War & War (25 page)

4.

Usually it took about ten minutes or so to warm himself with his own breath, to lock himself in, undo his buttons, sit down and then just breathe and keep breathing until he felt the room beginning to warm a little, taking up position at about five o’clock or quarter past five when he was sure not to be disturbed, for it was too early for the others and he could relax, and what was more, he added much later one evening, this was the only place he could relax, because he needed this half hour in the morning, this security and silence in the landing toilet, and he did in fact sit there about half an hour waiting for the urge, so he had time to gaze and stare, and did indeed take the opportunity for gazing and staring, this being a time before he could actually begin to think, the sort of time when a man sleepily gazes at things, when he truly soaks up everything that meets his gaze, the world before him, and, as they say, he said, even a crack in the wall or the door or the concrete floor becomes intimately familiar to him, so it was no wonder that one morning he noticed that near the top of the wall on his right, a wall that had been tiled from floor to ceiling, one of the tiles was not quite as it should be, that something about it was different from the day before or the day before that, though he didn’t notice that straightaway for while he was sitting with his trousers around his ankles, propping his head on his hands, he was looking down or ahead, at the bolt on the door, not up, and it was only after he had finished and pulled up his trousers that he happened to glance up and saw the change, which, he decided, consisted of the grouting around the tile having been removed, and it was so obvious that the grouting had gone that he couldn’t help seeing it immediately, so he put down the toilet seat and stood on it so he could reach the tile, tapped it and could hear that it was hollow behind, and by carefully pushing at one corner of it succeeded somehow in extracting the tile, behind which—there!—he could see a deeper space had been created and that the space had been filled with little plastic sachets, full, God forbid, of a white powder
much like flour
, not that he looked too closely or dared open one because he was a little frightened, his first reaction being that it was
bad things
in there, though to be perfectly honest, as he confessed later, he didn’t know what precisely bad things was, but he knew somehow, by some means, and it was somehow obvious that it was bad, and he didn’t even begin to guess who might have put it there, for it might have been anyone, and the most likely explanation was that was one of the lodgers in the apartment below, so he put the tile back, finished buttoning his trousers, flushed the toilet and quickly returned to his room.

5.

There is an intense relationship between proximate abjects, a much weaker one between objects further away, and as far as the really distant ones there is none at all, and that is the nature of God
, said Korin after a long period of meditation, but suddenly didn’t know whether he had said that aloud or only to himself and cleared his throat a few times, then instead of returning to his interrupted story said nothing for a while, hearing only the shuffling of the newspaper as the interpreter’s lover leafed through its pages.

6.

It was Kasser who suffered most from the cold, he said eventually, breaking his silence, from the moment they disembarked from the enormous
decareme
on the shores of the Tyne, received their horses, were joined by a body of armed escort that had been ordered for them, and set out on the road along the inner edge of the Vallum, and he was so cold that when they arrived at the first military post,
garrison
said Korin, he had to be lifted off his horse because he was so stiff, he said, that he could no longer feel his limbs or get them to execute his will, and was carried into the fort, sat in front of the fire and two gypsies were summoned to rub his back, his arms and his legs until they set off again, this time toward Condercum, moving on from there too in the same way, through several stops until, on the afternoon of the third day, they reached Corstopitum, that being their destination as well as their starting point according to the
Praetorius Fabrum
since they were bound to report some time soon on the condition of the Wall, which was why they made a tour of The Immortal Work of the Most Heavenly Caesar, after a good few days of rest of course which were necessary chiefly to allow the
vapors
of the brigantine medicinal herbs to take effect and cure Kasser’s aches and pains, a treatment he might have been glad of when they arrived at Calpe following the vicissitudes of the journey from Lisbon, which, once again, caused him the most suffering, and it was in fact the figure of Kasser, said Korin with a distant look, Kasser alone of the four of them, that underwent some subtle yet definite transformation,
mutation
, in the second half of the manuscript, his sensitivity or over-sensitivity, his vulnerability to injuries of various kinds, becoming ever more marked, a fact he mentioned now only because the attention of the others to Kasser became ever more intense, sometimes it being Bengazza, sometimes Toót asking him if “everything was all right” as they traveled on in the coach under the protection of the Prince of Medina, while at other times, at the Albergueria for instance, it was Toót who secretly tried to find some army surgeon, and succeeded in finding one in the “hope of alleviating the strange distress continually afflicting Señor Casser,” explained Korin, shaking his head, in other words, after the fourth chapter there was an imperceptibly increasing, concentration, a matter of delicate emphasis—or
nuance
, as Korin put it—on Kasser, and this constant concentration cast an anxious shadow even across the first hours of their arrival—for example when they found a space at a table on the crowded ground floor of the Albergueria, and everyone was keeping a wary eye on whether Kasser was eating the food put before him by the landlady, and later, after supper, when they were trying to guess whether he was listening at all to the conversation around him in which a mass of people, each in his own peculiar language, was analyzing the worrying and somewhat nightmarish state of affairs in the bay with its gently rocking but stranded vessels in the thick fog, the hopeless vacuum of the fatally becalmed sea, and, closer to the shores of Gibraltar, the melancholy shades of drifting schooners from Genoa and Venetian
galera da mercato
, the joints of whose masts gave an occasional muffled shriek as they shifted slightly in the deaf air.

