Translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet
László Krasznahorkai (1954–). Born in Gyula, László Krasznahorkai spent five years studying for a degree in law, before going on to take a degree in Hungarian language and literature at Eötvös Loránd University where his thesis focused on the work of Sándor Márai As a student, Krasznahorkai worked for the publishing company Gondolat Könyvkiadó as an editor, a post he continued until becoming a freelance writer in 1984, A year later, he published his first novel, Sátántango, a dazzling, experimental, challenging work that catapulted him to the forefront of literary life in Hungary. The poet and translator George Szirtes spent eight to ten years working on the “slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type” that became his equally dazzling translation of the novel, and widely acclaimed in English as a masterpiece, is still his best known. Krasznahorkai first left communist Hungary in 1987, travelling to West Berlin for a fellowship, and in the 1990s, he travelled widely in Mongolia, China, and later Japan – immersing himself in cultures which would ultimately result in stylistic changes his writing. His work has earned him numerous prizes, including the 2015 Man Booker International Prize, and the 2013 Best Translated Book Award in Fiction. He has adapted a number of his novels for the screen with director Béla Tarr. According to his literary agent, he now “lives in reclusiveness in the hills of Szentlászló”.
Paul Werchowenski
Mürsel Ertas
Ixi Fortinbras
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
Your name is pretty odd you know—he turned his head toward the back seat to the man who, when they met, had only said: I am Paul’s friend, Paul had said nothing in reply, and Paul didn’t even help, didn’t even explain what this person was doing there in the car, and even later on he didn’t even find out, and when this man said: I’m Paul’s friend, this man didn’t even look at him, like someone who didn’t consider this introduction to be important, when he came out from the doors of the terminal to the car with Paul, this man extended his hand and said something unintelligible: he held his hand, and said something in the English that they all took up immediately as their common language, but all the while he didn’t even look at him, instead he cast his gaze somewhere beyond his shoulder, namely off in a completely different direction, toward the sliding doors of the tiny provincial airport, as if he were still waiting for someone else, and whoever had just arrived—that is to say, him—was not the person he was waiting for, he had been preparing for something more than this, some more significant personality: they shook hands, this clearly meant nothing to him, thought Ixi Fortinbras, clearly he must have come just now with Paul from the bank, and Paul obviously didn’t know what to do with him, so you brought him out here to the airport; Ixi? Paul’s friend asked with a kind of sarcasm in his voice: Ixi, with an x?—yes—you say it with an i in front and an i in back?—no, both those letters should be pronounced like the letter e in English—fine, but Fortinbras, really? like in that, um, whatchamacallit, right?—yes, that’s it, he answered and as far as he was concerned the discussion was closed; he turned his head away toward the window, beyond the row of sparsely placed alternating factory buildings, tenements, and battered meadows that ran alongside the airport runways, there was nothing out of the ordinary, already in the first minutes he began to try to determine when he would recognize that he had not arrived in just any old place, but there was nothing, there were exactly the same factory buildings and tenements and fields as anywhere else, well, fine, of course it was just Kiev, he thought, but he said to Paul that he really didn’t notice anything at all here that would serve to indicate that … and you won’t either, answered Paul, winking conspiratorially at his friend, if this really were his friend here sitting beside him, this tense man clothed from head to toe in a discrete plum-colored Pierre Cardin-like getup and no other distinguishing features, who then added, oh, you didn’t come here for that old chewed-up piece of shit, did you?—because no one is interested in that anymore, everyone is beyond that, reeeeally … well, of course, he continued, the catastrophe tourists still come, they’re interested, but even if they go there to get their little dose of horror, they still find nothing, and especially not there, because there’s nothing there anymore supposedly, I myself never went, but everyone says the whole thing is just so embarrassing; this man grimaced and looked at Paul, and then, because there was no reaction whatsoever, he turned his head back toward the windshield and gestured with his left hand, with an undulating movement that was hard for Fortinbras in the back seat to understand, maybe it meant: well enough about that already, in any event, he said to Paul—clearly continuing their earlier conversation that had been interrupted only due to Fortinbras’ arrival and his getting into the car—originally, he said, she had been here at Deutsche Bank, then she left for a few months to go to Bucharest, and then she left again—and this is the main thing—to Tirana, and in Tirana she became the manager of Internal Audits and she spent two years there, the honest truth was that she wanted to get away from there as well, but the lady CEO, hired by the previous owner, didn’t really … didn’t really like her either, older ladies never really like young women, especially if the woman, the young woman in question, Teresa, is in a position to oppose her in certain matters, and an intern … an internal audits manager can do just that, and officially Teresa wasn’t even under the CEO’s supervision, but under that of the supervisory board, because the job of Internal Audits is of course to supervise the bank with the owner’s interests in mind, whereas the CEO, in a managerial function, falls under the purview of Internal Audits—well, now given all this, Teresa just had to get out of there … meaning she wanted to get out of Tirana? Paul interrupted, yes, that’s right, out of Tirana, that’s it exactly, the friend answered, and then whatshisnameagain, the Director of Internal Audits for Felicitas, I mean Banca Fortas in Genoa, who was responsible for the supervision and oversight of Internal Audits for all the subsidiary banks, he convinced her to go to Genoa, to work for him, this happened one and a half years ago, and they were getting on well in that situation, but then there was this distance, and there was this other position, because then Heinz was in Genoa, and sometimes he went to Tirana, well, and Teresa was really good at fulfilling her responsibilities, she did everything just as they wanted, um, the connection between Tirana and Genoa was ideal, and in Teresa’s opinion this Heinz was much more professional and capable than the guy before, and after that she went to Genoa, and no doubt after a very short time, Teresa realized that she found the Italian mentality extremely difficult to bear, they are incapable of making decisions, they take their sweeeeeet time, it takes them at least two or three months to decide on something, and they always they take their sweeeeeet time, and Paul’s friend made that same undulating motion again, to show just how they were taking their sweeeeeet time, Paul was quiet, he gazed ahead, his hands on the steering wheel, listening attentively to the account which—at the beginning—was not so bothersome to Fortinbras there in the back seat, because he thought: why not, obviously there was some little problem going on here and he had just dropped into the middle of things, maybe that’s