He sat on the bed with his coat in his lap holding a small pair of scissors he had borrowed from his hosts in order to unpick the delicate stitches he had used to secure the top of the secret pocket he had sewn into the lining, so that he might finally extract the manuscript, and was ceremonially about to set about his task, when suddenly, barely audibly, the door opened and the interpreter’s partner stood at the threshold with an open glossy magazine in her hand, not entering but looking across the room, somehow beyond Korin, and hovered there for a moment, more timid and tongue-tied than ever, not looking in the least likely to break her perpetual silence but rather on the point of disappearing once more and beating a hasty apologetic retreat, when finally, perhaps because both she and Korin were equally disconcerted by her unexpected appearance, she pointed to a photograph in the open magazine and asked, very quietly, in English: “Did you see the diamonds?” and when Korin, in his surprise, was unable to emit the merest squeak by way of an answer but continued to sit as if rooted to the spot with the coat in his lap, the very scissors frozen in his hand, she slowly lowered the magazine, turned around, and as noiselessly as she had entered, left the room, closing the door behind her.
The eternal belongs to eternity, said Korin loudly to himself, then, since he had taken a long time entering a single page, he perched on the windowsill holding the second, gazing out at the lights on the fire escapes of the building opposite, scanning the flat desert of the rooftops and the furiously racing clouds in the strong November wind, and added, Tomorrow morning, it must be done by tomorrow.
III ALL CRETE
According to the manuscript’s superbly honed and supple sentences, the kind of craft the ship most resembled was an Egyptian seagoing vessel, though it was impossible to tell what tides had borne it hither, for while the powerful winds currently blowing might have carried it from Gaza, Byblos, Lucca or indeed from the land of Thotmes, it might just as likely have been swept across from Akrotiri, Pylos, Alasiya, and if the storm had raged particularly fiercely, even from the distant isles of Lipari, and in any case, one thing was certain as Korin typed the letters, which was that the Cretans who had gathered on the shore had not only never seen one like it but had not even heard of such a craft, and that was chiefly because, firstly, they pointed out to each other, the stern was not raised; secondly, that instead of a full complement of twenty-five/twenty-five oarsmen, there were thirty/thirty, originally at least, fully equipped; and thirdly, putting all that aside, they remarked as they studied it from the shelter of an enormous cliff, the size and shape of the sail was now in shreds and its extent could be estimated, though the straining ornamental figurehead on the prow and the unusual positioning of the double row of arching tangles of rope all looked unfamiliar, unfamiliar and terrifying, even in the throes of destruction as huge waves drove the craft from Lebena into the bay at Kommos then cast it against a rock, turning the vessel on its side as if to exhibit the broken body to the frightened locals, saving it from further damage and raising it above the foaming waters, introducing it, as it were to human eyes in order to demonstrate how the combination of water and storm could, should it wish to, deal with such a vast mechanism; how thousands of unstoppable waves could toy with this previously unknown, peculiarly constructed ocean-going trader on which everything had died or at least seemed to have died, and had, indeed, to be dead, the Cretans muttered to each other, for surely no one could survive such turmoil in this lethal gale, not even a god, they added from the shelter of the cliff, for, as they said on shore as they shook their heads, no one could remain in one piece under such catastrophic, demonic circumstances, not even a god newly born, for none such could be born.
They are here for eternity, Korin explained to the woman in the kitchen, while she stood at the stove in her usual position with her back to him, stirring something in a pan, and not giving the slightest sign of having understood or given any heed to what she was hearing, and he didn’t go back to his room for the dictionary as he often had done, but abandoning hope of explaining the notion of eternity and here-ness, tried to move the conversation on instead by pointing to the pan in confusion, asking: Something delicious … as usual?