War & War

VII TAKING NOTHING WITH HIM

He did not look back once he set off but walked along the icy pavement toward the Washington Avenue stop, never glancing back over his shoulder, not, he explained later, because he had resolved not to but because everything now was truly behind him and nothing in front of him, only the icy sidewalk, and nothing inside him either except of course the four figures he was dragging with him toward Washington Avenue, that is to say Kasser and his companions; and that was all he remembered of that first hour after leaving the house on 159th Street, except the early dawn when it was still dark, with hardly anyone on the street, and the effort of slowly absorbing all the events of the previous night as he proceeded down the first two hundred yards or so along the ice, the way his savior, Mr. Sárváry, eventually fell silent after the great celebration and the countless toasts to their eternal friendship, the moment when he was free to return to his room, close the door and flop down on his bed and decide that he would take nothing with him, and, having decided that, closed his eyes; but sleep did not come, and later when the door quietly opened and there stood Mr. Sárváry’s young lady, Korin’s faithful listener through all those long weeks, who padded over to the bed quietly so as not to wake him, for he pretended to be deeply asleep, not wanting to have to say goodbye, since what could he say about where he was going, there was nothing to say, but the young lady hovered by his bed for a very long time, no doubt watching him, trying to tell whether he was really asleep or not, then, because he gave no sign that he was not, she squatted down beside the bed and very gently stroked his hands, just once, so lightly she was hardly touching him, his right hand that is, said Korin, showing the hand to his companion, the hand with the scar, and that was all, having done which she left as silently as she had come, and there was nothing to do after that but wait with as much patience as he could for night to be over, though that, alas, was very difficult, and he clearly remembered constantly checking the clock — quarter past three, half past three, a quarter of five — then he rose, dressed, washed his face, went to the toilet to do what he had to do there, and then a thought had suddenly occurred to him and he stood up on the seat to sneak a look at the sachets, the story being, he explained, that he had earlier discovered a hiding place behind one of the tiles that was full of little sachets containing a fine white powder and had immediately guessed what it might be, and that now he wanted to take another peek at them though he had no idea why, perhaps it was only curiosity, so he took down the tile again and found — not the packets but a vast amount of money, so much that he quickly put the tile back, and scurried into the apartment so as not to be seen by anyone on the lower floors, specifically by the person who had been depositing things in the toilet, so, having sneaked back, he closed the front door quietly behind him, folded the bedclothes in his room, piled them tidily on the chair he had positioned by the bed, looked round for the last time, saw that everything was precisely where it had been, the laptop, the dictionary, the manuscript, the notebook as well as little things like his few shirts and some underwear which would not need washing again, then left taking nothing with him only his coat and five hundred dollars; in other words there were no great tearful farewells, said Korin shrugging, and why should there be, why should he upset the young lady when it was certain that it would hurt her to see him leaving because they had got so used to each other, so no, it wasn’t a good idea, he said to himself; he’d go the way he came, then he stepped out into the street and really there was absolutely nothing in his head except Kasser and the other three, and the sad thing was he had nowhere to take them.

He clicked on the file, titled it War and War, gave it a proper file name, saved it, checking first that the address was working, then pressed the last key, switched the machine off, closed it, and carefully put it down on the bed, and having done so was quickly out of the house, running down the sidewalk in a panic with no idea where he was going, but then stopped, turned and set off in the opposite direction, as fleet-footed as before and, being just as uncertain, stopping once more some two hundred yards down the road to massage his neck and swivel his head before looking first ahead and then behind him as if seeking someone he failed to find, for it was early and there was hardly anyone on the street, and those few he saw were far away, a couple of blocks off at least, around Washington Avenue, with only some homeless under a mound of garbage directly opposite him on the other side of the road and a very old blue Lincoln turning out of 159th Street getting into second or third gear and passing him on its way back — but where to go now, he wondered, at a complete loss, just standing there, and you could see that he knew the answer to the question but had forgotten it, so he fiddled with a paper handkerchief in a pocket of his coat, cleared his throat, and poked his toe at an empty pack of Orbitos lying on the hard snow, but since the paper had almost completely come to pieces, it was hard work shifting it: still, he persisted and eventually succeeded to the extent that the pack turned over, and while he was poking the thing, clearing his throat and fiddling with the paper handkerchief in his pocket, his eyes darting now this way, now that, it is possible that he remembered where he wanted to get to.

