozen.

They were making their way through Lower Bavaria and had stopped at a market when Falke heard that something was happening in Cologne, said Korin, a fact he discovered as a result of the interest he showed in a work by a certain Sulpiz Boisserée at the bookstall where he had stopped to leaf through certain items, and he had become interested enough in one to linger and read more of it when the man at the stall, the bookseller, having been assured that Falke had no intention of stealing it but was seriously thinking of buying, told him his choice was a sign of the most refined taste, because something really important was in preparation at Cologne and furthermore that he, the bookseller, was of the opinion that it was of a magnitude to shake the world; and the book that Falke was holding in his hands was the best work on the subject and he was pleased to recommend it in the most earnest terms, its author being the young scion of a long-established family of tradesmen, who had dedicated his life to art, and had made it his chief aim to make the world forget an international scandal, if he may put it that way, by producing something spectacular of international significance to cover it; for the honorable gentleman would no doubt know, he leant closer to Falke, what precisely happened in 1248 when Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden laid the foundation of the cathedral, and would no doubt also be aware what was to be the fate of the divine plan according to which the foundation stone of the world’s highest and most magnificent sacred structure was then laid, because what he was talking about, of course, was the story of Gerhard, the architect and the devil, said the bookseller, specifically the extraordinarily curious death of Gerhard, after which in 1279 there was no one left who was capable of completing the building of the cathedral; not Meister Arnold who labored at it till 1308, nor his son, Johannes who carried on to 1330, nor Michael von Savoyen after 1350, in fact there was no one at all who could make any significant progress with the work, the point being, the bookseller continued, that after 312 years the building came to a halt and had remained in an infinitely sad skeletal condition with only the Chor, or choir, the Sakristei or sacristy, and the first 58 meters of the south tower completed, and rumor had it, as it would of course, that the reason for all this was Gerhard’s pact with the devil, which in turn was to do with the rather confused story of the building of some kind of drain, but whatever the truth of that, what was certain was that in 1279 the architect in a state of non compos mentis as they call it, threw himself from the scaffolding, since when a curse had lain on the whole project so that no one over the centuries could really complete the work, the cathedral on the Rhine famously remaining in the condition in which it had been left, with enormous debts in 1437 when they installed the bell, and all the time it was Gerhard, Gerhard, whom people talked about, for that was where, they all suspected and not without reason, the cause of the failure lay, the bookseller said, and then came 1814, and in 1814, that is to say 246 years after the complete abandoning of the work, this enthusiastic, virtuous and passionate man, this Sulpiz, somehow succeeded in finding the thirteenth-century drawings of the cathedral, the very Ansichten, Risse und einzelne Theile des Doms van Köln that Gerhard himself had used, and had become slavishly devoted to them, thereby subjecting himself to a curse much like that suffered by Gerhard, and here now was the very book, said the bookseller, pointing to the volume in Falke’s hands, and the news that 621 years after the laying of the foundations, the work was under way again, so the honorable gentleman had done well to pick the book up, and to carry on perusing it, and could for a ridiculously reduced price take it home with him and study it further, for this was a work that would bring him great joy in the possession, a discovery like no other, said the bookseller, lowering his voice, indeed there was nothing like it in the world.

