War & War (27 page)

13.

It was getting late but neither of them moved while Korin—his dictionary and notebook in his hand—continued the story complete with explanations without once stopping and the interpreter’s lover continued holding the same magazine in her hand, occasionally raising her head from it, sometimes folding it for a moment, but never putting it entirely aside, even when she turned toward the door, or, tipping her head on one side, listened out for something in the air, always returning to it, to the pictures in the black and white pages, with its list of prices for necklaces, earrings, bracelets and rings as they sparkled, colorless, on the cheap paper.

14.

Lewdness, erotica, passion and desire, continued Korin after a short pause for thought in obvious embarrassment before the woman, and explained that he would be misleading the young lady if he pretended they did not exist, if he attempted to keep silent about them or deny that they were an important aspect of all he had been talking about so far, for there was this other vital factor in the final collapse, the collapse, that is to say, of the text whose narrative was drifting toward Rome, for the text was deeply drenched in desire, a fact he simply could not deny on account of what followed, for the Albergueria was packed with prostitutes, and the sentences of the text, when they touched on the various levels of life in the Albergueria were constantly coming up against these prostitutes, and when they did so, he had to tell her straight, the text described them as extraordinarily shameless, the way they hung around the stairs and on landings, lounging in the corridors, or in the lit or darkened nooks of each floor or communicating passageway, nor was the text satisfied with pointing out their commodious breasts and buttocks, their swaying hips and slender ankles, their wealth of hair and the roundness of their shoulders, all of which constituted a colorful, variegated market, but insisted on following them as they picked up sailors, notaries, tradesmen or money-changers, entertained punters from Andalusia, Pisa, Lisbon, and Greece as well as adolescents and lesbians, strolled alongside aged priests who were continually blinking and gazing in terror behind them, lasciviously licking their lips and shooting come-hither glances at a random selection of already aroused customers then vanished into some darkened nearby room, and yes, blushed Korin, the text does indeed draw apart those curtains that should under any circumstances remain closed, and, no, he did not want to go into further detail regarding the subject, simply to indicate that the fifth chapter was unremitting in its portrayal of what went on inside these rooms, describing an infinite range of sexual practices, recounting the vulgar exchanges between whores and their customers, depicting the crude or complex nature of each sexual act, the cold or passionate expressions of desire, desire as it awakens or dies away, and noting the scandalously flexible rates offered for such services, though when it talks of these things it does not suggest that the world in which they happen was corrupt, nor was there anything high-handed or judgmental in its account of them, the text being neither euphemistic nor scatological, but rendered them remarkably methodically or, if he might so put it, with remarkable sensitivity, said Korin spreading his hands, and since this methodical and sensitive manner carried extraordinary power, it sets the tone of the text from the middle of the chapter onward so that whatever new or as yet unmentioned characters are discovered in the Albergueria their positions are immediately established in terms of desire, the first such character being Mastemann, who at this point, and possibly unexpectedly, turns up once more, having had enough of the dangerous and wasteful stillness of the becalmed bay, and is shown leaving a Genoa-bound
coca
and arriving on shore in a rowing boat to take a room on an upper floor of the Albergueria, accompanied by a few servants, yes, Mastemann, Korin raised his voice a little, Mastemann who had reason enough to weigh his decision carefully since he had to take into account the hatred—the
hate,
said Korin—felt by the inhabitants of Spanish-controlled Gibraltar toward Genoans, a hatred that extended to him; just as before, in the earlier episode, when Kasser and his companions first heard from guests arriving at their accommodation, from the first cohort of the
primipilus
at Eboracum, from the
librarius
of the
castrum
at Corstopitum, and finally from the Preatorius Fabrum himself, who had arrived in the seventh week of their sojourn in Britannia, about the hatred felt for the mysterious leader of the Frumentarians, who, it was said, Caesar held in the highest affection, and who was regarded by some as a genius and by others as a monster of depravity, as a man of the highest credentials on the one hand, an underling on the other, but whichever the case, he was referred to by all those dining under the friendly laurel branches of the shared refectory as
Terribilissimus
—the
Most Fearsome
, said Korin—an epithet applied first of all to the Frumentarius, said Korin, those cells of the imperial secret police implanted in the
cursus publicus
, who kept an unblinking eye on absolutely everyone, and were in the confidence of the immortal Hadrian, ensuring that nothing should remain shrouded in the fogs of ignorance, whether in Londinium, in Alexandria, in Tarraco, in Germania or in Athens, wherever, in fact, immortal Rome happened to be at the time.

