A Void (28 page)

start practising common law at Issoudin. So from Issoudin to

Ornans; luckily, I got to know a fact or two about his situation

in that town. Anton would scoot about in a BMW, with lots of

local girls swooning in admiration for him. In his bag was a thick

manuscript consisting, it was said, of an important monograph

on a tricky point of grammar, a monograph that Anton was

working on and was about to finish. Nobody found him anything

but gracious and civil, most particularly during a local symposium

on Lhomond in which Anton took a major part, giving a stimu-

lating talk on grammatical subjunctivity. But his, how shall I put

it, his romantic companion was a tart working in a shop that

sold various goods for sadomasochists; and, following criticism

at court for a confusing affidavit, Anton had to quit Ornans for

good.

I soon got a postcard saying that Anton was working at Ursins

and (from what I could work out) living in lodgings. I took

down an adas and saw that this Ursins was a small, charming

country town not too far from Oyonnax (Jura). Finally, I found

out that Anton was living at Yvazoulay, just a tiny dot on a map,

also not far from Ursins, and about which nothing was known.

That, alas, was all of 20 springs ago - 20 springs without knowing

in which town my darling was living, without knowing if Anton

was living at all or . . . or not. . .

"Voila," says Olga, summing up. "For my own part, bowing to

Anton's ultimatum, I caught a train for Azincourt. Augustus,

who was at first against unlocking his doors to a Mavrokhordatos,

was in fact adamant about it, did finally back down and admit

his son's consort.

"And so now you know my story, from start to

finish . . ."

"It's almost nightfall," says Squaw, sounding all in. "I'm thirsty

and I'm hungry - all of you, too, I don't doubt. And Jonah in

particular - poor Jonah hasn't had its rations now for four days.

191

If you don't want to kill it by starvation, you must nourish it

now - instandy."

"Squaw is right," says Olga. "Our first priority is food for

Jonah."

It's a mild, almost sultry night that's just about to fall. A

soft: wind blows, rocking a tall acacia and swaying its fronds.

Olga, Savorgnan, Squaw and Amaury all look down into

Jonah's pool, whisding a song, that song that usually had

Haig's carp swimming up in a flash, and crying out: "Jonah!

Jonah!"

No Jonah.

"Now that's what I call abnormal," Squaw murmurs anxiously,

"not to say a tiny bit alarming. Jonah's had 20 springs, as Olga

would say, to adapt to us, to distinguish our vocal chords and

to put its childhood companion — I'm alluding, naturally, to Haig

- out of its mind."

Soon a torchlit hunt is on for Jonah, probing its pool, dragging

it with toils and catching six goldfish, an anchovy, a turbot, a

tuna fish and about thirty minnows.

And at last Jonah turns up - or should I say, Jonah's carcass.

Poor Haig's baby carp had grown. It was about a yard long, if

not a full fathom, its whitish crop scintillating in a pallid halo of

torchlight.

Oh God, what a chilling sight! Oh what profound sorrow!

Olga knows, almost by instinct, that Albin's damnation is still

intact! What a black horizon looming up! Oh what a fatal sign!

What a malignant warning!

Wiping away a drop of salty liquid that is dripping from his

chin, Amaury talks wistfully of his liking for Jonah, that charm-

ing, cordial carp that would swim up out of its pool as if about

to hum its song in unison with you. And Savorgnan is just as

sad about it, and Olga, and Squaw. With Jonas's passing away,

it's almost as if Azincourt is going to pass away soon, for it was

a living symbol of Augustus's mansion.

192

Savorgnan puts forward an initially startling proposal: to swal-

low Jonah, thus according it, as Papuan Indians do, and as a last

salutation to an animal inspiring such loving, to a fish inspiring

such adulation, to a carp inspiring such adoration, a form of

transubstantiation.

This proposal is put to a show of hands and wins, so to say,

hands down.

"Stuff it," Squaw says abruptly.

"What th . . . !!!" says Savorgnan, aghast at such incivility.