It was the name of Voigtel, the Dombaumeister, that most often came up, that and Dombouverein and Dombau-fonds, not to mention terms like Westfassade and Nordfassade, and Südturm and Nordturm, and most importantly how many thousand tallers and marks were spent yesterday and how many today, this was what the grumpy Hirschhardt spouted day after day, continuously and unstoppably, while admitting that the cathedral, should it ever be finished, would be one of the wonders of the world, and the world of art, as he put it, was sure to turn its immediate attention to it, although, as he immediately pointed out, that would never happen, since the building would never be completed, given such a Dombauverein and such a Dombau-fonds and the constant bickering between the Kirche and the Staat about who should pay for what, and he couldn’t see any good coming from it, despite the fact that it was supposed to be one of the wonders of the world, and so on and so forth, though this was Hirschhardt’s manner generally, to be running things down, to be moaning, full of acid remarks and skeptical about everything, cursing now the stonemasons, now the carpenters, now the transporters, now the quarries at Königswinter, Staudernheim, Obernkirchen, Rinteln and Hildesheim, the point always being to curse someone or something, or so it seemed, said Korin, though equally there was no one who knew better what was happening outside his window, so he knew, for example, that at any particular moment there were 368 stone-carvers, 15 stone-polishers, 14 carpenters, 37 stonemasons and 113 assistants engaged on site, was aware of what had gone on at the last negotiations between representatives of church and crown; was informed about disputes between carpenters and stone-carvers, stone-carvers and stonemasons and between stonemasons and carpenters; knew who was sick and when, about shortages of provisions, about fights and injuries, in other words about truly everything there was to be known, so while Kasser and his companions had to put up with Hirschhardt and his grumbling, they were, nevertheless, obliged to him and to no one else for the information in whose light they could interpret events outside, events that might have remained hidden from them, for Hirschhardt also knew about Voigtel’s predecessor as Dombaumeister, Zwirner, a man of inexhaustible energy who nevertheless died young, and about long-dead characters like Virneburg and Gennep, Saarwerden and Moers, and not only them but obscure ones like Rosenthal, Schmitz and Wiersbitzky, as well as being able to tell them who Anton Camp was, who Carl Abelshauser and Augustinys Weggang were, how the winches, pulleys and traction equipment worked, and how the carpenters’ tools, the hoists and the steam engines were constructed; in other words you couldn’t catch Hirschhardt out on anything, not that Kasser and his companions even tried of course, in fact they hardly ever asked questions at all, knowing well that they would only be submitting themselves to one of Hirschhardt’s latest rants, merely nodding now and then as he spoke, for what they appreciated above everything else in the beer-hall was silence, that and a tankard of light ale from the tap, in other words the early and midmorning when there was hardly anyone but themselves in the bar and they could sit by the window, sipping at their beer, watching the work on the cathedral outside.

In Boisserée’s Ansichten there was already a drawing of the west front, dated 1300, most probably by Johannes, son of Meister Arnold, that was a work of outstanding beauty in itself and revealed something of the remarkable ambition behind the design of the building, but the deciding factor, first for Falke and then, following his summary, for the others, was the print they had seen displayed throughout the empire, a print hung in barbershops and on the walls of inns, that Richard Voigtel colored in after the etching by W. von Abbema for the Verein-Gedenkblatt, probably to draw attention to events in Cologne, in other words a print of 1867 originating from the Nurenberg workshop of Carl Meyer, that was all, and it was this that informed their decision where to go, because through their eyes, said the manuscript, the vast scheme depicted in the print immediately revealed the remarkable possibilities of this monumental shelter, a shelter, added Korin, that the four of them, as Kasser told a stranger who had been more successful than others in pursuing the question of who they were, that is to say merely a set of obsessed fugitives, though that was not how they described themselves that day, a week later, to Hirschhardt for example, but as simply expert defense-works engineers, in Kasser’s words when it seemed he had to say something to Hirschhardt, and that was all there was to it, he said, that was the chief reason the four of them had come, not simply to research, not only to analyze, but primarily, in fact above all, to admire all that was happening here, and in saying so they were not saying anything they would have had to deny elsewhere, for they did genuinely admire it from the moment they got off the mail-coach, caught their first glimpse of it and could not help but admire it, admire it there and then, the sight immediately and wholly captivating them, immediately for there was nothing with which to compare with it, because imagining it from Boisserée’s book, working it out from the drawing and the print, was entirely different from standing at the foot of the south tower and seeing it in real life, an experience that confirmed all they thought and imagined, though they had to be standing precisely where they were, at the precise distance, at a precise point and a precise angle to the south tower, Korin explained in the kitchen, so that there could be no mistake, but they did not mistake the distance, the point or the angle, and saw it and were convinced that it was not simply the building of a cathedral at stake, not just the completion of a Gothic ecclesiastical monument that had been abandoned centuries ago, but a vast mass, a mass so incredible as to surpass any building they might have imagined, one of which every detail would be finished — altar, crossing, nave, the two main aisles, the windows, the gates in all the walls — according to plan, though it was not what this or that aisle looked like, nor what this or that window or gate looked like that mattered but the fact that it would be an entirely unique, immensely high, incredible vast mass, relative to which there would be a point, as Gerhard had said to himself some six hundred years earlier, a specific point, as every Dombaumeister right down to Voigtel whispered, a point from which this beautiful piece of Amiens-work would appear to be a single tower mass, that is to say an angle from which the essence of the whole would be visible, and this was what the four of them had discovered by studying the legend of Gerhard, the drawing by Johannes, the Abbema-Voigtel print, and now, following their arrival, the reality itself, when, astonished, they sought out the ideal place where they might contemplate their own astonishment, a point that was not difficult to find, the beer-hall in other words from where they could watch each day’s progress and so be ever more certain that what they were seeing was not something they had imagined after seeing an architect’s plan but true, extraordinary, real.

