Unusual Uses for Olive Oil (14 page)

The first discussion period followed breakfast the next morning. The theme of the discussion was a very general one, so designed as to ensure that everybody had a chance to contribute views. The topic – ‘Should language be allowed to evolve naturally or should it be regulated by a national academy, such as the Académie Française?’ – caused a great stir. Most of the students agreed that language should be left to evolve naturally, although one or two purists took strong exception to this. The Académie Française, they said, deserved everybody’s thanks for standing up against the relentless tide of Anglo-Saxon linguistic pollution that was infecting so many languages. Von Igelfeld agreed, but said nothing: this debate was for the students, and one could hardly expect students to reach the right conclusion about
anything. In illustrating their point, one or two of the students in favour of linguistic freedom used words that he did not quite understand, but he did not reveal this: such words were inevitably vulgar and would be forgotten after a year or two, like that American word
okay
, which he had always felt would never last once the novelty wore off. Or
vachement
in French: what a ridiculous neologism that was: one would certainly not hear that in the halls of the Académie Française!

At the end of the discussion coffee was served. Von Igelfeld announced that he and the trust administrator would be available afterwards to resolve any administrative issues or deal with any queries about the programme.

‘My door is always open,’ he announced, and then quipped, ‘Except, that is, when it is clearly closed.’

This brought smiles of appreciation from the students, and von Igelfeld basked in their approbation. Perhaps students were not such a nuisance after all; perhaps the Institute should consider having a few more – not too many, of course; an extra three or four a year might be about right. He would take that up with Prinzel, he thought, on his return, and then, if the two of them agreed, they could present the decision as a
fait accompli
, or even a
fait vachement accompli
, to Unterholzer. He smiled at the linguistic joke, and wished that he could share it with somebody who would understand. He glanced about him – Herr Huber? No,
he was deeply engrossed in conversation with that same young woman he had been talking to the previous evening. Poor young woman, von Igelfeld said to himself. Perhaps I should have a private word with Herr Huber and tell him that he shouldn’t burden her too much with his conversation.

He sat down with the administrator and waited to deal with the first of the students who had indicated that they had an admininstrative issue. This was one of the young men called Hans whom von Igelfeld had spoken to briefly before dinner the night before.

‘I take it that everything is going well,’ said von Igelfeld as the young man sat down in front of him.

‘Oh, yes, Herr Professor. It certainly is.’

Von Igelfeld nodded. ‘Is there anything we can do for you?’

The young man looked down at the floor. ‘I was wondering whether it might be possible to change rooms,’ he said. ‘I’m sharing with Georg over there and I’m afraid that he snores. It’s very difficult to sleep if somebody is snoring.’

‘Of course it is,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘Certainly you can change.’

The adminstrator glanced at von Igelfeld. ‘Accommodation’s very tight,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we have anything available.’

Hans looked at von Igelfeld. ‘But I have had an idea,
professor,’ he said. ‘I could share with the other Hans. He says that he would be very happy to share with me, to save me from Georg’s snoring.’

The administrator looked at his list. ‘But he has a single room. There is only one bed in that room.’

‘We don’t mind,’ said Hans hurriedly. ‘Hans is not very large and there will be room.’

The administrator frowned. ‘I’m not sure that …’

‘Fine,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘That is very kind of him. You are lucky to have such a generous friend. And at least you will get plenty of sleep now – unless other Hans snores!’

Hans beamed with pleasure. ‘No, he doesn’t. I can tell you …’

‘Good,’ said von Igelfeld.

The next student was a young woman. She, too, wanted to change rooms, and had heard that there might be a chance of getting the bed previously occupied by Hans.

‘But that room is already occupied by Georg,’ said the administrator.

‘That’s fine,’ said the young woman. ‘I’ve spoken to him and he says that he doesn’t mind.’

The administrator looked at von Igelfeld. ‘This is very irregular, Professor von Igelfeld,’ he whispered. ‘We do not put male and female students in the same room. We have never done that. Otherwise …’

Von Igelfeld ignored the administrator and turned to the student. ‘You are a friend of this young man, are you?’