what Paul was thinking when he ignored him and simply let him be immediately exposed in media res to the daily life of Kiev, Fortinbras looked out the window, already they were crossing one of the concrete bridges above the Dnieper in the heavy traffic, he looked out of the window and he saw Imexbank, then he saw Pravex Bank, and then Privatbank, and Ukreximbank, Oshchadbank, UkrSibbank, Ukrsocbank, Rodovid Bank, Megabank, Bank Kiew, Brokbiznyesbank, Astrabank, Khresatikbank, Universalbank, Diamantbank, then he saw Nadra Bank, Delta Bank, Energobank, Fortunabank, Renesans Kapitol, and so on—good heavens, thought Fortin-bras, what is going on here, every other building is a bank, what in the world could this be, why are there so many banks here, but there was no way for him to pose any questions, because the conversation in the front seat had remained very intense, it was impossible to interrupt or stop it, and Paul, yielding to his own forgiving character, was just letting his interlocutor speak, and he spoke and spoke, he just kept talking and talking: in my opinion, Italy is the only European country where it isn’t customary for the top leadership of the bank to have university degrees; the larger part, i.e. most of them, attend vocational schools after their high-school exams, umm, and on top of that there are innumerable employees who are from completely different fields, for example humanities graduates, so in consequence she considered this Heinz to be good on a professional level, but as for the entire team working there—wait a second, Paul interrupted, what exactly was this Heinz to Teresa? Heinz?—he was the boss who lured her over there, fine, Paul asked again, but who did he lure over there, Teresa?—yes, Teresa, that’s who I’m talking about, and, well, as Heinz was the lowest-level Internal Audit manager to whom people had to report, the one responsible for the subsidiary banks, so—Paul picked up the thread of conversation again: this Heinz wasn’t at the highest supervisory level that the subsidiary banks had to report to?—no, no, no, the other nodded—he was the lowest-level manager, above him there were still two others, do you understand?—and these two others, who do they supervise? Paul interrupted once again with a question—they supervise the people one level below them, came the answer—so in other words, the ones who are always one level below?—yes, that’s exactly right, and then there is the highest level of management, responsible for supervising the entire bank—and thus they supervise the Italian part as well, but only the subsidiary banks?—yes, only the subsidiary banks, the primary bank doesn’t lie within their scope of authority, yes, only those subsidiary banks that are located in Europe, well now—Paul’s friend pulled his index finger along his forehead—so what happened here was that she didn’t like the Italian work ethic too much, that’s one thing, the other was that—and this was something she hadn’t noticed before—there was nothing to reproach Heinz with from a professional standpoint, but she just couldn’t stand his style, his ways, in other words he was like, I don’t know, she says that he was like—I would say this myself—a woman between fifty and sixty, with her cycles, when ooooh, she can be very sweet and everything, then she flies into a rage, and there’s no way to tell when it is going to be one or the other, so they never know in the morning when he comes into the office if he will be one way or the other, it’s impossible to know if his wife is the reason for this, or him, his wife sits at home all day, they’re Genoese, but they live in Milan, and it could be that he was always like this, or he just got that way, but whatever, the main thing is that she couldn’t stand this kind of style, or this kind of behavior that he was displaying with her, there were stomachaches, and so on and so on, and now after all this, with two years to go with this division in her contract, she sits down to chat with him and tells him that she can’t stand it anymore, and so then he told her, this was last year in August, not to get so worked up, because if she could go to Moscow in the autumn for two months, mainly to clear up the conflicts and set things straight in their Moscow office, by the time she got back he wouldn’t be there, of course this had to be taken on faith, and of course two months later, when Teresa came back he was still there: he was there, he is there, and with all certainty he will be there—who are you talking about now? asked Paul—Heinz, answered his friend, and she said that she certainly couldn’t bear it, she sat down with Heinz more than once, and they weren’t able to work things out, sometimes he’s more normal and he’s inclined to understand, and when he isn’t more normal, then he just argues—tell me about another time when Teresa was upset, Paul interrupted—fine, I’ll tell you about a very specific incident, he raised his left palm for Paul to be silent, he knew what he wanted, he already had a concrete example: here you have it, there’s an internal audit, well, now you need to know that she had already been in Moscow for two months, and in Moscow the chairman was the kind of person who’d been chairman there for thirty years already, the Italian Communist Party had sent him to Moscow, I think it’s clear that he had other duties, he’s senile already, but supposedly on good terms with Putin, to such a degree that he visits him socially, no one dares touch him, but he isn’t normal; now you have to really understand that literally he really isn’t normal, well, and then this happened: Teresa was there, and after advertising several times, they hired a lady as head of Internal Audits—Ludmila, or whatever her name was—Teresa said that she had been hired from somewhere else, she was capable, this was some time … in October or November, in the middle of the month, well, then it happened when Teresa came back and it turned out that this lady, as the head of Internal Audits, had the responsibility of inspecting the various divisions of the bank, they had a work plan, she was the one who created it, it had been approved in Genoa, and the work plan determined which divisions would be inspected by the employees, and it was decided that procurements had to be audited as well, and they were audited, well, now it turned out that in procurements some guy purchased something from a vendor without getting other offers, I don’t know if it was hardware or software, in other words some kind of info … information technology, or some kind of service for the bank, something the bank uses for its own needs, and the main thing was that it turned out there was some scandal, in other words they had never opened tender, and in that case you’re supposed to accept the most advantageous proposal, right? well, that’s not what happened this time, this woman wrote a report about it, and the report first got to the CEO, and the CEO sent it on—because he had to—to the chairman, well, and now the chairman began to rage that this was absurd, and the main thing was that he wanted to kick out this woman who wrote the report, well now it was an impossible situation, it was impossible to argue with him, because it was perfectly clear that he wanted to protect the person who had arranged this purchase, well, after all this—but, Paul asked again, who arranged the purchase?—we don’t know, answered the other—well, but what’s his position?