Sometimes I would really like to stop, to abandon the whole thing, said Korin on one occasion in the kitchen, then, after a long silence, staring at the floor for minutes on end, raised his head and hesitantly added, Because something in me is breaking up and I’m getting tired.

The day began at five in the morning for him, the time he naturally woke, which he did in a moment, his eyes snapping open, and he sat straight up in bed, fully conscious of where he was and what he had to do, that is to wash at the sink, draw a shirt over the undershirt in which he slept, grab his sweater and his plain gray jacket, slip on his long johns, climb into his trousers fixing the suspenders, and, lastly, to pull on the socks warming on the radiator and the shoes parked under the bed, all within a minute or so, as if time were continually pressing, so that he could be at the door listening out for any other movement — not that there ever was any at this time — before slowly opening it so it shouldn’t creak or, more importantly, that the handle should not click too loudly, for the handle was capable of making a terrible racket if he didn’t handle it properly, then out, out on tiptoe, into the connecting hallway and thence into the kitchen and the stairwell to knock on the door of the toilet — not that there was anyone in there at that time — to take a piss and a shit, return, put the water on to boil in the kitchen, prepare the coffee grounds the tenants kept by the tin of tea over the gas oven, brew the coffee, add sugar and, as quietly as possible, sneak back into his room where things would proceed according to a permanent, changeless routine that was never broken, which entailed sitting straight down at the table, stirring and sipping at his coffee, turning on the laptop and beginning work in the permanently gray light of the window, not forgetting to check first that all he had saved the day before was safe now, then he’d lay the manuscript open before him at the current page on the left-hand side of the machine, and scanning through, slowly trace the text word by word, using two fingers to type up the new material, till eleven when his back would hurt so much he had to lie down awhile then stand up and perform a few vigorous waist movements and some even more strenuous turns of the neck, before returning to the desk and continuing from where he had left off, until it was time to run down to the Vietnamese for that day’s lunch, after which he would go to the kitchen to join the woman and spend a good hour or so, sometimes as much as an hour and a half with his notebook and the dictionary in his lap, talking to her, keeping her informed of each new development, then return to his room to eat and work again solidly till about five, but sometimes only till half past four, because by now he felt obliged to stop at half past and lie down on the bed again, his back, his head and his neck being too painful, though he only needed half an hour of rest by this stage, then he’d be up again to listen out at the door, for he didn’t want to run into his host unless it was absolutely necessary to do so, and having assured himself that they wouldn’t meet, he went out, wearing his coat and hat of course, into the stairwell, down the stairs, and as quickly as he could, out of the house altogether so he shouldn’t meet anyone at all, for greeting people, when the occasion arose, was still a problem for him since he didn’t know whether Good evening, or Good day or a simple nod and Hi was the most appropriate, in other words it was best not to have to decide, and once he was outside in the street he’d take his usual route into New York, as he thought of it, having finished which he would return the same way, enter the house, climb the stairs, often stopping a long time by the door if he heard the rumble of the interpreter’s voice, waiting there sometimes a few minutes but occasionally a whole half hour before slipping down the connecting hallway into his room, closing the door so gently it created hardly a draft before relaxing and letting the air out of his lungs, before daring to breathe again once it was safe to do so, then remove his coat, his jacket, his shirt, his trousers and the long johns, place them on the chair, hang his socks over the radiator, tuck his shoes under the bed and finally lie down, dog tired, but still concerned to breathe as quietly as he could and to turn his body under the blankets with great care so the springs shouldn’t creak because he was afraid, constantly afraid of being heard, for the walls were paper-thin and he regularly heard the voice of the man shouting.

