A Void (17 page)

tion of unfactitious wisdom, of not-so-vain rumours, a human

articulation at its most psychically profound point, as of a

particularly clairvoyant spiritualist, or a saint, or any man not as

moribund as most of mankind. This is what I think. Within a

Logos, in its marrow, so to say, lurks a domain that for us is

off-limits, a zonal injunction that nobody can broach and to

which no suspicion can attach: a Void, a Blank, a missing sign

prohibiting us on a daily basis from talking, from writing, from

using words with any thrust or point, mixing up our diction and

abolishing our capacity for rigorous vocal articulation in favour

of a gurgling mumbo jumbo. A Blank that, for good and all, will

dumbfound us if accosting a Sphinx, a Blank akin to that giant

Grampus sought for many a moon by Ahab, a Blank into which

all of us will go missing in our turn . . ."

Augustus sits down, with a downcast air about him, totally

worn out . . . His companions start ruminating on what was

said.

"Just what I was going to say," murmurs Amaury in con-

clusion, as though intimating that Augustus took such obvious

words out of his own mouth. "Anton Vowl is missing."

"Hassan Ibn Abbou is missing," says Savorgnan.

"Douglas Haig Clifford did his vanishing act all of 20 springs

ago, an ashy furrow dividing his body in two," says Augustus.

"Douglas had on a sculptor's mould," sobs Olga, "to sing

Mozart's Commandant in
Don Giovanni."

"Now now," says Savorgnan, "why so gloomy? Think of that

good old song by Francois Danican Philidor: 'All of us must act

in unison, notwithstanding our individual sorrows'. What all of

us must do right now is stop brooding about our missing com-

panions and try to grasp what's going on, so as to ward off any

damnation lying in wait for us, so as to rid us all of this frightful

albatross!"

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"How will that occur," sighs Olga, "with this conundrum

baffling us, making us all limp and shaky, in proportion to our

burrowing into it, burrowing down, down to its inmost marrow,

as Augustus put it? Why rush at full tilt towards your own annihil-

ation? Why actually court that ignominious oblivion that was

Anton's lot and Hassan's and Haig's?"

Unanimously finding fault with this outpouring, judging it

just too compliant and timorous, Amaury, Savorgnan and Squaw

try to shout poor Olga down.

But with it soon looking as though it might turn into a

full-blown row, Augustus holds up his hand and, in a flat, monot-

onous drawl that cannot mask his low spirits, says:

"Calm down, amigos, calm down. Do try to control your

sorrow, your anguish, your wrath and your misgivings. You

should try taking to its logical conclusion Arthur Wilburg

Savorgnan's proposition, for, as Malcolm Lowry was wont to

say, 'You cannot catch up with a man who outruns his rivals'."

Consulting his watch, Augustus adds, "Look, it's almost mid-

night, I'm hungry and thirsty. I submit calling it quits, if only

for an hour or so, and rustling up a snack worthy of gustatory

buds as fastidious and discriminating as ours."

"Yum yum," murmurs a gluttonous Savorgnan.

"Unzip a banana," quips a waggish Amaury.

"In fact, a collation awaits you all in our dining room," says

Squaw, whom nobody saw go.

Augustus lightly claps his hands in anticipation, whilst Olga,

with intrinsic,
natural
sophistication (if that is not an oxymoron),

insists on changing into a formal outfit.

As Olga's will is paramount, our protagonists rush off, arriving

back in a flash, glamorous in glad rags.

Olga (who was, as I say, practically born "in") is a dazzling

vision in a formal Christian Dior pyjama suit of a filmy rainbow

satin, with a billowy flow of charming Victorian knick-knacks,

ribbons and bows, frills and braids, hoods and cuffs, to cushion

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its diaphanous opacity. A chunky solid-gold Arab brooch,

portraying an asp, insinuatingly coils its capital S around a wrist

as slight and narrow as an orchid stalk.

Amaury foppishly sports a classic tail coat.

Savorgnan, a dandy, infallibly "with it", has put on a charcoal

tux, a saffron jabot and a fawn cravat. Amaury chirps at him in

grudging admiration.

