Tuesday afternoon was a considerable success. Leflar enjoyed a walk in the hills above the town and they both ate a hearty meal in a small inn on the river. But von Igelfeld’s pleasure at his friend’s delight in the beauty of Regensburg was tinged with apprehension. The moment was fast approaching when he would have to present himself at the Veterinary Institute and join Leflar in the tour which had been arranged for him. That, at least, had been easy. He had simply informed the Director of the Institute that a personal friend, a prominent American expert in animal health, was visiting and that he would like to show him the Institute. The Director had promised to conduct the tour himself and had invited von Igelfeld to join them. What would happen if the Director made some remark which indicated that von Igelfeld was an outsider from a totally different part of the university? And would Leflar expect von Igelfeld to join in any debate engaged in by himself and the Director? If that happened, there would be no alternative but to claim an urgent appointment elsewhere.
By the time they arrived at the Institute, von Igelfeld was already beginning to feel a cold chill of dread. But when the Director, a charming man wearing a neat bow-tie, welcomed them both, his fear dissipated somewhat. The Director addressed all his technical remarks to Leflar and all that von Igelfeld had to do was to nod in agreement.
‘We’re engaged in a major programme of research on the genetics of degenerative disease in turkeys,’ said the Director, and von Igelfeld nodded, as if to convey that he, too, was heavily involved.
‘It’s an important topic,’ said Leflar.
‘Yes,’ agreed von Igelfeld. ‘Very important. From the . . . from the . . . turkey point of view.’
The Director threw him a glance. Now they moved on to the laboratories, where humming centrifuges and bubbling flasks attested to a high level of research activity.
‘Mg2 H2O + HgSO4,’ explained the Director, pointing to a vat of curiously coloured powder.
‘H2?’ asked Leflar.
‘MgCO2,’ responded the Director.
‘O,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘H.’
‘O?’ asked Leflar.
Von Igelfeld stroked his chin. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Definitely,’ interjected the Director. ‘H2O + NaCl3.’
They moved on to the physiology laboratory, where Leflar found a great deal to interest him. Von Igelfeld felt relaxed now; there seemed to be no reason why Leflar should suspect anything and all that remained was to join the Director for a social cup of coffee in his office. That, it transpired, was even easier, as the conversation was restricted to small talk and a discussion of the relative merits of Fayetteville and Regensburg. Then the Director took his leave, as he had a meeting to attend, leaving von Igelfeld to escort Leflar towards the front door. And it was at this point that the movement of the planets brought about what, for von Igelfeld, was a thoroughly disagreeable concatenation of events.
Nemesis took the form of a young man, evidently a student, who suddenly dashed out of a door and seized von Igelfeld’s arm.
‘Herr Professor,’ he said. ‘You must come in immediately. We’ve had a casualty brought in to the clinic. I can’t find Dr Steenbock and the staff in the lab said that I should ask you.’
Von Igelfeld found himself being ushered into a small room, the stark white walls of which were lit by a large overhead light. There was a high table with a stainless steel top and stretched out on that, connected by a tube to a cylinder of gas, was the anaesthetised form of a sausage dog.
‘He was brought in a few minutes ago,’ said the young man. ‘One of his legs has been crushed by a car. I’ve just developed the X-rays.’
He flicked the switch of a light box, illuminating a ghostly picture of bones and tissue.
‘The trouble is,’ went on the young man. ‘I’m only a third year student. Dr Steenbock would normally supervise me. I’m not allowed to do unsupervised surgery yet.’
Von Igelfeld looked about him wildly. This was worse – far worse – than his ordeal in Arkansas. He was utterly cornered. But he would cope with the situation, just as he had coped with everything that had gone before. This was no time for defeat.
‘Well, I’ll just stand back and let you get on with it,’ said Leflar helpfully. ‘I do very little small animal surgery. I’ll just watch.’
‘You do it,’ said von Igelfeld to the student. ‘I’m sure that you’ll be fine.’
‘But what shall I do?’ asked the student.
Von Igelfeld craned his neck to examine the X-ray.
‘The leg is broken,’ he said. ‘Look at this.’
‘Yes,’ said the student. ‘It’s a badly impacted fracture.’
