One thing the young lady should know, said Korin as he entered the kitchen the next day to take his place at the table, was that when he first arrived at this point of the narrative back in the far-distant records office, the point when they disappear on a boat to Alasiya, he was somewhat puzzled, for while he found the story, or whatever it was, utterly enthralling, as he had already said, he understood nothing of it, and believe me, young lady, this is no exaggeration, for as the young lady herself might have discovered, a person might think he has understood what he has read the first time, but doubt everything the second time round, even to the extent of doubting whether he had had the feeling of understanding in the first place, and he, he being the person in question, had found himself in such doubts the second time round, questioning the authenticity of his first reading, for Toót’s speech was fine in itself and he had noted the fact of the four of them being pulled from the water, had seen them enjoying a few delightful weeks getting to know an earthly paradise, then watched them facing the last judgment, and this was all very interesting, for people do write this kind of thing, but having considered the totality, he did still want to ask what it was about—so what were Korin’s English words — and admittedly this was a crude way of putting the question, perhaps even a little coarse, but this was precisely the form in which the question had arisen at the time, in as rough and ready form as that, in the feeling that this was all very wonderful, brilliant, wholly engrossing etcetera, but in the end, so what, what did it mean to anybody, what was it all about, why should anyone invent something like this, what was the writer secretly or overtly trying to do, was he retreating from the world by bringing these four characters out of the mist and thick fog, tossing them to and fro in a timeless universe, in an imagined world lost in the mists of legend?; what indeed was the point of it he asked himself, said Korin, and continued asking the question for a long time with much the same result, which was in fact no result at all, for he had no better answer to it now than he had back then in the records office where he first read it, raising his head from the manuscript for a moment to take breath and think, just as he had raised his head a few moments ago when he was busily transferring the document to his home page, and now this All Crete episode was there on his home page, Korin triumphantly announced, open to the world’s inspection, or to be truly precise, open to the inspection of eternity, and the young lady would know what that meant, that is to say anyone could now read the Cretan episode, by which he meant, the young lady should understand, that anyone at any time in eternity could read it, for all they had to do was to click on the site in the Alta Vista search engine, one click and they were there, and there it would remain, Korin enthused, his eyes fixed on the woman, thanks to Mr. Sárváry who had helped him set up the site, the whole first chapter was there for eternity, just a few clicks away, he raved, but if he thought this news would brighten the life of the woman sitting by the oven he was sorely mistaken because he hadn’t even succeeded in getting her attention, and she continued sitting bent over in her chair, occasionally turning to the burner, removing a pot or turning the heat up under it, shaking or stirring with a wooden spoon whatever was bubbling inside it.
The Minoan kingdom, said Korin — along with the Minotaur, Theseus, Ariadne, the Labyrinth, the one thousand, five hundred once and once-only years of peace, all that human beauty, energy and sensibility, with the double-axe, the Camera vase, the goddesses of opium, the sacred caves — the cradle of European civilization, or as they refer to it, the first flowering, in the fifteenth century BC, then Thera, he added bitterly, then the Mycenaean and Achaean hordes, the incomprehensible, agonizing and utter destruction, young lady, that is what we know, he said, then fell quiet and since the woman who was sweeping the floor had just reached him, he raised his feet to let her sweep under his chair, having done which she started toward the door to continue her work, but then stopped, turned and very quietly, as if to thank Korin for raising his feet, addressed him in a strange Hungarian accent, saying jó, meaning “right,” then continued to the door, sweeping the corners of the room, and gave the threshold a brush before sweeping everything carefully into a heap and brushing it onto the pan then opened the ventilation window and emptied the lot into the strong wind so the sweepings drifted past the miserable roofs and ragged chimneys up into the sky, and when she closed the window they could still hear one empty can bouncing as it was blown away, the noise falling away, falling silent behind the window, silent among all those rooms and chimneys, under the sky.
There’ll be snow soon, said Korin in Hungarian, staring out of the window, then rubbed his eyes, cast a glance at the alarm clock ticking on the kitchen cupboard then, without a word of good-bye, left the kitchen closing the door after him.