7.

According to the
Mandatum
of the
Praetorius Fabrum
they were commanded to inspect the condition of the Glorious Work so as to be able to form an opinion of the value of all that had been done so far, to offer technical advice on the remarkably continuous development and maintenance of the wall, on the human and other resources required for this maintenance, and to form a management committee of
ingeniarii
with legally binding powers, able to make decisions regarding the organization of time and space, to be set up in Eburacum where the VI
Legio Victrix
was stationed, though in actual fact, Korin told the interpreter’s lover on the bed, they were being summoned and dispatched simply so they might admire and adore this unique structure, and so that they should declare their astonishment and rapture at the sight, the idea being that the aforesaid astonishment and rapture should strengthen the position of its creators, reassuring, above all, Aulus Platorius Nepost, the current
legatus of Britannia Romana
in distant Londinium, that the masterpiece constructed here was genuinely the most advanced, most glorious, most immortal work that could have been created; and it was clear from the chosen style of the
Mandatum
, from the ceremonial quality of its language, that this was what was expected of them, nor would they have happily undertaken the terrible overland journey and the even more terrible sea-crossing had they not been assured that the purpose of this great plan of the Most High Lord,
the Project
, was precisely to inspire such astonishment and rapture, and, it must be said, they were not disappointed, for Hadrian’s Wall, as the simple soldiers referred to it, really did astonish everyone, being greater and different from what they had expected on the basis of what they had heard of it in the form of news or gossip before their arrival, chiefly in its physical substance as it snaked over miles and miles of the bare spine of the Caledonian hills toward its western limit at Ituna aestuarium,
bewitching
the spectator, including the four of them who after recovering from the ardors of the journey, which in the case of Kasser meant covering himself with a selection of furs from pelt of bear, fox, deer and sheep, walked the line of the Vallum for several weeks, so, yes, they were observers, said Korin, not technical advisers, as described in the markedly official document relating to their mission, and observers too they remained as guests of the Albergueria inn nestling, hidden by the sea, at the foot of Gibraltar, in Calpe, where they were registered as emissaries,
vicariouses
, of the cartographic council of King John II, though in actual fact it was the bay itself they had come to watch from the upper-story windows, in which bay, according to Falke, they were obliged to pay their respects to the limits,
the border
, as Korin had it,
of the world
, and therefore also the limits of certainty, of verifiable propositions, of order and clarity, in other words the border between reality and uncertainty with all the compelling attraction of unverifiable propositions, full of the unquenchable desire for darkness, for impenetrable fogs, for incredible outlandish chances, confronting, in brief, that which lay behind the realm of whatever existed, at the point where the human world had drawn the line of demarcation, added Bengazza, joining the conversation on the second evening, beyond which there exists, as they say, nothing, where, as they say:
nothing can be
, he declared raising his voice, the raising of his voice betraying for the first time the true purpose of their arrival here,
the aim
, said Korin, that being to wait here for news of the Great Event, the term referring to something Kasser had mentioned back in Lisbon, and at this point, said Korin, the young lady should know that in this fifth chapter all Christendom, but particularly the kingdoms of John and Isabella, was in a fever of hitherto unknown excitement, as were Kasser, Bengazza, Falke and Toót who, as true disciples and servants of the much respected Prince of Medina-Sidonia, Don Enrique de Guzmán, as well as of the Mathematical Junta of the court of Lisbon, believed that the daring expedition, rejected by John but fervently supported by Isabella was of greater, indeed very much greater significance than anyone could imagine, far more than a simple adventure, for, Toót remarked on their way here, if Señor Colombo’s idiotic venture should achieve its aims, Gibraltar, and with Gibraltar the world, and with the world the notion of anything with limits, and with the end of limits the end of everything known, everything, but everything would come to a stop, declared Toót, for the hidden last term of the conceptual realm, the intellectual distinction set between that which exists and that which does not would vanish, he said, and so the definable and therefore correct, if immeasurable, fixed ratio between the divine and the mortal orders would be lost in the dangerous euphoria of discovery, in the hubris of the search for impossible things, in the loss of respect for a state of being that realizes errors and can therefore reject error, or to put it another way,
the fever of fate
was succeeded by
the intoxication of sobriety
, said Kasser, yes, if you looked at it like that, the place, Gibraltar, was of enormous importance, and he gazed through the window, saying, Calpe and the Heights of Abila, and the Gates of Heracles, whispering that places offering views of Nothing would henceforth be confronted by Something, then he fell quiet on this second evening, as did everyone else as they sat and gazed silently, a shadow slowly crossing their faces, and thought of all those ships becalmed, trapped in the bay by the much feared
calma chicha
, the bay down there in the fog, and the faint shrieks occasionally emitted by the masts of the ships drifting off shore.