—maybe department head or something like that, his friend spread his hands apart, well, now after all this Teresa goes to Genoa to the department of Internal Audits, to say what happened, and discuss what to do now, and they talk, and they say that as a matter of fact this woman can’t be saved, because nobody is going to confront this chairman in Moscow, because this Moscow chairman is under the protection of the first or the second most important person in Genoa who’s also an old prick, who, if they call him, he hands down an order, and the result is always what they want, but Fortinbras didn’t react to this, it was impossible to connect to or follow what the two people in the front seat were talking about, and they showed no sign of interest in how much their guest was able to follow their conversation—if he understood nothing at all, that was fine too, indeed maybe it was even better if he was getting nothing from this story, or account; not only was the content and meaning of this conversation unclear to Fortinbras, but the reason for it escaped him as well—why was Paul’s friend putting on this performance, and why for Paul, and what did he expect from Paul—apart from listening to this account, nothing was clear, was he seeking advice, or did Paul have anything to do with anyone in this story? it was all perfectly obscure, Fortinbras determined, and in addition he could barely hope that later on he might begin to catch the drift of what they were talking about, that then it would become more clear, it was obvious that the entire story—if this was indeed a story—was just a cloud of obscurity in the best of cases and nothing else, so Fortinbras tuned out, he didn’t pay attention, the words reached him from the seats in front, but he just heard them, and he no longer bothered with their meaning, they drove across a few wide intersections, then they reached a luxury residential complex surrounded by fences, with guards standing in the gates, they turned in, they parked, and they went up an elevator to the ninth floor to a large apartment—it was not at all clear to Fortinbras whose it was—and when he tried to ask, Paul smilingly choked the words in him, signaling to him that well, that’s not interesting, the main thing is that you’ll feel good here, you can relax, take a shower, he put his hand on his back with a friendly gesture, look, and he lifted his watch to check, in four minutes it will be twelve o’clock, let’s say that we’ll come back for you at two, is that enough time? of course, answered Fortinbras, I’m not tired, well, that’s fantastic, fantastic and fantastic, Paul smiled at him, then they left him alone, he showered, he wrapped himself up in the towel, and he stood next to the large plate-glass window in the spacious room, comprised for some unknown reason of completely irregular angles; he stared outside, but he only saw the apartment blocks of the housing complex forming a semicircle, then through a gap between the buildings a small section of the Dnieper, he had no idea what district of the city he was in, so what are your plans, Paul asked him afterward, when he came back for him a little before three, my plans, Fortinbras looked at him confusedly, I don’t have any plans in particular, but if I could choose something, then more than anything else I’d like to get to, well you know, the Zone—we won’t be able to go in there, Paul explained, just maybe up to the border, if you insist on it, because supposedly the radiation over there is too much, I don’t believe it, but I guess it changes from time to time, he concluded, and put a cigarette into his mouth, but he didn’t light it, he sat leaning back against one of the windowsills, and explained to Fortinbras that he didn’t think a trip to the Zone was at all worth it, and he didn’t deny that it was possible to get into the Zone’s inner section for one hundred fifty dollars or something like that, but he made a dismissive movement with his hand, indicating that was nothing, it wasn’t a question of money, but that there was nothing to see there, and then suddenly he began talking about how Kiev was really beautiful, Fortinbras should believe him: it was much more worthwhile to look around Kiev a little bit; yes, answered Fortinbras, but right now as it happens I’m really interested in the Zone, because I understand, he continued more quietly, that it’s not really interesting for you here in Kiev, but you know I was never here, and it’s hair-raising—I know it isn’t for you—how the radiation spreads out here for up to one hundred kilometers, it’s just … I understand, I understand, Paul nodded from the window sill, so we’ll go see it tomorrow, no problem, that’s fine, he said, but at least let me show you something of the city today, then we’ll go have dinner tonight, all right? a wide smile, Fortinbras nodded, quickly threw on some clothes, and already they were downstairs in the car, luckily that friend or business associate was no longer sitting there so they could go just the two of them, and Fortinbras was very happy about this, he even expressed his joy, and Paul in a calm voice answered that this Mürsel wasn’t a bad fellow, believe me, I’ve known him for a while, it’s just that well, he always has something to say and it can get a little tiring, but he’s a fine fellow, there’s no problem with him, they cut across streets, and then they drove on through the wide boulevards, there were more unusually wide intersections, clearly they were getting closer to the city center, how much longer until the center, Fortinbras asked, that’s it already, you’re there, answered Paul, here’s a market, and sometimes on the weekend I come here to get vegetables and things like that, vegetables?! Fortinbras looked at him, and things like that?! while his host, shaking his head, just smiled, but he didn’t answer, he just nodded, yes, of course—but you eat vegetables, here?! he repeated, aha, Paul turned towards him for a moment and there was a kind of paternal forbearance in his regard, how could we not when the finest vegetables in all of Kiev are right here—well, but—there’s no but, Paul swept Fortinbras’s objections away, then suddenly Saint Sophia appeared before them, and the visitor was definitively struck dumb, they parked nearby, but before visiting the church they sat down in a Serbian restaurant, where they had some cold cocktails and something to eat, then they went into the silent courtyard of Saint Sophia, there were no crowds at all as Fortin-bras had imagined that there would be, at least here, but there weren’t any, he even asked about it: where are they, Paul, where are the tourists? at which point Paul looked at him seriously, he waited, and then finally he said: they’re all in the Zone; and they stopped in the courtyard, Paul gazed fixedly into his eyes, and he looked at Paul, trying to discern if he was joking now or what, but then Paul laughed, slapped his friend on the back, and said you really are far gone, Ixi, try not to take things so seriously, but well, what was he supposed to do, Fortinbras thought to himself, if things were serious, it didn’t make any difference if one looked away from how serious they are, they remained just as serious, and he almost even said this immediately to Paul, but then he didn’t speak, he was a little crushed by the strange arrogance of his friend’s reply, and so a little crushed, he stepped into the interior spaces of St. Sophia, and it wasn’t only because of this arrogance, but because generally—he had to admit to himself—his friend had really changed quite a lot since last time they had met, it wasn’t only obvious from his external appearance—because over the past couple of years Paul had clearly lost weight and had been working out—you could almost see the contours of his muscles beneath the jacket shoulders—but there were inner changes too, there in the interior part of Paul, in his character, in his nature some great change had taken place, there was, in Paul, a quality that he had never experienced before, a cynicism, Fortinbras had discovered in him a kind of impudence and he was really not too happy about that, he really wasn’t, because by