"No, no," says Squaw, calming him, "it isn't what you think.

What I'm proposing is that you stuff Jonah," adding, "You know,

I had a pal in San Francisco, Abraham Baruch. Now, notwith-

standing that, as his family had a loathing of circumcision, his

. . . his thing, you know, was still intact, Abraham, practising his

faith almost as much by whim as by conviction, had had his Bar

Mitzvah as a boy and would always visit his rabbi on Shabuoth,

Purim, Hanukkah, Sukkoth, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah

- a good pal was this Abraham, from whom I got to know a

cunning art, that of making Gafilt-Fisch."

So, whilst Olga soaks Jonah in a sink, trying to wash out that

awful sour flavour typical of carps brought up in captivity, Squaw

starts dicing a pound of Spanish onions to boil in a pot along

with a light potpourri of garlic, tarragon, paprika, cumin and

saffron, sprinkling it all with salt, mustard and just a hint of basil,

mashing into it a sprout or two, lupin, rutabaga, asparagus and

lots of juicy stock, finally blanching it, marinating it, trussing it

and sifting it out.

Taking a small carving ax, Olga puts Jonah on a chopping

board and splits it in two with a solitary blow, abrupdy giving

out a horrifying cry.

Amaury, Savorgnan and Squaw rush forward to find out what's

going on. With a haggard look, Olga points at Augustus's chop-

ping board - on it, intact, still fascinating, brought out of Jonah's

stomach, glows that original Zahir!

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Haig, it was now obvious, had, so long ago, out of a childish

passion for his carp, got Jonah to swallow that Zahir that Augus-

tus had worn on his pinky.

Quaking, mumbling inaudibly, frantically tugging a strand of

hair with a shaking hand, a hand now almost crimson from

Jonah's blood, lurching forward without any prior warning, Olga

falls - and falls hard!

Taking Olga's limp body in his arms, Amaury cautiously lifts

it up and lays it out on a couch, shouting wildly, "Olga's back is

out of joint - call a doctor and, if you can't find a doctor, call a

pharmacist and, if you can't find a pharmacist, call - oh, I don't

know — call a Boy Scout - call anybody at all — anybody who

can apply a cataplasm or a splint, a transfusion or a suturation,

an ablation or an adduction!"

But it's all in vain.

Olga now starts raving. Loud palpitations . . . a gradual cloud-

ing of vision . . . a croaking lung giving out a sibilant whisding

rasp . . . and a final spasm coinciding with a wish, an almost

fanatical craving, to say a last dying word. An astonishing

sound bursts forth and spurts forth, finishing in a gargling

snort.

"What? What is it?" asks Amaury.

Now, crouching down on all fours, Amaury positions his audi-

tory organ against Olga's lips, as a Huron or a Mohican would

apply his to a railway track to find out if a train was rumbling

far off.

Straining at first to grunt out a word, a word that for Amaury

is nothing but an indistinct grunt, Olga abrupdy falls back, as

limp as a rag.

Vanity, all is vanity! So it is that Olga mounts that upward

path to God's Holy City, uniting for all infinity with Douglas,

with Augustus and with Jonah.

"Did you grasp anything at all of what Olga was struggling to

say to us in that last gasp?" Savorgnan asks Amaury.

"I got a word, I think, but only a word, and a word, I must

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admit, that I couldn't work out at all: Maldiction! Maldiction!

Maldiction! At which point Olga's articulation was so faint,

so fatally pianissimo, it brought all communication to a

full stop."

195

15

Which, notwithstanding two paragraphs full of brio

and inspiration, will draw to an ominous conclusion

"Maldiction?" asks Squaw dubiously.

"Now that isn't too hard to grasp," Savorgnan instandy affirms.

"Oh, you think so?" says Amaury.

"I don't think so, I know so. For my part, I'd say that it all

has to do with a malign trauma, a tumour, a condition, anyhow,

blanking out Olga's vocal chords, thus implying a constriction

or an inflammation inhibiting or, at worst, actually prohibiting

any possibility of diction - so 'Maldiction'."

