Unusual Uses for Olive Oil (10 page)

The woman – a housekeeper, von Igelfeld presumed – led him through the hall and into a large drawing room. There, at the other end of the room, was Frau Benz herself, putting the finishing touches to a flower arrangement on a table in the window. She greeted him warmly, beckoning him across the room to admire the floral display.

‘Every one of these flowers is from our own gardens, dear Professor von Igelfeld,’ she said. ‘My gardener has such a marvellous touch with flowers. He is perhaps less accomplished when it comes to vegetables – his heart, you see, is not in it; some gardeners are like that. But flowers are a different matter.’ She paused. ‘Is your own gardener good with flowers?’

Von Igelfeld shook his head. ‘He is not,’ he said.

He did not know why he said this. We sometimes speak without thinking, without meaning to mislead, and this was one such case. He should have admitted that he had no gardener – it is not a difficult thing to say:
I have no gardener
is not a statement of which anybody should have reason to feel ashamed. But he did not say this, and instead he heard himself say
He is not
.

‘Then you should send him to my Herr Gunter,’ said Frau Benz. ‘He could spend a day with Herr Gunter and Herr Gunter would tell your Herr … What is your gardener’s name?’

Von Igelfeld looked out of the window.

‘Herr von Igelfeld? What is your gardener’s name?’

‘Herr … Herr Unterholzer.’

‘Well then, you send your Herr Unterholzer to spend a day with Herr Gunter and he will come back to you knowing everything there is to know about flowers! What do you think of that idea?’

Von Igelfeld laughed nervously. ‘A very good idea! I am sure that they would get on very well.’

Frau Benz now drew him gently towards the door. ‘I know that you are interested in ceilings,’ she said. ‘So let’s go and look at the ceiling I mentioned to you. The ceiling that depicts the entry of my dear husband into heaven.’

As they walked along a corridor that led off the drawing room, Frau Benz gave a further explanation of the ceiling. ‘The concept, I must confess, is not original,’ she said. ‘Rubens painted a very similar scene, you know, in London. The Banqueting Hall in Whitehall has a ceiling depicting the apotheosis of King James I of England and VI of Scotland. It is a very fine painting which I have myself inspected on a trip to London.’

‘It is better to see these things in person,’ said von Igelfeld.

Frau Benz was in strong agreement with this. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘There is nothing to equal the direct experience of being in the presence of great art. One can look at a photograph of a great painting and be moved, but one is never moved to the same extent as one is when one stands in front of the real thing. That is quite different.

‘It was when I was in London, standing directly underneath Rubens’ painting, that the idea occurred to me of portraying my dear late husband in a similar situation. That was the moment of insight; that was the moment at which I knew it was the right thing to do.’

‘And it undoubtedly is,’ said von Igelfeld.

She stopped when he said this and placed a hand gently on his forearm. ‘Thank you, dear Professor von Igelfeld. You clearly understand about these things.’

‘He was a great man,’ said von Igelfeld. Again he had no idea why he should say such a thing; he had never met the late Herr Benz and knew nothing about him, other than that he was a manufacturer of some sort. But it seemed to him that to describe him in this way was the right thing to do, at least from the point of view of providing comfort to Frau Benz. She clearly missed her husband keenly, and to hear one whom one
misses described as a great man must be a consolation, even if the tribute comes from one who might not have known much about the person so described, or might not have known anything about him, for that matter.

Frau Benz appeared to consider von Igelfeld’s remark for a moment. First looking down at the floor, she raised her eyes slowly, and he saw her gratitude. ‘He was,’ she said quietly. ‘None greater than he. Not one.’

‘No,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘That is surely true.’

They were nearing the end of the corridor. A door led off to the right, and Frau Benz now pushed this open gently, with the air of one anxious not to disturb unduly what lay beyond. Momentarily awed, as if entering a newly decorated Sistine Chapel, von Igelfeld peered into the room beyond the door. The shutters were partly closed, which made the room dim, but there was enough light to make out the shape of a tower, of the sort used by painters and decorators, with a ladder strapped against its side.