Now he keeps talking about this guy Kirsárt or whatever his name is, said the interpreter to his partner, shaking his head incredulously, like the other night there he is in the kitchen again and he is beginning to feel that the man is literally stalking him, hiding in wait somewhere between the front door, the kitchen and the hallway, just looking for that moment when he might “accidentally” bump into him, and what a ridiculous state of affairs, trying to evade someone, having constantly to be on the alert in his own apartment, having to hesitate before entering the kitchen in case the guy should be there, it really was intolerable, for after all he is perfectly aware of what the man is up to, hanging around behind doors, listening, but there are times he just can’t avoid these so-called “accidental” encounters, like the one last night when he pounced on him too, asking him if he could spare a moment while he babbled on about how his work was progressing and about this Misfart, or Firshart, or whatever his name was, unloading all this nonsense on him, nonsense of which you can’t understand a single word of course, because it’s all confused and he talks as if he, the interpreter, should have some clue as to who the hell this Dirsmars was: the guy was crazy, crazy in the strictest sense of the word, crazy and scary, there was no doubt about that anymore, scary and dangerous, you could see it in his eyes, in other words it was time to put a stop to all this because if he didn’t, he felt things would come to a bad end, and in any case it was fair to say that Korin’s days were numbered because Korin would be out on his ass now that he’d had this great offer, which was the chance of his life, believe me, said the interpreter to his partner, and if it worked out, and the way it looked was that it would need divine intervention to foul things up now, it would mean the end of poverty for them, they could get a new TV, new video machine and everything, whatever she wanted, a new gas stove, a new pantry, in other words an utterly new life down to the last saucepan, don’t you worry, and Korin would be sent packing too, there’d be no more need to hide from him or to scurry about like rats in their own apartment in order to avoid him, nor would she have to spend hours listening to the affairs of Birshart, no, Hirschhardt, Korin corrected him in confusion for he didn’t know how to conclude the conversation he had unfortunately become engaged in, for Hirschhardt was his name and Mr. Sárváry should picture him as someone who hated any kind of mystery, for mystery meant ignorance, which was why he loathed mystery, was ashamed of it and tried to dispel it whatever way he could, in the case of Kasser and his companions, by taking note of any incidental, casual and, for the most part, misunderstood remarks and, in his own fashion, drawing quite unfounded conclusions from them, constructing an entirely arbitrary view of affairs on the basis of extremely shaky foundations, presenting himself to his fellow citizens as someone wholly in the know when he sat down at various tables and told tales about them, quietly so they shouldn’t hear, suggesting that they were of some strange monastic order, the four of them there by the window, never saying anything, mysteriously coming and going, nobody knowing the least thing about them, what with their foreign names, not even where they were from, and of course they were all peculiar creatures, but they should regard them as refugees from the triumph at Königgrätz, or rather the hell of Königgrätz as anyone would say had they witnessed the Prussian victory on that notorious July 3 three years ago, a victory bought at the price of forty-three thousand dead, and that was just the Austrian casualties, Hirschhardt told the local drinkers, forty-three thousand in a single day and that was just the enemy, and, well, I ask you, he said, anyone seeing forty-three thousand dead Austrians is never going to be the same again, and that lot, said Hirschhardt indicating the four of them, were part of the entourage of the famous general, members of the strategic corps, in other words no strangers to the smell of gunpowder, and must have come face to face with death in many engagements, Hirschhardt concluded, his voice lingering on the word “death,” but the hell of Königgrätz had shocked even them, for that was hell, it really was, for the Austrians he meant of course, he quickly added, in other words they were heroes of Königgrätz, and that’s how they should be regarded, nor should they wonder that they did not seem in exactly high spirits: and, having heard this, people naturally did regard them as such, saying to each other as they walked into the bar, oh yes, indeed, there are the heroes of Königgrätz, before looking round for a vacant table or for their friends, calling for beers while surreptitiously casting sidelong glances in the direction of the window, assuring themselves that there, indeed, sat the heroes of Königgrätz, as Hirschhardt had told them time and time again, participants in that heroic battle, that great victory, which was a triumph looked at from one point of view but absolute hell from another, what with forty-three thousand dead, which was part of the history of the four men over there who were involved in the glorious battle and had had to witness the death of forty-three thousand people, all on a single day.

