Laszlo Krasznahorkai - War & War

He preferred Malaga wine, that heavy sweet Malaga, those first few evenings following his disembarkation, evenings he spent largely with Kasser’s companions, ordering one flask after another, filling glasses, drinking, then refilling, encouraging the others not to hold back but to go on, have a drink with him, all of them, then, surrounded by his band of lovelorn whores; he talked endlessly— talk and talk , said Korin — talked so that no one dared interrupt him because he was talking about Genoa and a power the like of which the world had never seen — Genoa, he said, as if merely to pronounce it was enough, and: Genoa again, after which he rolled off a list of names beginning with Ambrosio Boccanegra, Ugo Vento and Manuel Pessagno, but seeing that these meant nothing to his listeners, he leaned over to Bengazza and quietly asked him if perhaps the names of Bartolomeo, Daniel and Marco Lomellini had a familiar ring; but they didn’t for Bengazza, who shook his head— no, he said, said Korin — so Mastemann turned to Toót and asked him whether that phrase of Baltazár Suárez in which he says “these are people who consider the whole world not to be beyond their grasp” meant anything to him; but Toót answered in confusion that, no, it meant nothing, in answer to which Mastemann prodded him with his finger, saying that the perfection of the words, “the whole world,” told him not only that the world would indeed be theirs, and pretty soon, but that they stood at the threshold of a momentous event, the period of Genoa’s greatness, a greatness that would pass in the course of nature, naturally, though the spirit of Genoa would remain, and that even after Genoa was dead and gone its engine would continue to drive the world, and if they wanted to know what this Genoan engine consisted of, he asked them and raised his glass so that it caught the light, it was the power generated when the Nobili Vecchi , that is the world of the simple trader would be surpassed by the Nobili Novi , the trader dealing exclusively in cash, in other words by the genius of Genoa, boomed Mastemann, in which the asuento and the jura de resguardo , the exchanges and credits, the banknotes and the interest, in a word the borsa generale , the building up of the system, would produce an entirely new world where money and all that stems from it would no longer be dependent on an external reality, but on intellect alone, where the only people needing to deal with reality would be the unshod poor, and the victors of Genoa would receive nothing more nor less than the negoziazione dei cambi , and, in summing up, said Mastemann, his voice ringing, there would be a new world order, an order in which power was transformed into spirit, and where the banchieri di conto , the cambiatori and the heroldi , in other words roughly two hundred people in Lyon, Besançon or Piacenza would occasionally gather to demonstrate the fact that the world was theirs, that the money was theirs, whether it be lira, oncia, maravédi, ducats, reale or livre tournois , that these two hundred people constituted the unlimited power behind these things, just two hundred people, Mastemann dropped his voice and swirled the wine about in his glass, then raised it to the company and drained it to the last drop.

Two hundred? Kasser asked Mastemann on their last evening together, and with this the packing— the wrapping , said Korin — began, for there was a moment the previous night as they were going up the stairs and heading for their rooms when they looked at each other and without saying a word decided that this was the end, it was time to pack up, there was no point in waiting any longer, for should the News arrive, even if everything should turn out as Mastemann had predicted, they would not be affected by it— the news was not for them , as Korin put it — for though they believed Mastemann, and indeed it was impossible not to believe him, his words were as hammer blows to Kasser and over the course of several evenings they were increasingly convinced of the coming into being of this new world, a world born diseased; in other words they had already decided to leave and Kasser’s question, that Mastemann in any case had chosen to ignore, was only the mood music to all this, said Korin, so that when Kasser repeated the question — two hundred? — Mastemann once again pretended not to hear him though the others did and you could tell from their faces that the time had come, that once a wind sprang up there would be no point in prolonging their stay, and it didn’t matter from which of the hoped-for directions the News did arrive, whether from Palos or Santa Fé, or whether they first heard it from one of the people around Luis de Santangel, Juan Cabrera or Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, this new world would be more dreadful than the old— awful than the old , said Korin — and Mastemann kept repeating the same message, even on this, their last evening, about how the wine from La Rochelle, the slaves, the beaver-pelts and wax from Britannia, the Spanish salt, the lacquer, the saffron, the sugar from Ceuta, the tallow, the goatskin, the Neapolitan wool, the sponge from Djerba, the oil from Greece and the German timber, all these things would become merely theoretical items on paper, you understand? allusions and statements, and what mattered was what was written on the scartafaccio and in the ledgers of the great risconto markets, that is what they should pay heed to, for that was what reality would be, he said, and downed another glass of wine; then the next day a bunch of sailors from Languedoc arrived with stories that they had seen a few magogs coming down to the sea at Calpe, this being the first sign, soon to be followed by many others, such as the Andalusian pilgrims who turned up one day to report that an enormous albatross was flying low over the surface of the water, so that everyone should recognize that they were no longer becalmed, that the iron grip of the calma chicha was loosening, that the lull was over— the lull is over , said Korin — and within a few hours delighted servants entered the room where Kasser’s companions were lodged, and told the gentlemen who had been locked in there for days, that a wind had sprung up, that sails had been seen to tremble and that ships were moving, slowly at first then with ever greater speed, as the Cocca and frigates, the karaks and the galleons set off, so suddenly the Albergueria was a hive of activity, seeing which Kasser and his companions also made a start, their backs to Gibraltar, Ceuta before them, Ceuta where, in accordance with their earlier plans and with the preparation of a new navigational map, they should pick up a new commission from Bishop Ortiz, and in other words they knew what was to happen next, as they did at Corstopitum when they took their farewells before they crossed the channel, knowing what would await them on the beach at Normandy— what comes at the beach of Normandia , said Korin — and it was only Kasser who didn’t know whether he would reach the other side, the others having wrapped him in the warmest fleeces and led him to the dormitory of the carruca reserved for their special use by the cursus publicus , helping him up and settling him in, then getting on their horses and escorting him in the face of terrible winds, through thick fog that surrounded them at Condercum, past the wolves that attacked them at the bridgehead of the Pons Aelius, then boarding the extremely fragile-looking navis longa awaiting them in the Roman harbor to face the enormous waves of a tempestuous sea, moving into the daytime darkness and falling across the shore, the sun in hiding, said Korin, and no light at all, no light whatsoever.