Red 1 and Red 9 were equally fine for him since they both ran from Washington Avenue to Times Square where he would have to switch to the black line by means of which he could get to Grand Central and the green line that would take him to the Upper East Side, since he wanted to get there as soon as possible, Korin explained to his companion, having gleaned from his landlord the previous night that there was a Hungarian quarter in New York, for that was when he decided that he would buy the gun there, since, after all, not speaking English, he realized that he needed to be instructed in Hungarian, which was why his landlord’s mention of it in his monologue came at such a handy moment, for he didn’t feel he could ask him, having already bothered him so much, and as for others, well, he didn’t have the English and was therefore constrained to turn to a Hungarian to whom he could clearly explain his requirements and discover where the business might be arranged, for the language problem left him with no alternative, he immediately realized, but to find a Hungarian speaker, but once he found a seat opposite a large black woman on the Red 9 and began to examine the subway map above the woman’s head, he decided that he would make the journey between Times Square and Grand Central on foot, for it was not clear to him from the map what the black line connecting the two signified, and it was chance, the merest chance that decided things, not he himself, for he simply sat opposite the huge black woman and recognized that however long he studied the subway map he would not succeed in working out what the black line between the green and red routes actually meant, so it had to be on foot, he decided, and that’s how it turned out though he had no inkling what curious farewell gift the inscrutable will of fate had reserved for him on this, his last day, not the faintest idea, he repeated enthusiastically, but he had got thus far, he explained, everything on this last day worked out; he made smooth progress toward his ultimate goals, for it was as if something had taken him by the hand and was leading him there by the most direct route once he got off at Times Square, emerged from the subway and starting walking eastward, directly toward the tower he might almost say, immediately noticing that everything around him seemed to speed up, the whole world accelerating in extraordinary fashion as soon as he reached the street and made his way among the skyscrapers, pressing through dense crowds and gazing at the buildings, craning his neck, until it struck him that there was no point in seeking to discover a meaning in these buildings because however hard he tried he would not, said Korin, though it was a meaning he had been constantly aware of from the moment he first glimpsed the famous skyline of Manhattan from the window of his cab, a meaning of peculiar significance that he sought day after day each night about five P.M. after he had finished work and set out to walk the streets, particularly Broadway — trying in vain to give his thoughts some shape, first by meditating on the fact that the whole thing reminded him keenly of something, then by sensing that he had been here before, that he had seen this world-famous panorama, those breathtaking skyscrapers of Manhattan somewhere, but no, it was no good, the walks were all in vain, it was useless trying, he could not solve the puzzle, and, as he told himself this very dawn walking down toward the tower and the bustle of Times Square, he would have to leave without having found out, without having discovered or stumbled across the answer, without the least notion that in just a few minutes he would understand, said Korin, that in a few bare minutes he’d realize and achieve what he had set out to do, and that this would happen only a few minutes after setting off among the skyscrapers toward Grand Central Station.

We pass things without any idea of what it is we have passed, and he didn’t know, said he, whether his companion knew the feeling, but that was exactly what happened to him, in the most literary sense, for he had no idea what it was as he passed it, and only a few steps later, once he had slowed down, did he vaguely suspect something, and then he had to stop, stop right there and stand stock still, at first without knowing quite what the sensation was related to, racking his brains to find out the cause, but then he turned to retrace his steps and as he spun round he found himself in front of a huge store, the one he had just passed, a store full of television sets, several racks high and some twenty meters long of nothing but TV sets, all turned on, all working, every one of them showing a different program; and all this, he felt, was trying to tell him something very important though it was far from easy discovering what it was or why these advertisements, film clips, blond curls and western boots, coral reefs, news channels, cartoon films, concert excerpts and aerial battles should have anything to say to him, and first he stood puzzling in front of the display, then tried walking up and down in front of it still mystified, until, suddenly, having taken a step closer and leaned over, in the second row from the bottom, roughly level with his eyes, he noticed an image, a medieval painting, which must have been, there was no doubt about it, the thing that had stopped him as he passed, though he still didn’t know why, so he leaned closer still and saw it was a work by Breughel, the one showing the building of the Tower of Babel, an image that, being a history graduate, he knew very well, the camera focusing on the detail where King Nimrod, stern, serious and very fearsome looking, arrives at the site, with his moonfaced chief adviser beside him escorted by a few guards and there are some stone carvers working in the dust in front of them, the film being probably some kind of documentary, said Korin, that at least being his impression, though, naturally enough, he could not hear the commentary through the thick glass of the window, only the racket of the street in which he stood, the sirens, the squealing of brakes and the blast of horns; and then the camera began to pull slowly away from the foreground and Nimrod, and to take in more and more of the picture until Korin stood facing the landscape and the enormous tower with its seven infernal levels, unfinished, abandoned and damned, straining toward the sky at the end of the world, and, ah now he understood! Babel! he declared aloud, ah if only everything was so simple: Babel and New York! for had he understood this he would not have had to traipse about the city all those long weeks seeking a solution to the mystery — and he continued staring at the picture, stopping by the window display until he noticed that a big adolescent boy in a leather jacket kept staring somewhat challengingly at him, when he felt compelled to move on, and doing so, step by step, he felt a sort of calm settling over him and he carried on toward Grand Central Station while the stores by either side of him began to open up, chiefly the smaller greengrocers and delicatessens at first, but a little bookstore too, the owner being in the act of rolling out a bookcase on castors and the case full of cut-price books before which Korin stopped, having plenty of time for he had never in his life felt so free, and looked through the brightly colored volumes as he always did on his five o’clock strolls whenever he passed such a store, picking out one book with a familiar picture on the cover, the title of the book being Ely Jacques Kahn, and, in smaller letters below it, the words New York Architect, with the 1931 foreword by Otto John Teegen, and masses of black-and-white photographs of big New York buildings, precisely the ones he had seen in the course of his walks, images of the same gaggle of New York skyscrapers — the scraper-scape, he muttered to himself, and the word scraper-scape began to ring in his ear — and then he turned over a few pages, not systematically page by page, but in a vague arbitrary fashion, jumping from the end of the book to the early pages, then from the early pages to the later ones, when, suddenly, on page 88 he came upon a photograph labeled “View from East River, 120 Wall Street Building, New York City” at which point, he said that afternoon in the Mocca restaurant, it was like being struck by lightning, and he went back to the beginning and leafed through the whole book properly, from “Insurance Building, 42–44 West Thirty-Ninth Street Building” through “Number Two Park Avenue Building,” “N.W Corner Sixth Avenue at Thirty-Seventh Street Building,” “International Telephone and Telegraph Building,” “Federation Building” and “S.E. Corner Broadway and Forty-First Street Building” right through to the end, when he checked the name on the front of the book once more, Ely Jacques Kahn, and again, Ely Jacques Kahn, then raised his eyes from the book jacket and sought the nearest such building in the direction of the Lower East Side and Lower Manhattan, and could not believe his eyes, he said, simply didn’t want to believe his eyes, for he immediately found it: there stood the building in the book, as well as others whose pictures he had just looked at, and though there was undoubtedly some relationship between them, there was at the same time an even greater relatianship between them and the Tower of Babel as painted by Breughel, and then he tried to find other such buildings, rushing down to the next intersection to see better, or rather to get a better view of Lower Manhattan, and discovered them immediately, and was so shaken by his discovery that, without thinking, he stepped off the sidewalk into the crosswalk and was almost knocked down, cars hooting at him while he continued to stare at Lower Manhattan even as he leapt back, mesmerized by the view, it having struck him that New York was full of Towers of Babel, good heavens, imagine it, he said the same afternoon in a state of high excitement, here he had been walking right amongst them for weeks on end, knowing that he should see the connection, but had failed to see it, but now that he had seen it, he announced with great ceremony, now that he had got it, it was clear to him that this most important and most sensitive city, the greatest city in the world, the center of the world, had deliberately been filled by someone with Towers of Babel, all with seven stories, he noted, his eyes screwed up, examining the distant panorama, and all seven stories stepped like ziggurats, a theme with which he was very well acquainted, he explained to his companion, having attended university some twenty years ago as a student of history, later a local historian, for they were dense with references to the towers of Mesopotamia, and not just the Babel of Breughel, but also to material from Koldewey too, the German amateur archeologist’s name being Robert Koldewey, as he recalled perfectly clearly even now, the man who excavated Babel and Esagila and discovered Etemenanki, partly uncovered it and even made a maquette of it, so it was no wonder that when he arrived at John Fitzgerald Kennedy Airport, got into the taxi and took a first look to see the famous panorama that something immediately rang a bell with him, it was just that he didn’t know what it was, couldn’t put a name to it, though it was there lurking in some corner of his aching brain, reluctant to appear, hiding away, he said, until today, and frankly he didn’t understand the way it all suddenly came together on this, his last day, but it was as if it had been all laid out before him and always had been, because ever since dawn he had this feeling that someone was taking him by the hand and leading him on, and that this book about Ely Jacques Kahn was, so to speak, thrust into his hands; for why on earth would he pick up this book rather than any other, and why should he have stopped precisely before that particular bookstore, why walk down that very street, why walk at all — oh, it was quite certain, Korin nodded smiling in the Mocca restaurant, that they were there with him, leading him, holding his hand.