‘Then we shall have to amputate it,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘Cut it off.’
The student nodded. Then, opening a drawer below the table he extracted a scalpel and a large, terrifying instrument that looked to all intents and purposes like a pair of garden secateurs.
‘Go ahead,’ said von Igelfeld.
The student took the rear leg of the dog in his hand and made an incision. Bright canine blood appeared like a line of tiny flowers, but that was only the beginning. Soon the deeper structures were exposed and then, with a firm snip, the bone was cut neatly by the secateurs. It did not take long for the wound to be sewn up and there, in a metal dish, lay a small, detached leg.
‘Good,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘Well done.’
The student leaned forward to peer at the X-ray. Suddenly he groaned.
‘Oh no, Herr Professor! That was the wrong leg!’
Von Igelfeld looked at the plate. The broken leg was on the right, as was the leg which had been removed, but now, looking more closely, it was clearly in the front.
‘Take the right one off,’ he said sharply. ‘You have been very careless.’
The student reached again for his instruments and began the process of cutting into the injured leg. Again there was a bloodflow, quickly stemmed with a smouldering cauteriser, and soon another leg joined the one already in the dish.
‘Good,’ said von Igelfeld, emboldened. ‘I shall now assist you, in order to give you more confidence.’
He reached forward and took the scalpel from the student’s shaking hand. But as he did so, he slipped, and the sharp blade plunged deep into the remaining back leg. There was a fountain of blood and the student gave a shout.
‘You’ve severed an artery, Herr Professor!’
‘Take the leg off then,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘Hurry.’
Again the amputation procedure went ahead, leaving the poor sausage dog with a sole leg, in the front. Leflar, who had been watching intently, had been silent, save for a sharp intake of breath at the more dramatic events.
‘Poor dog,’ he said at last. ‘He’s not going to be able to get around very well with only one leg.’
Von Igelfeld looked at the sadly diminished sausage dog.
‘He can roll,’ he pronounced. ‘He will be able to get around by rolling.’
In the meantime, the student who had gone outside to sterilise the instruments had returned.
‘The owner is waiting outside, Herr Professor,’ he said. ‘Could you explain to him what has happened?’
Von Igelfeld nodded. ‘I shall tell him that it has been necessary to perform extensive surgery,’ he said. ‘Bring him in and I shall tell him what we have done.’
The student retreated and returned a few moments later with the anxious owner.
It was Unterholzer.
drei
On the Couch
Relations between Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, author of Portuguese Irregular Verbs, and Professor Dr Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer, author of a considerably less well-regarded work on the Portuguese imperfect subjunctive, were somewhat strained. Nothing was said, of course, but it was clear to von Igelfeld that Unterholzer continued to harbour a grudge against him over the unfortunate incident involving his dog. It was von Igelfeld’s view that he was entirely blameless in this affair, and that if anyone
bore any responsibility for it, then Unterholzer himself might be the most appropriate candidate. After all, it was his own failure to supervise the dog adequately that had left it free to run out into the road and collide with a passing motorist. Unterholzer should feel ashamed of this; if people failed to take adequate care of their sausage dogs, then accidents were only to be expected. And anyway, von Igelfeld reflected, the outcome could have been infinitely worse. It was true that the dog had lost three legs in the incident, but the Veterinary Institute had gone out of its way to fit it with a prosthetic appliance that appeared to be working very well. An elaborate harness was secured round the dog’s body and attached to this were three small wheels. By using its remaining leg as a paddle, the dog could propel itself on its wheels and get anywhere it wished to get. Only very occasionally did the system not work, as had happened once or twice on a hill, when the dog had got out of control and careered down the pavement on its tiny wheels, unable to stop itself, and had ended up on a lawn or in a bush. But these were minor inconveniences, and it was quite wrong for Unterholzer to maintain a coldness in his dealings with his senior colleague; Romance philology was too small a field to allow for animosity, at least with regard to personal disputes. Academic questions were another matter, of course; the issues there were real and it was sometimes inevitable that one had to be direct in one’s criticisms of a colleague’s misconceptions.
‘I trust that all is going well, Herr Unterholzer,’ remarked von Igelfeld one morning, in an attempt to break the ice.
