At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances (7 page)

It was not an easy confession for von Igelfeld to make, but at least it was quick in the making.

‘Oh that,’ said Matthew Gurewitsch. ‘Yes, don’t worry. I found it. I’ve been using it all along. Do you use it as well?’ he paused. ‘In fact, I must confess I’ve been feeling rather guilty about it. I wondered if I should be telling others about it.’

Von Igelfeld laughed. ‘That makes it easier for me,’ he said.

They walked across the Court together. The atmosphere in the College seemed lighter now, as if a cloud of some sort had been dispelled.

‘You know,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘Walking in these marvellous surroundings puts one in mind of opera, does it not? This setting. These ancient buildings.’

‘It certainly does,’ said Matthew Gurewitsch. ‘Perhaps I shall write a libretto about a Cambridge college. In fact, I seem quite inspired. The ideas are coming to me already.’

‘Would it be possible for me to be in it?’ asked von Igelfeld. ‘I would not want a large role, but if it were just possible for . . . ’

‘Of course,’ said Mathew Gurewitsch. ‘And it will be a fine role too. Positively heroic.’

Von Igelfeld said nothing. The Master had been right; the world was a distressing place, but there were places of light within it, not tiny particles of light like the quarks and bosons which the physicists chased after, but great bursts of light, like healing suns.

zwei

AT THE VILLA OF REDUCED CIRCUMSTANCES

ON HIS RETURN FROM SABBATICAL in Cambridge – a period of considerable achievement in his scholarly career – Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, author of that most exhaustive work of Romance philology, Portuguese Irregular
Verbs
, lost no time in resuming his duties at the Institute. Although von Igelfeld was delighted to be back in Germany, he had enjoyed Cambridge, especially after the Master’s address had so effectively stopped all that divisive plotting. Mr Matthew Gurewitsch’s lecture had been well-attended and well-received, with several Fellows describing it as the most brilliant exposition of an issue which they had heard for many years. Von Igelfeld had taken copious notes, and had later raised several points about the interpretation of
Il Trovatore
with Mr Matthew Gurewitsch, all of which had been satisfactorily answered. In the weeks that followed, he had struck up a number of close friendships, not only with those repentant schemers, Dr C. A. D. Wood and Dr Gervaise Hall, but also with their intended victim, Dr Plank.

Plank revealed himself to be both an agreeable man and a conscientious and competent Chairman of the College Committee. He invited von Igelfeld to tea in his rooms on several occasions, and even took him back to his house to meet his wife, the well-known potter, Hermione Plank-Harwood. Professor Waterfield, too, proved to be a generous host, taking von Igelfeld for lunch at his London club, the Savile
.
Von Igelfeld was intrigued by this club, which appeared to have no purpose, as far as he could ascertain, and which could not be explained in any satisfactory terms by Professor Waterfield. Von Igelfeld asked him why he belonged, and Professor Waterfield simply shrugged. ‘Because it’s there, my dear chap,’ he said lightly. ‘Same reason Mallory wanted to climb Everest. Because it was there. And I wonder whether Sherpa Tenzing climbed it because
Hillary
was there?’

‘I find that impossible to answer,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘And the initial proposition is in every sense unconvincing. You don’t climb mountains just because they’re there.’

‘I agree with you,’ said Professor Waterfield. ‘But that’s exactly what Mallory said about Everest.
Ipse dixit
. I would never climb a mountain myself, whether or not it was there. Although I might be more tempted to climb one that wasn’t there, if you see what I mean.’

‘No,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘I do not. And I cannot imagine why one would join a club just because it is there. The club must do something.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Professor Waterfield. ‘And actually, old chap, would you mind terribly if we brought this line of conversation to a close? It’s just that one of the rules of this place’ – this was at lunch in the Savile – ‘one of the rules is that you aren’t allowed to discuss the club’s
raison d’être
in the club itself. Curious rule, but there we are. Perhaps it’s because it unsettles the members. London, by the way, is full of clubs that have no real reason to exist. Some more so than others. I’ve never been able to work out why Brooks’s exists, quite frankly, and then there’s the Athenaeum, which is for bishops and intellectual poseurs. I suppose they have to go somewhere. But that’s hardly a reason to establish a club for them.’

