The Librarian took a sip of his coffee. ‘Of course you may, Herr Igelfeld.’
‘Von Igelfeld.’
The Librarian inclined his head. ‘Yes, of course. Do you know there is a doctor who attends at my aunt’s nursing home who added a von to his name? Suddenly it was there and he was most insistent on its use. He would very pointedly correct people who omitted it.’
Von Igelfeld sighed. ‘If he was entitled to it, then it should have been used. But I would prefer not to discuss matters of etiquette, if you don’t mind, Herr Huber. You asked me if there was anything of interest in the Zeitschrift. And I would like to answer that question.’
‘But you must,’ said the Librarian. ‘You know, I don’t think that one should leave questions hanging in the air. Have you noticed how politicians do that? Somebody asks them a question and it sits there unanswered. I don’t approve of that at all, do you, Herr von Igelfeld?’
Von Igelfeld began to feel the back of his neck becoming warmer, as it often did when he talked to the Librarian. Sometimes it felt as if he were in one of those dreams where he had to get somewhere or perform some task and it was just impossible to do it. Talking to the Librarian was a bit like that, and in an ideal world he would not have had to talk to him at all. But there were often occasions when the Librarian was the only other person in the coffee room and one could hardly sit there in complete silence.
‘About the Zeitschrift,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘There is a mention of the Institute. Perhaps you would care to see it.’
He passed the journal over to the Librarian, pointing to the offending item at the bottom of the page. Herr Huber took it from him and, adjusting his glasses, began to read.
When he had finished, he looked up at von Igelfeld and beamed with pleasure. ‘Well, this is most remarkable news, Herr von Igelfeld. It’s very good to see the Institute get recognition. And how gratifying it must be for our dear colleague, Herr Unterholzer, to get a prize. Fifty thousand euros! That is a very substantial prize, even if our currency is worth next to nothing these days because of bad behaviour by everybody except Germany. My aunt says that certain countries should—’
Von Igelfeld’s eyes narrowed. ‘You do not need to remind me of the elementary facts of economics, Herr Huber. But thank you, anyway. Returning to the matter in hand, it is, as you say, a very good thing to see the Institute get publicity. But do you not find it surprising that they should seek to give Herr Unterholzer, of all people, a prize?’
The Librarian looked puzzled. ‘Not really,’ he answered. ‘Herr Unterholzer is an established scholar. I’m sure that he richly deserves recognition for that book of his. Not that I have read it personally.’
Von Igelfeld suppressed a smile. ‘Not many have,’ he said. ‘It is not a very widely read book at all. In fact, I would venture to suggest that nobody at all reads it nowadays.’
The Librarian shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know. There’s a small library in my aunt’s nursing home, but I don’t think it’s there. And I don’t think my aunt would be interested in Herr Unterholzer’s book – not at her advanced age.’ He paused. ‘But you do not seem very pleased, Herr von Igelfeld. Why is this?’ He peered at von Igelfeld over the top of his glasses. There were times when the Librarian saw nothing, but there were times when he saw everything. ‘I would have thought that the triumph of one would be a triumph for all. Would you not agree?’
‘Of course,’ said von Igelfeld, hastily. ‘It’s just that in this case … well, I think that there may perhaps be a mistake, Herr Huber. I would love Professor Dr Unterholzer to win some sort of award. But at the same time I would always want the award in question to be – how shall I put it? – fully merited.’
The Librarian looked blank, and von Igelfeld continued with his explanation. ‘You see, it would hardly be very satisfactory if he, being a person who undoubtedly deserves at least some recognition, were to be given a prize that perhaps he does not actually deserve, if you see what I mean.’
The Librarian did not. ‘Do you mean that they might be mixing him up with another Professor Unterholzer?’ he asked. ‘Some Unterholzer …’ He waved a hand in a generally northerly direction. ‘Some Unterholzer up in Hamburg or somewhere like that? Is that what you’re suggesting?’
Von Igelfeld shook his head. The Librarian was either trying to appear obtuse or was simply not picking up the very clear point he was making. He would have to spell it out, and he now did so, leaning forward and lowering his voice even though they were still the only ones in the coffee room. ‘Herr Huber, has it occurred to you that they have mistaken Unterholzer for me?’ He pointed a finger to the text in the Zeitschrift. ‘They refer, as you have seen, to the putting of Regensburg on the map. Well, who did that? Professor Unterholzer? Or did I do it? With my book?’
The Librarian was a fair man, and faced with so direct a question there was only one answer he could give. He did not in any way want to diminish any glory that might be coming Unterholzer’s way, but he had to admit that of the two works of scholarship, von Igelfeld’s Portuguese Irregular Verbs was undoubtedly the more significant. ‘That is quite possible,’ he said. ‘But it’s a great pity if it is true.’