Kasser and his companions were perfectly aware, Korin explained to the woman, that the landlord of the inn was talking all kinds of nonsense but since they observed that the result of the landlord’s fabrications was that the locals by and large left them in peace, they only occasionally tried to broach the subject with Hirschhardt to ask him why he went about saying they were heroes of Königgrätz when they had never in their lives visited Königgrätz nor had ever claimed to have been there, adding that taking flight before the battle of Königgrätz was not the same as fleeing from Königgrätz itself and so forth, that they were not members of Moltke’s entourage, not even soldiers, and had only tried to escape an impending battle, not emerged from the heat of one, though, truth to tell, they only occasionally pointed this out because there was no point telling Hirschhardt anything for Hirschhardt was incapable of comprehending and simply nodded, his broad, completely bald skull covered in perspiration, his face set in a false smile as if he knew what the truth really was, so that eventually they gave up trying altogether and Kasser picked up a train of thought he had long been following, the original thread, the thing they had been talking about since they first arrived, that is the notion of preparing themselves for utter failure, for that was a genuine, unarguable possibility, since history was undoubtedly tending toward the ever more extensive force, violence, although no proper survey of affairs should omit the fact that a marvelous work was under construction here, a brilliant product of human endeavor, the chief element of which was the discovery of sanctity, holiness, the holiness of unknown space and time, of God and the divine, for there is no finer sight, Kasser declared, than a man who realizes that there is a God, and who recognizes in this God the spellbinding reality of holiness while knowing that reality to be the product of his own awakening and consciousness, for these were moments of enormous significance, he said, resulting in momentous works, for at the center of it all, at the very apex of each and every achievement stood the radiant single figure of God, the one God, and that it was always the man with the vision, the one who beheld him, that was capable of constructing an entire universe in his own soul, a universe like a cathedral aspiring to heaven, and the remarkable thing, the thing in Cologne, was that mortal creatures felt the need for a sacred domain, and this was the thing that completely overwhelmed him, said Kasser, that this desire persisted in the midst of an undeniable failure, a precipitous collapse into ultimate defeat, and yes, Falke took over, that was indeed extraordinary, but what was still more extraordinary was the personal quality of this God, since man, in discovering that there might be a God in heaven, that there might indeed be a heaven beyond this earth, had found not only a kind of lord, someone who sat in a throne and ruled over the world, but a personal God to whom he could speak, and what was the result of that? what happened? asked Falke rhetorically—what happened, Korin echoed him — what happened, Falke answered his own question, was that it extended man’s sense of being at home in the world, and this was the truly startling, truly extraordinary thing, they said, this all-consuming idea that weak and feeble man was capable of creating a universe that far exceeded himself, since ultimately it was this that was great and entrancing here, this tower man raised to soar way beyond himself, and that man was capable of raising something so much greater than his own petty being, said Falke, the way he grasped the vastness he himself created, the way he defended himself by producing this brilliant, beautiful and unforgettable, yet moving, poignant, thing, because of course he was not capable of governing such grandeur, unable to handle something so enormous, and it would collapse and the edifice he had created would tumble about his ears so the whole thing would have to start all over again, and so it would go on ad infìnitum, said Falke, the systematic preparation for failure changing nothing in the desire to create ever greater and greater monuments that collapsed, it being a natural product of an eternal desire to resolve an all-consuming, overwhelming tension between the creator of vast and tiny things.