"Hmm . . ." says Amaury, who hasn't got that at all. "But why,

at so crucial an instant, opt for such an ambiguous word?"

"Why? To inform us that, during that last ghasdy gasp, a fright-

ful constraint was muzzling, was actually strangulating, Olga: a

thirst for a Taboo that could only find satisfaction in a fit of

frustration, a fit, if you wish, of incapacity, harping on as it did,

as it had to do, again and again, ad infinitum (not attaining a

point of saturation but always in a limbo of dissatisfaction, which

is to say, always conscious that any full and final form of illumina-

tion is blinking at us, winking at us, just out of our sight, just

out of our grasp) — harping on, I say, at this solitary Malignancy,

a Malignancy assailing all of us, a Malignancy proving a cross

that all of us must carry, that Malignancy of which Haig was a

victim, its first victim, but which also did for Anton Vowl, Hassan

Ibn Abbou, Augustus and now Olga, a Malignancy causing us

agony primarily by dint of our chronic inability to call it anything,

to put a word to it, our chronic inability to do anything but sail

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around it, again and again, without any of us knowing how, or on

which spot, to alight upon it, circumnavigating its coast, magnify-

ing its jurisdiction, its attribution, constandy having to confront

its total, global authority, without for an instant hoping that, out

of that Taboo that it's imposing on us, a word might abrupdy light

up, a noun, a
sound
, which, saying to us, This is your Mortality,

this your Damnation', would also say, word for word, that this

Damnation
has
a limit and thus a possibility of Salvation.

"Alas, this insidious circuit to which I'm alluding has no Sal-

vation. I thought, as did all of you, that Anton or Augustus was

slain trying in vain to grasp what this horror was that had struck

him down. No, not at all! Anton was slain, Augustus was slain,

for not managing to grasp it, for not howling out a tiny, insig-

nificant sound that would, for good and all, bring to an abrupt

conclusion this Saga in which all of us must play our part. It is,

I say to you, by our saying nothing, by our playing dumb, that

this Law of 'an I for an I' that's pursuing us today is still so

strong, so invincibly strong. Nobody's willing to talk about it,

to put a word to it, so causing us all to fall victim to a form of

damnation of which nothing is known. What awaits us all is a

fatality from which no man or woman in this room has any sort

of immunity, a fatality which will carry us off in our turn without

our knowing why any of us is dying, for, up against this Taboo,

going round and round it without coming out and simply naming

it (which is in fact a wholly vain ambition, for, if it actually was

said, if it actually got into print, it would abolish this narration

in which all of us, as I say, play our part, abolish, notably, a

curious anomaly distinguishing it from outwardly similar nar-

rations), nobody among us will talk about this Law that controls

us, forcing us to wallow in our own prostration, forcing us, at

last, to pass away still ignorant of that Conundrum that sustains

its propagation . . ."

"I am talking for all of us, I know," nods Amaury in approval,

"if I say that your brilliant diagnosis of our plight has had an

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impact - I fancy a lasting impact - on us. But so many circuitous

paths! For a start, how could any of us know that that vanishing

man, that dying Anton Vowl, dying by his own hand, possibly,

or still living but in hiding — who can say? — would afflict us in

so frightful a fashion? But though I now know, as you do, that

this Law holds against us that which all of us do, that which all

of us say, that not any word of ours is what you might call

fortuitous, for it instandy and invariably has its own justification,

and thus its own signification, I can't stop thinking that I'm in

a sort of
roman a tiroirs,
a thick, Gothic work of fiction with lots

of plot twists and a Russian doll construction, such as Mathurin's

Monk
, Jan Potocki's
Manuscript Found at Saragossa
and just about

any story by Hoffmann or Balzac (Balzac, that is, prior to Vau-

trin, Goriot, Pons or Rastignac) — a work in which an author's

imagination, functioning without limits and without strain, an

author, mind you, making a mighty poor living by today's stan-