Von Igelfeld was silent. There were aspects of England that he would never understand, and this, it seemed, was one of them. Perhaps the key was to consider it a tribal society and to understand it as would an anthropologist. In fact, the more he thought of that, the more apt the explanation became, and later, when he put it to Professor Waterfield himself, the Professor nodded enthusiastically.

‘But of course that’s the right way to look at this country,’ he said. ‘They should send anthropologists from New Guinea to live amongst us. They could then write their Harvard PhDs on places like this club, and the university too.’ He paused. ‘Could the same not be said of Germany?’

‘Of course not,’ said von Igelfeld sharply; the idea was absurd. Germany was an entirely rational society, and the suggestion that it might be analysed in anthropological terms was hardly a serious one. It was typical of Professor Waterfield’s conversation, he thought, which in his view was a loosely-held-together stream of non sequiturs and unsupported assertions. That’s what came of being Anglo-Saxon, he assumed, instead of being German; the
Weltanschauung
of the former was, quite simply, wrong.

He arrived back in Germany on a Sunday afternoon, which gave him time to attend to one or two matters before getting back to work on the Monday morning. There was a long letter from Zimmermann which had to be answered – that was a priority – and von Igelfeld wrote a full reply that Sunday evening. Zimmermann was anxious to hear about Cambridge, and to get news of some of the friends whom he had made during his year there. How was Haughland (Plank)? Had Dr Mauve finished writing his riposte to the review article which Nenée-Franck had so unwisely published in the
Revue Comparative de Grammaire Contemporaine
the year before last? He should not leave it too late, said Zimmermann: false interpretations can enter the canon if not dealt with in a timely fashion and then can prove almost impossible to uproot. And what about the Hughes-Davitt Bequest? What were von Igelfeld’s preliminary conclusions, and would they appear reasonably soon in the
Zeitschrift
? Von Igelfeld went through each of these queries carefully, and was able to give Zimmermann much of the information he sought.

He made an early start in the Institute the next morning, arriving even before the Librarian, who was usually the first to come in, well in advance of anybody else. The Librarian greeted him with warmth.

‘Professor von Igelfeld!’ he exclaimed. ‘It is so wonderful to have you back. Do you know, only yesterday, my aunt asked after you! You will recall that some months before you went to Cambridge you had asked me to pass on to her your best regards. I did that, immediately, the very next time that I went to the nursing home. She was very touched that you had remembered her and she was very concerned when she heard that you had to go off to Cambridge. She said that she was worried that you would not be well looked after there, but I assured her that there was no danger of this. It’s odd, isn’t it, how that generation worries about things like that? You and I would have no hesitation about leaving Germany for foreign parts, but they don’t like it. It’s something to do with insecurity. I think that my aunt feels a certain degree of insecurity because she . . . ’

‘Yes, yes, Herr Huber,’ von Igelfeld interrupted. ‘That is very true. Now, I was wondering whether anything of note had happened in the Institute during my absence.’

The Librarian looked thoughtful. ‘It depends on what you mean by the expression “of note”. If “of note” means “unusual”, then the answer, I fear, is no. Nothing unusual has happened – in the strict sense of the word. If, however, “of note” is synonymous with “of importance”, which is the meaning which I, speaking entirely personally, would be inclined to attribute to it, in the main, then one might conceivably come up with a different answer. Yes, that would probably be the case, although I could never really say
ex
Germania semper aliquid novi
, if you will allow the little joke . . . ’

‘Very amusing,’ said von Igelfeld quickly. ‘Except for the fact that one should say
e Germania
, the
ex
form, as you know, being appropriate before a vowel, hence,
ex Africa
in the original. Be that as it may, certainly far more amusing than anything I heard in Cambridge. I’m afraid it’s true, you know, that the British don’t have a sense of humour.’

‘I’ve heard that said,’ agreed the Librarian. ‘Very humourless people.’

‘But if I may return to the situation here,’ pressed von Igelfeld. ‘
Ex institutione aliquid novi
?’

The Librarian smiled. He knew exactly what von Igelfeld would be interested in, which would be whether anybody had requested a copy of
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
in his absence. Normally, the answer to this would be a disappointing negative, but this time there was better news to impart, and the Librarian was relishing the prospect of revealing it. But he did not want to do it too quickly; with skilful manipulation of von Igelfeld’s questions, he might be able to keep the information until coffee, when he could reveal it in the presence of everybody. They were always cutting him short when he had something interesting to say; well, if they tried that today, then they would have to do so in the face of very evident and strong interest on the part of von Igelfeld.