‘In part,’ replied Unterholzer. ‘Some matters are progressing well, but there are others which are not so satisfactory.’
There was silence for a few moments, as Unterholzer awaited von Igelfeld’s response to the challenge. But none came.
‘What I mean,’ went on Unterholzer, ‘is that it takes a toll to be looking after a handicapped dog. There are so many things to worry about. Such a dog might become stuck in the mud, for example, if one’s dog happens to have wheels, that is. Only yesterday I had to oil him. One does not usually have to oil a dog, I think.’
Von Igelfeld bit his lip. It really was too much, this stream of unspoken accusations.
‘Indeed,’ he said, in a steely tone. ‘Supervising a dog is very demanding. One would not want one’s dog, while unsupervised, or negligently supervised perhaps, to run out into the traffic, would one, Herr Unterholzer?’
Unterholzer said nothing, but turned away and busied himself with some task. Von Igelfeld, for his part, was pleased with the way he had managed to turn the encounter to his advantage. Unterholzer would think twice now before he raised the question of the sausage dog again.
There was no further word from Unterholzer for two weeks. They passed one another in the corridor, and uttered courteous greetings, but no pleasantries were exchanged. Von Igelfeld was content to leave matters as they stood: if Unterholzer wished to smoulder, let him do so. He would only make himself look ridiculous in the eyes of a world which, if it were ever to discover the true background to the affair, would certainly side with von Igelfeld.
When Unterholzer eventually struck, it was with a suddenness that took von Igelfeld entirely by surprise. The Zeitschrift, which had previously been edited by von Igelfeld, but which was now edited from Frankfurt, arrived on the first day of every third month. Von Igelfeld had a personal subscription and enjoyed nothing more than taking his copy home on the day of its arrival and settling down to read it in his study over a glass of Madeira wine. It was, in many respects, the highlight of his existence: to savour the unadulterated pleasure of at least four articles on Romance philology, together with at least ten pages of book reviews, and several pages of Notes and Queries. Usually he finished his first reading of the journal that evening, and would return to it over the following days, after he had mulled over the contents.
On this occasion, he sat down with the Madeira and the review, and fixed his eye upon the Contents page. There was an article by Professor Dr Dr Mannhein on particles. (A treat! thought von Igelfeld.) There was a review essay on an important new etymological dictionary of Spanish, and . . . He faltered, the glass of Madeira toppling dangerously to one side.
It was there in black and white, the letters imprinted on the page with all the awful finality of names inscribed in some awful monument to an atrocity: Irregular Verbs: Flaws in the von Igelfeld Hypothesis. Von Igelfeld gasped, and gasped again when he saw what followed: by Professor Dr Dr Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer (Regensburg).
With fumbling hands he turned to the first page of the article and began to read.
‘Since the publication of the controversial Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, scholars of Romance philology have been questioning some of the basic assumptions as to the behaviour of the indicative in its irregular manifestations. The growing band of those who are unconvinced by the tentative hypothesis advanced by von Igelfeld have begun to suggest that third person mutations happened later than von Igelfeld naïvely assumes . . .’
It was almost too much for von Igelfeld to bear. With his heart hammering within him, he struggled to the end of the article, reeling at the subtle digs which virtually every sentence seemed to contain. Not only was he, according to Unterholzer, ‘naïve’ (page 34), but he was also ‘misguided’ (page 36), ‘misinformed’ (page 37) and ‘potentially meretricious’ (page 39).
He finished the article and laid the Zeitschrift down on the table beside his chair, next to the untouched glass of Madeira. He had never before – not once – been attacked in print. The reviews of Portuguese Irregular Verbs had been unanimously favourable; at conferences, colleagues had tripped over one another in the race to compliment him on his papers; and Zimmermann himself had never – not on one single occasion – uttered anything but praise of his work. And now here was Unterholzer – Unterholzer!– daring to question his theories, clothing himself, it would seem, in the support of a so-called ‘growing band’ of those unconvinced of his hypothesis. Who was in this ‘growing band’ on whose behalf Unterholzer purported to speak? Was Prinzel involved? Von Igelfeld had spoken to him only three weeks ago and there had been no indication of doubts as to the hypothesis. No, it was more likely that Unterholzer spoke for nobody but himself and had merely invented the support of others, in the same way as those who are unsure of themselves may use the first person plural when they express a view.
