War & War (23 page)

8.

They were passing through a chestnut grove that filled the air with a fresh and delicate fragrance so for a while, said Korin, there was silence in the carriage, and when they started up their
conversation
again it turned to the subjects of beauty and intelligence, that is to say the beauty and intelligence of Venice of course, for Kasser, noting that Mastemann remained distant and silent but was undoubtedly paying attention, attempted to show that never before in the history of civilization had beauty and intelligence been so aptly conjoined as in Venice, and that this led him to conclude that the matchless beauty that was Venice must have been founded on purity and luminosity, on the light of intelligence, and that this combination was to be found only in Venice, for in all other significant cities beauty was inevitably a product of confusion and accident, of blind chance and overweening intellect engaged in senseless juxtaposition, while in Venice beauty was the very bride of intelligence, and this intelligence was the city’s cornerstone, founded as it was, in the strictest sense, on clarity and luminosity, the choices it had made having been luminously clear resulting in the greatest of earthly challenges finding their perfectly appropriate solutions; for, said Kasser, turning to the rest of the company while being fully aware of Mastemann’s wakeful presence, they had only to consider how the whole thing began with those interminable assaults, the constant danger, or
continuous danger
as Korin put it, which had forced the Venetians of those days to move into the lagoon, and how that, incredibly, had been entirely the right decision, the first in a series of ever more correct decisions which made the city—every part of which had been constructed out of necessity and intelligence—said Falke, a construction more extraordinary, more dreamlike, more
magical
than anything mankind had hitherto produced, one that because of these incredible yet luminous decisions had proved itself to be indestructible, unvanquishable and utterly resistant to annihilation by human hands—and not only that but that this supremely beautiful city, Falke raised his head slightly, this unforgettable empire, he said, of marble and mildew, of magnificence and mold, of purple and gold with its dusk like lead, this sum of perfections built on intelligence, was at the same time wholly impotent and functionless,
absurd and useless
, an intangible, static luxury, a work of inimitable, wholly captivating and unrivalled imagination, an act of unworldly daring, a world of pure impenetrable code, pure gravity and sensibility, pure coquettishness and evanescence, the symbol of a dangerous game, and at the same time an overflowing storehouse of the memory of death, memory ranging from mild clouds of melancholy through to howling terror—but at this point, said Korin, he was incapable of continuing, simply unable to conjure up or follow the spirit and letter of the manuscript, so the only practical solution would be, exceptionally, to go and get it and read the entire chapter word for word, for his own vocabulary was wholly insufficient to the task, the chaotic mess of his diction and syntax being not only inadequate but likely to destroy the effect of the whole, so he wouldn’t even try, but would simply ask the young lady to imagine what it must have been like when Kasser and Falke, traveling in Mastemann’s carriage, talked of dawn about the Bacino S. Marco, or the brand-new elevation of the Ca’ d’Oro, since, naturally enough, they talked of such things, and the talk was at such a transcendently high level it made it seem they were rushing ever faster through the fresh and fragrant grove of budding chestnut trees, and only Mastemann was proof against such transcendence, for Mastemann looked as if it was of no account to him who asked what and who answered, he being concerned only with the motion of the carriage down the highway, with its swaying, and how that swaying soothed a tired traveler such as himself, as he sat in his velvet seat.

9.

Korin spent the night almost entirely awake, and didn’t even undress until about two or half past two, but paced up and down between the door and the table before undressing and lying down, and was quite unable to sleep even then but kept tossing and turning, stretching his limbs, throwing off the covers because he was too hot then pulling them back on again because he was cold, and eventually was reduced to listening to the hum of the radiator and examining the cracks on the ceiling till dawn, so when he entered the kitchen the next morning it was plain he hadn’t slept all night, his eyes were bloodshot, his hair stuck out in all directions, his shirt wasn’t properly tucked into his pants and, contrary to custom, he did not sit down at the table but, hesitantly, went over to the burner, stopping once or twice along on the way, and stood directly behind the woman, for he had long wanted to tell her this, he said, covered in embarrassment, for a very long time now he had wanted to discuss it but somehow there was never the opportunity, for while his own life was, naturally, an open book and he himself had said everything that could possibly be said about it, so it can be no secret from the young lady what he was doing in

