The 2 12 Pillars of Wisdom (19 page)

‘Oh?’ said von Igelfeld. ‘Were you unhappy there?’

‘Terribly,’ said the priest. ‘We were crammed together in dormitories, sharing everything, and they made us take cold showers all the time. I still shudder when I take a cold shower.’

‘You still take them?’ asked von Igelfeld.

‘Yes,’ said the priest. ‘I must confess that I do. I suppose that it’s ritualistic. But it may also be that it invokes memories of the military academy and I suspect that there’s part of me that wants to remember that.’

‘You should forget,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘You should try to move on.’

‘Oh, I try,’ said the priest. ‘But it’s not always easy.’

‘But if we may return to my case,’ said von Igelfeld, hesitantly. ‘Am I truly forgiven?’

‘Of course,’ said the priest. ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
For given entirely.’

Von Igelfeld returned home in high spirits. He had taken to this agreeable priest and had decided that he might well return to listen to some of his sermons. They would surely be very entertaining, unlike the Lutheran dirges he recalled from his boyhood. Filled with the spirit of forgiveness, he wrote an immediate letter of apology to Dr Hubertoffel and went out into the street to post it. Then, retiring to bed, he fell into the first sound sleep that he had had since the awful article had first appeared in the
Zeitschrift
.

Unterholzer looked at him suspiciously when he went into his office the following morning.

‘Good morning, Herr Unterholzer,’ von Igelfeld said brightly. ‘I have come to apologise.’

Unterholzer gave a start. This was not what he had expected.

‘Yes,’ von Igelfeld continued. ‘I have done you several great wrongs.’

‘Several?’ stuttered Unterholzer.

Von Igelfeld looked up at the ceiling. He had not expected it to be easy, and indeed it was not.

‘There was the matter of your poor sausage dog,’ he said. ‘That was most regrettable. I can only assure you that I had not intended that to happen.’

‘Of course not,’ said Unterholzer. ‘I never said that. . . .’

Von Igelfeld cut him short. ‘And then I went off to Dr Hubertoffel and tried to ruin your analysis. I told him all sorts of lies.’

Unterholzer’s jaw dropped. ‘You told him lies about me?’

‘Yes,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘I had intended that he should form a bad impression of you and that your analysis should come to an end.’

For a moment Unterholzer stared mutely at von Igelfeld. Then he began to smile. ‘But that’s very convenient,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking for a way out of all that without offending Dr Hubertoffel. Now he will be pleased if I no longer go. Frankly, I found it all an expensive waste of time. I’ve already paid him thousands, you know.’

‘So you’re pleased?’ asked von Igelfeld lamely.

‘Absolutely,’ said Unterholzer, beaming even more. ‘He kept trying to make me something I was not. I don’t like to be an assertive, gregarious person. That’s not my nature.’

‘You’re right,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘Well, I must say that I’m glad that I have been able to help you.’

Unterholzer had sunk back in his chair and the smile had disappeared. ‘But I have something for which to apologise,’ he muttered. ‘I wrote a very spiteful piece about
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
. I did it because of my sausage dog, but now I really regret it. Did you see it?’

‘No,’ said von Igelfeld.
Truth Always
. ‘Well, perhaps I glanced at it. But it was nothing.’

‘I shall do all that lies in my power to correct it,’ said Unterholzer. ‘I can assure you of that.’

‘You are very kind, Herr Unterholzer,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘Let us now put all this behind us and get on with the important work of the moment.’

And that is exactly what happened. The life of the Institute returned to normal. In the next issue of the
Zeitschrift
there appeared a prominent piece by Unterholzer, entitled
Further Thoughts on von Igelfeld’s Portuguese Irregular Verbs
. It amounted to a complete recantation of the earlier piece, which was described as having been intended only to engender debate, written by one who had cast himself, unwillingly, in the role of
Avocatus Diaboli
.

It was a thoroughly satisfactory outcome. Only the Librarian had appeared to regret how things had turned out.

‘Poor Herr Unterholzer seems to have lost his new drive,’ he commented to von Igelfeld. ‘I wonder why?’

