They were making their way through Lower Bavaria and had stopped at a market when Falke heard that something was happening in Cologne, said Korin, a fact he discovered as a result of the interest he showed in a work by a certain Sulpiz Boisserée at the bookstall where he had stopped to leaf through certain items, and he had become interested enough in one to linger and read more of it when the man at the stall, the bookseller, having been assured that Falke had no intention of stealing it but was seriously thinking of buying, told him his choice was a sign of the most refined taste, because something really important was in preparation at Cologne and furthermore that he, the bookseller, was of the opinion that it was of a magnitude to shake the world; and the book that Falke was holding in his hands was the best work on the subject and he was pleased to recommend it in the most earnest terms, its author being the young scion of a long-established family of tradesmen, who had dedicated his life to art, and had made it his chief aim to make the world forget an international scandal, if he may put it that way, by producing something spectacular of international significance to cover it; for the honorable gentleman would no doubt know, he leant closer to Falke, what precisely happened in 1248 when Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden laid the foundation of the cathedral, and would no doubt also be aware what was to be the fate of the divine plan according to which the foundation stone of the world’s highest and most magnificent sacred structure was then laid, because what he was talking about, of course, was the story of Gerhard, the architect and the devil, said the bookseller, specifically the extraordinarily curious death of Gerhard, after which in 1279 there was no one left who was capable of completing the building of the cathedral; not Meister Arnold who labored at it till 1308, nor his son, Johannes who carried on to 1330, nor Michael von Savoyen after 1350, in fact there was no one at all who could make any significant progress with the work, the point being, the bookseller continued, that after 312 years the building came to a halt and had remained in an infinitely sad skeletal condition with only the Chor, or choir, the Sakristei or sacristy, and the first 58 meters of the south tower completed, and rumor had it, as it would of course, that the reason for all this was Gerhard’s pact with the devil, which in turn was to do with the rather confused story of the building of some kind of drain, but whatever the truth of that, what was certain was that in 1279 the architect in a state of non compos mentis as they call it, threw himself from the scaffolding, since when a curse had lain on the whole project so that no one over the centuries could really complete the work, the cathedral on the Rhine famously remaining in the condition in which it had been left, with enormous debts in 1437 when they installed the bell, and all the time it was Gerhard, Gerhard, whom people talked about, for that was where, they all suspected and not without reason, the cause of the failure lay, the bookseller said, and then came 1814, and in 1814, that is to say 246 years after the complete abandoning of the work, this enthusiastic, virtuous and passionate man, this Sulpiz, somehow succeeded in finding the thirteenth-century drawings of the cathedral, the very Ansichten, Risse und einzelne Theile des Doms van Köln that Gerhard himself had used, and had become slavishly devoted to them, thereby subjecting himself to a curse much like that suffered by Gerhard, and here now was the very book, said the bookseller, pointing to the volume in Falke’s hands, and the news that 621 years after the laying of the foundations, the work was under way again, so the honorable gentleman had done well to pick the book up, and to carry on perusing it, and could for a ridiculously reduced price take it home with him and study it further, for this was a work that would bring him great joy in the possession, a discovery like no other, said the bookseller, lowering his voice, indeed there was nothing like it in the world.
It was the name of Voigtel, the Dombaumeister, that most often came up, that and Dombouverein and Dombau-fonds, not to mention terms like Westfassade and Nordfassade, and Südturm and Nordturm, and most importantly how many thousand tallers and marks were spent yesterday and how many today, this was what the grumpy Hirschhardt spouted day after day, continuously and unstoppably, while admitting that the cathedral, should it ever be finished, would be one of the wonders of the world, and the world of art, as he put it, was sure to turn its immediate attention to it, although, as he immediately pointed out, that would never happen, since the building would never be completed, given such a Dombauverein and such a Dombau-fonds and the constant bickering between the Kirche and the Staat about who should pay for what, and he couldn’t see any good coming from it, despite the fact that it was supposed to be one of the wonders of the world, and so on and so forth, though this was Hirschhardt’s manner generally, to be running things down, to be moaning, full of acid remarks and skeptical about everything, cursing now the stonemasons, now the carpenters, now the transporters, now the quarries at Königswinter, Staudernheim, Obernkirchen, Rinteln and Hildesheim, the point always being to curse someone or something, or so it seemed, said Korin, though equally there was no one who knew better what was happening outside his window, so he knew, for example, that at any particular moment there were 368 stone-carvers, 15 stone-polishers, 14 carpenters, 37 stonemasons and 113 assistants engaged on site, was aware of what had gone on at the last negotiations between representatives of church and crown; was informed about disputes between carpenters and stone-carvers, stone-carvers and stonemasons and between stonemasons and carpenters; knew who was sick and when, about shortages of provisions, about fights and injuries, in other words about truly everything there was to be known, so while Kasser and his companions had to put up with Hirschhardt and his grumbling, they were, nevertheless, obliged to him and to no one else for the information in whose light they could interpret events outside, events that might have remained hidden from them, for Hirschhardt also knew about Voigtel’s predecessor as Dombaumeister, Zwirner, a man of inexhaustible energy who nevertheless died young, and about long-dead characters like Virneburg and Gennep, Saarwerden and Moers, and not only them but obscure ones like Rosenthal, Schmitz and Wiersbitzky, as well as being able to tell them who Anton Camp was, who Carl Abelshauser and Augustinys Weggang were, how the winches, pulleys and traction equipment worked, and how the carpenters’ tools, the hoists and the steam engines were constructed; in other words you couldn’t catch Hirschhardt out on anything, not that Kasser and his companions even tried of course, in fact they hardly ever asked questions at all, knowing well that they would only be submitting themselves to one of Hirschhardt’s latest rants, merely nodding now and then as he spoke, for what they appreciated above everything else in the beer-hall was silence, that and a tankard of light ale from the tap, in other words the early and midmorning when there was hardly anyone but themselves in the bar and they could sit by the window, sipping at their beer, watching the work on the cathedral outside.