Abandoning her guest for the moment, Frau Benz moved purposefully across the room and opened the shutters. In the flood of light that resulted, a long dining room was revealed, with walls covered with elaborate
chinois
wallpaper, and above that, only partly obscured by the painter’s tower, the depiction, almost complete, of the apotheosis of Herr Benz.

‘There it is,’ said Frau Benz in hushed tones. ‘Herr Benz being admitted to the heavenly realms – just as I imagine it took place in real life.’

Von Igelfeld stared at the picture. It was undoubtedly skilfully executed, in colours and tones reminiscent of the French Baroque. There was God himself, taking something of a back seat in proceedings, but emitting a divine glow that very satisfactorily illuminated the ranks of those angels hovering closest to him; and there were some of the figures from Germany’s past: Goethe, still wearing his earthly clothes, von Igelfeld noted, and flourishing the very pen that must have written
The Sorrows of the Young Werther
, and Wagner too, flanked in his case by Rhine maidens. These buxom young women were pictured as beaming with relief; a relief that stemmed, von Igelfeld imagined, from having been translated from the murky realms of early German myth into these more luminescent, less riverine surroundings.

And finally, there was Herr Benz himself. He was unmistakable, being dressed in modern clothes – presumably the suit that he wore on his daily trip to his factories. Because of the angle from which he was viewed – an apotheosis being inevitably seen from below – it was possible to make out the soles of his shoes and the wine-red socks he was wearing. These details, von Igelfeld noted, were very finely caught by the painter, and he said as much to Frau Benz.

‘Ah yes,’ she said. ‘His red socks. They were so important to him.’

They spent a few more minutes in the dining room before Frau Benz suggested that they move elsewhere. ‘One cannot look at ceilings for too long,’ she said. ‘One’s neck will not allow it.’

‘Michelangelo must have had such a crick in
his
neck,’ said von Igelfeld.

This witty observation was very well received by Frau Benz, who laughed appreciatively. ‘I never thought of that,’ she said.

Von Igelfeld felt almost light-headed as he tossed out the next remark. ‘Well, I imagine that
he
did.’

Again, the witticism made Frau Benz laugh. And this, thought von Igelfeld, was beyond any doubt a good thing: it did not do, he felt, to contemplate deceased husbands
excessively
. Once they had been safely admitted to heaven, as Herr Benz clearly was, then one should perhaps consider
moving on
. There was very little mischief that one could get up to in heaven, particularly with Goethe and Wagner, not to say God, looking on, and so Frau Benz might well leave him there, so to speak, and concentrate on more earthly matters. He could not say this, of course – he realised that – but at least he could bring her out of herself with light-hearted conversation of the sort that he had now so spontaneously embarked upon. No, it
was going very well, he thought, and for a moment he imagined himself as the next male occupant of this charming
Schloss
, receiving some in one of the elegant drawing rooms, showing others the formal gardens with their playful fountains and elegant paths, so crunchy underfoot with their well-raked gravel. And at his side, supportive and admiring, would be Frau Benz herself, now – dare he entertain the delicious thought? – now Frau Professor Dr Dr (
honoris causa
) (
mult.
) von Igelfeld!

There was, of course, the question of whether a wife should restrict herself to being Frau Professor or whether she should include her husband’s doctorates: opinion was divided on the matter, and there had been sharp exchanges in the German academic press. Von Igelfeld found himself uncertain, as he could see that each side of the dispute had something to be said for it. It could certainly be argued that to attribute doctorates to a person who did not have them was frankly misleading. Yet was this form actually doing that? If one thought about it carefully, to call a wife Frau Professor Dr was not actually suggesting that she had a doctorate; it was effectively denoting that she was the wife of a professor who
himself
had a doctorate. In that sense, there was no intention to deceive, and indeed no possible deception unless one were careless in one’s interpretation of what was said. Of course some people
were careless, and could misunderstand matters, and that was a powerful argument for holding that it was safer not to include the doctorate and refer simply to Frau Professor.

But then there was a further issue. What was the position if the wife of a professor had a doctorate in her own right? If one used the form
Frau Professor Dr
then there was a grave danger that people would think that the doctorate pertained to her husband and not to her. This situation could not be remedied by the simple inclusion of a further doctorate, as
Frau Professor Dr Dr
would surely normally be read as implying that her husband had, as was often the case, two doctorates. What, then?

