A Curable Romantic (75 page)

He shook his head at us, as though he were a schoolman confronting a gang of rowdies. “I daresay, were it not for the great renown and practical success achieved internationally by Esperanto, none of us would be here today. This committee and the delegation it represents would not exist. Certainly none of you men would be taking time away from his essential endeavors to concern himself with as quixotic a chimera as a world language.”

The marquis turned his back on our table, strolled over to the tall windows, and gazed out through them. “The fall of Volapük, wounded first by its own deficiencies, and then killed like Othello” — he spun around dramatically — “by its former friends, did much harm to our cause, and as a consequence, Esperanto had to pitch its tent on a wind-swept ledge where the world said nothing could survive, and yet, in that high and rocky place, gentlemen, we have not only survived, we have flourished!”

I can only reproduce this scene now with chagrin. This should have been the marquis’ finest hour, the culmination of his twenty long years of self-sacrificing devotion to our cause. For twenty years, when it came to the question of Esperanto, the marquis had been the staunchest of conservatives, and in that hour, he championed his position (a position, I might add, even more extreme than Dr. Zamenhof’s) with a fiery elegance. Had it all ended here, without its subsequent and multiple dénouements, there might now be de Beaufront Streets running alongside the many Zamenhof Streets throughout the world or at least (as would perhaps be more appropriate) crossing them at every turn.

Instead one need only consult an atlas to realize that there are none.

With more pathos than I’d ever heard it before, the marquis next recounted the story of his abandoning Adjuvanto. “Gentlemen, I, the son of nobility and a student of Müller’s, was neither too proud nor too foolish to submit to another man’s greater genius, though he was a nobody, not a grand intellectual like ourselves, but an impoverished oculist with no formal training in the lingual arts, and as it turns out, a Jew.” His nostrils flared, and his tone grew even more oleaginous. “On the contrary, it was with love in my heart for all mankind that I burned my own project in a self-inflicted auto-da-fé: dictionaries, grammars, flash cards, the works! The chambermaid, hearing a fire crackling on the hottest day in July, ran into my rooms, thinking to save me from some dire mishap. Understanding everything in a glance, she threw herself upon the fire, plunging her hands into the flames to save whatever remnant she could, singeing herself pitiably. ‘Non, non, old mother,’ I cried. ‘Non, non! Let it go, let it burn.’ ‘But, Master, your work!’ she wept, as I salved her burnt fingers with my tender kisses.”

Moved to silence by his own words, the marquis stared at an empty space in the room, as though seeing the scene before him once again. We were all silent for a moment, until, coughing, Professor Jespersen cleared his throat and said, “I’d like to address the question of the supersigns, if I may?”

The marquis, regaining his composure with apparent difficulty, replied, “By all means, by all means, certainly.”

Professor Jespersen stood and removed his glasses. “It appears to me,” he said, twirling them by their stems, “that, here, Idiom Neutral has the advantage over Esperanto, possessing as it does a natural alphabet unblemished by circumflexed consonants that Esperanto alone, of the hundreds of languages we’ve studied so far, dares to offer to the world.”

These two combatants, sizing each other up, proceeded to joust over the supersigns, the accusative endings, the plural -js, and a host of other philological concerns, the marquis parrying each of Professor Jespersen’s potentially lethal thrusts with consummate skill, I thought. Their debate was enthralling, and the marquis’ performance — deft, witty, inspiring — left the men of the committee stimulated and amused.

SO MUCH SO
, in fact, I imagined the marquis’ presentation might prove decisive for the committee. However, the discussion that followed it turned quite fractious.

“I say we’ve heard enough!” Rector Boirac surprised everyone by pushing away from the table, his forehead flushing scarlet. “How much longer can this go on? Yes, it’s been a fascinating intellectual voyage. Marvelous that so many cranks and eccentrics can scare up cab fare to appear in the Fifth Arrondissement, each with his own more or less inadequate scheme. Gentlemen, gentlemen!” Rector Boirac was forced to raise his voice as the others grew restive. “I move that this committee immediately vote to accept Esperanto en bloc and let this exercise in intellectual pharisaism end so that we can all go home to our wives and our dinner, happy to have contributed to the welfare of mankind.”