‘No idea,’ began von Igelfeld, but then corrected himself.
Truth Always
. ‘At least I think I know, but these matters are confidential and I’m very sorry but I simply cannot tell you.’

vier

The Bones of Father Christmas

Italy beckoned, and this was a call which Professor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld always found very difficult to resist. He felt at home in Italy, especially in Siena, where he had once spent several idyllic months in the Istituto di Filologia Comparata. That was at the very time at which he was putting the finishing touches to his great work, and indeed many of the streets of that noble town were inextricably linked in his mind with insights he experienced during that creative period of his life. It had been walking along the Banco di Sopra, for example, that he had realised why it was that in Brazilian Portuguese there was a persistent desire to replace the imperative tense with the present indicative. Was it not linked with the tendency to confuse
tu
and
voce
, since the singular of the indicative had the same form as the imperative singular
at least for the second person
? It was: there could be no other explanation. And had he not rushed back to the Istituto, oblivious to the bemused stares of passers-by? Had he not stumbled briefly on the stairs as he mentally composed the paragraph which would encapsulate this insight, a stumble which had caused the prying concierge to whisper to his friend in the newsagent next door, ‘That German professor, the tall one, came back from lunch yesterday
drunk
! Yes, I saw it with my own eyes. Fell downstairs, at least two flights, head over heels.’

And then there was the idea which had come to him one morning while he took a walk past the Monte di Paschi bank and had seen the bill-poster slapping a notice on the wall. The poster had been one of those announcements that the Italians like to put on walls; the death of a local baker’s mother.
E morta!
the poster had proclaimed in heavy, Bodoni type, and below that, simply,
Mama!
Von Igelfeld had stopped and read the still gluey text. How remarkable that private pain could be so publicly shared, which meant, of course, its dilution. For we are all members of one another, are we not, and the baker’s loss was the loss, in a tiny way, of all those fellow citizens who might know him only slightly, but who would have read his cry of sorrow. And like Proust’s tiny madeleine cakes dipped into tea, the sight of one of these posters could evoke in von Igelfeld’s mind the moment when, after passing on from that melan-choly sign, he had suddenly realised how the system of regular vocalic alternations had developed in the verb
poder
.

But Siena was more for him than those heady days of composition; he cherished, too, a great affection for the Sienese hills. He liked to go to the hills in spring, when the air was laden with the scent of wild flowers. His good friend, Professor Roberto Guerini, was always pleased to entertain him on his small wine estate outside Montalcino, where von Igelfeld had become well known to the proprietors of surrounding estates and was much in demand at dinner parties in the region. One of these dinner parties was still talked about in Italy. That was the occasion when the current proprietor of the neighbouring estate, the Conte Vittorio Fantozzi, known locally as
il Grasso
(the fat one), had conducted a lengthy dinner-table conversation with von Igelfeld in which both participants spoke old Tuscan dialects now almost completely lost to all but a small band of linguistic enthusiasts. In recognition of his guest’s skill, the count had bottled a wine which he named after the distinguished visitor. The label showed a picture of a hedgehog in a field, an allusion to the literal translation of von Igelfeld’s name (hedgehog-field, in English,
campo del porcospino
in Italian). Thereafter, von Igelfeld was referred to in Sienese society as ‘our dear friend from Germany,
il Professore Porcospino
’.

It would have been good to get back to Tuscany – perhaps even to Montalcino itself – but when the call arrived, it was of a rather different nature.

‘Florianus and I are going to Rome,’ said Ophelia Prinzel when she encountered von Igelfeld in the small park near his house. ‘Would you care to accompany us?’

Von Igelfeld remembered with pleasure the trip to Venice which he had made with the Prinzels a few years earlier. It was true that the holiday had been cut short, when Prinzel discovered that he had been rendered slightly radioactive as a result of contact with polluted canal water, but that had soon been dealt with and was not allowed to place too much of a pall over the trip. Von Igelfeld might have been more pleased had the offer been to go to Venice again, or even to Naples or Palermo, but Rome in the agreeable company of his two old friends was still an attractive prospect, and he accepted readily.

