A Void (30 page)

"Knock anyway, why don't you," says Ottaviani, trying to stay

cool.

Swann raps his fist hard on Augustus's front door and waits

. . . and waits . . . and waits. But nobody unlocks it.

"I told you so. Not a living soul," says Swann, blanching in

horror; but, almost instandy taking that back, and squinting

ambiguously at his companion, adds, "No, I was wrong. Living

in this mansion is a solitary individual, but an individual, in my

opinion, as dozy and as drunk as a Polack."

Obviously unfamiliar with Swann's allusion, Ottaviani says,

"Don't panic now"; and, applying all his physical might to a thick

partition in front of him, forcing a bolt in its clamp and, with

his stick, a stick with a razor-sharp point, shoving Augustus's

door, and in particular its flap, as far back as its doorstop will

allow, finally wins through.

"That's that! Why don't you and I just go in?" says a trium-

phant if slighdy jumpy Ottaviani, who starts cautiously inching

forward, whilst a quailing Swann, still visibly in a condition of

shock, timorously follows him. Abruptly, though, Squaw looms

up, carrying a small oil-lamp that glows with a dim and dusky

half-light.

"So wasn't I right?" says Ottaviani to his boss. "It was

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unworthy of you to flip your lid as you did! Good old faithful

Squaw!"

"Hallo," says Squaw, not putting much warmth into it. "You

know, I had to hang about for you two all night!"

"You don't sound in high spirits, Squaw," says Swann. "What's

up?"

"Augustus cashing in his chips, that's what's up!"

"But I know all about that!"

"Uh huh, but Olga too!"

Ottaviani's jaw drops. "Olga!!"

"That's right, Olga, and not only Olga but Jonah!!"

"Jonah too!" shouts Ottaviani, "Why, that's - that's awful! I

- Hold on, who's Jonah? I don't know any Jonah."

"You do too," Swann cuts in a bit childishly. "Jonah is - that's

to say, Jonah was - Augustus's carp."

"Oh . . . is that a fact?" murmurs Ottaviani thickly, not grasp-

ing why anybody would think of naming a fish as insignificant

as a carp.

"But who? And what? And how?" says Swann, harassing

Squaw, who has hardly got a word in up to now.

"You'll find out all about it in an instant," Squaw finally gasps,

"but first," unlocking a door, "why don't you sit down in this

drawing room and I'll pour you out a hot drink, for this wintry

morning air is going to chill you through and through."

It's as dark in Azincourt as in a tomb.

"It was a short-circuit," says Squaw to Ottaviani. "I think a

plug has blown but, for all that I sought to work out which was

faulty, I'm afraid I still don't know. In addition, Azincourt has

no such thing as a torch or a gas-lamp or a flashlight or a Davy

lamp - nothing, in fact, but this poor apology for a light that

I'm holding up in front of you."

"Oh, not to worry, Squaw," says Ottaviani with his usual affa-

bility. "Aloysius and I can follow what you say just as comfortably

by night - I don't think dawn's too far off now, anyway."

* * *

As if blindly, Swann and Ottaviani accompany Squaw into

Augustus's smoking room. And it's in that room, with its oil-lamp

giving off both a sickly halo and a suffocating aroma, that Squaw

finally fills our two cops in on that salvo of mortal blows that

has struck down Augustus and his companions.

Amaury Conson's arrival, along with Arthur Wilbur

Savorgnan;

A mass of information involving Anton Vowl's vanishing;

Anton's diary;

Augustus's album;

Savorgnan's virginal tanka on its black "kaolin" card;

Anton's transcription, for Olga, of six oddly familiar

madrigals, all of which Augustus thinks of paraphrasing

in a disturbing fashion;

Augustus dying that ominous morning, abruptiy crying

out "A Zahir!" whilst going out to drop grain into

Jonah's pool;

Augustus's Zahir and its Saga;

Haig's apparition following Tryphiodorus's arrival;

Othon Lippmann's faith;

Augustus's morning purification in his lustral bath;

His Zahir vanishing;

Othon Lippmann dying;

Haig's vocation;

His blank inscription on Augustus's billiard board;

Haig running away from Azincourt;