15.

Kasser was very ill by then—
very ill
, said Korin—and spent most of the day in bed, rising only to join the others for the evening meal, but nobody knew what sort of disease was eating him because the only symptom he exhibited was extreme chill: no fever, no coughing, no pain of any sort, but a cold that continually shook his whole body, his arms and legs, everything trembling all the time, however they stoked the fire up, the two slaves allotted to the task continually feeding the flames, until the place was so hot that perspiration ran off them in rivers, all in vain, for nothing helped Kasser, and he continued to freeze while the doctor from Corstopitum examined him, as did physicians from Eboracum, prescribing various herbal teas, feeding him the flesh of serpents, and in general trying everything they could think of without any of it making the slightest difference, and his three guests, the three agents of the Frumentarius with their all-comprehending web of informants, headed by Mastemann, made him visibly worse, and were, in fact, a decisive factor in his deteriorating condition, so that after the visit of the
Praefactus Fabrium
he no longer rose to take his evening meal but had it brought to him by the others, and even then they couldn’t really
talk
to him because he was either trembling so violently under the blankets and pelts that he was incapable of even contemplating conversation, or they found him lost in such a deep well of silence they didn’t feel it worthwhile trying to rouse him from it; in other words the evenings—
the nights
, said Korin—passed with few words or in general silence, as did the days, the early and midmornings, in silence or with just a few bare words, Bengazza, Falke and Toót spending the time in composing their reports on the Vallum, and going to the baths in the afternoon, so that they might return to the peace of the villa by dusk, and that was how time passed on the surface, said Korin, or genuinely seemed to, with Kasser inside, shivering in his bed, and the rest writing their reports or enjoying the waters of the baths, though in actual fact they were all cultivating the peculiar art of not mentioning Mastemann, not even pronouncing his name, although the very air was heavy with his presence, with his physical form and history, a history they could glean in detail from the accounts given by the three visitors and one that weighed on their thoughts, so that after another week it had become obvious to them that they were not only keeping silent about him but that they were
waiting
for him, counting on him to act, and were convinced that as the
Magistere
of the
cursus publicus
of Britannia he would seek them out, said Korin, the manuscript being obsessed with the necessity of reminding the reader how they kept watching the events outside the villa, how they trembled when the servants announced the arrival of a guest, but Mastemann did not come to seek them out—
he was not coming
, said Korin—for that was not to happen until the next chapter, when, on the evening of his arrival, he announced himself as the special representative of the
Dominante
of Genoa and, wafting a cloud of subtle perfume around him, requested a place at their table which being granted he gave a curt nod, sat down, briefly examined their faces, then, before they could reveal who they were, set out on an encomium of King John as if he already knew who it was he was dealing with, telling them that in his eyes and in the eyes of Genoa, the king of Portugal was the future, the spirit of the age,
Nuova Europa
, in other words the perfect ruler whose dictates were based not on emotion, interest, or the vagaries of his fate, but on the reason that governed emotions, interest and fate, then having said so, turned his attention to discussion of the Great Tidings, to Colombo whom he referred to now as Signor Colombo and now as “our Cristoforo,” and to their utter astonishment, talked of the expedition as of something successfully completed, then ordered some heavy Malaga wine from the landlady for everyone and announced the beginning of a new world—
a new world coming
, said Korin—in which not only Admiral Colombo but the very spirit of Genoa would triumph, and what was more, he raised both his glass and his voice, the all pervasive, all conquering spirit of Genoa, the spirit that, judging by the looks that followed Mastemann’s least gesture, Korin explained to the woman, aroused in the lodgers of the Albergueria nothing but intense and the most wholesale hatred.

16.