IV THE THING IN COLOGNE
If they were worried about security, they could put their minds at ease, since security as far as he was concerned was completely assured, began the interpreter, strictly keeping to the orders he had received at the beginning that he should sit straight in the Lincoln, gaze calmly ahead and not turn round, then added that if there were to be any problem it could only be with his partner but that she was simpleminded, in other words a genuine mental case, and therefore could safely be ignored, for he had rescued her a year ago from some utterly hopeless predicament in the filth of a Puerto Rican swamp where she lived beyond hope, without family or possessions, without a thing in the world at home or indeed in the U.S. when she crossed illegally over the border, without a scrap of ID, nothing, till fate threw them together, and they should know that she owed her life to him, everything, in fact more than everything because she was in no doubt that if she misbehaved she could lose everything in the blink of an eye, as she would fully deserve to: in other words she was no great prize but that’s how she was, and she’d do for him, because while it was true that she was simpleminded, she could cook, sweep and warm his bed, if they knew what he meant, as he was sure they did, and, well, there was someone else living in the apartment with them, but he didn’t count because he was a nobody, a crazy Hungarian, who drifted in and out and was there for only a couple of weeks until he found himself proper accommodation, a guy who was staying in the back room, said the interpreter pointing to the house for they were just passing it, there, and he let it out to him as one Hungarian to another, because they took pity on him, a poor lunatic you wouldn’t even notice because he lacked any distinguishing feature, and that really was all, the mad Hungarian, the Puerto Rican and himself, that’s the way it was, and when he said it was completely secure it was the honest truth, for there were no friends, just them, nor was he part of a group of any sort, there were only a couple of guys at the video store he occasionally talked to, and the people he knew at the airport from the time he worked there, and that really was all, then having got so far he told them they could ask him anything, but no one stirred in the backseat and no questions were asked, they simply continued in funereal silence as they made another circuit of the interpreter’s block, so when he was eventually able to get out and go up to the apartment he had a lot to think about when he met Korin on the stairs, the interpreter on his way up, Korin heading down, saying Good evening Mr. Sárváry, though it was clear that Mr. Sárváry was deeply preoccupied but, if he did not mind, he would like to tell him here on the stairs, since they hardly ever met otherwise, that he regretted the unfortunate incident, the misunderstanding, which as far as he was concerned was utterly innocent, for he felt no compulsion at all to pry or interfere in others’ lives, that being completely alien to his character, and if there had been a misunderstanding it was entirely his fault, it truly was, Korin shouted after the interpreter; in vain however, since his last words were directed at the wall alone, the interpreter, who was already on the next floor, having dismissed him with a wave of his hand as if to say, for God’s sake leave me alone, so that Korin, after a moment or two of confusion, continued on his way downstairs and at ten minutes past five precisely, stepped out into the street, because he was starting again, that is to say he could start anew, for the rainy, stormy, intolerable weather of the last few days had vanished to be replaced by a dry cold, and he could go out again and carry on walking around New York in search of the mysterious secret, as he had described it to the woman, taking the subway to Columbus Circle, then stretching his neck to gaze up at the skyscrapers as he trudged along Broadway, Fifth Avenue or Park Avenue to the towers of Union Square, turning down toward Greenwich Village, making his way on foot into SoHo, along Wooster, Greene and Mercer Streets, beyond Chinatown, toward the World Trade Center where he caught the subway returning to Columbus Circle and Washington Avenue, utterly exhausted by then, and as ever, not having solved the mystery, back to the apartment on 159 th Street to read over what he had done that day, and if he found it satisfactory, to save it with the appropriate key, that is to say, as he remarked, doing everything properly, according to a system that was correct and reassuring, or rather, he said, as the story grew and lengthened and the days passed, but he felt no anxiety or terror on this account, rather the opposite in fact, for he was perfectly content knowing this was his last home on earth, that everything would remain in this fatal state of balance between eternity and the march of time, that it was all going according to plan, ever growing on the one hand, ever diminishing on the other.