America, what his task was, why and, should he succeed in accomplishing it, what the result of that would be, and all this he had revealed and repeated many times, there was one thing he had never mentioned and that was what they, and particularly the young lady, meant to him personally, in other words he just wanted to say that as far as he was concerned this apartment and its occupants, and particularly the young lady, represented his one contact with the living, that is to say that Mr. Sárváry and the young lady were the last two people in his life, and she was not to be cross with him for speaking in such an excitable and confused fashion, for it was only in such turgid manner that he succeeded in expressing himself at all, but what could he do, it was only like this that he could convey how important they were to him, and how important was anything that happened to them, and if the young lady were a little sad then he, Korin, could fully understand why that might be and he would find it painful and would deeply regret it if the people around him should appear sad and this was all he wanted to say, that’s all, he quietly added then stopped speaking altogether and just stood behind her, but because she glanced back at him for a moment at the end and, in her own peculiar Hungarian accent said simply
értek
, I understand you, he immediately turned his head away as if feeling that the person he had been addressing could no longer bear his proximity, and stepped away to sit down at the table and tried to forget the decided confusion he had caused by returning to the usual subject of his conversation, that is to say the carriage and how as it was nearing the outskirts of Padua, all the talk was of names, a range of names and guesses as to who would be the new Doge, who would be elected, in other words, following the death of Tommaso Mocenigo, who would rule in his place, whether it would be Francesco Barbaro, Antonio Contarini, Marino Cavallo, or perhaps Pietro Loredan or Mocenigo’s younger brother, Leonardo Mocenigo, which was not unimaginable according to Toót, though Bengazza added that any of these were possible, Falke nodding in agreement that it was all possible, with one exception, a certain Francesco Foscari, who would not be elected for he was in favor of the alliance with Milan and therefore, problematically, of war and Kasser, glancing at Mastemann, agreed it might be anyone but him, the immensely wealthy procurator of San Marco, the one man against whom Tommaso Mocenigo, in that memorable speech, had warned, indeed successfully warned, the republic, for the forty-strong election committee had immediately responded to the power of Mocenigo’s argument and demonstrated their own wisdom, by giving this Foscari fellow just three votes in the first round, and he would no doubt receive two in the next and then would shrink to one, and while they could not be certain of this, Kasser explained to Mastemann, for they had received no fresh news since the first round of the elections, they felt sure that a successor would already have been chosen from among Barbaro, Contarini, Cavallo, Loredan or Leonardo Mocenigo, or at any rate that the successor’s name would not be Francesco Foscari, and since two weeks had elapsed since the first round people in Padua would probably know the result already, said Kasser, but Mastemann continued to refrain from comment and it was evident by now that it was not because he was asleep for his eyes were open, if only narrowly, said Korin, so it was likely that he wasn’t sleeping, and he maintained this attitude to the extent that no one felt bold enough to persist with the conversation, so they soon fell silent and it was in silence they crossed the border of Padua, such silence that none of them dared break it, it being completely dark outside in the valley for a good while now, one or two fawns scattering before the carriage as they reached the city gates where the guards raised their torches so they could see the occupants of the seats and explained to the driver where their intended accommodation was to be found before stepping back and snapping to attention, allowing them to continue on their way into Padua, and so there they were, Korin summed up for the woman, late in the evening in the courtyard of an inn, the landlord and his staff running out to receive them, with dogs yapping at their heels and the horses swaying with exhaustion, a little before midnight on the April 28, 1423.

10.

