A Void (34 page)

aquarium and, profiting from its lazily dozing in its bath, ram-

ming in his fatal suppository and accompanying it with a fulmi-

cotton priming cap which, on contact, would spark it all off.

His plot striking him as virtually airtight, and having nothing

to do but hang around until nightfall, Maximin had a drink in a

squalid pub not far from Sabin's mansion, hoping to sing, within

four hours or so, a triumphant Hosanna.

Nor was our Maximin wrong. At 11.35 a young groom, that

with whom Sabin had struck his bargain, did in fact turn up,

drawing a bulky caravan in which, smiling as amiably as a cow

watching a train go past, Rudolf was snoozing.

At 11.52 Ankara was abruptly lit up with a blinding flash, with

a loud bang rattling its roofs and blowing out its windows,

and a smoky, stifling, malodorous fug drifting about until

morning.

And at 12.23, knowing now that his atrocity had no survivors,

a radiandy victorious Maximin would swan into a chic local night-

club, although normally tight with his cash (but such a trium-

phant
coup
did in his opinion warrant a blowout), and drink two

gigantic magnums of Cramant
brut,
jovially clinking his glass,

toasting his companions and standing drinks all night long.

So, against fantastic odds, Maximin had at last brought it off.

But alas, his Magnificat, his Hosanna, was sung too soon. Within

just six days a half-cousin of his, suspicious of his abrupt pro-

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motion to firstborn status, would bump him off in his turn!

From that point on, killing was virtually a norm, killing turn and

turn about: if our family had a law ruling its conduct, it was

an uncompromising, proto-Darwinian law of survival. A young

accountant, who was handling its capital, soon lost his sanity

trying to control its multifarious ramifications. In just thirty-six

months, rights to that capital would fan out to as many as thirty-

two claimants, all of whom, without fail, would succumb to a

fratricidal blow.

It was finally obvious that, with mutual killings continuing in

such a ridiculous fashion, no family could last for long without

at last dying out. It was painfully obvious, too, that only a third

of our family at most was still intact. Panic stations! And, slowly,

an artificial kind of harmony was brought about, with siblings

and cousins and aunts all lining up to sign a pact — a shaky

coalition which, not surprisingly, would fall apart within a

month.

At which point, a law was laid down, imbuing this fratricidal

war with an almost ritual quality.

What this draconian law primarily did was disallow any man

from having two sons, so as to put no child at risk from his

bloodthirsty sib. It also sought to limit similar rivalry among

cousins, so that a day would dawn on which - by, as I say, a

Darwinian distribution, winnowing out all non-survivors at birth

- a solitary branch would grow from a strong family trunk.

To attain this ambitious goal, a trio of voluntary options was

put at our family's disposal:

a) that, on giving birth, a woman was automatically slain;

b) that, just as soon as his first son was born, a man automati-

cally had his balls cut off;

c) - and this option was most popular by far - that this man,

although raising his firstborn in normal conditions, would do

nothing to stop any following son from dying or would simply

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do away with him - notably, by abandoning him on a dunghill,

drowning him in his bath or dishing him up for lunch to a British

Lord, according to Jonathan Swift's famous Proposition, as a

juicy joint of roast lamb or wild boar.

It was a law that would unblock an awkward situation and it

was to last for six springs, during which transmission of our

family's capital was not, thank God, an occasion for bloody

squabbling.

Nobody now would kill just for fun; no patriarch would allow

his branch to cast too long and dark a shadow across his rival's

branch; a quorum was brought to pass that all found fairly satis-

factory. And so this outwardly inhuman status quo wasn't actually

as harsh as all that.

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23

In which an anxious sibling turns a hoard of cash found

in a drum to fairly satisfactory account

But (says Savorgnan, continuing) a horrifying bit of bad luck

was to occur to this unhappy family of ours.

Flying into Acapulco's Good Samaritan hospital, a malicious

stork brought our mama not just an infant but a trio of infants

in its bulging bill. Luckily (for, if not, it was curtains for both

of us), our papa who, according to that family law I told you

about, would normally watch his son's birth, had had, just that

morning, to go to Washington, for, as his work was importing

goods from abroad, a toy company in that city was proposing a

major contract involving his buying up, at a discount, a gigantic

stock of harmonicas that it was manufacturing and that his own

company could offload at a profit without any difficulty, particu-

larly in Ankara.

It was obvious to mama that, on signing his contract, papa

would instandy rush back down to Acapulco and, counting a trio

of sons, to two of which no man in his family had any right,

would do away with both of us.

In a spasm of instinctual passion, wishing to maintain our

survival at all costs, mama rang for a doctor and told him all

about our frightful situation. This doctor, a chivalrous and mag-

nanimous young man who was still in thrall to his Hippocratic

oath, couldn't turn his back on so poignant a supplication and,

laying our sibling in mama's loving arms, quickly took flight with

us to snatch us away from our doom.

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"And so," says Amaury, "if I follow you aright, my papa found

just an only child on arriving back in Acapulco?"

"That's right. By falsifying our forms and giving us both an

alias - profiting from a lucky opportunity involving a pair of

stillborn twins occupying for an hour or so a corridor adjoining

our incubation ward - nobody had to inform him of his two

missing sons."

"But, if papa didn't know us, why harass us, why attack our

sons?"

"About thirty springs ago poor mama caught a cold that was

going around
(staphylococcus viridans)
and was visibly about to

succumb. A Cardinal, in hospital for a minor malady, would

grant absolution and unction but only following admission of all

worldly sins. From such a man of God, such an august pastor,

mama could hold nothing back.