For the rest of the evening, von Igelfeld considered his response. One possibility was to confront Unterholzer and to ask him to explain himself. Another was to appear so wounded by the remarks that he would induce in Unterholzer a feeling of guilt for his appalling betrayal. And finally, he could just ignore the article altogether and pretend that he had not noticed the attack. The first and the second options were fraught with risks. He was unwilling to engage with Unterholzer in a point for point refutation of the criticisms he had made – to do that would be to lend to them a gravity that they patently did not deserve. And if he appeared wounded, then Unterholzer would have the satisfaction of knowing that the ridiculous barbs had struck home, which was presumably what he wanted. This left him the option of dignified silence, which he knew he was capable of managing. He had often shown a dignified silence in the past when faced with Unterholzer and his doings, and so all that he would have do would be rather more dignified and silent than usual.
Over the next few days, whenever von Igelfeld saw Unterholzer in the Institute, he merely nodded gravely in his direction and passed on. Unterholzer tried to speak to him on one occasion, but von Igelfeld pretended to be deep in thought and not to notice him. He thought, but could not be certain, that Unterholzer looked worried, and this gave him considerable pleasure. He could continue to keep his distance – for years if necessary – until Unterholzer knocked on his door with an unconditional apology. And even then, it might take some time before an apology could be accepted, so grave was the offence which Unterholzer had committed.
Yet as the days passed, von I
gelfeld found himself increasingly puzzled by Unterholzer’s apparent ability to endure the Coventry to which he had been consigned. Unterholzer was seen laughing and joking with some of the junior assistants and was, in von Igelfeld’s hearing, described by the Librarian as being ‘in remarkably good spirits’. It seemed to von Igelfeld that his colleague had acquired an extraordinary new confidence. Not only had he shown the temerity to criticise Portuguese Irregular Verbs in the columns of the Zeitschrift, but he seemed to have overcome his previous hesitance and inadequacy in his everyday dealings with his colleagues. This was disturbing; if Unterholzer were to start throwing his weight around, then the Institute would become a distinctly less attractive place. Nobody wanted Unterholzer’s opinions on anything, and it was highly undesirable that he should see fit to give them.
Von Igelfeld decided to take the matter up with the Librarian, who had always enjoyed a close relationship with Unterholzer.
‘Professor Unterholzer seems in very good form these days,’ he remarked. ‘He’s rather more confident than before, would you not say?’
‘Dear Professor Unterholzer!’ said the Librarian. ‘He’s certainly more forthcoming than he used to be. But then that’s psychoanalysis for you!’
Von Igelfeld narrowed his eyes. ‘Psychoanalysis?’ he said. ‘Do you mean that Professor Unterholzer is undergoing analysis?’
‘Yes,’ said the Librarian. ‘In fact, I can take some of the credit for it. I recommended it to him and arranged for him to meet Dr Hubertoffel. He’s a very good analyst – one of the best, I believe.’
Von Igelfeld made a noncommittal sound and brought the discussion to an end. Stalking off to his office, he began to ponder the implications of what he had been told. Confidence! Psychoanalysis! Dr Hubertoffel! It was all profoundly unsettling. He was used to the order of things as they were, and the thought of a liberated Unterholzer, free of the manifold inadequacies which up to now had made his company just bearable, was extremely disturbing. He would have to find out more about this Dr Hubertoffel and see whether there was any way of restraining the baneful influence which he seemed to be having on Unterholzer’s life. If this involved a visit to Dr Hubertoffel himself, then von Igelfeld was prepared to do even that. He had always harboured the gravest mistrust of both Freudians and Freemasons, whom he regarded as being inextricably linked, but the task ahead of him had now acquired an urgency which could not be ignored: the reputation of the Institute, and that of Portuguese Irregular Verbs itself, could depend on bringing Unterholzer to heel before even more damaging attacks could be made. To this end, he was even prepared to wander into the Freudian cage itself and deal with whatever lion figures may be found within.