now Paul was his only friend, and he knew that at their age there would be no others, but then what should he do, he kept thinking, with this cynical impudence, what, he asked himself as he looked at the glorious church interior, and his brain worked over this again and again, he thought about this in front of the frescoes too, and he thought about it in front of the mosaics, all the while realizing that what he was seeing was dazzling, but without Paul it wasn’t worth anything, and in general without Paul, his true friend, nothing was worth anything, he walked back and forth through the soft gold, from which, it seemed to him, the entire building had been constructed, he crept here and there in the small labyrinths of the columns and the walls, and he could hardly give himself over to this unparalleled space, in addition to which Paul became visibly restless after just a few minutes, he—who in the old days would have been capable of remaining in an architectural miracle like this for hours—was impatiently waiting for when they would finish here practically as soon as they stepped inside, yes, this was Paul now, more than anything else now he wanted to get things done, in place of the old tranquility some kind of general, restive impatience vibrated inside him, yes, this was what the world meant to Paul now, a succession of things following one after the other, in which he, Paul, had to take care of each individual thing, to take care of things on his own behalf, one after the other in succession, and then came the next one, for example him and the fact that he was here, the fact that Paul had invited him as a guest to Ukraine, and now he, Fortinbras, was the thing that had to be taken care of, and he would take care of it; just a quick telephone call to see if he was in the mood to come to Kiev, that was enough, and the plane ticket was already there in his laptop, everything happened so quickly that there was no time to prepare, my God, where am I going, he had thought about just what kind of dangerous situation was he getting himself into, and in general: anywhere, because he couldn’t even bear the thought of danger, let alone a real danger, danger had been, for the last ten years of his life, a major category: it was in other words what he could not tolerate, he had excluded it from his life, freeing himself from the smallest, the very tiniest dangers, he sniffed them out and avoided them by wide margins, he never undertook anything in which even the very minutest chance of danger could be hypothesized, he wasn’t paranoid, no, he was only someone who sensed the dangers that were already there, if possible, in even the most minuscule of events, so that he wasn’t just imagining they were there, but he sensed—if it was at all possible to sense them—the dangers that were present already; and now it was exactly he, who had this kind of relation to dangerous events, who had come here at Paul’s bidding, he, whose excessive sensitivity was well known among his friends, and first and foremost among them Paul as he knew him the best, and here he was in close proximity to the infamous Zone, not much further than one hundred kilometers, he had looked at the map on the plane, I’ve gone mad, where am I going, Paul says something and I jump, fine, it was always like that, but one day I’m really going to pay for this, and maybe that one day is today, that’s what he was thinking about up there in the atmosphere, but then after he had gotten off the plane these thoughts disappeared, because he was absorbed by what was around him, and if only that friend or business associate hadn’t been in Paul’s car, and if only he and Paul hadn’t had to spend the first hours after his arrival crushed by the incoherent stories of this Pierre Cardin-suit guy, instead of both of them spending at least the first day together and having a chance to speak, because it had been almost two years since they had last seen each other, but what does that matter now, Fortinbras thought to himself among the dense curvilinear columns of the Sophia with their dark golden glimmering, here I am with him now among these dense curvilinear columns with their dark golden glimmering, and the saints gazed down on him from the mosaics and the frescoes from the opulent gold, very soulfully, they looked down on him, and for him, perhaps, because of these gazes, he had no desire to quickly be done with it, as Paul had clearly indicated with his body language, you stay here, he whispered into his ear, I’ll wait for you outside, and already Paul was outside in the courtyard, but this is impossible, he thought, is this Paul? and he just looked back at the saints in the mosaics and the frescoes, as if they would know, but they didn’t know anything, nothing in the whole world, they just looked at him soulfully and they just asked him: what happened to the past, they stared at him, and they asked him: where is it?—where is that place where their soulful nature would mean something, but that place wasn’t anywhere anymore, what could have happened with Paul, Fortinbras asked himself worriedly, what is this whole thing with this athlete’s pumped-up exterior, this frivolous cynicism, and his heart was aching, and the Sophia was so beautiful, but he couldn’t put it off anymore, he had to leave these soulful saints in their golden light prematurely, because Paul’s mute urging from outside made his staying there completely senseless, and once again he sat in the car, and the car glided along, and for a while Paul didn’t say anything, then finally he spoke, and Paul suggested he show him the city; he thanked him, but in the meantime he had been thinking the best thing would be to sit down somewhere and discuss this matter in a tranquil setting, but of course there was no tranquil setting anywhere, and after a drive through the city, they sat down in a café, you’ll like it, Paul noted as they went by foot for the last two hundred meters, and they passed in front of a house and the plaque on the house informed them that Bulgakov had lived here, and when he noticed this, he immediately wanted to take a look at the inside of the house, but Paul impatiently waved him down, saying oh, that’s not interesting, leave it, there’s nothing to see in there, cafés are much more interesting, let’s go already, so on they went, passing among a row of repugnant street artists, you’ll see, Paul kept saying, encouraging him, this place is the greatest, but it wasn’t, just four walls painted in four different colors, a gussied-up stucco ceiling, Austro-Hungarian Art Deco tables and chairs, with a few better dressed figures by the tables, but he, Ixi, had absolutely no idea why Paul liked this place so much, and he understood even less what why Paul thought that he, Ixi, would like it, why would he like it, with its cheap kitsch for tourists, that’s the kind of place it was, in any event he didn’t want to dampen his friend’s enthusiasm, so he noted in a restrained manner that it was pleasant, but immediately afterward he mentioned the Bulgakov house again, and he was asking something about Bulgakov and Kiev, but Paul just looked at him with a surprised or rather a blank gaze, he gulped down his coffee, he didn’t know anything about Bulgakov, and in general Paul didn’t know anything about anything, he was obviously interested only in local political and business gossip, and why—Fortinbras broke his inner silence—why don’t we talk about the Sophia or about Bulgakov, he asked Paul that question, and Paul did not conceal his resentment, we already talked about Bulgakov and we were in the Sophia, Paul said harshly and a little angrily, what do you want already, but well what had come over Paul? Fortinbras asked himself ever more sorrowfully, what the hell has happened, he looked at