A Void (29 page)

dards, having to cough up a thousand words an hour for virtually

instant publication, churning out paragraph upon paragraph,

writing his daily ration of incongruous scribblings till it's coming

out of his nostrils — a work, as I say, in which an author's imagina-

tion runs so wild, in which his writing is so stylistically oudand-

ish, his plotting so absurd, of an inspiration so capricious and

inconstant, so gratuitous and instinctual, you'd think his brain

was going soft!"

"That's right," says Savorgnan in his turn. "Now you might say,

'Why, that's all just a paradox!', but I, for my own part, was so

struck by its accuracy that I would actually put it forward as not

a paradox but a paradigm, a matrix, if you wish, for all works

of fiction of today. To intuit an imagination without limits, an

imagination aspiring to infinity, adding (or possibly subtracting)

to (or from) its quasi-cosmic ambition a crucial factor, an

astoundingly innovatory kind of linguistic originality running

through it from start to finish, as a word, 'Brighton', say, might

run through a stick of rock, what you imply is that such a work

198

of fiction could not allow a solitary lazy or random or fortuitous

word, no approximation, no padding and no nodding; that, con-

trarily, its author has rigorously to sift all his words — I say, «//,

from nouns down to lowly conjunctions — as if totally bound by

a rigid, cast-iron law!"

"Thus," murmurs Amaury, waxing almost lyrical, "oblivious

of this inhibition that's thinning out our capacity to talk, is born

Imagination - as a chain of many, of so uncountably many, links;

and thus too is born Inspiration, born out of a twisting path that

all of us must follow if any of us is to ink in, to stain with black,

if only for an instant, and with a solitary word, any word at all,

our own Manuscript's immaculation!"

Squaw, finding it a bit alarming that Amaury should hold forth

in such an abstract fashion, abruptly says, "Now just hold on! I

pity you, Amaury. How can you talk about books and such with

Olga's body still warm!"

"Oh, God, you must think I'm a callous lout, Squaw! I'm sorry,

so awfully sorry," says Amaury, blushing with mortification.

"It's this room that's doing it," says Savorgnan, looking around

him in mild agitation. "It's got a sort of morbid quality, don't

you think? Is anybody for moving out?"

"No," says Squaw, "you can't go. Think - Aloysius Swann is

now on his way to Azincourt and his contribution will assist us

all in working out just what's going on. And if, as I think, Aloy-

sius took his car, you can count on his turning up by nightfall.

My proposal is that you wait for his arrival whilst dining, for,

what with all our discussions, nobody's had anything all day to

put in his stomach."

What Squaw cooks is suitably light and frugal, for, although

naturally hungry, Savorgnan's low spirits won't allow him to

think of gorging on what is laid out in front of him. Amaury is

similarly downcast, simply picking at his food, nibbling it without

any of his usual gusto.

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"I know how hard it is for you to stop thinking of poor Olga,"

says Squaw at last, "but I insist that you both try this first-class

gorgonzola, a gorgonzola of which Augustus was so fond, I

occasionally had to go out at night to buy it from our local dairy

if our supply had run o u t . . . "

But nobody lays a hand on Augustus's gorgonzola, or on

Squaw's cold roast ham or
chaussons farcis a la Chantilly.

As Savorgnan complains of an aching brow, as if his brain had

a thick lining of cotton wool, Squaw starts making him an

infusion and has him swallow an aspirin. At which point, lying

down on a couch, Savorgnan tactfully asks if Amaury wouldn't

mind slipping out, informing him of his wish to catch forty winks.

Amaury, for his part, avid to find out if, at Azincourt, a copy

or a manuscript or a rough draft isn't lying around, anything

that might furnish additional information, ransacks Augustus's

library, unloading boxfuls of books and spilling out in disarray

hardbacks and softbacks, works of fact and works of fiction,

biography and autobiography.

