A Void (25 page)

his inamorata, first saying, though, with an intimidating frown:

"God willing, it may not occur, but if a baby
is
born to us, a

fruit of our loins, a product of our passion, you must call it

Albin," adding, "for, if not, I, Albin Mavrokhordatos, last of my

clan, will pass away — and my Damnation will pass away too!"

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15

In which you will know what Vladimir Ilich

thought of Hollywood

So Albin took off, and would find out, from a postcard arriving

at his fjord, that Anastasia had got as far as Cattaro in Italy,

instandy making contact with an ambassador from Washington.

But, having caught 'flu during what was by all accounts a long and

arduous trip, our star's right lung was now ailing from catarrhal

inflammation.

On studying a thick batch of X-rays, a local consultant finally

said that Anastasia would pull through only by giving up film-

making for good and all. In truth, notwithstanding "Actors

Studio" histrionics and faindy Stanislavskian tics, it was now

common gossip in Hollywood that Anastasia probably hadn't

much affinity with sound-film acting. (All of this was occurring

round about 1928 and it took a solitary film, an "all talking, all

singing, all dancing" musical with A1 Jolson, for Fox, MGM,

Columbia and Anastasia's own studio, Paramount, instantly to

opt for this most radical transformation in film history.)

Thus Anastasia, a vamp who had got Farouk to slim down

and Baudouin to plump up, a vamp who had had Taft sighing,

Wilson crying and Ramsay MacDonald lying, a vamp for

whom Winston Churchill had bought a gigantic box of Havana

cigars and of whom, in a radio broadcast from Moscow, Vladimir

Ilich Ulianov had said no opium was as fatally noxious, brought

to its abrupt conclusion a filmography so uniformly brilliant, so

fantastically lustrous, it was absurd that it should finish in this

way. Six Oscars! Four
Lions d'or\
Ah,
sic transit Gloria Mundil

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It was a traumatic shock for thousands of film buffs. A fan

club in Iron Mountain, in Wisconsin, not far from Michigan,

took poison to a man, a young Kabuki actor in Tokyo would

commit ritual hara-kiri in Anastasia's honour and a Jamaican

sailor took it into his mind to jump off Radio City Music Hall,

in midtown Manhattan.

Anastasia was to languish for six months in a sanatorium in

Davos. Rumour has it that Thomas Mann, catching sight of this

still ravishing wraith of a woman strolling about its grounds,

said, "If only I'd known Anastasia whilst writing
my Magic Moun-

tain . . .
What a companion for Hans Castorp! How pallid Claw-

dia Chauchat is by comparison!"

Finally Anastasia would go into labour but, by now fatally ill

with TB, would pass away in childbirth, saying, in a last painful

gasp, "You must call my baby Olga . . . Olga Mavrokhordatos

. . . To Olga I assign a substantial patrimony . . . all of what I

own, but for a donation of fifty thousand dollars to this

sanatorium and its administration . . . And you, for your part,

must contract to bring up my only child until . . . until its

majority . . ."

Thus Olga would grow up in Davos, knowing nothing of

Albin, in a chic sanatorium with only counts and viscounts, maha-

rajahs and maharanis, lordships and ladyships, for company . . .

Anton Vowl cut in. "But what about Albin?"

"It was in 1931 that Albin found out that Olga was living at

Davos; and, avid to contact this unknown offspring of his, took

off in a flash, forcing Othon Lippmann, who was now his right-

hand man, to follow him. Though it had to zigzag through lots

of mountainous twists and turns, Albin had his Bugatti bowling

along flat out, full blast. . . but actually didn't turn up at Davos."

"Why not?" said a dumbstruck Anton.

"I was told by Othon that, at about two-thirds of his way to

Davos, not far from Innsbruck, Albin, virtually abandoning him,

told him to stay put in his Bugatti, informing him of his own

obligation to call on a man in that vicinity. Spying on Albin,

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watching him go into a vacant-looking hangar, Othon hung

about all day and, that night, paid a visit to it in his turn . . .

and found nobody in it but Albin, who was lying, all but bathing,

in his own blood, now fit only as food for worms."