A king among stone carvers: the idea shocked everyone in Babylon, for it meant that whatever laws had governed them so far were now invalid and that there was no longer any foundation on which order might be built, and, this being so, from now on it would be the unpredictable, the sensational and the senseless that ruled their lives, and yet he walked among the stone carvers as any man might do, treading the length of the Marduk road, through the Ishtar Gate, over to the hill opposite, acting against all the ruling conventions and thereby advertising the fact that power was no longer with the empire, for leaving the palace without the appropriate retinue and the presence of the court, with just four guards as escort and, of course, the fearsome moon-faced chief adviser at his side was more than Babylon could bear, and when the chief adviser cried, The King, and the armed escort carelessly echoed the words, the stone carvers on the hillside thought someone was playing a joke on them and did not even rise to their feet and stop working at first, but when they saw it really was the king they threw themselves on the ground facedown until the adviser, communicating the king’s wishes, ordered them to rise and to continue what they were doing, for such were the king’s commands, he said, the king’s expression stern and frightening, but somehow disturbing too, the eyes faintly idiotic, the eyes of a man bearing the authority of Nimrod’s robes and scepter, but among workmen, and that’s how the priests of Marduk knew that the last judgment must be near though sacrifices continued undisturbed on the altars, but there was the king, engaged in direct conversation with the stone carvers on the hillside, and news of this apocalyptic event quickly spread and terrified even those who had given themselves over to fierce pleasures and the evils of forgetfulness behind the thick but now useless walls of the city; and the four of them threw themselves on the ground once more but none of them dared answer such questions as they did not understand, for their hearts were in their mouths, loudly drumming in fear that the mighty Nimrod was standing before them in an act of madness, that the king himself was asking them whether the stone was hard enough, and they went on nodding, saying, yes, yes, hard enough, but the king gave no sign of having heard their answer and stepped away to join the guards who were openly grinning, then stood on a ledge that offered a perfect view with a deep chasm at his feet, the vast tower of Etemenanki rearing up before him on the far side, and stood immobile, a dry scalding breeze above the river blowing directly into his face; so Nimrod watched the builders at work, laboring at the enormous monument, that impossible structure rising before him, almost ready now, a perfect silence at his back, the hammers and chisels frozen in the workmen’s hands as he surveyed his creation, Nimrod’s challenge to the world, a triumph, a work of genius, an edifice of godless majesty designed to confront time itself — that, at least, was how Nimrod imagined it, said Korin to his new friend, for what else could it be, as they sat down for a drink at the Mocca restaurant, what else could it be if we are to believe Breughel rather than Koldeway, and he did believe Breughel in preference to Koldeway, for that was what he had assumed from the beginning, that Breughel’s painting was correct, since after all one had to, in fact absolutely had to assume something, for there had to be a reason for him being in New York, and there had to be some mysterious guiding hand to lead him here so that he might accomplish his own humble task and receive a clear explanation of all these references to Babel, and why should all this be as it was, smiled Korin, his head swaying, if not to enable us to comprehend that this is what God’s absence leads to, to the production of a miraculous, brilliant and utterly captivating kind of human being who is incapable, and always will be incapable, of just one thing, that is of controlling that which he has created, his own feeling being, he declared, that it was true, that there really was nothing more miraculous than man, for think, to take a random example, of computers, of satellites, of microchips, motor cars, medicines, televisions, of unmanned stealth bombers, a list so long we could continue it forever, and this was probably the reason and explanation for his own presence in New York, so that he should be able to sort the essential from the banal, in other words to understand that that which is too big for us is altogether too big, and having understood this to convey this understanding to others, because, and he couldn’t emphasize this strongly enough, he, Korin, had to point out the true state of affairs, and he did not merely imagine but felt most clearly that something had taken him by the hand and was leading him.

