A Void (26 page)

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it's a fictional work, or part of a fictional work, what I must look

for is a group of banal, common, familiar signs surrounding it,

by which I can start assuming, unambiguously, that a work of

fiction is in fact what it is: a handful of individuals in conflict, in

confrontation with a curious sort of fatality, imagining, right up

to its last paragraph, that this fatality is actually a fortuity, a

product of nothing but downright bad luck. An individual is

slain, now two, now four, and now all six, with a haunting strand

of plot working its way through a mosaic of motifs so confusing

that you and I can't possibly summon up a vision of its totality

from A to Z, its organic unity, so confusing that our wish to

find a significant sign in it is simply an illusion.

"But, gradually, with our starting to grasp that a law is structur-

ing its composition, this initial confusion of ours will turn to

admiration - admiration at how, with such a niggardly grammati-

cal, syntactical and punctuational construction, with a vocabulary

cut down to a minimum by so many constraints of scission,

omission and approximation, such an inscription can still contain

so much information.

"Dumbstruck by this amazing capacity that it has - whilst

outwardly avoiding a signification which it knows is taboo — to

affirm it anyway, articulating it by a cunning bias, shouting it out

as if from a rooftop, formulating it by association, by allusion, by

saturation - dumbstruck, as I say, you and I, although still not

totally grasping at this point what it's saying to us, can at last

boast of proving its validity as a signal, as a communication.

"From which point it's but a hop, skip and a jump to grasping

why so much was built on so rigorous a constraint, so tyrannical

a curb. It was born out of a mad and morbid whim: that of

wholly satisfying a fascination with linguistic gratuity, with pro-

scription and subtraction, that of avoiding any word striking its

author as too obvious, too arrogant or too common, of according

its
sijjnifiant
just a gap, a slit, a loop, so narrow, so slim and so

sharp, that you instantly grasp its justification.

"Thus, as though by transmuting a quality into its contrary,

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from omission is born affirmation, from constraint is born auton-

omy, from obscurity is born light!"

"I would applaud your diagnosis," said Augustus, "if I had any

faith in its conclusion. But now you must hurry. My watch is

ticking away, night is falling fast, and from Azincourt to Urbino

it's about 28 Indian kadams, which is to say, 8 nagis or 18

kuppodutur ams!"

"I know," Vowl said simply. "Don't worry, I'll go to it, plung-

ing up to my waist into all this murky arcana."

At first, though, Vowl said to yours truly, "Squaw, go into

Augustus's atrium. In my bag you'll find a stack of six books.

Bring it to us, will you, it's vital for our work."

So I did as I was told and brought Vowl back his stack of

books. It was an amazing anthology of all things Mayan: a

translation of Popol-Vuh by Villacorta-Rodas, R. P. Sahagun's

transcription, in its totality, of Machu-Pichu and, most particu-

larly, a trio of Chilam-Balam - Ixil, Oaxaca and Uaxactun.

Transcribing it took right until dawn. His armpits growing

moist and malodorous, Vowl soon had his cardigan off and was

busy working in his shirt, whilst, to cool him down, I'd bring

him, variously, a glass of Chardonnay, a tomato sandwich, a

cappuccino and a whisky-and-soda. I would pick my way through

a mass of rough drafts and scorings-out, which Vowl, chain-

smoking, sucking cigar upon cigar, coughing fit to bust his guts,

spitting up saliva and pulling his hair out, had thrown away in

dissatisfaction.

It was painfully slow going. Vowl would blow his top, coming

out with disgusting cuss-words, boiling, almost frothing, with

irritation at his own stupidity, gnashing his fangs in fury, turning

a bright crimson colour and on occasion murmuring a word so

inaudibly I just couldn't catch what it was, an odd sort of mantra

that was said again and again, monotonously. It was all a bit

alarming -
and
a load of codswallop, in my opinion.

