It was getting late but neither of them moved while Korin — his dictionary and notebook in his hand — continued the story complete with explanations without once stopping and the interpreter’s lover continued holding the same magazine in her hand, occasionally raising her head from it, sometimes folding it for a moment, but never putting it entirely aside, even when she turned toward the door, or, tipping her head on one side, listened out for something in the air, always returning to it, to the pictures in the black and white pages, with its list of prices for necklaces, earrings, bracelets and rings as they sparkled, colorless, on the cheap paper.
Lewdness, erotica, passion and desire, continued Korin after a short pause for thought in obvious embarrassment before the woman, and explained that he would be misleading the young lady if he pretended they did not exist, if he attempted to keep silent about them or deny that they were an important aspect of all he had been talking about so far, for there was this other vital factor in the final collapse, the collapse, that is to say, of the text whose narrative was drifting toward Rome, for the text was deeply drenched in desire, a fact he simply could not deny on account of what followed, for the Albergueria was packed with prostitutes, and the sentences of the text, when they touched on the various levels of life in the Albergueria were constantly coming up against these prostitutes, and when they did so, he had to tell her straight, the text described them as extraordinarily shameless, the way they hung around the stairs and on landings, lounging in the corridors, or in the lit or darkened nooks of each floor or communicating passageway, nor was the text satisfied with pointing out their commodious breasts and buttocks, their swaying hips and slender ankles, their wealth of hair and the roundness of their shoulders, all of which constituted a colorful, variegated market, but insisted on following them as they picked up sailors, notaries, tradesmen or money-changers, entertained punters from Andalusia, Pisa, Lisbon, and Greece as well as adolescents and lesbians, strolled alongside aged priests who were continually blinking and gazing in terror behind them, lasciviously licking their lips and shooting come-hither glances at a random selection of already aroused customers then vanished into some darkened nearby room, and yes, blushed Korin, the text does indeed draw apart those curtains that should under any circumstances remain closed, and, no, he did not want to go into further detail regarding the subject, simply to indicate that the fifth chapter was unremitting in its portrayal of what went on inside these rooms, describing an infinite range of sexual practices, recounting the vulgar exchanges between whores and their customers, depicting the crude or complex nature of each sexual act, the cold or passionate expressions of desire, desire as it awakens or dies away, and noting the scandalously flexible rates offered for such services, though when it talks of these things it does not suggest that the world in which they happen was corrupt, nor was there anything high-handed or judgmental in its account of them, the text being neither euphemistic nor scatological, but rendered them remarkably methodically or, if he might so put it, with remarkable sensitivity, said Korin spreading his hands, and since this methodical and sensitive manner carried extraordinary power, it sets the tone of the text from the middle of the chapter onward so that whatever new or as yet unmentioned characters are discovered in the Albergueria their positions are immediately established in terms of desire, the first such character being Mastemann, who at this point, and possibly unexpectedly, turns up once more, having had enough of the dangerous and wasteful stillness of the becalmed bay, and is shown leaving a Genoa-bound
coca and arriving on shore in a rowing boat to take a room on an upper floor of the Albergueria, accompanied by a few servants, yes, Mastemann, Korin raised his voice a little, Mastemann who had reason enough to weigh his decision carefully since he had to take into account the hatred — the hate, said Korin — felt by the inhabitants of Spanish-controlled Gibraltar toward Genoans, a hatred that extended to him; just as before, in the earlier episode, when Kasser and his companions first heard from guests arriving at their accommodation, from the first cohort of the primipilus at Eboracum, from the librarius of the castrum at Corstopitum, and finally from the Preatorius Fabrum himself, who had arrived in the seventh week of their sojourn in Britannia, about the hatred felt for the mysterious leader of the Frumentarians, who, it was said, Caesar held in the highest affection, and who was regarded by some as a genius and by others as a monster of depravity, as a man of the highest credentials on the one hand, an underling on the other, but whichever the case, he was referred to by all those dining under the friendly laurel branches of the shared refectory as Terribilissimus—the Most Fearsome, said Korin — an epithet applied first of all to the Frumentarius, said Korin, those cells of the imperial secret police implanted in the cursus publicus, who kept an unblinking eye on absolutely everyone, and were in the confidence of the immortal Hadrian, ensuring that nothing should remain shrouded in the fogs of ignorance, whether in Londinium, in Alexandria, in Tarraco, in Germania or in Athens, wherever, in fact, immortal Rome happened to be at the time.