Oh yes, they knew Gyuri Szabó, the proprietor of the Mocca remarked as she was chatting with her friend on the phone that night, having got home, showered, turned on the TV and pulled the phone over, and he had taken the opportunity of bringing over some lunatic, giving him a table to sit at, yes, they let Gyuri in, he is no problem, he just sits himself down at the table and shifts about in his chair a bit, he’s been there a week now among the customers, a quiet well-behaved decent enough kind of guy, with, yes, some strange ideas, but he was welcome to sit there, the problem was the other one, the one with a face like a bat, they never had this screwball before, the woman exclaimed, and he did all the talking, producing such a torrent of nonsense, she cried, well, you have no idea, and they drank Unicum with beer, the Hungarian way, eleven shots each, from four in the afternoon to two in the morning, so you may imagine, she said, the bat-faced one talking and talking and Gyuri Szabó listening, though he was drunk too just like the other guy, nor was there any point in telling him to behave himself when he came out of the john, they just went on as before though she should have closed up hours ago, the cash long having been dealt with, and still they didn’t want to go, so in the end she had to say something, to turn off the light, which was something she hated doing as it reminded her of being back in Hungary where they do this lights-off-all-out business all the time, but there was nothing else she could do, she had to turn the lights off a couple of times until, thank heaven, they finally noticed, got to their feet and went out, though it was Gyuri Szabó she was sorry for, him being the son of old Béla Szabó from his second marriage, she told her friend, the one who was in charge of a department at Lloyds, yes, old man Béla’s boy, yes and we always thought he was the artistic type, in other words a real decent guy, all heart, but the other man she knew absolutely nothing about, and to be honest, she was genuinely frightened of him, because you never knew what that kind of person was thinking or what he’d do next, though, truth to tell, he can’t have been thinking much in particular and in any case, he paid, thank God, and, true, he upset a couple of chairs on his way out, but at least he was leaving and hadn’t done anything to upset anyone, but as he left he complained of feeling sick saying he had to throw up, and the other guy said, go ahead, throw up, so Korin went a little way down into the doorway by the entrance and vomited and vomited until he felt better, then feeling fine, he went straight over to the cart to help push it even though his friend told him not to bother as he was used to doing it himself and he’d do it by himself this time too, but Korin paid no attention to him since that was what the man had told him the first time that afternoon when he had stopped a block away, down 81st Street, and Korin had asked whether he could help, at which point his accent gave him away, and they both immediately realized that the other was Hungarian, this being pretty simple with Korin’s can I help you, and not much more difficult with the other’s no thanks, Korin having spent several hours summoning up the courage to talk to someone without succeeding in finding either the courage or indeed anybody who looked Hungarian until suddenly he noticed a strange figure and was astonished to see that this figure was in the process of leaning a full-size store dummy against a bus stop on 81 st Street, arranging it so it looked as though the dummy were waiting for a bus, having done which he chained the dummy’s hands and feet to the bus stop and turned its head to face the oncoming traffic, raising its left arm a little so it would seem that the dummy was hailing a bus, after which he returned to his cart, ready to pull it further up the street, which was the point at which Korin first approached him and asked him if he needed a push for if he did he would be glad to help.

