Read A Void for Free Online Page B

cotton-cloud sky.
    "I always said a kid would bring about my downfall," sighs a
    Sphinx so dolorous it looks almost as though it's about to burst
    into sobs.
    "Now, now, Sphinx, no hamming it up, s'il vous plait" says
    Aignan gruffly and with a faint hint of compassion for his victim
    — adding, though, "You must admit, had I got it wrong, you'd
    instandy claim what's owing you. I got it right, I won; and so,
    by law, it's curtains for you." And, raising an intimidating hand
    in front of him, adds, "So - what about taking a running jump
    off that cliff?"
    "Oh no," it murmurs softly, "not that, oh God, not that. . . "
    "St, sir Aignan roars back, without knowing why an Italian
    locution should pop into his brain at such a point of crisis and
    climax.
    Picking up a thick, knobby stick, Aignan knocks it down - so
    hard, in fact, that it falls unconscious, spiralling downward out
    of control, spinning round and round in mid-air, down, down,
    down, into a profound abyss, into an aching Boschian void. A
    blood-curdling wail, a wail partaking of both a lion's roar and a
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    cat's purr, of both a hawk's inhuman squawk and a hauntingly
    human, all too human, cry of pain, throbs on and on all around
    for fully thirty days . . .
    With a fabliau of so obvious a moral, it's not too difficult to
    intuit what kind of fiction or plot must follow. Aignan tours his
    country, roaming back and forth, uphill and down again, arriving
    at sundown in unfamiliar and unknown townships, proposing a
    day's labour to local rustics and cartwrights and sacristans and
    taking for his pay just a thin, fatty cut of bacon or a dry crust
    with a scrap of garlic as its only garnish. Starvation gnaws at
    him, thirst too, but nothing can kill him.
    Whilst approaching his maturity, Aignan would soon know
    how to adapt to almost any kind of situation confronting him,
    would soon grow cool and nonchalant, fortifying his worldly
    wisdom, magnifying his vision of his surroundings, his
    Anschauung , and crossing paths with many curious and intriguing
    individuals, all of whom would, in various ways, transform him,
    by giving him a job of work to do, or board and lodging, or by
    indicating a vocation to him. A con man would instruct him in
    his craft; a mason would show him how to build a small but cosy
    shack; a compositor would tutor him in printing a daily journal.
    But that isn't all. What occurs now (as you'll find out) is a
    hotchpotch of cryptic plots and complications, simulating, word
    for word, action for action, its conclusion apart, that saga of
    profound roots, that amusing but also moral and poignant story
    that a troubadour, whom history knows as Hartmann, took for
    his inspiration, and whom Thomas Mann would follow in his
    turn, via a trio of short fictions.
    Thus, to start with, Aignan is told that his papa was good King
    Willigis (or Willo for short) and his aunt was Sibylla. Sibylla,
    though, was so fond of Willigis, fond of him with a passion that
    sat oddly with kinship, that sororal adoration would gradually
    blossom into carnal lust (notwithstanding Willigis's faithful old
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    hound howling with horror and dying just as coition was about
    to occur). Within 8 months and 23 days Aignan was born.
    Blushing with guilt at his iniquity, hoping that castigation in
    this world might guard him from damnation, Willigis (Willo for
    short but not now for long) fought a holy war against Saladin
    and was struck down, as was his wish, by an anonymous son of
    Allah.
    As for his Dauphin, Aignan, with immoral blood coursing
    through his body, his mama, Sibylla, thought to abandon him
    on a raft so that it might float away northwards to an insalubrious
    district of filthy marshland, full of moronically drooling young
    cutthroats (for adult consumption of alcohol was said to attain
    as much as six gallons a month) and animals of unknown origin
    but of, no doubt, voraciously carnivorous habits: talk was of a
    dragon "stuffing guts wit' battalion, a' way down t'