The student smiled at him. ‘We are friends. We read to each other, you see, and it would be nice to be able to do that here.’

‘Of course it would,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘It is very useful to have somebody to read to one when one’s eyes are tired.’

The administrator tried to interrupt. ‘I’m not sure that policy allows …’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘I shall authorise this.’

There were several other requests made that morning, all concerned with moving rooms. The administrator became quite sulky. ‘Once this starts,’ he complained to von Igelfeld, ‘it will never end. With the greatest respect, Professor von Igelfeld, in previous years I have handled all the accommodation issues myself, without troubling you. Now that you are taking an interest in them, I’m afraid that it is all going to become excessively complicated.’

‘I do not see that,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘These young people need to be comfortable so that they can apply their minds to the discussions. It is important that they get sound sleep.’

The administrator stared at him incredulously. He
hesitated for a while before replying, as if weighing his words carefully. ‘I’m not sure if you appreciate what is happening here, Professor von Igelfeld. The reason why the students are interfering with my perfectly good accommodation arrangements is that they are up to—’

He did not finish. ‘Excuse me, Herr Wolters,’ said von Igelfeld icily. ‘I am perfectly aware of what’s what. But thank you very much for your concern, which is, as always, much appreciated.’

He looked about him in irritation. Really! It was intolerable that mere administrators should think fit to question professorial judgement. He had heard that this had been happening more and more in universities, but he would certainly resist it when he came across it, as he now did. What next? Would it be librarians who started to throw their weight around? Herr Huber telling
him
what to do?

Where
was
Herr Huber? Perhaps he should have a word with him and check up that the filing of the maps was in order. Herr Huber, for all his wittering on about all sorts of ephemera, was a highly conscientious librarian and would certainly have filed the maps by now, but seemed to be out of the room. Von Igelfeld rose to look out of the window. He spotted Herr Huber immediately, walking towards a cluster of pine trees with that same young woman. Von Igelfeld sighed; he could just imagine the conversation. ‘There are some
pine trees remarkably like this in the grounds of my aunt’s nursing home, you know. I drew the attention of the matron to them and she explained that …’

The next few days passed without incident. There were some very successful discussion sessions, and two lengthy book reports prepared by students chosen by von Igelfeld for this honour. There were also several most enjoyable hikes, in which the entire party participated, even Herr Huber, who was wearing, much to von Igelfeld’s amusement, traditional Bavarian lederhosen.

‘I fear your knees will feel somewhat cold,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘But it’s your choice, Herr Huber. I would never presume to comment on a colleague’s clothing, even if he were to look ridiculous.’

‘You are very kind,’ said Herr Huber, as they strode along. ‘I must say that I enjoy wearing this outfit, which belonged to my late uncle, you know. He has nothing to do with the aunt you may have heard me refer to; he is on the other side. He lived in Berlin for many years, you know, and …’

‘Yes, yes, that is all very interesting, Herr Huber, but I was wanting to speak to you about a more delicate matter. I don’t think that one should monopolise the time of any of the young people who are with us, don’t you agree?’

‘I most certainly agree,’ said the Librarian.

‘So you should perhaps give that young woman a bit of a break from your company,’ said von Igelfeld.

Herr Huber’s tread faltered. His knees, visible below the edge of his lederhosen, seemed to tremble slightly. ‘But I cannot be unkind to her,’ he said. ‘She keeps seeking out my company and we get on very well.’

‘
She
seeks
you
out?’ asked von Igelfeld.

Herr Huber nodded. ‘And her own company is very delightful. Look, here she is now.’

Herr Huber’s friend came striding towards him. ‘Stoffi, come on. Let’s go and walk at the front. Come along.’