“The table recognizes Professor Jespersen,” Professor Ostwald barked above the commotion Rector Boirac’s outburst had pulled in its train, pounding his gavel like a smithy hammering an anvil. Professor Jespersen
unfolded his long body and stood with his hands pinioning his coattails against his hips. He scowled in Rector Boirac’s direction, before turning, in this guise, to take in every face around the table.

“Perhaps it would have been more prudent of me, like many of our good friends, to have remained a distant observer of this committee and its goals.” He laughed grimly and shook his head. “Certainly doing so would have spared me many a vexation.” Inside the opening of his beard, his mouth became a bloodless line. “There have been too many days of work and too many nights without sleep since this whole rigmarole began!”

“Hear, hear!” everyone chorused.

“However,” he raised his hands to silence the grumbling he himself had elicited, “because of a certain impetuosity in my nature, once I have determined which course is right, it is impossible for me to remain passive. Now,” he said sharply, “Rector Boirac is correct. Perhaps our good secretaries have been too meticulous, too thorough in their researches. It’s a failing we all, as scholars, should aspire to, and let me be the first to say it: Bravo, Messieurs Couturat et Leau! Bravo!”

“Bravo, congratulations, good work, gentlemen!” was heard around the table.

“However,” Professor Jespersen silenced us again, “in contradiction to what Rector Boirac maintains, a number — a very small number, granted — but a number of worthy candidates for an international language have shown themselves in the course of our discussions and — forgive me, Rector Boirac — if I insist upon insisting” — he had begun to lose his temper — “that in a matter of such consequence for the whole of mankind, it
will not do
to leave a final choice to mere chance — ”

“Mere chance?” Rector Boirac barked out.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” Professor Ostwald pounded his gavel.

“ — nor,” Professor Jespersen shouted down both men, “to the most vociferous of propaganda campaigns!”

“Do you realize what an idiot you’re sounding?” Rector Boirac nearly screamed.

“I won’t be threatened or intimidated,” Professor Jespersen called back.

“What do you propose? What is Professor Jespersen proposing?” Rector Boirac attempted to draw the table into the argument. “That we tear down our twenty years of building? Burn the books we’ve published for more than twenty years? Destroy the printing houses, disband our organizations?”

“Certainly no one is suggesting that,” Professor Couturat replied fretfully.

“Sir,” Professor Jespersen spoke more mildly, “I am not, as you well know, a practical man. I am, rather, a scientist, and I can only examine the matter before me with scientific detachment and clarity. Were I asked to judge the question of which language has most successfully built up its structures and marshaled its resources, then, of course, I would honestly concede, and gladly so, to Esperanto.” Rector Boirac and Professor Jespersen looked sadly into each other’s faces. “But that is not the question we have been called here to decide. Rather, we’re here to decide which language is
best
, not which has been the most successfully propagandized.”

“Volapük lived and died, Otto,” said a Dr. Förster who, along with a Dr. Bouchard and a Professor Eötvös, was attending the proceedings that day. “Let it rest in peace.”

“Let us be honest.” Professor Jespersen dropped his shoulders. “Let us speak plainly with one another, shall we? We all know that there are simply too many unreasoned and eccentric idiosyncrasies in Esperanto” — Rector Boirac nearly coughed up his coffee — “deriving no doubt,” Professor Jespersen continued over the commotion, “and I say this with only admiration for Dr. Zamenhof’s bold assay — deriving no doubt from the fact that the man is not a linguist.”

“Not a linguist?” Professor Baudouin said. “Otto!”

“He’s an oculist, for God’s sake!” Professor Jespersen laughed, straightening his tie. “Why, I’d no sooner presume to suggest he allow me to write my own prescription for eyeglasses!” Laughter rose up from the table on all sides, bathing Professor Jespersen in its warmth.

“So what do you suggest, then?” Rector Boirac thundered.

Professor Jespersen exhaled furiously. The polemics were clearly wearing on his nerves. “What do I suggest?” He returned to his seat. “A
simple and elegant principle, and one with which our friend Ostwald here would no doubt agree, as it uses the least amount of energy to attain the greatest amount of good for the largest number of people.”

“Oh?” Professor Ostwald said, intrigued.