The conversation continued into the late evening and ended with praise of the discovery of love and goodness, which, as Toót put it, may be regarded as the two most significant European inventions, and this, said Korin, was roughly when Hirschhardt did his round of the tables and totaled up the bills of the various drinkers so that he might send them home, and, while he was at it, to say goodnight to Kasser and his companions too; and so it went night after night, like clockwork, and no one imagined that it would all change soon or that the accustomed order of things would be overturned, not even Kasser’s friends on their way back along the Rhine who felt a little heavy on account of the beer and spent their time discussing whether the peculiarly frightening figure who had recently appeared in the vicinity of the cathedral and whom they had spotted through the window, a gangling, exceedingly thin man with pale blue eyes wearing a black silk cloak, had anything to do with the building, for all they knew about him was what the ever informative Hirschhardt told them when they enquired, which was that he was named Herr von Mastemann, and while that was all he or anyone else knew, there was no lack of gossip on the subject, a gossip that varied from day to day so that now he was supposed to represent the State, and now the Church; now he was said to be from a country on the far side of the Alps, now from some northeastern principality; and while one couldn’t exclude the possibility that one or other of these rumors was true it was impossible to be certain, for there was nothing but rumor, hearsay, said Korin, to go on, rumors such as that he had been seen with the master of the works, or with the foreman of the carpenters and eventually with Master Voigtel too, or that he had a servant, a very young man with curly hair whose only task seemed to be to carry a portable folding chair, to appear with it each morning in front of the cathedral, and to put it down dead in the center facing the west front so that his master might sit in it when he arrived and remain there for hours, immobile, in silence; rumors that women, the women, Korin explained in English, particularly the servant girls at the inn were head over heels in love with him, that he had made them wild; that here in the celebrated city of St. Ursula, the city of beer, he did not drink beer at all but — scandalously — confined himself to wine; in other words, said Korin, there were endless petty rumors but nothing firm, no convincing overall picture, nothing of the essence, as a result of which of course the evil reputation of this von Mastemann increased hour by hour while the whole of Cologne looked on and feared; so that in the end there was no chance at all of discovering the facts, the truth, said Korin, rumor having grown ever wilder and spread ever more quickly, people saying that the air grew significantly cooler as you drew closer to him and that those pale blue eyes were not in fact blue at all, nor were they real, but were actually made of a peculiarly sparkling steel, which must mean that this von Mastemann character was quite blind, and taking all rumors into account the truth itself would have seemed pretty dull so that no one actually sought it any longer and even Toót, who was the least likely to pay attention to idle chatter, remarked that cold shivers ran down his spine as he watched von Mastemann sitting immobile for hours, his two metal eyes sparkling and staring at the cathedral.