him, he looked into his eyes, and they were Paul’s old eyes, but everything else had changed, this Paul Werchowenski is not the same person who used to be my friend, Fortinbras said to himself that evening at dusk, and he was dejected, you’re tired, Paul noted kindly, as they were headed toward the restaurant chosen for their evening meal, it’s nothing, nothing, he brushed off the remark dispiritedly, and just sank down into the soft hum of the Audi A4, he wasn’t even interested so much anymore in the Dnieper, or the city, and especially not in the restaurant that had been chosen with all the special dishes, this is the best that you can get here, said Paul loudly, and he ordered one dish after another, you’re tired, he repeated again later on, but you know when you’re tired you mustn’t lie down, listen, and he leaned in closer towards him, I’ll take you somewhere, okay? and there was a roguish look in his eyes, somewhere? Fortinbras asked, yes, Paul smiled at him, and we’ll get rid of that tiredness, and they were already driving along the streets of Kiev toward the outskirts, the housing estates disappeared, and only ever larger buildings could be seen, concealed by enormous fences, inasmuch as anything could be seen in the darkness, then they stopped at one gate, Paul said something, and he showed something like a pass to the guard, they turned into a huge park, then they were inside a building that was something like a castle gone mad, there was a huge crowd, and noise, smoke, thumping canned music, but Paul just gestured for him to wait a minute, we’re not there yet, Fortinbras followed him, they went upward somewhere in an elevator, and they stepped out into a corridor where there was complete silence, and it was so empty that he really thought they weren’t in the same building, their steps were swallowed up by thick carpets, then Paul pressed a buzzer, and he tapped out a code onto a pad next to a door, he showed some kind of card to a camera, the door opened, they stepped in, but then there was another door, as if they had walked into an elevator, but behind their backs the first door closed with a loud bang, something had happened but it was impossible to tell what, there was a small quiver or something, that’s all they could feel, then the second door opened, and then they were inside some kind of little hole and across from them was another door, then something happened again, and finally this third door opened as well, and Fortinbras took one step toward a huge open room, but he felt too much gravity in his step, yes, that was the first thing that he noticed, that movement here had become heavy, as if in this room gravity had increased, Paul gently pushed him ahead, he took another step, and he realized that they were in an aquarium, Fortinbras was rooted to the spot, he wasn’t seeing an aquarium from the outside, but they were, in the most decisive sense of the word, inside an aquarium, there was no doubt, but there was not a drop of water upon them, around them there were a few naked women swimming around, their long blonde hair undulating behind them, Fortinbras just looked, then he looked at Paul, but Paul was so happy to see Fortinbras so surprised that he didn’t say anything, whatever will be will be, later on he would find out what kind of trick this was, he took a few steps forward, with Paul urging him on, go on, go on, let’s go, and the women floated beside them and above them with their cascading blonde hair, it was an incredible sight, around them the walls burned with gold, as did the ceiling and the floor, it seemed like it was all made of gold, the whole thing was blinding, because the light was shining so brightly from somewhere, Paul just stood half a step behind him, enjoying the effect, and the effect was huge, as even after one minute Fortinbras was incapable of speaking, then a naked woman floated over to him in the water, which could hardly be water, she stroked his chest, then her hand slid down his stomach to his sexual organs, it was very beautiful and very lovely, it was so beautiful and so pretty that in the first moment Fortinbras thought this was also some kind of trickery, just as everything here was a kind of trickery, and it might have been true, Paul gently took his arm and led him toward an almond-shaped opening leading into a kind of cave, but there he already felt the presence of water down by his legs, it splashed around his shoes, and yet nothing got wet, on the other hand real-looking women came forward, and there they were, and they greeted the two men, do you hear their English? it’s flawless! Paul exclaimed enthusiastically, come on, he pulled him along, let’s sit down there, and he led him over to a scarlet couch, they were served champagne and fruits, but the champagne wasn’t champagne, the fruit wasn’t fruit, only the women were real, they sat next to them, they wore lustrous, satiny, bluish glimmering bathing suits which emphasized their figures with unbelievable precision, so much so that Fortinbras blushed, not only because of their breasts and the nipples of their breasts, but the curve of their bottoms, and the secretive components of their vaginas were sharply and enticingly delineated; and there were only bodies here, bodies and enticement and offers and nightmares, which caused him to realize more or less where they were, yes, Paul said to him, this is what a brothel is like here, what do you think, but the women are so beautiful and pretty, Fortinbras answered faintly, there’s no way they can be prostitutes, but they are, very much so, try it out, pick one, whichever one you want is yours, said Paul not bothering to lower his voice, and at his further prompting he had to choose one, all the while hearing Paul’s ever more enthusiastic voice: so, what do you say, Ixi, well, what do you say to this, my old man? and the woman unbuttoned his fly, and climbed into his lap, while at the same time another woman leant over his shoulder, touching his face with a breath-light touch, caressing his mouth, prying it open with playful strength, and she pressed some kind of pill into his mouth, then he remembered that the pill was blue, the woman thrust her tongue into his mouth, and this tongue played inside his mouth spreading the pill all over his palate, but immediately after that his brain felt like it was exploding, and it was horrifically good, and then he was outside in the cosmos, for one hundred years, and, in the cosmos, there was a mild breeze blowing, and everywhere there were thousands and thousands of billions of radiant stars, and everything was ascending somewhere with insane speed, and in the meantime he ended up underneath a huge rainbow made up of a billion colors, really this rainbow was composed of a billion different colors, he was filled with unspeakable happiness, he was in an immeasurably deep space and endless darkness which nonetheless shone, and then falling, some kind of sickly giddiness, and finally just an incandescent beam of light, an unbearable thundering, every sound hurt, and a million sounds were attacking him, Paul leaned above him, then sat down beside him on the bed, please, turn it off, turn it off, he begged Paul, at which Paul, laughing, stood beside him, turned off the music, and his head was splitting with unbearable pain, close the curtains, I beg you, Paul, he begged, but I closed all the curtains already, Paul laughed, but at least he was there in the apartment that was known to him, where they had arrived before, at least Paul was there next to him, that was good, but what wasn’t good was that Paul was laughing in a completely different way than the way Paul used to laugh, there was something in his laughter that was painful to Fortinbras, so he asked him: please don’t laugh, fine, said