‘As it happens,’ he said, ‘I have some work I’ve been meaning to do in Rome. I shall be able to spend the days in the Vatican Library and then devote the evenings to leisurely pursuits.’

‘So wise,’ said Ophelia. ‘A break is what you need. You push yourself too hard, Moritz-Maria. I’m quite happy to leave the Puccini project for weeks at a stretch.’

Von Igelfeld was not surprised to hear this, and was tempted to say:
That’s why you’ll never finish it
, but did not. He had grave doubts whether Puccini’s correspondence would ever be published, at least in the lifetime of any of them, but loyalty to his friend forbade any comment.

They set off at the end of April, winding their way down to the plains of Lombardy. They had decided to break the journey, spending a few days in Siena before making the final assault on Rome. From their hotel, perched on the top of the city walls, they had a fine view of the surrounding countryside and its warm, red buildings. Von Igelfeld sat on the terrace and gazed out over the terracottatiled rooftops down below him, reflecting on how everything in Italy seemed to be so utterly in harmony with its surroundings. Even the modern works of man, buildings which in any other country would be an imposition on the landscape, here in Italy seemed to have a grace and fluidity that moulded them into the natural flow and form of the countryside. And the people too – they occupied their surroundings as if they were meant to be there; unlike Germany, where everybody seemed to be . . . well, they seemed to be so
cross
for some reason or another.

If life were different – if instead of being the author of
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
, with all that this entailed, he were a man of independent means, able to spend his time as he wished, then he could live in Italy, in some renovated Tuscan farmhouse. He would rise late, attend to his vines, and then take a leisurely drive into the nearby village to buy his newspaper and collect his mail. Perhaps he would even get married and his wife keep him company and play Schubert on the piano for him in the evening. That would be heaven indeed, but there was no point in dreaming; he
was
the author of
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
, he had no house in Italy, and such domestic comfort as he enjoyed was at second hand, crumbs from the table of the Prinzels. If only Unterholzer had not stolen – yes,
stolen
– from him the charming dentist, Dr Lisbetta von Brautheim who should, if there were any justice, have married von Igelfeld himself. And now he had even overheard Unterholzer talking about buying a small house in Italy! What use would that be to him, thought von Igelfeld bitterly. How could Unterholzer even begin to understand the subtle pleasures of the Italian landscape? How could Unterholzer begin to savour the scent of thyme in dusty summer air, with that great big nose of his? More of a lump than a nose, really, if one came to think about it. If Unterholzer were ever to contemplate a scene of hills and cypresses, all he would be able to see would be his own nose, and perhaps a blur beyond it. Italy, with all its visual treats, would be utterly wasted on Unterholzer, who would do far better to stay in Germany, where people like that were somehow less conspicuous.

But what could one expect? thought von Igelfeld. What could one really expect? There was nothing that could be done about Unterholzer. He should have been something else altogether. Perhaps the Burgermeister of a small town somewhere in Bavaria. Instead of which he had poked his large, unsuitable nose into philology, where it had no business to be. Really, it was most vexing.

He sighed. It was not easy maintaining one’s position as the author of
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
. Not only was there Unterholzer (and all that tiresome business with his dog), but von Igelfeld also had to cope with the distinct unhelpfulness of the Librarian and with the unmitigated philistinism of his publishers. Then there was the awkward attitude of the university authorities, who recently had shown the temerity to ask him to deliver a series of lectures to undergraduate students. This had almost been the last straw for von Igelfeld, who had been obliged to remind them of just who he was. That had caused them to climb down, and the Rector had even sent a personal letter of apology, but von Igelfeld felt that the damage was done. If German professors could be asked to lecture, as if they were mere
instructors
, then the future of German scholarship looked perilous. He had heard that one of his colleagues had even been asked whether he proposed to write another book, when he had already written one some ten years previously! And the alarming thing was that people were taking this lying down and not protesting at the outrageous breach of academic freedom which it unquestionably was. What would Immanuel Kant have made of it? What would have happened if the University of Koenigsberg had asked Kant whether he proposed to write another
Kritik der reinen Vernunft
? Kant would have treated such a question with the contempt it deserved.