‘Indeed it is a pity,’ said von Igelfeld, sitting back in satisfaction that his point had been agreed to. ‘There are many regrettable mistakes made in this life and some of them are not only a pity but are painful – to all concerned. I refer, of course, to the decision made by Athens to send its fleet to Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War.’
The Librarian nodded. ‘That was most regrettable. The victory of Sparta was not a good thing, in my view.’
Von Igelfeld tapped the table in emphasis. ‘Indeed it was not. But mistakes are made, and this is possibly one. Not perhaps of quite the same magnitude as the mistake made by the Athenians, but a mistake none the less.’
The Librarian looked thoughtful. He could not recall making any mistakes himself, but others certainly did. ‘You know something, Herr von Igelfeld,’ he began. ‘I heard of the most extraordinary mistake that was made a few years ago. Please forgive me if I’ve already told you about it, but there was a lady in my aunt’s nursing home whose first name was Inge. That, in itself, is unexceptional enough, but as it happens there were two Inges in the home. One is now no longer with us, I regret to say, but the other is. She has the room two doors down from my aunt’s old room – before they moved her to the new wing, that is. That wing took an awfully long time to build, you know. The builder went bankrupt. He was Polish, I believe, and although they can be very good builders they can sometimes get into a bit of a financial mess.
‘This lady by the name of Inge received a letter one day. But before I take this any further I should tell you that her surname was Schmidt and the other Inge, the one who did not live in the old wing but had a room under the clock tower – or the place where the clock tower used to be before they knocked it down and built a storeroom – that Inge’s surname was Schultz. She was Frau Inge Schultz, and my aunt told me – discreetly, of course – that she had the most terrible habit of moving the top set of her false teeth while you talked to her. The teeth came out over her lower lip and you saw the artificial pink gums. It was a nervous habit, really. She didn’t intend to cause offence.
‘Anyway, this letter that Frau Inge Schmidt received was in reality addressed to Frau Inge Schultz! The handwriting was indistinct, you see, and the young man who sorted the mail misread it. Easily done, I suppose, but it meant that Frau Inge Schmidt received a letter addressed to Frau Inge Schultz, and started to read it. Of course it began with the greeting Dear Inge and so she assumed it was for her. But the letter went on about all sorts of things that meant nothing to her, and was signed at the end by a name she just did not recognise. Klaus, I think it was. Or possibly Karl. I must ask my aunt about it when I go to see her this evening. She remembers these things. But let us work on the assumption that it was Klaus.
‘Well, she reached the end of the letter and, being
a very polite person, decided that she would just have to write back to this Klaus person and tell him some of the things that were happening in the nursing home. So she did, and a few weeks later she got a letter addressed back to her. She had put her room number on her letter of reply and so the young man in the post room had delivered it to her although this time the writing was clear enough. He didn’t look at the name, you see – he just looked at the room number.
‘So it carried on for some months. She continued to get letters from Klaus and he got letters from her. Then he wrote and announced that he was coming to visit her because he had to be in Regensburg for some reason or other. He turned up and asked for room fifty-two – or whatever it was – and they directed him to it. Then he realised that he had been corresponding for some time with a complete stranger.’
The Librarian paused, allowing the full impact of the story to sink in.
‘And so?’ said von Igelfeld.
‘They became very good friends. He decided that he rather preferred this Inge to the other one and they continue to write to one another to this day. He sends her books and magazines, and she has knitted a whole set of very attractive bathroom accessory covers for him. My aunt showed me a picture of one of these – it was very beautifully worked, I must say.’
Von Igelfeld rose to his feet. ‘I must dash, Herr Huber,’ he said. ‘As usual, it has been a great pleasure talking to you.’
‘We could continue later, over lunch if you wish, Herr von Igelfeld,’ said the Librarian, also rising to his feet. ‘That is, if you are free.’
‘I am not,’ said von Igelfeld. There were limits to the comity one had to show colleagues, and these had been reached, indeed had been exceeded, even before the conversation had come to an end. Besides, he had letters to write. The mistake that he had uncovered could not be left unchallenged. If there had been confusion, then it would have to be dispelled, painful though that duty might prove to be.
* * *
He travelled to Berlin by train, enduring a journey that could have been pleasant had it not been for the annoying conversation of his fellow travellers, some of whom insisted on talking on the telephone at great length about matters of a most personal nature. Von Igelfeld’s stares of disapproval were met with a blank response from a woman who spent at least fifteen minutes describing an operation for ingrowing toenails and the difficulties she had had with her insurance company over the resulting claim. Why should they pay such a claim, von Igelfeld asked himself. It was nobody’s fault that her toenails had grown in; or, if there were fault, then surely it would be her own, for not cutting them correctly in the first place. That was the trouble these days; nobody was prepared to accept responsibility for anything, not even for the state of their toenails.