Oh yes, the world is unjust, thought the Librarian. They – Prinzel, Unterholzer and von Igelfeld (Zimmermann, too, come to think of it) – had all the fun. They went off to conferences and meetings all over the place and he had to stay behind in the Library, all day, every day. All he had to look forward to each evening was the visit to the nursing home and the short chat with the nurses and with his aunt. It was always a pleasure to talk to his aunt, of course, who was so well-informed and took such an interest in everything, but afterwards he had to go back to his empty apartment and have his dinner all by himself. He had been married, and happily so, he had imagined, until one day his wife walked out on him with absolutely no notice. She had met a man who rode a motorcycle on a Wall of Death at a funfair, and she had decided that she preferred him to the Librarian. He had tracked her down to a site outside Frankfurt – the sort of wasteland which funfairs like to occupy – and he had had a brief and impassioned conversation with her outside the Wall of Death while her motorcyclist lover raced round and round inside. He had implored her to come back, but his words were lost in the roar of the motorcycle engine and in the rattling of the brightly painted wooden planks that made up the outside of the Wall of Death.

Such was the Librarian’s life. But at least von Igelfeld was kind to him, and it would give him very great pleasure to tell him, when the moment was right, that a copy of
Portuguese Irregular
Verbs
had been requested, and despatched, to none other than Señor Gabriel Marcales de Cinco Fermentaciones, cultural attaché at the Colombian Embassy. This was remarkable news, and although he could not say with certainty what it implied, it undoubtedly had interesting possibilities.

‘Yes,’ he said to von Igelfeld. ‘I believe that there is something which will interest you. I shall obtain the details – I do not have them on me right now – and I shall tell you about it over coffee.’

During the hours before coffee, von Igelfeld busied himself in his room, going through the circulars and other correspondence that his secretary had not deemed sufficiently weighty to send on to Cambridge. Most of this was completely unimportant and required no response, but there were one or two matters which needed to be addressed. There was a request from a student in Berlin that he be allowed to work in the Institute for a couple of months over summer. Von Igelfeld was dubious; students had a way of creating a great deal of extra work and were, in general, the bane of a professor’s life. That was why so few German professors saw any students; it was regrettable, but necessary if one’s time was to be protected from unacceptable encroachments. On the other hand, this young man could be useful, and could, in the fullness of time, become an assistant. So von Igelfeld wrote a guarded reply, inviting the student for an interview. That task performed, he set himself to a far more important piece of business, which was to discover evidence of Unterholzer’s having been in his room during his absence.

Von Igelfeld knew that Unterholzer could be cunning, particularly when it came to issues of rooms and chairs. He would not have done anything so unwise as to have left a sign on the door with his name on it; nor would he have moved any of the furniture. Of course, one could check the position of the chairs and possibly find that one or two had been shifted very slightly from their original position, but this was not proof of any significance, as the cleaners often moved things when they were cleaning the room. There were other potential clues: the number of paper-clips in the paper-clip container was a possibility, but then again Unterholzer would have been aware of this and would have made sure that he had replaced any such items.

Von Igelfeld looked closely at the large square of framed blotting paper on his desk. This was the surface on which he normally wrote, and if Unterholzer had done the same, then one might expect to find evidence in the form of the inked impression of Unterholzer’s script. He picked up the blotter and examined it carefully. He had not had the foresight to insert a fresh sheet of paper before he left, and the existing sheet had numerous markings of his own. It was difficult to make out what was what, as everything was reversed. Von Igelfeld paused. If one held the blotter up to a mirror, then the ink marks would be reversed and everything would be easily readable.

He made his way quickly to the men’s washroom, where there was a large mirror above a row of hand-basins. Switching on the light in the darkened room, he held the blotter up to the mirror and began to study it. There was his signature, or part of it, in the characteristic black ink which he used: M . . . . . M . . . . von Ige . f . . d. And there was half a line of a letter which he recalled writing to Zimmermann almost six months ago. That was all legitimate, as were most of the other markings; most, but not all: what was this? It was clearly not in his handwriting and, if he was not mistaken, it was Unterholzer’s well-known sprawling script. Moreover, and this suggested that no further proof would be needed, the blotting was in green ink, which was the colour which Unterholzer, and nobody else in the Institute, used.