8.

These two chapters, said Korin, with their increasing focus on Kasser, with their unrestricted use of the devices of repetition and intensification, these fourth and fifth chapters, should have quickly alerted the reader to the probable intentions of the writer and hence to the meaning of the manuscript at large, but he, in his dense, stupid, unhealthy way had managed to grasp nothing, but nothing of it in the last few days, and the mysterious, cloudy origins of the text, its powerful poetic energy, and the way it turned its back in the most decided manner on normal literary conventions governing such works, had deafened and blinded him, in fact as good as blasted him out of existence, like having a cannon fired at you, he said and shook his head, though the answer was right there in front of him all the time and he should have seen it, did in fact see it, and, furthermore, admired it, but had failed to understand it, failed to understand what he was looking at and admiring, meaning that the manuscript was interested in one thing only, and that was
reality examined to the point of madness
, and the experience of all those intense mad details, the
engraving
by sheer manic repetition of the matter into the imagination, was, and he meant this literally, Korin explained, as if the writer had written the text not with pen and words but with his nails, scratching the text into the paper and into the mind, all the details, repetitions and intensifications making the process of reading more difficult, while the details it gave, the lists it repeated and the material it intensified was etched into the
brain
forever, so that the effect of all those passages—the same sentences endlessly repeated but always with some modification, now with some filling out, now a little thinner, now simplified, now darker and denser, the technique itself delicate, light as a feather—said Korin, reflectively, the combined effect did not produce impatience, irritation or boredom in the reader but somehow immersed him, Korin continued, glancing at the ceiling, practically drowned him in the world of the text; but, well, we can say more about that later, he interrupted himself, because now we should continue with how the journey from Onnum to Maia and back got properly under way and how anyone who was not in their immediate proximity at their various stopping places or, in the evenings, at their various improvised shelters, might have thought that the journey from Onnum to Maia would be no different from the one from Maia to Onnum, with three
decurio
before them, four horsemen immediately behind, and the thirty-two soldiers of the
turma
or detachment on heavily armored horses at the back of the procession, though it wasn’t a straightforward progress, a matter of continually moving ahead, said Korin shaking his head, not a simple journey at all along the serpentine route of the enormous Vallum, nor was it the matter of a single unbroken conversation, of
talking
after dark as they rested at the warm outposts of Aesica, Magnis or Luguvalium, engaged in seamless never-ending reflection by the fire as they sat on their bearskin rugs, going over and over what they had seen that day, checking that the selection of stones was appropriate for carving, noting the unparalleled skill in accommodating to natural conditions, keeping an eye on the haulage, the marking, the laying of the foundations and the faultless planning of the construction itself and admiring the expertise and invention of the military engineers of the
II Legio Augusta
; the skill of the execution itself—
the art of implementation
, said Korin in English—being as nothing compared to the idea of the Vallum, that is to say the Vallum’s spiritual content, since its physical existence, said Bengazza, was the embodiment of the idea of a border and articulated with spellbinding clarity the distinction between all that was Empire and all that was not, a statement, said Falke, of simply staggering force, to show the two distinct realities the Vallum Hadrianum was there to divide, since at the bottom of all human intentionality, Toót took over, on the most fundamental level—
in the primary level of human
, said Korin—lay the longing for security, an unquenchable thirst for pleasure, a crying need for property and power and the desire to establish freedoms beyond nature; and man, he added, had gone a long way to achieving all this, the loveliest aspect of it being the ability to construct fastidious answers to insoluble problems, to propose the monumental in the face of the miscellaneous, to offer security in the face of defenselessness, to provide shelter against aggression, to develop refinement in the face of crudity and to seek absolute freedom in the face of constraint, in other words things to produce things of high order as opposed to those of a lower order, though you might put it as effectively, said Bengazza, to credit him with the creation of peace instead of war—
instead of war the peace
, in Korin’s words—for peace was the greatest, the highest, the supreme achievement of man, peace, the magnificent symbol of which, as of the divine Hadrianus and of the permanence of the entire Pax, was the Vallum that stretched for mile after mile beside them, which demonstrated how one great symbol, with all its deep inner significance, might become its own perfect antithesis, for that is what they were talking about there in Gibraltar, at the table in the Albergueria, in the course of those endless unfinished conversations, the most important of them concerning the unquenchable human desire for the taking of ever greater, ever newer risks, the desire for a supreme, unsurpassable and ever new kind of daring that extended the scope of personal courage and curiosity, as well as the human capacity for
understanding
as they called it in the feverish din of their morning and evening gatherings on the enormous ground floor of the Albergueria, in those long days of enforced inactivity in 1493, while waiting for the most decisive news in human history, the news whether Admiral Colombo had returned in triumph or vanished forever in the immeasurable dusk at the ends of the world.