Anton Vowl's apparition;

Haig's damnation;

Albin's family and its stock;

His passion for Anastasia;

Anastasia dying whilst giving birth to Olga;

Albin slain by Othon;

Anton both transcribing and translating that inscription,

that "Katoun", found on Augustus's billiard board;

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Haig dying in Urbino, for which a handful of motivations

is put forward;

Olga's affair with Anton;

Anton vanishing on finding out that Tryphiodorus is his

papa and thus Haig his kin;

Jonah, Haig's carp, dying of starvation;

Cooking a Gafilt-Fisch;

Olga slitting Jonah in two, finding that horrifying Zahir;

Olga's fatal fall and dying murmur of "Maldiction!"

"And that," says Squaw in conclusion, "is a straightforward

chronology of a jinx which is clinging to us all and which, only

today, has struck again and again and again!"

"Hmm," says Swann, "that was an admirably succinct sum-

mary, I must say. But, now I think of it, why isn't my old buddy

Amaury with us? And Arthur?"

"Savorgnan was complaining of a stabbing pain in his brow

and lay down; as for Amaury, I saw him taking a long stroll

around Azincourt - around its grounds, I should say — and I

think his plan was to turn in on finishing it. I don't doubt you'll

find both upstairs, snoring away."

"But you'd think my knocking would bring both downstairs

again. God knows, I was making an uproar!"

"In my opinion," says Squaw, "Savorgnan is just too numb,

as is Amaury, for any sound to snap him out of his stupor - I

doubt that a witch's bacchanalia on a Sabbath night would do it."

"It's most important, though, that both Amaury and Savorg-

nan join us right now," murmurs Swann. "Do you know if, in

Azincourt, I can put my hands on a tuba or a sax, a bassoon or

a pair of cymbals, a tom-tom or a bongo drum?"

"No, but you might try this horn," says Squaw, picking up off

a tall stand a hunting horn, a paragon of a horn, a horn to kill

for, half of it in ivory, half in brass, dating from about AD 1000.

(It's said, although it's probably just a folk-myth, that a paladin

known as Alaric, a vassal of Clodion, who had such an abundant

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crop of hair that his companions-at-arms would call him Samson,

was willing, at a council of local barons, and whilst in his cups,

was willing, as I say, to assign his own position at Clodion's

court, along with all its rights and favours, to any man who could

draw a satisfying roar out of his horn [all of this occurring,

naturally, in a dark fairy-story wood]. Taking him at his word, an

urchin, a skinny ragamuffin, a poor rustic, a common bondsman,

stood forward, took Alaric's horn in his own horny hands and,

blowing into it with as much might as a Tyrolian blowing into

a horn to call his cows in, got from it a sound of an astonishing

purity, a sound, though, so sharp that it split Alaric's tympanum

in two. This was profoundly gratifying to Alaric's lord [Clodion,

so rumour had it, was afraid of Alaric and thought of him not

as a vassal but as an out-and-out rival], who, instandy, and pooh-

poohing this word of warning from his bodyguard:

A bondsman crown'd will down you,

A bondsman down'd will crown you!

had his unwitting champion brought to him, making him his

minion, knighting him, giving him his own fair cousin's hand in

matrimony, along with a mansion, a stronghold in Gascony and

six high-ranking positions at court, and publicly proclaiming that,

just as Roland would always accompany Carolus Magnus, so

would his young knight always accompany him.

Alas and alack for Alaric and his lass! Within just four days it

would turn out that Hilarion, as Alaric's darling was known, if

indubitably skilful at blowing horns, was totally ignorant of tilt-

ing and jousting, drawing an arrow across a longbow and training

a hawk or a falcon. Caught in a skirmish with a dwarfish but

surprisingly spry Arab, who was attacking him with a scimitar,

Hilarion, a bit of a show-off, had a wild stab at knocking him

down with a solitary mortal blow, but his swordsmanship was

so clumsy that it was his own body that was run through!)