The gentlemen would, he felt sure, forgive him this late and somewhat lengthy statement, said Mastemann’s driver at the crack of dawn next day when having woken the staff he sounded his horn to gather the passengers together at one of the tables at the inn, but if something could serve to make his master’s journey unbearable, that is beside the terrible quality of the Venetian roads which made his master feel as though his kidneys were being shaken out of his body, as though his bones were being cracked, his head split wide open and his circulation so poor that he feared to lose both his legs, that is on top of the tribulations already mentioned, it was the impossibility of talking, socializing, indeed of merely existing, so it was unusual for his master to commit himself in this way, and he had undertaken the exercise only because he felt it his duty to do so, said the driver, on account of the news, the good news he should emphasize, of which he had been instructed to speak this dawn, for what had happened, he said, drawing a piece of paper from an inner pocket, was that having arrived last night, Signor Mastemann—and they might not be aware of this—did not ask for a bed to be prepared for him, but ordered a comfortable armchair complete with blankets to be set opposite an open window with a footstool, for it was well known that when he was utterly exhausted and could not bear even to think of bed, it was only like this that he could get any rest at all, and so it was that once the servants found such an armchair for him, Signor Mastemann was escorted to his room, undertook certain elementary ablutions, consumed a meal, and immediately occupied it, then after three hours or so of light sleep, that is to say about four o’clock or so, woke and called him in, him alone, his driver, who by his master’s grace was literate and could write, and honored him by effectively raising him to the rank of secretary, dictating a whole page of notes that amounted to a message, a message whose written contents, the driver explained, he had this dawn to pass on in its entirety and what was more in a manner that was clear and capable of withstanding any enquiry, so that he should be prepared to answer any questions they might have, and this was precisely what he would now like to do, to carry out his orders to a T by attending to them in full, and therefore he requested them, if they found any expression, any word, any idea less than clear the first time round, that they should say so immediately and ask him for elucidation, and having said all this by way of preamble, the driver extended the piece of paper toward them in a general kind of way so that no one actually attempted to take it from him at first, and only once he had offered it more directly to Kasser, who did not take it from him, did Bengazza accept it, seek out its beginning and start to read the single side of text that had been inscribed in the driver’s finest hand, then having done so he passed the sheet on to Falke who also read it, and so the message circulated among them until it was returned to Bengazza once more, at which point they fell very silent and could only gradually bring themselves to ask any questions at all, for there was no point in asking questions, nor was there any point in the driver answering them, however patiently and conscientiously, for any answer would have failed entirely to touch on the meaning of the letter, if letter—
letter
—it might be called, added Korin to the woman, since the whole thing really consisted of thirteen apparently unconnected statements, some longer, some shorter and that was all: things like DO NOT FEAR FOSCARI and when they enquired after its significance the driver merely told them that as concerned this part of the message Signor Mastemann had merely instructed him as to the correct stressing of the words, telling him that the word FEAR was the one to be most heavily stressed, as indeed he had just done, and that was all the explanation they received, further probing of the driver being useless, as was the case with another statement, THE SPIRIT OF HUMANITY IS THE SPIRIT OF WAR, for here the driver started a recitation in praise of war, about the glory of war, saying that men were ennobled by great deeds, that they longed for glory but that the true condition required for glory was not simply a capacity to undertake glorious deeds but the glorious deed itself, a deed that might be attempted, planned and carried out only under circumstances of great personal danger, and furthermore, the driver continued, clearly not in his own words, a person’s life was in continuous and extended peril only under the conditions of war, and Kasser stared at the driver in astonishment, at an utter loss, then glanced across at his companions who were just as astonished and at an equal loss, before running his eyes over the third statement saying VICTORY IS TRUTH, asking the driver if he had something to add to this subject too, the driver then replying that the election committee, as far as Signor Mastemann was aware, had sat in the election chamber for ten days in the course of which they had come to the conclusion that Cavallo was too old and incapable, that Barbaro was too crippled and vain, that Contarini was dangerous as he had autocratic tendencies, and that Loredan was required to be at the head of a fleet, not at the Palazzo Ducale, in other words that there was only one candidate worth discussing, the one man able to help Venice maintain her honor, the one man capable of victory, the one man chosen by twenty-six clear votes after ten days of debate to be the Doge of Venice, and that man, naturally, was the great Foscari, in response to which Kasser could only repeat the name: Foscari? are you sure? and the driver nodded and pointed to the bottom of the sheet where it was stated, and twice underlined, that Francesco Foscari, the noble procurator of San Marco, had been elected by twenty-six clear votes.