Should we die, the mechanics of life would go on without us, and that is what people feel most terribly disturbed by
, Korin interrupted himself, bowed his head, thought for a while, then pulled an agonized expression and started slowly swiveling his head,
though it is only the very fact that it goes on that enables us properly to understand that there is no mechanism.

17.

The whores’ fit of madness, he continued, could only be explained by the appearance of Signor Mastemann, though no one was clear about the reasons for it at the time because they all missed the most important thing, that Mastemann’s presence produced a kind of magnetic field, the power appearing to emanate from his entire being, and it can’t have been anything else, for as soon as Mastemann arrived and settled in on an upper level, the Albergueria changed: the ground floor fell silent as never before, silent, until he came down that first evening of his stay and sat down at an impromptu choice of table—that of Kasser’s companions as it happened—at which point everything changed, for though life went on nothing was as it had been, so that tailors, cobblers, interpreters and sailors, though they continued where they had left off, all kept an eye on Mastemann, waiting to see what he would do, though what could he have done?—Korin spread his hands—since he simply sat down opposite Kasser’s companions, talked, filled his glass with wine, touched his glass to theirs, leaned back and in other words did nothing to suggest that this universal stillness—
this general rigor
, said Korin—might have its origins in him, though one had to admit that it was enough to look at him in order to feel the terror he inspired with his frighteningly pale and immobile blue eyes, his pockmarked skin, his huge nose, his sharp chin and long, delicate, graceful fingers, his cloak black as ebony, especially when its scarlet lining flashed from beneath it, when the words froze in everyone’s mouth:
hate and fear
, hate and fear being what he inspired in the tailors, cobblers, interpreters and sailors on the ground floor; though all this was nothing as to the effect he had on the prostitutes, for they not merely trembled before him but were completely beside themselves whenever he appeared, wherever they came across him, the nearest and loveliest girls of Algiers and

Granada immediately running to him and surrounding him, as if drawn by an irresistible magnet, swarming round him as though he had bewitched them, touching his cloak and begging him, please, to come with them, he needn’t pay, they whispered in his ear, it could be the entire night, every part of them was his, anything he wanted, they crooned and burst into bubbles of hysterical laughter, jumping up and down, running about, hugging his neck, pulling at him, patting him, dragging him this way and that, sighing and rolling their eyes as if Mastemann’s mere presence was a source of ecstasy, and it was perfectly obvious that once Mastemann arrived they had taken leave of their senses, though this meant that the thriving trade that had depended on them very quickly and most spectacularly went bust, for a new age, an epoch, had begun in which whores no longer sought financial rewards for their services but sought payment in orgasm instead, though orgasm was not to be had since there wasn’t anyone left who could satisfy them, and men advised each other to leave them alone for they would only drain you to the dregs and use you rather than you using them, and everyone knew which way the wind was blowing, that the cause of all this was Mastemann, so that, under the apparent calm, the fear and hatred—
hate under the quietude
, said Korin—grew hour by hour, in a manner very similar to that experienced in Corstopitum, for you could hardly describe it as anything else but fear and hatred, as Bengazza and his companions detected in the general attitude toward the unknown Mastemann, as they heard the depressing accounts of the
primipilus
and the
librarius
, and marked the bitter words of the
Praetorius Fabrum
recalling how adept Mastemann had been at exploiting the well-oiled machinery of the
cursus publicus
ever since it started building up its network of agents, and how people had already feared and hated him then, though they hadn’t even seen him, holding him in contempt and shuddering at his name despite the fact that there was no chance of actually meeting him, and it was only Kasser who did not reveal his feelings, said Korin, Kasser who remained inscrutable, without a stated view for he was incapable of saying a word and expressed no opinion either in Corstopitum when the others came to visit him, nor at the table in the Albergueria, where he hardly ever appeared now to take part in conversations, and when he did come, he only sat silently, watching the bay through the window, gazing at the wreath-like sails visible through the fog patches, that ghostly gathering of galleons, frigates and corvettes, the
naviguela, caravelles
and hulks as they waited so that, finally, after eleven days, the wind should begin to rise again.