He was used to doing this alone and would like to continue alone, the man told him, but having said it allowed Korin to help even though it was clear he had no need of it, for the plastic hands and feet protruding from under the loose tarpaulin cover of the cart showed that the whole thing was full of store dummies and would therefore weigh very little; but Korin did not let that discourage him and began pushing the back of the cart while the man got hold of the pole at the front and pulled it, the whole lot rattling and giving a considerable jolt each time there was a bump in the icy snow beneath, so that dummies began to slide off right and left and Korin or the man had to thrust them back among the rest; and so they pushed and pulled and pushed and pulled and within a few minutes had gotten pretty well used to it, arriving in the busy traffic of Second Avenue where Korin finally dared to ask whether the other, by any chance, could tell him where the Hungarian quarter was because he was looking for it, to which he received the answer that they were in the Hungarian quarter right now; in which case, Korin continued, perhaps the other might help him with some business, the business, Korin cleared his throat, that is, of buying a gun; an inquiry greeted by the other with a solemn echo — ah, gun — his face suddenly serious, telling him a gun could be bought almost anywhere, and this seemed for a while to conclude the conversation, neither of them saying a word until the man applied the brakes, dropped the pole on the stones, turned round and asked Korin directly to tell him what it was he was actually after, in response to which Korin repeated, a gun, a gun of any kind, no matter if it be big, small or of middling size, just a gun, and that he had five hundred dollars to spend on it, that sum comprising all his money, and that he was prepared to spend it all on a gun, just a gun; not that he wanted to frighten the other man with all this, he hastily added, for he meant absolutely no harm and would be quite happy to tell the whole story but wasn’t there somewhere they could sit down and eat and drink something while he told it, he asked, and looked around for some such place because he had, after all, been out on the street since dawn and was chilled through to the bone, so a little warmth would be most welcome, and some food and drink too, and yes he’d love to drink something; but the other man would not let the matter rest and examined him further and at some length on the subject of the gun, Korin responding with further invitations to go and eat, pressing the man to be his guest and telling him that all would be revealed once they were sitting down together, so the man hemmed and hawed and said there were plenty of restaurants nearby and within a few minutes they were sitting in the Mocca, its walls lined with mirrors and decorative crockery, its ceiling papered in relief using some synthetic material, with just three melancholy looking guests at the tables and the crow-faced proprietress wearing oval glasses, her hair cut froufrou fashion, who suggested they eat something as well as drink, and though she did this in the most friendly manner only Korin took her advice and drank a goulash soup with pinched noodles, the other man refusing anything, merely taking one of the sugar packets provided on the table, tearing the end off and pouring it down his throat, flicking at the packet with his index finger to get all the sugar out, repeating this a few times in the course of their conversation; all he wanted, he said, being something to drink, which indeed they both did, downing one Unicum with beer, followed by another Unicum with beer, and another and so on while Korin talked and the man listened.

The dummy sat by itself at a table near the counter and looked so convincing one might have thought it was a real person sitting there though it was of the same plastic material as the other dummies in the cart and as life-sized as those outside, and yet, in the light of the diner, its pink skin seemed more transparent and its gaze more meditative than theirs as it sat with its legs tucked under the table with perfect propriety, a propriety it was forced to exercise in order that it should be able to sit at all, with one hand in its lap and the other on the table, its head turned away a fraction, tipping slightly, so as to make it seem the face was gazing into the distance somewhat lost in thought — and as soon as the man saw it he immediately went to sit beside it, so that by the time Korin had removed his coat he too had to sit with the dummy and clearly found it difficult not to query its presence at first, though once he got used to it being there he accepted it and no longer felt any need to ask any questions, just glanced at it every so often, and after the fifth or sixth round of drinks, once the Unicum had well and truly gone to his head, he accepted the dummy to the extent that he even started including it in his conversation, a conversation that consisted primarily of his monologue of course, whose intention was to enlighten the other by telling him about the headaches, about his own revelation concerning Babel and to continue with his account of the time in the records office, the weeks at Sárváry’s, the journey to America passing on to the manuscript, eternity, the gun, then, eventually, Kasser, Bengazza, Falke and Toót, and the way out, how they couldn’t find it and how he carried them about inside him but felt extremely worried now even though earlier he thought he’d be perfectly calm, because they somehow stayed with him, were clinging to him, and he felt he couldn’t get rid of them just like that, but what could he do, where and how could he solve the problem, he sighed, then went to the toilet on returning from which he was confronted in the corridor by the proprietress with the froufrou hairdo who begged his pardon but asked him, a little awkwardly, not to ply his companion with drink, because they knew him very well in the restaurant, and he was neither used to it, nor able to cope with it, to which Korin answered that neither could he himself, though the woman, rather impatiently, cut him short, saying it would do his companion no good at all, and adjusted her froufrou hair as she did so, because he was a very sensitive, good-hearted boy and he has this obsession with store dummies, populating the whole district with them, and it wasn’t just in her restaurant he planted one but wherever they would let him, and they let him because he is such a quiet, gentle, decent sort of man, and he had left three dummies in Grand Central Station, as well as others in the public library, one at McDonald’s, another at the cinema at 11 th Street, and one at a nearby newsstand in front of the magazine shelves, but people said he had more at home, one sitting in the armchair in his room watching the TV, one at the kitchen table and one at the window supposedly looking out, in other words, said the proprietress, she couldn’t deny that he was somewhat cranky but he was not mad, and he was only doing all this on account of some woman because, they say, he very much loved her, and she was simply asking Korin to understand, and more than understand, to look after him if he could, because you couldn’t fill him with drink, it was just asking for trouble, to which Korin readily agreed, saying yes, he understood now, and that he would certainly look after him most carefully as he too thought he was a really nice man, confessing that as soon as he set eyes on him he really liked him, so, yes, he would look after him, he promised, but then immediately broke his word for as soon as he sat back down with the man at the restaurant he immediately ordered another round, nor could he be dissuaded from more on top of that, so he was truly asking for trouble, and this eventually did lead to trouble, though not in the form the proprietress had anticipated, for it was Korin who felt ill, extremely ill in fact once they had finished and while vomiting helped, it only relieved him for a few minutes, then he was ill again, and worse, no longer pushing the cart but clinging onto it, constantly telling the other man, whom he now referred to as his friend, that death meant nothing to him, while clinging on, almost allowing himself to be drawn, his feet repeatedly slipping on the snow, which by this time, that is to say about four or half past four, had frozen solid.

