‘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 . . . ’