* * *

Squinting as doubtfully at Augustus's horn as a conscript at an

Amati or a Stradivarius, and giving out a profound sigh, Swann

blows into its brassy spiral of piping but, obtaining only a croaky,

slighdy mournful hiss, shouts out a furious "Shitr!", a notorious

oath from Jarry's
Ubu Rot
that's still fairly common, from

Aurillac to Saint-Flour, from Puy Mary to Mauriac, in Cantal -

in which district Swann was born and in which his family is

ubiquitous.

Bragging a bit, blowing his own horn, so to say, Ottaviani

asks for a turn, saying that, in his youth, hunting stags, wild

boar, aurochs and izards around Niolo, in its dark woods and

along its scrubby hills, had taught him to how to play it. Cockily

taking hold of Augustus's horn, twirling it around his hand as

though it was as light as a baton thrown up by a drum-major

in a dazzling rotating motion, and producing from it, with

an amazing lack of huffing and puffing, a sonorous, wholly

satisfying sound, Ottaviani actually starts improvising, and not

without aplomb, a potpourri of military music.

Squaw wildly applauds him. "Bravo! Bravo! Bravissimo!"

"All right, all right, that'll do," says Swann, who, visibly grudg-

ing Ottaviani his triumph, put out at having his own mortifying

incapacity shown up, is hoping to play down his assistant's skill,

communicating to him by a dirty look how untactful it was of

him, not to say suspicious, as an adjutant, a right-hand man, to

flaunt his gift for music whilst all his boss could obtain was a

sound as musical as a duck's fart!

"Okay, boss, okay," Ottaviani sighs, compliant but inwardly

raging.

"Anyhow, what's important is our two companions. I did all

I could - you too, Ottavio," adds Swann, now in a conciliatory

mood, "- to stir up Arthur and Amaury. But, I'm afraid, to no

avail."

In truth, nothing at all occurs for a long instant. Gradually,

though, a sound floats down as if from a distant attic, a dragging

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sound as of a ghost laboriously pulling his chains, slowly, pain-

fully, making his way downstairs, flip-flop, clip-clop.

And now Arthur Wilburg Savorgnan turns up, limp, numb,

puffy, clumsy, haggard, sluggish, not at all on form.

"Good Lord," says Savorgnan, mumbling thickly, "Ottavio!

What th' fuck you doing in this joint?"

"Now now, Arthur," says Swann, "don't talk rot. I told you

all I was coming with Ottaviani."

Without saying a word, looking practically punch-drunk,

Savorgnan rubs his cranium, blows out two big gobs of snot by

holding his thumb against his nostrils and, spying a divan, drags

his body to it, lays it out across it and starts noisily snoring.

"Oh, grant him his catnap," says Swann. "It's Amaury I'm

most anxious about — for, without wishing to alarm you with a

ghasdy prognosis, all my information adds up to his dying

tonight!"

A cry from Squaw. "Amaury dying! But why?"

"Why! Why! Always why!" groans Swann. "Oh God, why

always this wish to find a motivation in mortality? Amaury is out

of it, that's all I know! His bio won't turn up in any Who's

Who!"

"But how can anybody know such a thing? How did you find

out?"

It was soon obvious (says Swann) that Amaury was about to fall

victim in his turn.

This is how it was. Ottaviani and I got to Noyon, all in. Our

first stop was its commissariat, to find out if it had a communi-

cation for us from Paris. I got a radiogram from a man on duty

and quickly took it in:

P A R I S . S I X T H M A Y . M I D D A Y . F O U N D O U T

A B O U T P A S S I N G A W A Y O F Y V O N C O N S O N I N

P A R O S . S T O P . C O N F I R M A T I O N P O I N T B Y

P O I N T A T Y O U R D I S P O S A L I N A R R A S . S T O P .

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I got into my car and took off for Arras, arriving only at nightfall,

as my road was oddly full of mishaps of all kinds. I ran to, I

almost burst into, its local station, so avid was I for information,

but all I found on duty was a lisping nincompoop who wouldn't

stop talking, who didn't know what I was talking about and who

was actually angling for a tip, a commission, a payoff! For a tip,

all I was willing to accord him was a crack across his jaw with my

walking-stick, but it took us two hours to obtain our radiogram

confirming Yvon's passing away, a radiogram stuck away in a

vault that was horribly difficult to unlock.