His scrutiny proving all in vain, Amaury finally thinks of taking

a turn around Azincourt's lush grounds. It's a starry, scintillating

night, not too hot, not too cold - in fact, just right. Amaury

lights up a long, luxuriously aromatic cigar, a Havana found

whilst casually rummaging in Augustus's smoking room, and idly

strolls about, along this pathway and that, inhaling a lungful of

virginal night air that adds a faint whiff of opopanax to his cigar.

Who would think - who, truly, would think - that in such a

halcyon spot, in such a park, with all its occupants, its plants as

much as its animals and birds, living in total, natural harmony,

so many atrocious killings could occur? Who would think to find

damnation lurking in such an Arcadia?

Far off, an owl hoots. Without his knowing why, but probably

through a chain of unconscious associations, this owl, Pallas's

bird, so it's said, calls to his mind a book from long, long ago,

no doubt from his youth, a work of fiction that also had an

2 0 0

allusion to a park in which Damnation would triumph, a public

park that it would finally claim as its own.

But, goddammit, what book was it? In his mind, its infiltrator

was at last thrust out, with no kindly Good Samaritan rushing

to assist him, and his carcass thrown into a gaping pit.

Amaury sits for about a half-hour in a mossy arbour, not far

from that tall acacia with its swaying fronds producing a dull but

continuous sound, a murmur soft and low, a humming sigh that's

both sibilant and soporific.

His inability to grasp just what it is that insidiously links a

book out of his past with his situation now is driving him crazy.

Was it in fact a work of fiction? And didn't Anton Vowl claim

long ago that a work of fiction would contain a solution to his

plight? An amorphous mass of books and authors bombards his

brain.
Moby Dick
? Malcolm Lowry? Van Vogt's
Saga ofNon-Af

Or that work by Roubaud that Gallimard brought out, with a

logo, so to say, of a 3 as shown in a mirror? Aragon's
Blanc ou

l'Oubli>. Un Grand Cri Vain? La Disparition
? Or Adair's transla-

tion of it?

Amaury starts, conscious of a chill night wind.

Standing up, taking a last puff on his cigar and idly throwing

away its butt, a tiny glow-worm that wanly lights up Azincourt

for a passing instant, Amaury, abrupdy struck, during just that

instant, by a
frisson
of unfamiliarity with his surroundings (no

swaying acacia in sight, no stony path to assist him in finding

his way back, but a soft plush lawn), fumblingly lights a match

(but its spark burns out too soon to do much good), consults

his watch (which says 11.40 but, alas, isn't ticking as it should)

and, now a bit jumpy, with palpitations causing a slight pain in

his ribs, starts cursing.

Groping blindly, Amaury walks forward, not only bumping

into a wall but also falling into a shallow pit (in which, as is

instandy obvious to him, Augustus caught all that morning damp

with which Squaw would fill his lustral baths) and, totally lost,

2 0 1

stumbling into a clump of shrubs that has a strong aroma of

blackcurrant commingling with that, as strong if hardly as

fragrant, of thuja, shrubs that scratch his arms in his frantic

strivings to stop a rash of thorns from snagging his clothing.

Just as Amaury, in a now almost paranoid condition, is starting

to think of its park as a sadistic labyrinth laid out as it is to

imprison him, Augustus's mansion at last looms mistily up. It's

pitch-black, with not a light burning in any window, on any floor

at all, so that it has an oddly forlorn, almost ghosdy look about

it, as though not housing a living soul.

"Now, now, nothing at all to worry about. Probably just a

short-circuit," murmurs Amaury, groping along a dark corridor

until finally arriving in a small drawing room and lying down on

a divan, shaking, worn out, numb with shock.

Not a sound around him.

An alarm, faint at first but soon disturbingly loud, starts ringing

in Amaury's brain. "What's going on? What's Savorgnan up to?

And Squaw? And Aloysius Swann - didn't Squaw say Swann

would turn up tonight?"

A wholly irrational panic now grips him by his throat, causing a

wild, stabbing pain in his back and making his brow go hot and

cold in turn.