“I suggest, simply, that in assessing the internationality of a word, we count up the number of people who know that word already in some form in their native language and cleanse the vocabulary of whatever language we decide must be our committee’s choice from the obscure and little known choices resorted to by Dr. Zamenhof, who quite obviously worked without regard to scientific principle!”

“Then,” Professor Baudouin raised his voice, glowering at the men before him, “we have no other work before us today than to vote Chinese in as the international language and be done with it!”

“Chinese?” Professor Eötvös said.

“What does Chinese have to do with an international language?” Dr. Bouchard said.

Professor Baudouin had not finished. “You gentlemen from the western half of Europe have fallen once again, as you so often do, into the trap of thinking your small principalities represent some superior norm. The elements you can’t abide in Dr. Zamenhof’s Esperanto are precisely what make it so appealing to the majority of Europeans. Simply because a man is a Pole or a Russian does not mean he can’t have an original or a superior thought!”

“You’re saying then, I take it,” Professor Jespersen challenged him, “that Esperanto simply can’t be improved?”

“Don’t be an ass, Otto. Of course, it can be improved, just as French or German can be improved. However, just as I wouldn’t presume to dictate those improvements to the French or the German, neither would I do so with the Esperantists, who represent a substantial community of speakers. Rather, we must leave these sorts of changes up to the actual — ”

At the word
ass
, however, the uproar Professor Baudouin caused drowned out the rest of what he was saying.

“We have a committee that oversees such things,” Rector Boirac shouted, though no one seemed to be listening to him. “There are procedures! There are rules!”

“I thought you were here as a private citizen, Rector Boirac,” Professor Jespersen said abrasively.

“A private citizen who just happens to be the president of the Esperanto Language Committee,” Dr. Bouchard said chidingly.

“Look,” Professor Jespersen ripped his glasses from his face and threw them down upon his notepad, “a language
must
change or die. You
cannot
impose your will upon a living language.”

“That’s true for a natural language, Otto,” Professor Baudouin said, “but not for an artificial one!”

“Oh, rubbish!” Professor Jespersen complained.

“Do you really think, Otto,” Professor Ostwald asked, “that Idiom Neutral with its fifteen verb forms can be made to work worldwide?”

“No, of course not, not as it stands now, but we would change all that with improvements.”

“But that is
not
the mandate of this committee!” Rector Boirac roared.

Exhausted by the bickering, I left the chamber and hurried to the nearest door, my shoes clacking against the marble floors of the hallway. Outside, the sky was grey and the air was sharp with the threat of winter. Taking refuge beneath a barren tree, I lit a small cigar and took a calming puff.

“Hey, since when are you smoking again?” Loë said.

“Ah, what are you doing here?” I exhaled, greeting her. With my gloved hand, I stirred the cloud of smoke until it thinned.

“You know I don’t approve.”

“No, and neither do I.”

“Still, give us a puff all the same.”

Glancing over her shoulders to make certain no one was watching her, Loë accepted my cigar. With her head lowered, she took in a mouthful of smoke. “I’ve come to take you to lunch, Kaĉjo. How has the day been so far?”

“Oh God! Terrible, just awful, in fact! No, I have such a headache! Just look at me!” I lifted my hands to show her how much they were trembling. I paced back and forth, the gravel of the cinder path crunching beneath my shoes. “None of the procedures are being followed! Inventors
are presenting their own languages! A Professor Peano, after presenting his own language, was invited to sit on the committee! And no one can agree on anything! I mean, what good is an international language if there’s more than one? Do you see what I mean?”

In this vexed state of mind, I couldn’t help eying Loë with a smallness of spirit. “I’ll light you your own, if you wish,” I addressed her sharply. She’d ceased passing back the cigar and was keeping it to herself, puffing in and out quickly, the smoke leaving her mouth in small staccato bursts.

“Oh God, no,” she said. “You know how I hate these things.”

Before I could stop her, she’d tossed the one-franc cigar onto the gravel and, raising her skirts, stamped it out with the toe of her shoe. “You shouldn’t be smoking in any case. You’re not as young as you once were, you know.”

“It’s absurd,” I said, lighting the other one I’d purchased. “The inventors can’t even speak to one another. Their years of selfless labor have left them with nothing but an idiolect, understood by one solitary person or, as in the case of Mr. Streiff’s Bopal, not even that!”