"My tailor is rich," says Savorgnan in franglais, and with a

slighdy smug grin of satisfaction.

As for Augustus, who as a Consul was known for his ultra-

modish but unshowy chic, his outfit is of a sort which calls to

mind a British major informing Victoria of how wily Johnny

Pathan was drawn into an ambush at a mountain pass in colonial

India.

With "Ooohs" and "Ahhhs" and murmurs of mutual appro-

bation, Olga, Amaury and Savorgnan now walk arm in arm into

Augustus's dining room, which is laid out, thanks to Squaw, as

lavishly as though for a king and his court. A Louis X tallboy

prompts gasps of admiration all round, as also a Burgundy

bow-back chair with Hugo Sambin's stamp on it, a sofa of a

floral motif unmistakably by Ruhlmann and, most notably,

a divan with its own vast, airy canopy. Its attribution to Grinling

Gibbons was thought highly dubious, not to say downright

scandalous, by scholars and buffs, although it did carry his

hallmark.

"Did you know," says Augustus to Savorgnan, "that, sus-

picious of this attribution, and in my opinion righdy so,
Warburg

and Courtauld
would publish an important monograph of Gib-

bons by Gombrich that was also - though, naturally, only by

implication - a vicious attack on Panofsky?"

"You don't say?" snorts Savorgnan.

"Oh but I do! In fact, I don't mind adding that I actually

thought it would finish in a bout of fisticuffs. Gombrich, though,

who didn't want to fall out with his rival, would admit, in a

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tactful Parthian shot, to having found in his slanging match with

Panofsky six major points on which, in an adroit combination,

to ground his first draft of
Art and Illusion.''''

"Now it's that kind of information that will maintain your

divan's worth at any auction, Gibbons or not!"

On which prognosis all sit down.

It's no frugal cold-cut lunch that Augustus puts in front of his

trio of companions but a Lucullan orgy of gastronomic, gustatory

and, so to say, Augustatory glory. Its first dish is a
chaud-froid
of

ortolans
a la Souvaroff.
No fish, but an
homard au cumin
for which nothing short of a '28 Mouton-Rothschild is thought apt. To

follow, a roast gigot in onion gravy, its flavour subriy brought

out by a soup^on of basil; and, to accompany that, in conformity

with a tradition at La Maison Clifford (as Azincourt is jocularly

known among Augustus's visitors), a tasty if not too spicy curry.

And whilst this curry is still making its impact, a paprika salad is

brought in, brisding with scallions, cardoons and mushrooms,

zucchini and bamboo shoots. To fill that famous
trou normand,

a glass of calvados, naturally, of first-class quality; and, in fitting

conclusion, a scrumptious
parfait au cassis
with which is drunk a

fruity Sigalas-Rabaud of a sort to bring a sigh of swooning bliss

from Curnonsky.

Proposing a toast, Augustus puts into tripping, flowing words

his vow that "from all our communal labour a solution to this

conundrum that's still baffling us, a way out of this circuitous

labyrinth of which nobody among us has found a ground plan,

will, and in fact
must
, soon turn up."

Glass clinks against glass. Glass upon glass is drunk. Naturally,

it's all just what you might call
social
drinking: as soon as Augustus

says, "I'm going to top up my glass", Amaury says, "So
shall
I."

And Olga. And Savorgnan. And back to Augustus.

It's now long past midnight. Amaury, in a tipsily flirtatious

mood, starts kissing Olga's hand (which, if timid and shaking

slighdy, is not withdrawn from his lips, lips moist and crimson

from a fabulous Armagnac drunk out of a glass of a strikingly

115

rainbowy irisation) and mumbling soft amorous nothings of a

burbling baby-talk intimacy.

Night is slowly fading into dawn. Far off a cock crows. A

mound of Iranian caviar is brought in.