They were going somewhere in the snow and it didn’t matter to Korin where it was, nor did it seem to matter much to the other man, who occasionally adjusted the tarpaulin covering the dummies, then bent forward and blindly dragged the cart behind him in the sharp wind blowing down the avenues oriented north to south so that every time they passed one of these, which they did frequently, they tried to escape from it as soon as they could, fleeing from it, saying nothing at all for a long time, until the man suddenly said something over his shoulder, something he must have been thinking for a while, but Korin didn’t hear him so the man had to drop the pole, go over to Korin so he could get his message through to him, which was that it was all very nice what he had told him about the manuscript in the Mocca restaurant, very nice indeed, he nodded, but of course he had invented the lot, admit it, for beautiful as the Cretan, the Venetian and Roman episodes were, he should calmly own up to the fact that they existed only in his imagination, to which Korin naturally responded with a firm no, that no, he had not made it up, the manuscript existed and what was more was there on his bed on 159 th Street if he wanted to see it, he said, quickly grabbing the back of the cart because he had let go of it for a moment, and yes, said the other man very slowly, because if it was true — he raised his head — it must be beautiful and it would really be very nice to see it, and surely there was something one could do about that road, that way out, and you know what? he asked, we should meet tomorrow night about six o’clock at my place, and Korin should bring that manuscript with him, that’s if it existed, for if it did exist it would be very beautiful and he would like to show a page or two to the woman he loved, he said gazing at the dummies under the tarpaulin, then produced a business card from his pocket, pointed to the address on it, saying, here, and gave it to Korin who put it away, and the place would be easy enough to find, so let us say six o’clock, he added before falling flat on his face and remaining motionless on the snow while Korin stared at him for a moment before letting go of the cart and taking a step toward the man to help him, but he lost his balance in trying to do so and fell beside him where he lay until the man, who might have been brought to his senses, or if not precisely to his senses at least to consciousness by the cold before Korin was, extended his arms, pulled Korin to his feet, and they stood there, with feet planted apart, facing each other, both of them swaying for a whole minute or more, until the man suddenly said that Korin was a likable guy but somehow lacked a center, and with that he took up his place at the front of the cart, raised the pole and set off along the snow once more, only this time Korin did not follow him, for he hadn’t the strength to do so, not even by clinging onto the cart, but gazed at the man with his dummies getting ever further and further away, reeled over to the nearest doorway, pushed at the outer door and lay down by the wall at the foot of the stairs.

Four hundred and forty dollars, that was what most upset him when he found the money on him, for where does a dirty little nobody like this get four hundred and forty dollars from, while he, said the man in the yellow overalls pointing to himself, he clears the crap from the house, fixes the drains, takes out the garbage and sweeps the filthy ice in front of the house for a hundred and eighty a week working his guts out to earn a pittance, and this creature has four hundred and forty dollars right there in his coat pocket, just like that, as he guessed when he saw him at the bottom of the wet stairs, thinking there’s another filthy stinking bum lying in his own vomit, just as he suspected when he saw him at the bottom of the stairs, the sight of him making his blood boil, so he would happily have put a bullet in him, but contended himself instead with giving him a kick and was just starting to drag him outside when he found the four hundred and forty dollars in his pocket, counted the bills into his own wallet, and gave him such a kick his foot was still aching because he must have struck a bone his foot was hurting so badly; four hundred and forty, imagine it, his voice trembled with fury, well, he was so angry he booted him right out of that door and off the sidewalk too onto the street like the piece of shit he was, he was that disgusting, and boy was he disgusted, said the man in the yellow overalls grabbing the arm of the person living upstairs, and he was quite right to treat him the way he did, he thought, that’s the way to deal with them, let them freeze their asses off outside, he said, his face reddening, let him lie out there till a car runs over him, and he just lay there, unable even to open his eyes he was in so much pain, but eventually managed to do so, heard the terrible car horns, saw where he was and started dragging himself toward the sidewalk without quite realizing the gravity of his situation or understanding why his stomach, chest and face hurt so much, then lay for a while on the edge of the sidewalk until it seemed someone was asking him if he was all right and he didn’t know what to answer so he said yes, all right, but even as he did so it flashed across his mind that he wouldn’t want a policeman to find him there and he grew agitated, thinking he had to move on as quickly as he could, so clambered to his feet seeing that it was light and that two school-age children were looking at him sympathetically, asking him again if he was all right and whether they should call an ambulance, an ambulance, Korin echoed, oh, an ambulance and tried to tell them that they were on no account to call an ambulance because there was nothing really wrong with him, it was just that something had happened, he didn’t know what, but that everything was all right now and that they should leave him alone now, he’d be all right, until he realized that he was speaking Hungarian and quickly tried to find a few English words but nothing came, so he stood up and started down the sidewalk, walking with enormous difficulty, making it to the corner of Lexington Avenue and 51 st Street, then stumbled down into the subway and felt better among the swirling crowds where a battered figure like him would not be so conspicuous, because he was truly battered and shattered, he told his friend later, so utterly shattered he couldn’t imagine how he could ever be reassembled, but he got onto a train though he had no idea where it was going, nor did he care as long as it was away from there, and once he thought he was far enough away he got off and wandered over to a map and found the name of the station, which was somewhere in Brooklyn, but what could he do, what was there to do, he wondered in desperation, as he said later, and then he remembered what they had agreed when they parted, strange as it was that he should have forgotten everything about the last few hours except the fact that he had promised to deliver the manuscript to his new friend by six o’clock that evening, so the task was to get the manuscript, he said to himself, and he eventually found himself on a 7 train going back toward 42nd Street, but was very frightened, he said, since he realized how beaten up he was, not to say how dirty and stinking, with vomit all over him, frightened also that someone would stop him before he got home, but it was the last thing on anyone’s mind to stop him, everyone steering clear of him rather than confronting him, and so he reached West 42nd, transferred to a 9 train to get home, home as he kept muttering, home, the word itself like a prayer, dragging his body homeward, his body feeling as if it had been broken into a thousand distinct pieces, finally reaching the house and climbing the stairs still feeling so terrible that it never occurred to him that he had left the apartment for the last time the night before, though he should have given that a thought, he told the man later, because then he might have understood more clearly why he felt so much like a corpse.