The bad thing was getting ever closer, its progress irresistible, Korin explained in the kitchen, and there were any number of signs of its approach, but it was one word that decided the issue in Cologne, after which there could be no doubt as to what was to follow, this word being Festungsgürtel, said Korin, or rather the event associated with it, an event whose importance outweighed everything else, at least for Kasser and his companions, for while the febrile mood they observed both in town and at the inn, and the ever more frequent sight of military detachments patrolling the streets were enough to set them thinking, they could still not be certain as to the true nature of events, and could only be so once they heard the military snap of the word one day when the inn was full of the tramp of soldiers’ boots and Hirschhardt sat down at their table to inform them that the army unit stationed in town, or rather the Festungsgouvernor, to give him his proper tide, that is to say Lieutenant-General von Frankenberg himself — despite the fury of the archbishop — had ordered the vacating of the Festungsgürtel to make space for a shooting gallery, the Festungsgürtel, Hirschhardt emphasized the word, which, as you gentlemen must know, serves as the spiritual center of the building works, where they keep the stones, in what we call the Domsteinlagerplatz, right next to the Banhof am Thürmchen, and the order had just been given so Herr Voigtel had immediately to stop all further railway deliveries, thereby severely endangering the whole project, and to begin hoarding the stone surreptitiously and in a great hurry, the very tone of the order making it clear that it would have to be obeyed immediately and that there would be no appeal against it, and indeed what could Herr Voigtel do but rescue that which was still possible to rescue and to remove whatever he could, burying the rest, for it was pointless referring to the overriding significance of the progress of the cathedral, the answer would have been that its overriding significance was merely an aspect of the glory of the German Empire, for the word was Festungsgürtel, and that’s what mattered, repeated Hirschhardt nodding significantly, then, seeing that his guests had fallen utterly silent, tried to cheer them with a discussion of the glorious prospects of the coming Krieg but without much success, for Kasser’s little band just sat there with vacant stares, in shock, before asking more questions in an attempt to understand more clearly what had happened, without much success for Hirschhardt could only repeat what he had already said before returning to his group of carousing soldiers, perfectly at peace with himself it seemed, relieved of his normal gloom, prepared even to take the liberty, as he had never done before, of downing a big tankard with them and joining in a roaring chorus celebrating the glorious forthcoming victory over the filthy French.

They put the money down at the end of the bar counter and left quietly so that Hirschhardt, who was caught up in the general heartiness, failed to notice their departure and without anyone else remarking that they had paid and disappeared; from which fact, said Korin, the young lady might be able to deduce what was to follow, and indeed there was no need for him to tell her what followed for it was plain as the nose on her face what would, effectively, follow, although it was quite different hearing it in his words to reading it on the page, there being no comparison between the two experiences, and particularly in the case of the passage on this subject, an extraordinarily beautiful passage about the last evening with their walk home along the bank of the Rhine and how they then sat on the edge of their beds at their accommodation, waiting for the dawn without saying a word, at which time a conversation did begin, albeit with some difficulty, a conversation about the cathedral of course, about the point to the southwest of it from where, henceforth, they would no longer—never more said Korin — have the privilege of observing it as a solid, perfectly compact mass, with those splendid buttresses, the wondrous relief work on the walls and the vibrant ornamentation of the façade that concealed the weight and mass of the whole, and their talk kept straying to the deep metaphysical aspect of this unsurpassable masterpiece of the human imagination, to heaven and earth and the underworld, and the governance of such things, the way these invisible domains were created, and, needless perhaps to say, how, from the moment Hirschhardt’s account had made it clear what the order to clear the Festungsgürtel had meant, they had immediately resolved to leave the place, this Cologne, to depart at first light, said Bengazza, and allow the military art of destruction, the art of soldiers as Korin put it studying his dictionary, to replace the unique spirit of the art of construction, and he knew, added Korin, that as another chapter in the lives of Kasser and his companions drew to a close, that nothing had been resolved or had grown any less mysterious, that there was still no clue as to what all this was leading to or what the manuscript was really about, what we should think as we read it or listened to its words, for as we do so we keep feeling that somehow we are looking in the wrong place for clues, in studying, for instance, its descriptions of the shadowy form of Kasser, for naturally one would like to understand what it all added up to, or at least Korin himself would, but the details did not help: he was left contemplating the whole thing, the sum of the images, and that was all he could see as he worked at the keyboard transcribing the manuscript, watching Kasser and his companions speed away from Cologne that morning, the dust of the mail-coach billowing behind them; and the image of the curly-headed young servant as he appears in front of the cathedral, folding chair in one hand, the other casually in his pocket, a light breeze raising the locks on the young man’s head as he puts the chair down directly facing the west front then stands beside it, waiting, and nothing happening as he continues to stand there, both hands now tucked into his pockets, there is no one about in the square at dawn and the chair is still vacant.