Languidly snuggling up against Amaury, Olga nods off. Augus-

tus, for his part, informs Savorgnan of his participation in a local

rowing championship. Rowing was a sport wholly unknown at

Azincourt, but Clifford sounds anxious to back it, founding an

official Club, actually going as far as making this Club a baptismal

gift of a skiff with which to start things moving, and togging out

a trio of young locals in dark bluish suits boasting coats-of-arms

according to a good old Oxford tradition (at which 'varsity, in his

youth, Augustus had won acclaim as a first-class cox).

It's almost morning as Amaury and his companions finally call

it a day.

Noon rings out. A wasp, making an ominous sound, a sound

akin to a klaxon or a tocsin, flits about. Augustus, who has had

a bad night, sits up blinking and purblind. Oh what was that

word (is his thought) that ran through my brain all night, that

idiotic word that, hard as I'd try to pin it down, was always just

an inch or two out of my grasp - fowl or foul or Vow or Voyal? -

a word which, by association, brought into play an incongruous

mass and magma of nouns, idioms, slogans and sayings, a confus-

ing, amorphous outpouring which I sought in vain to control or

turn off but which wound around my mind a whirlwind of a

cord, a whiplash of a cord, a cord that would split again and again,

would knit again and again, of words without communication or

any possibility of combination, words without pronunciation,

signification or transcription but out of which, notwithstanding,

was brought forth a flux, a continuous, compact and lucid flow:

an intuition, a vacillating frisson of illumination as if caught in

a flash of lightning or in a mist abruptly rising to unshroud an

obvious sign - but a sign, alas, that would last an instant only

to vanish for good.

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"How was it?" Augustus now murmurs calmly. "It was. Was

it? It was." It was a solution (or a pardon, or possibly just a form

of compassion) that was flittingly within his grasp but which no

word, no affirmation, of his could magnify into what is known,

simply, as wisdom.

At which point, although not knowing why so insignificant a

fact is having such an impact on him, it abruptly occurs to him

that Jonah, his carp, hasn't had its food - a trivial omission on

his part but also so haunting that, without waiting an instant,

Augustus puts his clothing on whilst mumbling an indistinct

incantation.

Nobody is stirring abroad. Augustus walks to a pantry cup-

board, picks up a handful of grain, of a kind that Jonah is particu-

larly partial to, and abruptly stops, having, in an unlit nook of

his drawing room, on top of an upright piano, caught sight of

that curious black clay box (black from a light coating of Indian

ink) on which, according to Savorgnan, Vowl had paid a first-

class artisan from Japan to paint a tanka. Drawn to it by an almost

morbid fascination, Augustus picks it up and holds it flat in

his hand, staring at Vowl's tanka, a pictographic symbol of an

incomparably finicky calligraphy, and tracing out with a long

almondy thumbnail its insinuatingly squiggly contours.

At which, and totally without warning, a horrifying, inhuman

cry is thrust out of him:

"Ai! Ai! A Zahir! Look, look, a Zahir!"

With his flailing hand caught in mid-air, Augustus falls down

in a fatal swoon.

As it turns out, his cry is so loud, shrill and blood-curdling that

all of his company start up, quickly slip on nightgowns and rush

downstairs, panicking and paling, aghast and cowardly, colliding

with a chair and spilling a goldfish bowl, groping for a doorknob

and finally locating a light switch - Amaury, as usual, arriving

first, with Olga, Savorgnan and Squaw in tow.

Augustus is lying on a giant octagonal rug with Russian motifs.

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A ghastly rictus contorts his lips. In its last, dying spasm, his

hand had split Vowl's clay box in half. Around his body is a

random sprinkling of grain.

"Why grain?" asks a dumbstruck Amaury.

"It was for his carp," says Olga, who knows all of Augustus's

funny habits and quirks.

"Uh huh," adds Squaw, "Jonah hasn't had any food for two

days. It was a daily obligation of ours that both of us had lost

track of, what with all that was going on."

"And my hunch is," says Olga thoughtfully, "that, whilst

choosing grain for his carp, Augustus was struck down by a

malady as abrupt as it was mortal, a trauma, a shock, a coronary

thrombosis - who can say?"

"All right," says Savorgnan, "but how do you link his attack

with this box that our poor host was crumpling in his hand