But, finally, at cockcrow:

178

"Ouf!" said a hot and sticky Vowl, obviously worn out but

glowing with satisfaction and giving Augustus (who had to put

on a lorgnon to study it) a scrap of cardboard with 25 curious

graffiti on it, adding, "I thought for an instant I wasn't going to

crack it."

"What do you know," said Augustus cursorily glancing at it,

"it's just as baffling as it was to start with!"

"Oh, do calm down, will you," said Vowl. "You'll grasp it in

just an instant. Look, Katouns usually draw from a pool of six

local patois. In this particular inscription it's a Chiapas patois,

known as 'Lacandon', which, so tradition has it, was brought

into play mosdy in soothsaying Katouns. Its transcription is

known, but not its pronunciation, for, as a morphology fit only

for anticipation, divulgation or vaticination, it's invariably full of

ambiguous locutions and syntactical shortcuts of a kind that only

clairvoyants or shamans can unlock . . ."

Augustus anxiously cut in.

"But if that's . . . What will you . . . ?"

"I'm coming to that, Augustus, so just shut up, will you. I

know of a handful of ad hoc solutions that will assist us:

"Its complication arising principally from its 'a-vocal' quality

as a jargon (that's to say, it's a jargon with no history of vocalisa-

tion), and thus from an implicit contradiction with any notion

of pronunciation, by choosing, in imitation of that which I do

know:

Ba va sa ka ma sar pa ta par da

Bi vi si ki mi sir pi ti pir di

Bo vo so ko mo sor po to por do. . .

a matrix simulating transcription, I think that I can, by logic,

intuition or imagination, polish up my original rough

draft."

Vowl instandy got busy, chalking up his 25 signs on a black-

board and coming up with this:

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Ja Gra Va Sa La Da La Ma Tan

A Ma Va Jas 'A Ta Krat' Da

La Pa Sa Ya Ra Da Ra Cha

This didn't calm Augustus, who couldn't fathom a word of it

and who said in a fury, "For all I know, it's in Afrikaans or

Sanskrit. What I do know, though, is that it isn't in any way

stimulating my imagination!"

But, trying to mollify him, Vowl told him that his goal was

at last in sight and that by noon Augustus could count on having

a translation of his Katoun.

Chasing us both out of our own billiard room, Vowl also said

that nobody should disturb him now, at any cost, for four hours

or so. So, whilst Augustus got busy polishing his Hispano-Suiza,

oiling it, filling it up with gas, fixing it up for its forthcoming

dash down to Urbino, I was hard at work rusding up a filling

lunch for all of us.

And Anton Vowl was as good as his word, surfacing punctually

at midday and approaching Augustus with a scrap of cardboard

in his hand.

"You want to know what that blank signal on a billiard board

is all about? Voila."

"Oh, you talk us through it," said Augustus, subsiding into a

sort of ghastly languor. "I'm in a total funk about it all."

Thinking of that instant now, I call to mind a sky that was

luridly clouding up, a horizon that was almost totally in shadow,

a build-up of alarming nimbostratus, as if a storm was about to

burst, and a gust of wind abruptly rising, smashing a fanlight

window and causing us all to jump.

I think I said, if inaudibly, "Oh, God, I'm so afraid," and I

saw that Augustus was mumbling, stumbling, possibly praying.

At which point Augustus and I finally, and
in toto,
got to know

that inscription that was so damning to us. Vowl's articulation

was horribly icy and cutting, chopping up what was said into

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small hard chunks of information and talking so distinctly I

almost thought Vowl wasn't talking at all but spitting a host of

razor-sharp darts at poor Augustus - darts that would sting him

and prick him, drill him and nail him down, that, in short, would

crucify him.

It was all long, long ago, my hair is now gray and straggly,

but his words still haunt my soul:

I POLISH MY LAW ON A CLIFF,

IMPRINTING "AN I FOR AN I"

IN A ROCK'S TRITURATION

An instant - an instant as long as an infinity - was to pass.

Nobody said anything. A gigantic wasp was buzzing around that

scrap of cardboard that Vowl was brandishing.

"Now do you know what it's all about?" said Vowl softly.