The two of them were in the kitchen among the boxes, the woman lying twisted and spread-eagled, her face completely beaten in, the interpreter hanging on the central heating duct but the blood all over his face showing he had been shot several times with a machine gun at close range — and he couldn’t scream, couldn’t move, as he stood in the open door, but slowly opened his mouth without any sound coming out of it, and then he wanted to go back the way he came, to get out of there but his limbs simply wouldn’t move, and when he was eventually able to move his legs they took him forward, closer to them, ever closer, and he felt a terrible pain in his head, so he stopped and stood still once again rooted to the spot and remained there for ages, standing and staring, unable to take his eyes off them, his face filled with horror, suddenly aged, and he opened his mouth again still without success, still silent, and took one more step forward but stumbled over something, the telephone, and almost fell, but instead of falling squatted down beside it and slowly punched in a number and listened a long time to the busy signal before realizing that he had dialed himself, and then he began searching in his pocket, but whatever he was looking for in an ever greater panic he couldn’t find, not for ages, and then it was there, the business card; uh, he grunted into the receiver, repeating the sound idiotically, uh, uh, uh, they’re dead, the pair of them, dead, the young lady and Mr. Sárváry, the man at the other end telling him to speak up and stop whispering, to tell him clearly what the matter was, but I’m not whispering, Korin whispered, they’ve killed them, both of them are dead, the young lady’s waist is twisted right out of shape, and Mr. Sárváry is hanging there; then get out of there as quick as you can, the man shouted into the phone; uh, and everything is smashed up, said Korin, then held the receiver away from his mouth, looked up with a terrified expression, then rushed out onto the stairs, pushed open the door of the toilet, leapt onto the seat, raised the tile and removed the money, gripping it in his hands, then rushed back into the apartment, picked up the phone and told the man that he knew, he knew at last what must have happened and started telling him about his landlord’s new job, about all his shopping, about the money in his hands, about the packets of white powder and the place where they were hidden and how he had discovered them, babbling on in ever greater confusion, ever more terrified by what he himself was saying as the man at the other end asked him again to stop whispering because he couldn’t hear him properly, but it was quite certain now, Korin continued, and he never once thought it would be Mr. Sárváry, not while he …, and he began crying, uncontrollably sobbing, so whatever he said the other man could not hear him for the sobs, sobs that shook him and went on shaking him so he couldn’t even hold the receiver, but then he picked it up again and listened and there was the man at the other end saying hello, are you still there? and when Korin replied that he was, the man told him to get out, and seeing that he had the money, hold on to it and bring it with him, definitely bring it with him and not to touch anything now but to leave the place, leave it now and come to his apartment or anywhere else he wanted to meet, can you still hear me? are you still there? the question hanging in the silent petrified air a long time but not receiving an answer because Korin had put the receiver down, screwed the money up in his coat and had started backing away, continually backing and weeping once more, finally stumbling down the stairs and out into the street, walking a couple of hundred yards and then beginning to run, to run as fast as he could, rushing on with the business card in his hand, gripping it so hard that his hand was all the time shaking with the effort.

They were sitting in the three bucket chairs, the store dummy facing the TV, the man beside her and Korin beside him, and all was silent but for the hum of the television with the sound turned off and a washing machine in the bathroom grumbling, bucking and sloshing, none of them saying anything, the man having sat Korin down on his arrival and taking his place beside him but not asking anything for a very long time, just staring in front of him and thinking very hard, then eventually getting up, taking a glass of water and sitting back down again to reassure Korin that they would think of something but that first they had to clean his clothes because he couldn’t move a step dressed like that, and then he helped him strip the clothes off though it was obvious that Korin did not really know what was going on or why it was necessary which meant that it was only with the greatest difficulty the man succeeded in unbuttoning him, but eventually his garments lay in a heap at his feet, and the man gave him a bathrobe, then removed anything that remained in the clothes before taking them into the bathroom and putting the lot — coat, underwear and all — into the washing machine, starting it up, then returning to the armchair to sit there and think even harder; and so they sat there a whole hour until the washing machine in the bathroom, with one final gasp, came to the end of its cycle, and the man said he had better know, roughly at least, what had happened otherwise he couldn’t help to which Korin only answered that he had noticed the hiding place in the toilet before, but had believed one of the occupants downstairs to be responsible for it, since anyone could use the toilet on their floor, at which point the other interrupted him to ask what he meant by hiding place, and Korin simply repeated that it was a hiding place and that one day he found that the white packets in it had been replaced by money, and though the other tried to stop him asking what packet? which day? Korin went on saying he didn’t think it had anything to do with them, that it was so far from his mind in fact that he forgot to say anything about it, because suddenly there was all this chaos, a lot of people arriving at the apartment, taking everything away then returning the next day bringing things back, and this so confused the young lady that he felt he had to look after her, and he had no idea that it was the hidden stuff that was the cause of everything, and once again began to cry in the armchair, and was quite unable to answer another question the man put to him, so that he had to do everything himself, to look through his belongings, find his passport, examine it to check that it was valid at all, then spread the clothes out in the bathroom to dry and count to see how much money there was, finally working out what to do next, then sitting down beside him again, to tell him quite quietly there was only one solution, and that was that he should get out of the country as soon as possible, but Korin did not answer and just sat beside the dummy and cried.