Of course there were even more appalling complications. What if a woman who was herself a professor, and the possessor of two doctorates, were to marry another professor,
who had only one doctorate
? Von Igelfeld knew of no such case, but the fact that something had not yet occurred was no guarantee that it would not. If it did, then perhaps the only solution would be to call such a person Professor Dr Dr Frau Professor Dr. It was cumbersome, yes, but the fact that a term of address was cumbersome did not mean that one should shy away from it: exactitude, von Igelfeld had always maintained, was far more important than mere linguistic convenience.

He had put such thoughts behind him by the time they sat down for lunch on the west terrace. They were served by Ernst, a young manservant in a white linen jacket and black bow-tie. He brought them a consommé, followed by a concoction of fluffed white of eggs over which truffle-impregnated oil had been dribbled.

‘A light lunch is always best,’ said Frau Benz.

‘Yes,’ agreed von Igelfeld. ‘The best sort of lunch is the lunch one sees photographs of these astronauts eating. It’s so light it floats around the cabin.’

Frau Benz thought this very amusing, and complimented von Igelfeld on his wit. ‘It must be wonderful to be able to make such funny remarks,’ she said. ‘What a great talent you have, Professor von Igelfeld. How you must make your colleagues laugh!’

Across von Igelfeld’s mind there flashed a picture of morning coffee at the Institute, with Herr Huber going on about his aunt and the nursing home and Unterholzer rehearsing some grudge or other. It was not quite as Frau Benz imagined it; but then he felt different here, in her company: more vital, more appreciated, more capable of making diverting conversation.

‘Oh, it’s nothing, really,’ he said modestly, but then added, ‘Sometimes these things do slip out.’

‘As they do from those writers of aphorisms,’ said Frau Benz, dipping her fork into the egg. ‘I assume they wake up each morning and wonder what aphorism
will occur that day. I imagine that Friedrich von Schlegel’s days began that way.’

‘Or Marcus Aurelius and his
Meditations
,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘He presumably halted his campaigning in those melancholy fens if he felt a meditation coming on.’

Frau Benz rocked with laughter. ‘Marcus Aurelius …’ she giggled. ‘A meditation’s coming on …’

Von Igelfeld basked in the appreciative laughter. He looked out over the edge of the terrace. The ground sloped sharply away from the Schloss, and down below, so far below as to be a world in miniature, was a tablecloth of ripe fields: golden hay, wheat, oats: the lands of the Schloss. Distance precluded detail, but he imagined that closer inspection would reveal the presence of broad-beamed Brueghelian peasants, busy with their scythes, bringing in the harvest that would be translated soon enough into rents for the Schloss’s coffers. How satisfactory, he thought, must the established order be when one is oneself well established within it.

They rounded off their lunch with coffee and small squares of chocolate-covered marzipan.

‘I have so enjoyed myself,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘You have been most kind to me, Frau Benz.’

She smiled demurely. ‘The pleasure has been mine, Professor von Igelfeld.’

He suddenly felt emboldened. ‘And please, let’s set
formality aside. I would be delighted were you to call me Moritz-Maria.’

It was a bold, perhaps reckless step to take, even if the invitation was hedged with an entirely appropriate subjunctive. Frau Benz was a person of conventional views; she lived in a
Schloss
; she was a respectable widow; one would not normally move on to first-name terms with such a person after no more than two meetings. A year, perhaps, would be about right; a year of formality before venturing – cautiously – into the realms of first-name intimacy. And here am I, he thought; here am I suggesting this after our very first lunch together. And lying about having a gardener too. So much, he reflected ruefully, for the von Igelfeld family motto,
Truth Always
.

Frau Benz hesitated, but only briefly. ‘Thank you, Moritz-Maria, thank you. And please, I should be delighted if you were to address me as Kitty.’

‘I shall be honoured to do so,’ said von Igelfeld, thinking how fitting the name seemed. ‘Kitty.’

They talked for a few minutes more before he glanced at his watch and told his hostess that it was time for him to go. ‘Perhaps I could reciprocate by taking you to dinner,’ he said. ‘Would you by any chance be free tomorrow evening?’