Laszlo Krasznahorkai - War & War

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

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