There was just the one bed in the bedroom, a store dummy propped by the window as if looking out and in the kitchen nothing but a bare table and four chairs, one of the chairs occupied by another store dummy raising its right hand and pointing at something on the ceiling or beyond it; which left the sitting room with its TV, three armchairs, one dummy and the man, now replaced by Korin, the rest bare, practically empty, the walls alone being covered with photographs, or rather several copies of the same photograph, as was the whole apartment, one photograph in various sizes, large, middling and vast, but everywhere the same, each of them showing the same thing, a hemispherical structure clad in broken glass, and when the man, hearing a faint rustling, opened his eyes he saw Korin, fully dressed now in his overcoat, waiting, it seemed, to go, looking at the wall, examining the photographs, bowing a little to examine each of them, deeply absorbed in their contents, whereupon Korin, having noticed that the man had woken up, quickly sat down in the armchair again, next to the store dummy and fixed his eyes on the TV, not answering when the man got out of bed and asked him through the door if he wanted a cup of coffee, but kept staring at the silent TV, so the man made coffee for just one, filled himself a cup, added sugar, stirred it and sat down with it next to Korin in the vacant armchair, surprised to find that Korin was after all addressing him, asking where the woman he loved had gone, to which he replied after a long silence simply that she had gone away; and what about her? and the one in the kitchen? and the one at the bus stop? asked Korin nodding toward the various dummies, to which he answered that they all looked like her, slurped once at his coffee, stood up and took the cup out into the kitchen, and by the time he returned Korin seemed not to have noticed his absence and was absorbed in telling his story, describing the two children’s faces as they peered down at him threatening to call the ambulance, and how he had managed to slip away and took shelter in the subway for a while, though every part of him was aching, he said, especially his stomach, his chest and his neck, and his whole head buzzing so that he hardly had the strength to stand, but kept going somehow and got to another subway station, then to another and another, and so forth … but the man stopped him at this point to say, I don’t understand, what are you talking about, but rather than explain Korin stopped altogether and for a while all three of them were simply watching TV, cartoons and advertisements following close on each other’s heels, rapid, jerky, silent images, as if everything was under water, until the man repeated his advice that Korin should leave immediately because it was a tough city and you couldn’t hang around thinking that either someone would kill Korin or the cops would get him, which would be more or less the same thing, he said, and since he seemed to have vast amounts of money he should decide where to go and he, the man, would take care of it, but he needed to pull himself together now, he said, though he could see that Korin was still out of it and that nothing he said had got through, that he was simply frowning at the television, watching it for a long time as though it required all his concentration to keep track of the flickering images on the screen before eventually rising from the armchair, going over to the pictures on the wall, pointing to one of them and asking, and this? where is this?

A temporary bed had been made up for him behind the armchairs in the living room, but though he lay down and pulled the covers over him Korin did not sleep, waiting instead for the man in the bedroom to breathe evenly and start snoring, then he got up, went to the bathroom, touched all the clothes drying there and gazed at the pictures on the wall again, leaning very close since they were just a faint glow in the murk, but by leaning so close he succeeded in examining every one, moving from one to the other, giving each one careful thought before moving on, and that is all he did that night, working his way through the apartment, moving from the bathroom through to the bedroom, then into the living room, returning frequently to the bathroom to check how dry the clothes were, touching them, adjusting them on the radiator, but then, quick as a shot out to examine the photographs again, admiring the strange, airy dome with its arches made of simple steel tubes bent to define a large hemisphere in space, staring at the large uneven glass panes — roughly half a meter or a meter in size — with which the hemisphere was covered, studying the fixing of the joints and trying to make out some text written in bright neon tubes, pressing his head ever closer to the pictures, straining his eyes, concentrating ever more intensely on them, until, it seemed, he had solved something and was in any case finding it easier to make out details that showed a completely empty space surrounded by white walls, and inside it a remarkably light-looking, delicate contraption, a bubble of air, possibly a dwelling of some sort, he said to himself as he moved from one image on to the next, a version of a prehistoric structure, the man later explained to him, yes, a dwelling, the skeleton made of aluminum tubes filled in with broken, irregular panes of glass, something like an igloo; and where was it? asked Korin, the man replying that it was in Schafhausen, and where was Schafhausen? in Switzerland, came the answer, near Zürich, at the point where the Rhine divides the Jura mountains, and is that far? asked Korin, is it far, this Schaffhausen, and if so, how far?

He had called the taxi for two o’clock and the taxi arrived right on the dot so he advised Korin to go now but first he checked the overcoat, regretting the fact that it was still a little damp, and looked in the pockets to see that the passport and ticket were there before giving him some final advice on how to get around JFK, then they were both on their way down to the ground floor, both silent, and so they left the house, the man embracing him before ushering him into the taxi which set off for Brooklyn and the expressway, leaving the man standing in front of the house to raise his hand and wave uncertainly for a while, though Korin was unaware of him for he never turned his head, not even to look through the side windows but sat quite bent over in the back seat, his eyes staring at the road over the driver’s shoulder, it being transparently clear that he was not in the least interested in the view but only in what lay ahead, meaning in what lay ahead over the driver’s shoulder.