Paul, then I won’t laugh, and he laughed some more, but in exchange you start pulling yourself together, because it will be nine-thirty in a second, and if you really want to go we’ve got to set off now, he said go?! where?! Fortinbras leaned up on his elbows, well, didn’t you want to go to the Zone? and it was hard taking a shower, although both of them thought that would help, it didn’t help, every single drop of water coming from the shower head struck him with massive force, look, Paul opened the door from time to time, maybe instead we should just put it off if you’re like this, no, no way, I’ll be fine in a second, he answered, and he forced himself to let the drops of water fall on him from the shower head, and already he had dried off by himself, and he got dressed by himself, just when he went down to the elevator he needed a bit of support in case he lost his balance, because sometimes he would still lose his balance, that’s the last symptom, Paul reassured him, your balance will still be looking for itself for a moment, and they were already headed off toward the nearby highway, this time on the inner side of the Dnieper, we’ll pick up Mürsel here, Paul said suddenly at a traffic light, like someone who makes all the decisions in these matters, and he turned off, but at first Fortinbras had no idea what was going on: who was this Mürsel, and why did they have to turn off for him, in place of his brain there was an enormous ice-cold chunk of stone, so that he only began to realize where this was headed when he got a glimpse of Mürsel, oh, the guy from yesterday, oh no, anything but that, this flashed through the ice-cold stone, but he mumbled something to him as a way of greeting, I thought—Paul turned back to Fortinbras—it would be more pleasant to make the trip in company, no? and already in the front of the car they were launching into yesterday’s theme, Paul wasn’t interested in the Zone at all, Fortinbras realized, he lives one hundred kilometers from it, and it’s not interesting to him, he looked at the sparse alternation of buildings next to the highway: pubs, apartment houses, farms, shops, tin-roofed churches—they had set off to the north, toward the Zone; and Mürsel, who was not wearing Pierre Cardin this time, but Cerruti, was already in the thick of things, namely that in his view, joint stock companies in shared ownership functioned exactly like those massive enterprises in the old socialist era with no supervision on the part of the owners, in which the management functions as a kind of quasi-owner, and the real owners, who are after all the distributed shareholders, have no idea of what’s going on, they have zero representation at the general meetings, they tell them whatever they want, resulting in an inner structure, which, I tell you, is built upon the logic of buddies and friends, there’s no role anywhere for expertise, absolutely no question of who is appropriate for a given job, and as a matter of fact this was the case with us too—don’t be mad, you Pavel Morozov, Paul said to him, but the parallel wasn’t completely clear—still, said Mürsel, who this time was in Cerruti, and with the strong gestures familiar from yesterday: he half turned around so he could speak to Paul, who was behind the steering wheel: but here, you see, the situation is once again personal, because this Italian, this Ficino ended up here in Kiev, because among all the countries where Banco Fortas has subsidiary banks, Kiev is the only place where they will hire someone as a chairman without a university degree, everywhere else a university degree is required, this is determined by the local authorities, so it’s up to Kiev, that’s the rule here, that’s how it is by law for credit institutions, and that’s how it should be, nothing will change in this regard, the law concerning credit institutions formulates the rules for banks, including the human rules of the game, well, what’s interesting about this is—just imagine, Mürsel shook his head—Albania is the country with the strictest credit-bank regulations, and I know this because once a long time ago I was the chairman of a local supervisory board there, because over there in Albania everything is delegated from Genoa, and I was the only one with the piece of parchment qualifying me to be chair of the supervisory board, well, of course it didn’t happen that way, but the joke is that I was the only one with the parchment, do you get it, the whole thing is a joke, just a joke, but that’s not the interesting part, well, and so he came here to Kiev, and he lured me over here as well—who’s this now? Paul interrupted—well, who am I talking about, you’re not paying attention, Paul, I’m talking about that Ficino, who else would I be talking about, well, to cut a long story short, first he was in Tirana, but then he came here to Kiev, because no parchment is needed here, and then he brought me over here, I accepted the offer, I came—but this Ficino, Paul interrupted again, what is he at the bank, he’s the chairman, answered Mürsel a little impatiently, because as I was telling you, even somebody without a parchment can be chairman, and he can come here … well, now you have to know that this subsidiary had been sold half a year before we came here, previously it was in the ownership of the mayor of Kiev, it was his and only his, and for sure they paid off the Italian trade delegation and the inspectors, and they bought just one big pile of shit, because the quality of the outstanding debts was shit, how should I put it, you know what that means, and in this case the owning family had a financial interest in most of the extended credit, there’s no doubt—Mürsel spread his hands apart, well, as he had gotten out of it he must have known that the whole thing was just one big pile of shit, namely that the chance that the credit would be repaid was small, if not nonexistent, the prospect, namely, of repayment, was not going to happen, or at least not any time soon, and a lot of this debt had to be appraised, on the basis of which certain provisions had to be made for liabilities which in all likelihood would not be repaid, you understand, it’s clear, well, but there are regulations here, right? and the outstanding liabilities and the investments have to be classified—this is how it is all over the world—they’re assessed on a quarterly basis, but here, you know, there are several degrees of assessment, and for each degree of classification there are four or five other classifications, and for each of these, with the exception of the highest one—with which accordingly there is no problem—for each degree, local legislation determines a percentage for the liability reserves, these are basic things, what can I say, but so that your friend can understand, the main thing is—Mürsel now turned around to Fortinbras—the main thing is that the provision for liabilities is taken from earnings and placed in a particular account which is not included in those earnings, well, now you should know—he turned back to Paul—that the family—that is the former owner, or mainly his son—definitely—although of course it can’t be proved definitively—paid off this guy, this Ficino, for a song, namely he was invited to go sailing on their personal yacht on the Dnieper, he was invited to parties at their home, to receptions and the like, and it’s possible that they gave him something, the result of which was that Ficino began to prefer this family, particularly the son of this family, and this preference meant that the family had the money here in deposits, and it was earning much higher than the usual interest rates, well you understand, and now the relationship between myself and this chairman began to quickly deteriorate—he turned back again to Fortinbras—in as much as I’m kind of