Von Igelfeld looked on in astonishment as the Librarian’s arm was taken and he was led away to the front of the walking party. Stoffi! He had never before heard anybody call the Librarian by his first name, and he was appalled that a student should presume to do so. It was true that she was a postgraduate student, and clearly into her thirties already, but she was still technically a student and therefore of a distinctly lower academic rank even than that occupied by Herr Huber. And he was also astonished at the way she took Herr Huber’s arm; it was almost as if there was something between them – an intimacy even – which of course was frankly unbelievable and need not be thought about any further. Stoffi! Well, none of them
would ever dare to call him Moritz-Maria – that was as firm as the very rocks on which they were now walking, high above the distant valley, high in an air that seemed so sweet and pure that to breathe it was to purge the lungs of all staleness and despair. He would rise above these petty matters, he decided, and enjoy the mountain air to the full. He breathed in; it was delightful, quite delightful. He felt content. The problems of the world are far away, he thought, and they need not worry me here. He paused. What exactly were the problems of the world? They were profound, he was sure, but he now realised that he had not exactly exercised himself over them during the past few years. Nor before that either. In fact, he had never really considered them at all, and he decided that now he should perhaps do so. Linguistic pollution? The decline of the subjunctive? The intrusion of English words into Romance languages? This was the sort of thing that the world needed to get to grips with, and he would not flinch in the face of such issues.

He slipped into a most agreeable routine that included an early morning stroll immediately after breakfast and a more ambitious hike in the afternoon. The morning stroll was usually a solitary affair, taken while the students had their morning discussion, in which he used the time by himself to think about the various scholarly projects that he had lined up for the autumn
and winter. The possibility of a new edition of
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
had been raised by the chairman of the Max-Planck Foundation and von Igelfeld was now giving it serious consideration. The chairman’s letter had been persuasive:
We are interested in funding the publication of a series that will include the twenty or so most significant works of scholarship in a widely varying range of disciplines. These will be books that are already in print, or that have been in print but are now out of print. They will be, quite simply, the crowning glories of German scholarship of the second half of the twentieth century and the first part of the twenty-first. They are books that will endure in the manner that Horace anticipated for his
Odes.

Von Igelfeld had taken considerable satisfaction from the terms of this letter. He knew what Horace had written about his
Odes
– ‘
Exegi monumentum aere perennius
: I have created a monument more lasting than bronze.’ It was not the most modest of comments on one’s own work, perhaps, but it was the chairman who had brought it up and not von Igelfeld, and it was hardly immodest to contemplate the compliments passed by others. The appropriate response to such a compliment was to acknowledge it with a slight bow of the head, which von Igelfeld had, in fact, done when he had first read the glowing sentence.

Now, in the mountains, he was able to use the
tranquillity of the winding paths to think about how he would tackle the writing of a second edition and of what new material he would incorporate. And there were other things, too, that needed to be thought about: a paper to be delivered in Sweden in November at an important conference of Romance philologists – this would have to be written by the middle of October as it was to be included in the published proceedings of the conference. Then there were several books for review in the
Zeitschrift
– not an unduly onerous task, but one that would none the less require weeks of work. Yes, he thought, the
monumentum aere perennius
was still a work in progress.

It was towards the end of the week that von Igelfeld set off for a morning stroll rather earlier than usual. He had risen shortly after six, having left his blind slightly open and thus allowed the morning sun to stream directly into his room. This had woken him up and taken him to the window to gaze out on a morning of quite exceptional beauty. Opening the window, he stuck his head out and breathed in the champagne-like air. It was quite exhilarating and it inspired him to have his walk before breakfast rather than afterwards.

Dressed in his mountain-walking clothes – plus-twos, green knitted socks, a pair of stout climbing boots, and a waterproof jacket – von Igelfeld strode out of the lodge and on to a path that he had not taken before.
This path was considerably steeper than most of those that ran from the lodge and was generally thought to be a little too ambitious for those unused to Alpine conditions. Von Igelfeld, however, felt that the week’s practice he had already had equipped him perfectly well for a short walk along this path. If conditions became too difficult he could always turn back; there was no danger.