"Ho hum," said Anton with a sardonic grin. "A bit of a tall

story, if you want my opinion."

"That's just what I said. In fact, I'd put my bottom dollar on

it that it was Othon who'd slain him for his loot."

"But did Othon go on to Davos to join up with Olga?"

"Natch. And no doubt with a kidnapping job bubbling in his

mind. A kidnapping from a sanatorium — that was typical of such

a villain! Othon did in fact talk to its administration, but had no

luck with Olga. In fact, a strong hint was thrown out that his

'rights' in this affair had no basis in Swiss law and that any

insisting or importuning on his part would land him in jail -

without passing Go, as
Monopoly
would put it."

"And so," said Vowl, summing up, "Olga still didn't know

what this 'Mavrokhordatos affair' was all about?"

A sigh from Augustus.

"That's right. What's important to grasp, though, is that

nobody at all was conscious that a form of Damnation was cling-

ing to that family and always would do. Olga was to grow up

without having an inkling of what an infamous and horrifying

jinx it was."

On Othon finally giving up his own malignant ghost (and natur-

ally told by him of this ghastly Law that clung to our family and

sworn at by him for unwittingly allowing my Zahir to vanish),

I would go to Davos in my turn, on four occasions, hoping to

do away with Olga by my own hand, as an act of human charity.

But, by now, Olga was too old to go on living in a sanatorium.

An informant told of a woman conforming to Olga's physiog-

nomy living in Locarno. I took a train to Locarno. A phony

alarm! I was told, again, that Olga had flown off to London to

buy a flat in Mayfair. So I instantly got going, my train arriving

172

at Victoria Station just as Olga's was pulling out, bound for

Frankfurt. I rang up a diplomat in Frankfurt to whom I was

known, asking him to shadow Olga until my arrival. But, ironic-

ally, my diplomat pal, an idiot whom I had thrown out of his

job as quickly as you could say 'Jack Robinson', saw fit to stamp

Olga's passport with a visa for Stockholm, in which city, worn

out, I simply quit looking.

"And that," said Augustus in conclusion, "is why I said Haig

hadn't got it. My poor son thought, with all his oaths and insults,

to damn his papa. But, in wishing to marry Olga, it's actually

Haig who's going towards that Damnation, not I, it's Haig who's

sinking fast into that machination that is afoot all around us!

Now, his first night is on . . . ?"

"Monday," said Anton Vowl, consulting an almanac.

"Four days . . ." said Augustus doubtfully. "Still, I think my

Hispano-Suiza is up to it. But only by starting now, this instant.

To Urbino! You and I must draw my son back from that void

that's yawning insidiously on his horizon! So hurry up! Put a

sock in it! Chop chop!
AndiamoV

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15

For which many will no doubt claim that it adds much

that is crucial to our story

"All right, all right," said Anton with conviction. "You and I will

go to Urbino, driving all day and all night, you driving whilst I

catch forty winks, and so on. But I think it important to put our

trip off for a day or so, till tomorrow morning, say, for our first

priority is to find out what Douglas was clumsily trying to say

by 'a blank inscription on a billiard board'."

"But why, for crying out loud? What has my billiard board

got to do with all of this?" said Augustus, who was itching to

start off.

"It was, was it not, in your billiard room that that Damnation

now stalking your son was born. And a crucial point subsists in

this affair, a point on which, to this day, nobody has any infor-

mation. You know that Douglas took your Zahir, right?"

"Right."

"What you don't know is what Douglas did with it!"

"But you . . . that inscription .. ." said Augustus, blanching.

"You may think I'm crazy, but that inscription will finally

inform us - such, I should add, is my wish, not a fact - why

such a Damnation clings to your Zahir."

"But who's going to work it all out?"