A moan. "I know — I know - it's food poisoning! It was that

ham I had tonight - or Augustus's bloody gorgonzola - it was

off. I thought it was a bit gamy -1 thought it had a funny, rancid

odour — only I didn't want to say anything to Squaw!"

Whilst rushing into Augustus's bathroom to look in its first-aid

kit for a cordial or a syrup, anything to bring on instant vomiting,

a suspicion abruptly assails him: what if a drop of poison was

put in his whisky?

"Now that I think of it, it had a flavour of . . . a flavour of

. . . oh God, I just know it was burnt almonds! It's my turn!

Why, naturally, that's it! I'm going to . . . it's going to . . ."

2 0 2

If Amaury is mumbling and bumbling and crying out in this

awful fashion, it is, alas, simply for want of knowing against

whom or what to bring an accusation.

Such is his anguish, his mind is continually at risk of sinking

into a coma. But, dragging his limp body forward with a strain

that's almost inhuman, gasping, choking, sobbing, sobbing as an

infant might sob, and cursing his long, stubborn opposition to

submitting his body to mithridatisation, as his chums constantly

told him to do, Amaury finally crawls out again into a dark

corridor.

Is this it? Is this his last gasp? A fortissimo No!!! - that is his

oath. By hook or by crook, by drinking gallons of milk or by

taking an antibiotic, Amaury still trusts in his own survival. And

in a flash it occurs to him that, upstairs, in a boxroom adjoining

a studio that Augustus had put at Savorgnan's disposal, is a flask

of Homatropini hydrobromidum

H3C - CH - CH3

N - CH3 CHO-CO-CHOH-C6H5, BrH

H3C - CH - CH3

that will pull him through this crisis.

So, still groping, still in pain, grimly clinging to its rail, Amaury

climbs, rung by rung, that dark and narrow stairway that spirals

up to Azincourt's top floor . . .

2 0 3

V

AMAURY CONSON

21

In which, following a pithy summary of our plot so far,

a fourth fatality will occur, that of a man who has had

a significant part to play in this book

Around midnight, having brought Ottavio Ottaviani along for

moral support, Aloysius Swann finally draws up at Azincourt.

Having, that morning, quit his commissariat, Faubourg Saint-

Martin (which has a vault containing all official information

involving Anton Vowl and his vanishing act), and driving his

Ford Mustang as quickly as Fangio, as Stirling Moss, Jim Clark

or Brabham, Swann was hoping to park it in front of Augustus's

mansion by dusk. But it was almost as if a playful hobgoblin was

trying to bar his path with what you might call avatars (
avatars,

naturally, signifying
mishaps
or, in fiction,
plot twists
[viz. Bloch and Wartburg, Dauzat and Thomas], for no Hindu communicant

with Vishnu would think of applying to a man as pragmatic as

Swann notions as holy as incarnation, transformation and tran-

substantiation). On as many as six occasions his car was to stall,

forcing poor Ottaviani to labour long and arduously to put things

right again, that labour consisting in his scrutinising it in its

totality, point by point, from its chassis to its piston, from its

hood to its transmission.

On top of which, it would skid into a ditch, a ditch that, luckily

for both, was fairly shallow.

And, to cap that, it had collisions with, in turn, a chick (which

was crossing a road, but don't ask why), a cat, a puppy with

short, frizzy hair and a soulful look and, worst of all, a child of

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six, a casualty that would prompt such a scandal that for an instant

Swann was afraid of a lynching party.

"Ouf!" says Ottaviani, whilst Swann pulls to a halt in a billow

of hot air. "Azincourt at last! And not an hour too soon!"

"For my own part," says his companion, looking around dubi-

ously, "I can't stop thinking it's possibly a bit too tardy. Look -

not a glint of light on any floor. It all looks so dark, as if totally

vacant."

"Now now," says Ottaviani, assuring his boss, "it's just that

nobody's up and about, that's all."

"Rubbish! What an odd hour to turn in! I told Savorgnan I

was on my way — was it too much to ask him to stay up for my

arrival?"