At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

‘Who is it this year, Senior Tutor?’ asked one of the junior dons.

‘Mr Matthew Gurewitsch,’ announced the Senior Tutor. ‘He is a well-known opera writer from New York and I am told that he is a very entertaining lecturer. He will be with us for one week exactly and then he goes on to interview Menotti. We are very lucky to have him.’

Von Igelfeld nodded approvingly. He knew little about opera, but was keen to learn more. It was possible that Mr Gurewitsch would talk about Wagner, or even Humperdinck, both of whom von Igelfeld approved of. But there were dangers; what if he chose to speak of Henze? For a moment he closed his eyes; to have to attend a lecture on Henze would be intolerable, the musical equivalent of attending a lecture on Beuys and his piles of clothes or his wooden boxes.

‘And his subject?’ asked another junior don.

‘Il Trovatore,’ said the Senior Tutor.

Von Igelfeld relaxed. He would attend the lecture, and attend with pleasure. Perhaps there would be indirect references to Wagner and to Humperdinck; one never knew what a lecturer was going to say until he started; or, should one say, until he finished.

Von Igelfeld spent the following morning in the Library. He made the acquaintance of the Librarian, who was delighted that somebody was prepared to work on the Hughes-Davitt Bequest.

‘So few people seem to care about the Renaissance today,’ said the Librarian. ‘And yet, had it not happened, where would we be today?’

Von Igelfeld thought for a moment. Historical speculation of this sort was unprofitable, he thought. There was little point in thinking about that soldier who had prevented the spear from plunging into Alexander the Great and who had thus saved Western civilisation. But if he had not done so, and the Persians had conquered the Greeks, then . . . He stopped himself. It was unthinkable the Institute itself might not have existed and yet it was quite possible, had history been rather different. Ultimately, we were all at the mercy of chance. All our schemes and enterprises were dependent on the merest whim of fate; as had been the outcome of that decisive naval battle when England defeated the Spanish Armada, but would not have done so had the wind come from a slightly different direction. In which case, the University of Cambridge itself would today be La Universidad de Cambridge, or Pontecam, to be precise.

At lunch time he returned to his rooms. He saw Dr Hall making his way purposefully towards the Refectory, and he remembered the uncharitable remarks of Dr Porter about stout dons. It was true, however, the dons at this College were very stout. Professor Waterfield, for example, whom he had met earlier that morning when they both arrived at the door of their shared bathroom at more or less the same time, was very stout indeed. There would certainly not be room for both of them in that bathroom should there be a struggle to see who would enter first.

There was, of course, no such struggle. Von Igelfeld politely asked Professor Waterfield whether he would care to return in twenty minutes, when the bathroom would again be vacant, and Professor Waterfield, although slightly surprised by von Igelfeld’s suggestion, had mildly acquiesced.

‘I should not wish to stand between you and cleanliness,’ he remarked cheerfully as he returned to his room, and von Igelfeld, appreciating the quiet humour of this aside, responded: ‘Mens sana in corpore abluto .’ Professor Waterfield did not appear to hear, or, if he did, chose not to say anything, which was a pity, thought von Igelfeld, as it was an aphorism that deserved a response. Perhaps he would have the opportunity to use it again when he next met his neighbour at the bathroom door; one never knew.

Now, beginning his ascent to his room, where he proposed to take his customary lunchtime siesta, he found himself face-to-face with a man whom he did not recognise from the previous evening’s dinner. This person was carrying a suitcase and von Igelfeld, glancing down at it, saw the initials MG painted discreetly above the handle. This, he concluded, must be Mr Matthew Gurewitsch. He had noticed that the guest room on the floor below his, a distinctly inferior guest room, he had been led to believe, had been allocated to Mr Gurewitsch, and a small name card had been attached to the door in recognition of this arrangement. Feeling more confident of his surroundings, after he had introduced himself to Mr Gurewitsch, von Igelfeld showed him to his room, which was unlocked.

‘A comfortable room,’ said von Igelfeld, noting with pleasure that the furniture was distinctly more worn than his own. ‘No bathroom, I’m afraid. But then these old buildings don’t take too well to modern plumbing.’

‘No bathroom!’ exclaimed Mr Gurewitsch. ‘Even the crypt on the set of Aida has hot and cold running water these days!’

‘Well, that is opera,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘This is Cambridge. And it seems that there’s no bathroom.’

‘But what do I do?’ asked Mr Gurewitsch.

‘There’s a bathroom over on the other side of the Court,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘It’s attached to the Senior Common Room. I think that you will have to use that one.’

‘You don’t have one upstairs?’ asked Matthew Gurewitsch hopefully.

Von Igelfeld was silent for a moment. If he told this new visitor about the bathroom that he shared with Professor Waterfield, then that would mean that there would be three people sharing, rather than two. Two was bad enough, of course – look what had happened that morning – but if there were three people using the one bathroom, that would be even worse. It did not matter that Mr Matthew Gurewitsch appeared to be an extremely agreeable man, it was purely a question of practicality. The bathroom issue was a problem which the College should face, and it was not up to visitors like von Igelfeld to have to shoulder the responsibility of everyone’s bathroom needs. No, that would be to expect too much. He had no locus standi in bathroom matters in Cambridge and there was no moral obligation on his part to draw the attention of others to the existence of such bathroom facilities as there were.

At the same time, it was clear to von Igelfeld that he could not tell a lie. The motto of the von Igelfeld family was Truth Always, and he could not ignore this. It was true that he had deviated from it in that unfortunate encounter with Dr Max Augustus Hubertoffel, the psychoanalyst, but he had dealt with the moral sequelae of that lapse in as honourable a way as he could. But the incident had reminded him of the need for strict truthfulness. So his words would have to be chosen carefully, and here they were, forming themselves with no particular effort on his part: ‘I do not have a bathroom in my rooms,’ he said.

Although quite spontaneous, the words were well-chosen. It was indeed true that von Igelfeld did not have a bathroom in his rooms. There was a bathroom in the vicinity – on the landing to be precise – but this did not belong to von Igelfeld and therefore the precise terms of Matthew Gurewitsch’s question did not require it to be disclosed. He felt sorry for Matthew Gurewitsch, and for the many others like him in Cambridge who presumably had no