Hallen für die neue Kunst to be precise, and within that building it was specifically the world-famous sculpture by Mario Merz that he desired to see, for he had been informed the work was there, said the person pointing to the building, and yes, he said, we have two works by Merz on the first floor, but by that time he could see that the person was shaking from head to foot, having presumably gotten chilled while he was waiting, so he called the security guard and suggested they continue the interview inside, for the wind was very strong, and the guard agreed, so they went inside, closed the door of the hut behind them, sat down at the table and Korin began his story, a story that started a long way back — please, the director interrupted him, do try to make your account as concise as possible — yes, the attendant nodded, he would try to make it as concise as possible but the story was so complicated, and what was more so fresh in his mind, that it was hard to tell what was important and what wasn’t, and at the same time he had felt sure, said the attendant glancing up at the director, that as soon as they sat down at the table in the hut, once he had had a chance to look the person over — a tall, thin, middle-aged person with a small, bald head, feverishly burning eyes and enormous protruding ears — that he was crazy, but if he was the mystery remained of how he succeeded in winning them over in just a few minutes, because he did win them over, in fact he completely swept them off their feet, and it was plain even if he was crazy that what he was babbling was not sheer nonsense, that one had to listen to him properly, because there was a peculiar drift to his story and every word in it was of some significance, of quite dramatic significance in fact, for he felt himself to be part of the drama, an actor in it — but please, the director interrupted him again, Herr Kalotaszegi, we both have work to do, try to keep the story as short as you can — oh of course, said the attendant, nodding and conscious of his error, well, in other words he told us the story from its origins in a small Hungarian town and how one day at the office he discovered a mysterious manuscript among the archives, how he took this manuscript with him to New York, having, Herr Director, sold up and got rid of everything, left it all behind, his home, his work, his language, his house, everything, and went off to die in New York, Herr Director, all this with lots of incredible twists and turns and with one terrible unnamed incident about which he was unwilling to speak, and how he was led here by chance, he emphasized this, having heard something about some sculpture, or to be precise, a sculpture that he had seen in a photograph and decided he must see in the flesh because he had fallen in love with it, Herr Director, having fallen literally in love, said the attendant, with Mario Merz’s piece and wanted to spend an hour inside it, at which point the director leaned incredulously forward asking, what did he want? and the attendant repeated to spend an hour inside it, a request an attendant could by no means grant of course, and he had tried to explain to him that it wasn’t up to him to give such permission, in other words he rejected the request, but he did listen through his story, a story, as Herr Director could plainly see now, had quite carried him away, that overcame any resistance, even the very idea of protesting, because, he confessed, after listening to it awhile he felt his heart would break, because he felt certain that the person wasn’t merely spinning stories but had genuinely come to Schaffhausen to end his life, a Hungarian like himself, a little unfortunate creature who was obsessed with the notion that the manuscript he discovered in Hungary was of such importance that he was obliged to preserve it for eternity, to transmit it, do you see Herr Director, the attendant asked him, and that was why the person went to New York, because he considered it to be the center of the world, and it was in the center of the world he wished to conclude the business, that is to say the transmitting of the manuscript as he expressed it to the attendant, to eternity, and so he got hold of a computer and typed up the entire manuscript so it should find its place on the Internet, and having done so his work was over, because the Internet, or so the person had persuaded them a few hours ago while sitting at the table in the security guard’s hut, was the surest way into eternity, and he was convinced, the attendant bowed his head, that he absolutely had to die since life no longer had any meaning for him and he was most insistent on this point — the attendant raised his eyes to meet the director’s — constantly emphasizing and repeating that it was for him and for him alone that life had become meaningless, and that was crystal clear to him, but as he had taken the characters in the manuscript so much to his heart, too much to heart, the person explained, the only thing not crystal clear to him was what he should do with these characters now, since they had not loosened their hold on him, and it was as if they were determined to go with him, something like that, but he couldn’t be more precise, Herr Director, and the man did not explain clearly what it was he was preparing to do, except he kept asking to see the work by Herr Merz, a request he, the attendant, had to resist, constantly telling him to wait till morning, attempting to calm him down, to which Korin replied that there was no morning, and then he grasped his hand, looked into his eyes and said, Kalotaszegi úr, I have only two requests, first that I speak with the director and the director at some stage speak to Herr Merz and insist on his telling him how much his sculpture had helped him, because at the very moment the man felt he had nowhere to go to he realized he had, and he wanted to thank Herr Merz most warmly, from the bottom of his heart, for that, for he, György Korin, would forever think of him as dear Herr Men, and this was his first request; the second being, the reason that he was in fact sitting here now, the attendant pointed to himself, that someone should put a plaque on his behalf, on the wall of Herr Merz’s museum somewhere — and at this point he passed over a great heap of money, said the attendant, asking that it be used for that purpose — a plaque screwed to the wall, with a single sentence engraved on it telling his story, and he wrote that sentence down on a piece of paper, said the attendant, and slipped it across to him, telling him that he was doing so in order that he might remain in the vicinity of Herr Merz in spirit, Korin explained, he and the others, as close to Herr Merz as possible, that was how he explained the plaque, Herr Director, and here’s the money and here’s the piece of paper, and he put them both on the table, though the director was still terribly confused by what Kalotaszegi had told him, as he told his wife who had arrived in the office at the same time as the police, but at the same time he found so touching, so genuinely tragic that he had asked the attendant more questions, going over the whole story again, trying to piece together the broken pieces of Kalotaszegi’s account, the last part of which was Korin saying good-bye to the attendant and going out, and he had succeeded in assembling the story after a fashion, the story being extraordinary and deeply moving, he admitted, though he swore that what finally convinced him was when he turned on the computer, checked AltaVista, a name often mentioned in the story, and saw with his own eyes that the manuscript really existed under the English title of War and War, and asked Kalotaszegi to translate the first few sentences of it for him, and even in that rough and ready translation he found the text so beautiful, so compulsive, that by the time of her arrival, he pointed to his wife, he had made his mind up, and had decided what to do, for why was he the director of this museum if he couldn’t make a decision after a night like this, and that having finished his business with the police, he would see to it immediately with the help of the attendant and would choose an appropriate spot on the wall outside, for what he had decided, he declared, is that there would be a plaque on the wall, a simple plaque, to tell the visitor what happened to György Korin in his last hours and it would say precisely what it said on the piece of paper, because the man deserved to find peace in the text of such a plaque, a man, the director lowered his voice, for whom the end was to be found in Schaffhausen,