At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

I didn’t want another person sharing the bathroom with Professor Waterfield and myself. I did not actually lie, but I as good as lied.’

Dr Hall shook his head. ‘That’s the problem with these old buildings,’ he said. ‘There just aren’t enough bathrooms.’

‘Well, that may be so,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘But it doesn’t excuse my action. I shall have to tell him immediately after coffee.’

‘And we shall tell the others that there will be no emergency meeting called tomorrow,’ said Dr C. A. D. Wood. ‘And I shall say something decent to Plank.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Dr Hall. ‘I propose to go straight over to him, right now, and tell him that I think that he’s doing a very good job as Chairman of the Council.’

‘That will please him,’ said Dr C. A. D. Wood. ‘Nobody’s ever said anything like that to him before. Poor Haughland (voce, Plank).’

At the end of coffee, as the Fellows broke up for the evening, von Igelfeld made his way over to join Matthew Gurewitsch, who was examining one of the College portraits, a picture of a former Master, who had been beheaded under Cromwell.

‘Mr Gurewitsch,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘I owe you an apology. I omitted to tell you that there was a bathroom at the top of the stairs and that you could use it.’

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’etre 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