Laszlo Krasznahorkai - War & War

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.