like a manager in this situation, but just to make things clear, in principle the CEO, and not the chairman, should be the one running the bank, because he’s the one who’s running the place, and the chairman shouldn’t even be interfering with the functioning of the bank, but this guy Ficino interfered and he interfered because he’s Italian and the bank is Italian, and the CEO is a Ukrainian who’s afraid of Italians, but not of me of course; but my own position is kind of special, because normally I wouldn’t be reporting to a manager but directly to the CEO, I’m responsible for the treasury, as you know, in other words resource allocation, and I always ask for—or, to put it more bluntly, order—written documentation for every verbal request, which comes to me from the Italians—well, Ficino did a whole bunch of things which chiefly favored the family members of the former owner, umm, and there were other things too, and in every instance I asked to get it as a written request, well, his tactic was that he always did what he wanted to do, and then somebody else would take the blame, and then he would scream that this idiot had screwed up, well, now, however, there was a paper trail for everything, and so he couldn’t do that anymore, well, and as a matter of fact I was the one who got it in the neck when I followed this procedure every single time, which I could make light of, but he didn’t, instead he was enraged continually, and he turned more and more against me, and as he turned against me, I also was compelled to react, and his position became more and more entrenched … who’s this now, Fortinbras put forth the question, but only to himself, because he was even less interested in this story, if that was possible, of which he didn’t even understand half, because he only paid attention occasionally, sometimes just picking up a word here and there, so that it was difficult, he wasn’t interested, the story bored him, indeed, after a while, in the heavy traffic, by the time they left Kiev, he already felt an aversion for this story, and he tried to prevent Mürsel’s words from reaching his consciousness, he watched the road in front of them, which was lined with either birch trees or beech trees, he didn’t know which, he didn’t know trees, maybe they were birch trees, and he looked at the buildings, appearing infrequently now alongside the road, and the roadside vendors: there were many of them for a while after they left Kiev, then they too became ever more infrequent, they were selling cucumbers, lettuce, potatoes, and tomatoes on carpets spread out on the ground, my God, cucumbers, lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes?!—do you have a Geiger counter? he suddenly asked Paul in Danish, interrupting Mürsel, a what? Paul jerked his head back, a Geiger counter, repeated Fortinbras with emphasis, still in the language they shared, why would I need one, Paul frowned, and then quickly turned back to the direction they were going, because he felt that he had held Fortinbras’ gaze too long, they were going to crash into something, and all the while Mürsel understood nothing, he looked at Paul, and he looked at Fortinbras, to try to see what was going on, but it didn’t last too long, he couldn’t bear the pause which was far too long for him, and already he launched into the story again, but Fortinbras decided that from this point on he wasn’t going to listen to him at all, not even a word, he felt hurt by Paul’s reaction, and by the fact that it didn’t even occur to Paul that what obviously seemed to him to be a superfluous precaution, to someone else, for example to him, Fortinbras, was hardly superfluous at all, and that nothing was clearer than the fact that if somebody were headed toward some kind of danger—even if voluntarily, as they were now—then at the very least the most minimal of precautions should be taken, because they were headed toward danger now, on this highway with vegetable sellers sparsely scattered along its edge, more threatening than the most lethal of danger, and Fortinbras at this moment in Paul’s car didn’t want to explain why he insisted on approaching this menace, he didn’t want to, because he knew he desired it, and while he was repulsed by his own desire in vain, he wanted to be there, because what he was feeling was something that was stronger in him than nature, or maybe it was an exaggerated fear of everything that was scary, and this was his desire, his wish: to somehow come into the proximity of that strength of which there never had been and never would be anything more formidable, because this was the one thing that man had started and had been unable to stop—so, you want a Geiger counter, Paul interrupted Mürsel, and he turned to the back seat once again, really, why didn’t you say so, why are you so interested in the Zone, what the hell do you want there, Paul turned to the front again, and he seemed a little agitated, but really, tell us already, he continued, what the hell is so interesting for you that you want to go where nobody else wants to go, where nobody ever wanted to go, to wallow in catastrophe like that, it’s really not how I knew you, Ixi, Paul lowered his voice, and he grimaced as if he were sorry, Fortinbras saw his eyes glancing back in the mirror, and then he realized that he was sorry, he said to himself, for certain he was sorry, and that’s why he was quiet, Fortinbras was quiet, and for a while no one said anything, even Mürsel needed some time to realize that it would be best for him to start speaking and break the silence, because this silence didn’t bode anything good, it had all promised to be so much fun, to take this strange character to the Zone, to take this person with a more than strange name, Mürsel noted to himself and finding his voice again, he said: he tripped me up, he simply didn’t give me a bonus, claiming that there were losses in the treasury but that wasn’t true because the whole bank had been having losses last year, Mürsel raised his voice, well, and then this thing happened in December—and here Mürsel held a slight pause for the sake of effect, but Paul just gazed fixedly at the road, in the back their guest was gazing at the road just as fixedly, just as people in a car usually do, everyone looks at the road, and he too was looking at the road, Mürsel thought to himself that if someone is sitting in a moving vehicle, there’s nothing else to do than look at the road in front, although you could also look, for example, at the landscape on the side, if the landscape is interesting, but here it isn’t, still, though, you could look at it, Mürsel continued his monologue—yes, when this thing happened in December—but actually it all began six months before that, with the liquidity problems at the bank, and that was caused, among other things, by the fact that the founding capital was too small, the parent branch was supposed to raise it, and the Italians didn’t like this idea, no one liked it, and they had no intention of raising the founding capital, especially at a subsidiary, and now here comes Ficino, who—I don’t know exactly what the transaction was—transferred the family’s money over there through some bank, but with additional interest, it’s likely that Ficino had promised the son this additional interest earlier, 10 percent on the dollar to be exact, which is pretty high, right, and now I come into the picture, because I wasn’t willing to pay out this extra high interest, namely I asked Ficino to put it in writing that the interest for this transaction would be this high, and this happened six months before, and it was executed with a termination date of one year, so that the money would be with us for one year, and in the meantime in December the Italians in Genoa decided that nonetheless they would