"I am!" said Vowl triumphantly. "Long ago I got Douglas to

draw a rough diagram and I'd study it for hours and hours at a

sitting, only stopping to consult with a famous cryptologist in

Paris. Today, if I can hardly claim to know what it's all about,

I'm willing to say that I harbour a suspicion or two that ought

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to furnish us with a solution, total or partial - or, at worst, iron

out most of its complications.''

"Okay, you win."

So, grudgingly going along with him, Augustus took Vowl

into his billiard room.

Approaching Augustus's billiard board, running his hand along

its inscription and applying a magnifying glass to it, Vowl took

stock of its rash of curious whitish dots.

"Aha," said Vowl at last in a murmur, "I was right. It's a

Katoun."

"A Katoun?"

"Katoun, or Katun - a noun indicating a scrap of graffiti

common to various Mayan civilisations, principally that in Yuca-

tan. It's a fairly basic
modus significandi
, particularly practical in

transcribing sayings, myths, almanacs, liturgical writings and

inscriptions found on tombs or on triumphal archways.

"It consists mostly of odd bits of information (invariably

spanning a rigorous chronology of thirty springs), information

about months, lunar months, canicular days, royal birthdays,

migrations, cardinal points and so on. On occasion, though,

you'll find, not a book, but, say, a tiny chunk of narration surpass-

ing its strict transitivity and actually aspiring to what you and I

might think of as an artistic quality . . ."

"So, knowing that it's a Katoun, you can automatically work

out its signification?" said Augustus, who was dying to find a

solution.

"Good Lord, no," said Vowl, smiling, "our work is cut out for

us - till tomorrow morning, anyhow." (It was now approaching

midnight.) "Its signification will only show up -
if it shows up at

all -
as soon as I can fathom by what path of action, by what

cryptological algorithm, I can transform it from a subscript

(which is to say, this inscription as it now stands) via a transcript

into a final translation.

"But what I must first try to grasp is what kind of axiomatis-

ation such a transcription is bound up in. For, you know," said

175

Vowl, smoothly going on, "most of its complications will spring

from this plain fact: that you and I cannot, obligatorily, work it

all out. Today, at most, I can grasp, oh, about a fifth of it - and,

by dawn tomorrow, you'll know, giving or taking a word, only

as much as a third."

"All right, but do you think, notwithstanding so major an

unknown factor, that you can unlock what signal it holds for

us?"

"Why not? Cryptology is not a myth. It's not a form of witch-

craft. Think of Champollion or of Laranda, Arago, Alcala, Riga,

Riccoboni, von Schonthan and Wright. In truth, a signification

will show up, but, I must say to you, distandy, in a slighdy cloudy

futurity, in a slightly vacillating cloud. I'll grasp it by association.

"Actually, I would count on a trio of distinct strata of clarifi-

cations:

"First, you and I look at it casually and think of it as just

confusing poppycock, foolish mumbo jumbo - noticing, though,

that, as a signal, it's obviously not random or chaotic, that it's

an affirmation of sorts, a product of a codifying authority, submit-

ting to a public that's willing to admit it. It's a social tool assuring

communication, promulgating it without any violation, accord-

ing it its canon, its law, its rights.

"Who knows what it is? A bylaw? A Koran? A court summons?

A bailiffs logbook? A contract for purchasing land? An invitation

to a birthday party? A poll tax form? A work of fiction? A crucial

fact is that, my work advancing, what I'll find rising in priority

isn't its initial point of application but its ongoing articulation

for, if you think of it, communication (I might almost say 'com-

munion') is ubiquitous, a signal coursing from this individual to

that, from so-and-so to such-and-such, a two-way traffic in an

idiom of transitivity or narrativity, fiction or imagination, affabul-

ation or approbation, saga or song.

"Thus, first of all, is Logos and its primacy, that talking 'it' of

our inscription: putting it baldly, you and I know that it's talking

to us but still don't know what it's saying. Now, assuming that