"Now this pompous Cardinal, who was a bit of a crook, practis-

ing simony, trafficking in dubious shards from Christ's Cross or

nails from his crucifixion, misappropriating church funds and

blackmailing its faithful, would instandy think of mama's infor-

mation as a kind of jackpot and start angling for bids. A distant

cousin of ours, a cousin who, as it turns out, was acting for our

family's Dauphin, got to know of this situation, accusing papa

of going back on his family's law by hiding us from its quorum

and, to punish him, killing his son, your sib, my sib!

"Alas, fanatically fond of this son, hoping to appoint him Dau-

phin and accusing us of conniving at his downfall (for, without

us, in his opinion, nobody had any motivation for doing away

with him), papa took his killing so badly that his family thought

his mind was starting to crack up.

"Papa took an oath to kill us, to track us down until our dying

day, and, first, to kill our sons - so that you and I would know

in our turn how tragic it was for a man not to bask in filial

adoration!"

"So papa did know us — did know our sons?"

"No. At first papa didn't know anything of us (in addition,

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you
had
no son, nor had I), but took off, notwithstanding, with

a solitary goal: to pick up our trail, to find out who had brought

us up, and in what country you and I had grown up."

His first port of call was Acapulco, from which city, tracking us

with a flair as cunning as that of a Huron or a Sioux, papa would

laboriously follow, all of 20 springs on, in our path.

From Acapulco, now, to Guadalajara, a populous town in

which I was taught my ABC and had my first communion along

with you. But that young doctor, our saviour, was soon on to

him, knowing, or probably just anticipating, his plan to follow

us. So, on our 10th birthday, you and I hastily quit Guadalajara

for Tiflis, Tiflis for Tobolsk, Tobolsk, finally, for Oslo. And it

was in Oslo that our doctor would pass away without first

informing us about that dark shadow that was cast across our

path.

Now, at that point, I was split up from you. A circuitous path

took you to a sanatorium in Uskub, from which you almost

instandy ran away; but, run down by a truck whilst darting in

and out of traffic on a busy highway, you totally forgot your

past.

For my part, I got to Hull, a British port in which I was

brought up by a drum-major, who, noting that I had a natural

gift for studying and a passion for books, paid for my tuition at

Oxford.

So it was that I lost contact with you. You didn't know any-

thing about my way of living, including my alias; nor did I know

anything about yours. But I did on occasion worry about you,

thinking with nostalgia of our common past.

And, as soon as I was 25, and had my MA, I took a post as

assistant in a Council for Propagating Low Latin, an organisation

that had its HQ in Sofia. As I had only six hours of tuition a

month, I had at my disposal a lot of days in which to find out

what I could about you, profiting from this handy fact - that,

by train, it was at most a day's outing from Sofia to Uskub.

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In its sanatorium, though, nobody had any information about

you. So I would go around Bulgaria, asking about you and carry-

ing in my bag a charcoal drawing that I'd got a local artist, a

skilful draughtsman if hardly a Goya, to do, following indications

from a sanatorium doctor — a striking mug-shot it was too,

though probably invalid, as it was so long ago that you'd run

away.

Showing this drawing to anybody who was willing to look at

it, to a farmhand, a sandwich boy, a fairground pitchman, a

compositor, an accountant and a cop, I occasionally had a hunch

of a forthcoming tip-off. But no, it was all to no avail.

Finally giving up my post as assistant, I quit Uskub without

having had an inkling of information about you, without having

had a hint of any kind.

But, moving at that point to Augsburg, a city in which I was

paid a fabulous commission by its local Josiah Macy Jr. Founda-

tion for my collaboration on Oskar Scharf-Hainisch von

Schlussnig-Figl's study of Bororo's total lack of guttural sounds

in its pronunciation - Bororo, a particularly rich and stimulating

Paranan patois in which, as in Bantu, most nouns finish in a

labial "//" - I would go to Uskub on a trio of occasions, from 6

March to 20 April, from 28 July to 1 August, and again in

mid-August, to carry on untiringly with my inquiry.

I had, at last, to draw this conclusion: I was 10, you too,

naturally, at our splitting up. Now, if I was taking pains to find

you again, I'd had no hint of you, for your part, trying to pick

up my trail. So what could justify such a disturbing fact? I had

to admit your vanishing act or, should I say, by postulating it

a priori
, to work out a motivation for it: (a) your dying as soon

as you ran away from your sanatorium; (b) a gypsy carrying you

off; (c) a brutal shock, an unknown trauma, fatally impairing

your sanity or your instinct or your wisdom, cutting you off from

all contact with a world of hard facts and truths!

Working my way through a mountain of inscriptions, imma-

triculation forms, almanacs, journals, logbooks and notarial

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scripts, going from administration to administration, visiting

stations and dockyards, harbours and airports, hospitals and

shops, I took thirty-six months all told to find out that, 18 springs

ago, a handful of local inhabitants had caught sight of a boy, a

youthful vagabond with a moronic look about him, roaming

through Mitrovitsa, a big industrial town not far from Uskub.

This youth didn't know any Bulgarian, had blood on his moc-

casins and was visibly starving.

I was instantly conscious, by both intuition and a kind of

irrational conviction, that this was my first truly significant tip.

I took a train to Mitrovitsa and a local man soon got in touch,

corroborating my story and smiling fondly at my drawing. Long,

long ago, taking pity on him, this man had found just such a lad,

making him his goatboy, giving him a roof, a room and food.

So, having had six springs of worrying about you in vain, of

not knowing who to turn to for information, I was at last starting