He’s cold, they say, repulsive and unfeeling, he’s heard it hundreds and hundreds of times, that he is harsh and merciless and brutal and unsympathetic and decadent, by that, however, they only betray — he takes one step forward — that they are afraid of him, because it is terrifying, really, when they have to be confronted with the fact that he is here, he who amidst eternal death and in the greatest of need, had to break out in a truly harsh, merciless, unsympathetic, and decadent world, with that truly unassailable desire in him, so that at last someone could state something about the truth, but what kind of a statement is that — he is cold and repulsive and unfeeling! and his mind is filled with rage yet again, and now he is the one who would be called repulsive and unfeeling! exactly him, who could be called the fanatic of reality, if anything at all; but not cold and unfeeling, no, not that; in his anger he begins to pull at his beard impatiently, in front of the ticket desk window, no one will ever get there, will ever get to the point of being able to understand, only Valentine understands, no one — just Valentine, and Valentine alone — understands what he is searching for so obsessively, and no one can say that he is unfeeling, because that was exactly what was so unbearable in his dreadful life, that he wasn’t brutal, but everything was — from Geneva through Bern and all the way to Zürich — it was he who surmounted everything with the greatest of sensitivity, because he alone had a heart, and with this heart he looked at the landscape, and he looks at it now too, and it is with this heart that he sees now that everything is woven into one: the earth with the water, the water with the sky, and into the earth and the water and the sky, into this indescribable Cosmos is woven our fragile existence as well, but merely for just one moment that cannot be traced, then, already, it is no more, it disappears for all eternity, irrevocably, like Augustine and all that Augustine was as of yesterday, nothing else remains, only and exclusively the landscape; in his case, then the locomotive’s whistle sounds from the direction of the tracks, and with that, this line, where there is only a woman with a hat in front of him, suddenly speeds up; he speaks once again out loud to himself, in his case, Lake Geneva remains, the recumbent monumental strips in the dead blue space, the Great Expanse, those two words begin to rattle around in his head, just like, in a moment, the wheels beneath the carriage pulling out of Geneva Station: the monumental, the inconceivable, the Great Expanse that includes all within itself, the ultimate painting of which is, of course, right here in front of him, and he will paint it, he finally reaches the ticket window — he will go that far, he flings out, with his two insanely burning eyes, to the visibly frightened elderly railway official, that he wants a second-class ticket to Vevey; he knows already what title he will give to the painting of the lake completed not too long ago, he knows already, once he comes back from Valentine, his first order of business will be to go into the atelier, take the picture down from the easel, and note down on a piece of paper, and finally to attach to the back of the painting those few words, which he cannot express more precisely than to say that he, Oswald Kienzl is on a journey, a journey in the right direction, just a few words, namely “Fomenrhytmus der Landschaft,” hence the most appropriate possible expression for the painting, for it not just to have a title, but in his own succinct way to let the world know, inasmuch as it may be curious, to let the world know who he was, what kind of figure he was, upon whose gravestone would one day be written the words: Oswald Kienzl, the Swissman.
987. THE REBUILDING OF THE ISE SHRINE
He didn’t say I am Kohori Kunio, he didn’t even return their bow, nor did he accept the handshake offered by one of them, he didn’t say anything at all for quite a while, he just listened, namely he listened with barely concealed reluctance till the end of their account as to why they were here at the Jingū Shicho, who they were, and what they wanted; then he informed them that as for the name they had mentioned, Ms. Bernard, although he knew who she was, from here and from Harvard too, in terms of their request, he could neither say yes nor no, as the matter did not fall under his jurisdiction; he for a long time now — and here he repeated the words very meaningfully, stressing for a very long time — had not worked in the Department of Public Relations; then, with an unfriendly grimace, he gave them to understand that he did not in the slightest wish to discuss his present position with the two uninvited guests, moreover he did not wish to discuss anything with them at all, nor did he wish to have any dealings with them whatsoever, he did not in the least wish to get mixed up in a conversation with the two foreigners, he already even regretted having to come down from the Jingū office here to the public area of the Naikū, in a word he deliberately behaved in an unfriendly manner in order to humiliate them, and a little threateningly as well, as if he wanted to let them know that it would be better if they gave up their plan; if they went ahead with their request, they would meet with refusal everywhere, even if they handed in an official application, the grudging recommendation with which he wished to close this conversation that was debasing for him, they would receive exclusively one and only one kind of response from the Department of Public Relations at the Jingū Shicho: a refusal in the most decisive terms, and they should not even count on anything else, the Jingū Shicho and the two of them simply did not go together, they should leave off even trying, they should leave the Naikū and in particular they should quit trying to cast their presence, so inappropriate here, in a newer and newer light, so really, he turned the corners of his mouth down and looked off somewhere into the heights above the forests of Naikū, how could they possibly imagine that they could just show up here, accost him, cause him the trouble of coming down from his office and ask his permission, in the area of the parking lot in front of the Shicho building, to take part in the 71st rebuilding of the Ise Shrine, in the ceremony known as Misoma-Hajime-sai, and all the other things as well, how could it turn up in the head of a European novice architect and a Japanese Noh-textile designer, as they called themselves, that they could even step into the most sacred spot in the entire country, he could see very well, his contemptuous gaze suggested as he looked around with increasing irritation, just what sort they were: the kind of people who neither in their attire nor their bearing nor their way of speaking nor their manner were suitable, neither were they acceptable in their social status, and, in particular, the manner in which they had conveyed their request scandalized him, so that while they tried with ever more servile bearing and ever more humble words to reverse the direction of their incidental audience, already now completely hopeless, Kohori Kunio simply left the two supplicants there; they stood for quite a while, completely scalded, without even the strength to move, this reception had taken them so much by surprise because while they had suspected — chiefly, the Japanese friend had — how complicated it would be to obtain a general mandate from the Jingū Shicho, while they suspected that there would be serious obstacles, they — at least the guest from Europe — did not suspect that their first attempt would end in such a fiasco, not to mention that the so-called conversation that took place with Kohori-san excluded even the possibility that he would ever again communicate with them, either personally or in writing, so that they left the otherwise public area of Naikū with their heads bowed and with the speed of people fleeing, and they didn’t even feel like looking for the most important spot for them in Naikū, in this sacred forest, they just wandered around