At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

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 Nenee-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 Senor Gabriel Marcales de Cinco Fermentaciones, cultural attache 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.