"Actually," said Augustus just as softly, "what it calls to mind

is
Arthur Gordon Pym.
In particular, its closing paragraph."

"I must say I hadn't thought of it," said Vowl, "but I'd go

along with that."

"And my principal misgiving in this affair," Augustus would

go on, "is that this inscription, too, is bristling with bad luck."

"But can any of us do anything about it?"

"That's what I found so alarming. What I saw in this 'rock's

trituration' was a mould of stucco which, on Monday, my poor

son will wrap about his body. Thus will this Law of 'an I for an

I' kill him! Can't you grasp it - Haig is lost as soon as Karl Bohm,

his conductor, pours him into that monstrous dicky. That's why

you and I must fly to Urbino, arriving at its
palazzo
by Monday

night!"

So, with Vowl in tow, Augustus quickly got into his Hispano-

Suiza and took off in a flash.

Alas, as you know, notwithstanding Augustus's driving night and

day, without pausing for a snack, or a drink, or forty winks, his

throbbing brow practically stuck to his car's front window, such

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was his fixation on arriving in Urbino by dusk, it was all in

vain. Bad luck was to dog his path in a trio of small towns. At

Aillant-sur-Thonon six cogs would jam, blocking up a joint; at

Isonzo his dynamo would burn out, ruining an accumulation

circuit; and, to cap it all, at San Laranda, his ignition was to

grow so hot it would actually fall apart in his hands!

Arriving at Urbino's ducal
palazzo,
and told that Haig had put

on what you might call his iron, or stucco, lung, Augustus's plan

was to go to his son's changing room and instandy cut him out

of it; but a doorman wouldn't allow him in and sat him down

on a foldaway chair in a back row upstairs. (It was standing room

only.) Augustus had to stay put on that chair throughout
Don

Giovanni
, downcast, sobbing, oblivious of Mozart's ravishing

music.

Finally, a spotlight would focus on Haig, transforming him

into a pallid, marmorial monolith of light. Ah! but you all know

what was to occur at that fatal instant: Augustus's son would

stub his foot, trip up and fall. . . and his mould would split from

top to bottom . . .

"No!" Olga has coldly cut in. "A fact is missing from your

account, an important, a vital fact. You told us of Douglas's doom

just as Augustus told us of it on his arrival at Azincourt, whilst

transporting his son in a shroud.

"But, in informing you, Augustus was to omit a crucial point.

Was it from a lack of information? Or a psychological blackout?

Or did Augustus act unwittingly, assuming such a load of guilt

for his conduct as to wish to block it at all costs from his conscious

mind? I couldn't say. But Anton Vowl also saw Douglas's appar-

ition, Vowl saw it all and got it all!"

"But saw what. . . ? got what. . . ? if not that Haig lost his

footing, falling down as hard as a baobab cut in half?" asks

Squaw, who may truly want to know or is simply trying to show

Olga up.

Olga laughs harshly, unsmilingly. "Saw that Augustus, worn

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out by his long trip down through Italy, full of misgivings and

hardly in command of his own actions - Augustus, as I say,

watching Douglas, abruptly stood up, giving out such a loud,

fortissimo cry that it brought about his son's collision with a

column and his final fatal fall!"

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15

On running a risk by asking for a fish
farci

"My God!" Squaw shouts out, visibly aghast at such an accusation

and instandy going into attack against Olga.

"Who told you such a foul bit of dirt? It was a mishap, I know

it. Blood will out! It's natural that you, a Mavrokhordatos, should

spout such filth! Why, it was your papa who put a jinx on us all!

All of us, facing damnation from your family!"

"Oh, do stop your squawking, Squaw!" says Olga. "It's just

shock that's making you blurt out such stupid things."

But, stubbornly continuing, Squaw adds with a sly, shifty grin,

"So why was it Augustus who had to cry out? Who knows if

it wasn't you? That's right, how do I know - how do any

of us know - it wasn't your cry that was so loud and sharp

as to kill poor Haig? Couldn't you too claim a similarity with a