Mastemann remained silent and reserved any opinion he might have had on anything to himself, breaking his silence, wrote Korin, only when he felt like approaching the women who hurried to and fro across the main square, calling them in order to commend the infinite range of choice he offered, a choice lacking nothing, he smiled as he pointed to his cages full of cats, from the Libyan White and the Marsh Cat, the Nubian Kadiz, the Arab Quttha and the Egyptian Mau, as well as the Bubastine Bastet, the Omani Kaffer and even the Burmese Brown, everything the heart could desire as he put it, offering not only what there was in store right now, but also what would be stocked in the future, in a word literally everything they could imagine, he went on, albeit in vain as far as his listeners were concerned, for he did not succeed in holding the attention of any of the busy women, in fact he tended to frighten them as much as his cats did, so the women hurried on, their hearts in their mouths, a little faster if anything, practically running, leaving the tall gangling figure of Mastemann in his long black silk cloak alone in the center of the square, in splendid isolation, to return to his usual place beside the cart as if his wasted words were of no concern to him, to pick up a cat and continue stroking it; and so he would go on all day in the shadow of the cart as if nothing and no one in the whole wide world were of the slightest interest, appearing to be a man incapable of being shaken out of his dour calm by any event whatsoever, even when, as actually happened, Falke stopped by the cages and tried to engage him in conversation, when Mastemann simply kept silent, fixing his light blue gaze on Falke’s eyes, staring and staring while Falke asked him, “Have you been there?” pointing toward Phaistos, “for people tell me they have a most wonderful palace, a remarkable work of art, marvelous architects; or indeed beyond it to Knossos, though I expect you have,” Falke sounded him out, “and you must have seen the frescoes there and perhaps even the Queen too?” he asked, but there was not the slightest flicker in the eyes of the other who continued watching him, “and then there are those famous vases, jugs and cups and jewels and statues, Mr. Mastemann,” Falke enthused, “there above the sanctuary, what a sight, Mr. Mastemann, and this entire one thousand five hundred years, as the Egyptians tell us, is after all, and we should acknowledge it as such, an unrepeatable, unique miracle?” but his enthusiasm had no effect at all on Mastemann’s dour expression, in fact, said Korin, nothing Falke could say made any difference whatsoever so what could he do, meaning Falke, but bow his head in confusion and leave Mastemann in the middle of the square, leave him to sit in the shadow of the cart alone again, stroking the ginger cat in his lap, seeing that he knew not Phaistos, nor Knossos, not the Regal Goddess with her serpents at the very top beyond the sanctuary.
He would find it difficult, said Korin to the woman next day as she was sweeping round the oven, her eyes averted after having finished the cooking, really difficult, he said, to give precise descriptions of Kasser, Falke, Bengazza and Toót, because even now, after everything, after hours and hours of study, following day after day of the most intense absorption in their company, he still could not say exactly what they looked like, who was the tallest for example, who was short, which of them was fat or thin, and to be honest, if he absolutely had to say something he would have attempted to get around it by saying that they were all four of them of middling stature and of average appearance, though he could see their faces and expressions from the moment he started reading as clearly as anything, as clearly as if they were standing before him, Kasser delicate and thoughtful, Falke gentle and bitter, Bengazza tired and secretive, Toót harsh and distant, faces and expressions you see once and never forget, said Korin, and the delicate, bitter, tired, harshness of the four of them so impressed itself on him that he could still see them as clearly as he did that first day, moreover, he was forced to admit before he went any further, that it was enough for him to think of them to feel a tug of the heart, since the reader knew as soon as he came across them that the situation of these four characters, not to put too fine a point on it, was, beyond doubt, vulnerable, that is to say that behind those delicate, bitter, tired and harsh features it was all vulnerability, defenselessness, he said, yes, that’s the kind of rubbish he came out with, imagine it, the interpreter recounted to his partner late next night in bed, he didn’t know, he said, from day to day what delightful tidbit to regale him with and chiefly not, why or in what language, but today, when he was careless enough to walk into the kitchen the man was there and collared him in the doorway, giving him this unbelievably idiotic story, offering it to him like it was lady luck or something, something about these four guys in the manuscript and their vulnerability, I ask you, excuse me sweetheart, but who the fuck cares whether they were vulnerable or not, only God in his infinite mercy cared what the hell they did in that manuscript, or what he was doing in that back room, the only thing that mattered being that he paid the rent on the dot and not stick his idiotic nose into other people’s affairs, because, and here he kept addressing his partner as “sweetheart,” it was their business, and their business alone what they did or did not do, or, to repeat, whatever difficulties they may occasionally encounter, do in fact encounter, was a matter entirely for themselves alone, and he very much hoped that nothing relating to them was adverted to in these kitchen conversations while he, the interpreter was away, that his sweetheart never attempted to give anything away regarding their private life, never even mentioned it in fact, because, to be honest, he didn’t even see what the point was of these great pow-wows in the kitchen, moreover in Hungarian, a language of which his sweetheart was almost totally ignorant, but all right, she can let the fool blather on, he couldn’t forbid that, but the subject of them, or his new job, was out of bounds to her, just remember that, and, propping his head on his hand as he lay in bed, he hoped his sweetheart had made proper note of this, his free hand creeping toward the woman, then, he changed its mind, and moved his hand to the parting of his snow-white hair, tracing the line from the bridge of his nose upward, mechanically checking that no strand of hair had accidentally strayed across from one side to the other to disturb the clean line of the parting in the middle.