Brozz nodded civilly as Eszterhazy, accompanied by Horvath, appeared. The engineer was supervising the installation of some item and had just called, “A full meter clearance on all sides” to the work-crew. Now he said, as calmly (and as abstractedly) as though they were again (or still) in the suburbs of Bella, “You see very clean it all is.”
“I do see. Yes.”
“No fire. No smoke. No cinders. No ash.”
“None. True.” He didn’t add, And no reason why your absurd engine should work, either.... For if it did work, what then? Then it did. And that was that. Brozz was after all the engineer. Eszterhazy had after all not gone over the patents, the blue-prints, plans, specifications, calculations. What he had heard and seen in Bella hadn’t persuaded him that it ought all to work — at least not on any large and practical scale. Did it really? Well, well, they would see. Wouldn’t they? Now all he said was, “And the water is nice and clean, too.”
A very faint cloud came over the face of Engineer Brozz. “Sometimes there is sludge,” he said. Eszterhazy was about to ask about this when two gentlemen, investors, board members, appeared, and — seeing new faces — bore them away to the board room, produced cold beer, produced a neatly printed prospectus and an application for the purchase of shares. As he had left the engine-room Eszterhazy had heard Brozz say, yet again, “A full meter clearance on all sides.” And then he had heard Brozz catch his breath and he saw Brozz kick something. Heard Brozz say, “I won’t have this.” The doors closed. Rather odd.
But perhaps not.
There was nothing in the least odd about the way the investment possibility was urged, but something else was odd .. . definitely so . . . Eszterhazy could not at first have said why. Walls were rising for the new mill-pond, which should produce a very high head of water indeed. Eventually. It was Summer, the water was down, it was more easily diverted to allow the work to go on. What was odd, then? Something certainly was. He sought out Brozz, after they had left the board room. What was the projected height of the new wall?... of the new mill-pond? Ah, that high. That was more like a lake than a pond! Yes, one had to be assured of a good store and a good fall of water. A good high head of it. It would not of course all be contained by the wall, the dam. The natural features of the landscape would also serve to impound the water? Yes, of course, quite. The vale — beside a grove, stonding in a vale
“Excuse me, Engineer. But, ah... ah ... it seems to me that the new lake or pond or — that it would, if my hasty mental calculations are correct — that it would drown the Sacred Grove. Eh?”
Brozz gave him an abstracted look, turned away, called, “A full meter clearance on all sides;” turned back. “Excuse me, one must repeat things very often, else they may not be done. What did you ask? Flood the ... the what?”
“The Sacred Grove.”
The engineer’s eyes looked into his own. “What is the Sacred Grove?” Brozz asked.
Perhaps it was not so surprising that the man had never heard of the place; were there not many people who had and yet had never heard of a vacuum-pump or a compressed-air engine? Brozz had, to be sure, seen the site; he had seen every square meter round about; to him, however, it had been merely a natural declivity in which water might be impounded and made to fall from a considerable height. Its historical associations literally meant nothing to him, and neither did other possible uses for the water. It had seemed to Eszterhazy, and he could not refrain from mentioning the results of his quick calculations, that the water might more profitably be used to turn a dynamo and generate electricity. But this conveyed no more to Brozz than had the phrase the sacred grove; his mind for twenty years had been bent in one direction, and it could not now be bent into another. The huge brass and bronze engine parts, the immense segments of iron and steel moved incessantly; the fly-wheel, the walking-beam, the revolving-flying globes, the cogs and all the rest of the equipment. “And all so clean!” over and over again was Brozz’s exclamation. “No fire, no smoke, no ash, no cinders: only water and air! So clean! So clean!” (What was a little sludge?) See the great tuned turbine turn!
There was certainly a deal of merit in what he said. Eszterhazy had seen the Black Country of England and its continental equivalents; to compare it to Hell was a simile in a state of fatigue, but what other comparison was there? Pillars of cloud, black cloud, by day, and pillars of fire, red fire, by night. Soot falling down like snow, the earth riven open for coal. If indeed it were possible for the inevitable degree of industrialization which the country must experience to be based on water and air, well, so much the better. It would be too bad about the sacred grove or Sacred Grove; one could not have everything, of course. The changes along the Little River and its tributaries would be considerable.
Would, eventually, inevitably, be immense.
Must be immense.
And not there alone.
Eszterhazy realized this, and with something less than an absence of total discontent. But he reassured himself, as most would, that change was inevitable — and, in this instance, that change was at least to be minimized. The earth need not be wounded to yield coal, the forests need not be ravished to supply firewood. Only that the water, flowing anyway, would flow through channels. And, if no man ever bathed twice in the same river, the river having meanwhile flowed on; well, the same river would never turn any wheel twice. And, so, what of that?
Nothing.
Back at the Inn of St. Mammas, there on his desk was the Avar-Ister newspaper, folded, as he had left it, to the classified notices. And there, in the right hand margin, next to the pencil-mark he had made, was this:
Dr. Szilk will receive into his own home a very few gentlemen as
residential private patients. Secure care. Full board. Excellent attention. The Rose-colored House, 102 Great St. Gabriel Street near Pannonian Gate.
Why had he marked this ? There were always such notices in the newspapers; oh very well, there were always such advertizements : not always as discreetly worded as Dr. Szilk’s was. It was not clear if his “private patients” were shrieking mad or merely moody or nervous. But this was the key to something which had been locked a while in Dr. Eszterhazy’s mind. Dr. Szilk’s sanatorium in Avar-Ister — had he ever visited there? No. But he had visited others like it, in (for example) Dr. Rothenbueler’s, in Bella.
Among the particular ideas of Dr. Rothenbueler’s in Bella was that tight clothes were too unhealthy, dark clothes too depressing, bright clothes too exciting. And there, on a visit a few years ago ... a tall, thin man . . . loose light-grey jacket and loose tan trousers ... a mere glance. But now proving enough to identify. So. Engineer Brozz had once been treated for a crisis of nerves, eh? This might account for much. And it might account for ... currently . . . nothing. Nothing at all.
Nothing.
Eszterhazy was now a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Literature; at times he felt rather as Petrarch must have felt when, having gone all the way to — was it Ghent? — in order to copy a rare text of — was it Cicero? — he discovered that he could get no ink in Ghent. How could they have managed without ink in Ghent? Well, perhaps they had not needed ink just then: one did not copy texts of Cicero every day. Agreed. But — Ghent was a commercial center of no mean size; how had they kept their records? The answer might have been that they used tally-sticks. And not ledgers. It was certainly more easy to make tally-sticks than to make ink; however, one could not copy a rare text with a tally-stick.