raise the founding capital, and of course Ficino was shitting bricks for something like that to happen, something critical like that, because then there could be huge problems if it emerged that here was this 10 percent extra interest on this money, so he wanted to get out of it, but still—Mr. Ertas, said Paul, what kind of sums are we talking about here, could you give me a sense of that so I can have an idea, well, Mürsel shook his head slowly, and he began to pout a little, well, imagine it to be about ten … Paul glanced sharply at him—or rather, Mürsel pulled his index finger along his forehead—something like, umm, a sum of a hundred million dollars, well something like that, it doesn’t matter now, the main thing is that in December Ficino was told to terminate the family’s extra interest, but it still wasn’t decided if this would be a tactical move, and they they would reinstate it on December 31, and the money would be called in once again, or was it final, nobody knew, and so Ficino and his people were maneuvering, and that was the problem, because according to the law the obligatory reserves which a given bank has to make on the basis of foreign sources, in other words for the central bank it’s a question of the deposit as a guarantee for the given amount, well, now you also know very well, if you’re familiar at all with macroeconomics and theory, that for every deposit the percentage will be different, and now no one could decide if it should be valid for a half-year or a whole year, and Ficino and his crew were counting on it being a transitional thing, accordingly one half year, but in the meantime it emerged that this wasn’t possible, because it could only be for one year—no, I’m wrong, they were counting on one year, and it could only be for half a year, and because of that they had fewer reserves than they should have had; in cases like that usually the central bank imposes a fine, and now Ficino began to get frantic, saying that there had been a mistake, it was bungled, the calculations were wrong and so on, namely he was talking about the treasury, well, I asserted that this wasn’t true: I didn’t make any mistakes, and we didn’t make any mistakes, because I said to him, to Ficino: you said, right here in this room what the information was, this was the conversation that I heard, and of course Ficino wasn’t satisfied, they began to investigate who was responsible, the wrangling began, internal audits, and Ficino tried in every way he could to smear it on me, but I was right there with all the written orders as well as the regulation stating that this wasn’t my responsibility but the responsibility of the back office, but the back office themselves could hardly be completely responsible, because if they had no information, which they didn’t, then the back office couldn’t decide what to do or what not to do, in any event things were looking pretty bad for Ficino, and so he decided that as the whole affair was not clean he would split the part of the bank that deals with these deposits off from Treasury, and move it to the back office so that nothing like this could happen in the future, which is absurd, because this division would have no idea what the info was, so that the problem wasn’t solved, because the right solution would be for the treasury to function in two parts in coordination with each other, in other words there was a lot of tension and that’s the way it is even now, and now I want to get out of there, as a matter of fact it’s an open secret that I want out, but I don’t know what you have to say about this, and Mürsel turned to Paul, and he was quiet, and he waited for Paul to say something, but Paul didn’t say anything, and Fortinbras was convinced that it was because he also wasn’t paying any attention and didn’t even care that Mürsel was waiting for his reply and that this was because he was thinking about him, Fortinbras, and the situation was becoming uncomfortable, I would be so happy to jump out of this car, thought Fortinbras, I’d jump out, and I would undo the fact that I am here, he felt that Paul comprehended that something had changed between them, and that’s what he was thinking about, and not about Mürsel’s story, which was likely no more interesting to him that it was to his guest here in the back seat, Mürsel continued to be silent, and maybe now he just realized that his story hadn’t really thrown anyone into a fever here, Mürsel cast a glance back, and this glance was clearly full of rage, and he cast a glance to the side as well, at Paul, and this glance was clearly full of hurt, the Audi A4 hummed along softly, you can’t go faster than the speed limit here, said Paul in the friendliest possible voice, there are so many policemen, they’re lying in wait, we can’t take any risks, is that okay? and Paul turned around again, and looked at Fortinbras, and smiled at him; and that’s all it took for Paul to pull himself together, Paul always needed only twenty seconds to regain his composure, and that dear smile appeared on his face again, that smile Fortinbras loved so much, and now too he was grateful for it even if it wasn’t sincere, he was grateful to Paul that there hadn’t been a rupture, he didn’t want that, and he smiled back, and with that a very important accord was created between them, and that was exactly how their friendship had started too, when they were both still in Hungary, when they both went to pester a deputy department head at the Ministry: Fortinbras was seeking financial support for a Danish-Hungarian exhibit in his gallery, and Paul also needed funding for something at his bank from this deputy department head, and they warmed up to each other, two foreigners among the wild herdsmen, then it turned out that there was only one sum of money allocated for cultural events like this, and among the two projects only one could be awarded the sum, and then Paul came over to him, and that smile was on his face, as he allowed the money to go to the gallery project, and that’s how they arranged it, and of course he, Fortinbras, returned the favor as soon as he could, so that they met up with each other ever more frequently, and they parted company as inseparable good friends, and then over the years they visited each other, and Paul said that he never would have believed that at his age he would still be able to find a true friend, and Fortinbras also admitted that the situation with him was exactly the same, he found it inconceivable that he would be able to find such a deep and true friend in anyone, and it had all started to be torn apart yesterday and today up until this moment, but now it was resolved, that is once again Paul had resolved it, he was so grateful to him there in the back seat that he didn’t even know what to do, and so as not to bother Mürsel again, who had regained his presence of mind, and had explicated a few of the finer points from the story—almost imperceptibly he reached out towards the seat in front, and he gently patted Paul on the shoulder, just so lightly, like a breath, and Paul didn’t turn his head back to him, but for a second he did a little bit, and Fortinbras felt that he had received this reconciliation gratefully, indeed he received this subtle indication of apology, and nothing would ever separate them now, it was only these strange circumstances that troubled them sometimes, and maybe the only reason for the trouble was his own excessive sensitivity, thought Fortinbras, and he gazed penitently at the road in front of them, through the windshield in between the heads of Paul and Mürsel, the road in front of them leading toward the Zone, the road on which not one single vegetable seller could be seen anymore, the road was lined by birch or beech trees—I think, thought Fortinbras, that they’re birch.