By the time the train drew into the Hauptbahnhof von Igelfeld felt in a thoroughly bad mood. Berlin, however, lifted his spirits, with its wide skies, its architecture and its air of being at the centre of something. This was undoubtedly a place where power was exercised and decisions were taken, even if some of these decisions, as in the case of Unterholzer’s nomination, were unfortunate ones. Well, if Berlin was a physical metaphor for decisions, then it was also a metaphor for the confrontation and rectifying of past mistakes and wrongs. There had been the horrors and moral disaster of the thirties, followed by the pain and penitence of the forties and fifties. These had been followed by the monstrous mistake of the Wall, and again that had been rectified by that structure’s dismantling. Wrongs, rectification, renewal: a mantra we might all commit to memory, he thought.
The offices of the Leonhardt Stiftung, the body in charge of the prize, were not far from the main campus of the Freie Universität. Von Igelfeld was familiar with the university, as he had recently given a seminar at the Languages of Emotion Centre, or Cluster of Excellence as it was now called. That was not a very modest way of describing oneself, he had thought at the time. One might be excellent – indeed his institute in Regensburg was undoubtedly excellent – or largely excellent, if one left Unterholzer out of the equation – but that did not mean to say that they should change their name from the Institute of Romance Philology to the Cluster of Excellence of Romance Philology. How ridiculous people had become, he thought, in their scrabbling after recognition and the funds that came with it. He had written Portuguese Irregular Verbs without so much as a penny of public money, although its publication undoubtedly made him a cluster of excellence in these new, ridiculous terms. And who would head a cluster of excellence? Did a cluster have a director, or did it have a pole, rather like a magnetic pole? Hah! It would surprise them if he went into the Cluster of Excellence nearby and asked for the pole. Of course the director might be a real Pole, and that would cause confusion. How funny!
He was well received at the Leonhardt Stiftung, where he was shown into the waiting room outside the director’s office.
‘Herr Unterholzer will be with you in a moment,’ said the secretary, flashing a smile in his direction. ‘He is just completing an important telephone call and asks that you would be good enough to wait.’
Von Igelfeld froze, halfway into the sitting position, poised immediately above his chair. He wondered whether he had heard correctly. Had she said Herr Unterholzer or had he heard Herr Unterholzer because Unterholzer had been on his mind? He knew that the mind played tricks on one, especially if one were tired after a long journey. It was not unusual to hear, or read, things that were not really there but were suggested to us by the subconscious. Professor Freud had written something about that, he thought, although it was difficult to remember exactly where Professor Freud had written anything.
‘Did you say Herr Unterholzer?’ he asked.
‘Please do continue to sit down,’ said the secretary. ‘Yes, Herr Unterholzer is the director of the Stiftung.’
For a few absurd moments von Igelfeld imagined that he had stumbled upon the most extraordinary piece of chicanery. Unterholzer had relatively few commitments in the Institute and could easily spend three days a week in Berlin without anybody’s being any the wiser. It was perfectly possible, then, that he was moonlighting as the director of the Leonhardt Stiftung while still holding down his position in Regensburg. That sort of thing was common in Italy, of course, where there were people known as pluralists, who had jobs in more than one university. Thus a professor in Parma might also be a professor in Bologna, or even Rome. He had heard of one man who was a professor in Bari while at the same time being a professor in Trento – cities separated by an immense length of Italian railway track. This professor, drawing a full salary from both institutions, had taken to conducting some of his seminars in Milan, expecting students to travel from each city to meet him there. That was all very unsatisfactory and would not be tolerated in Germany, thought von Igelfeld. Nor would the German authorities tolerate another Italian situation he had heard of involving a university in a city where neither the professors nor the students lived, thus making the institution a virtual shell. Shells, however, can get grants from the European Union, which had a long history of giving grants for non-existent tomato crops in places like Sicily and Greece.
If Unterholzer was the director of this foundation, then he was showing the most remarkable brass neck in putting himself on the shortlist for the prize. Von Igelfeld considered that not only was this unprincipled, it was probably also criminal, and for a few delicious moments he imagined Unterholzer being arrested in the coffee room at the Institute and dragged off while the Librarian went on about somebody’s having been arrested in his aunt’s nursing home for stealing from the kitchens or something of that nature. What a thought! Unterholzer disgraced over self-awarded prize, the headlines would read. And the report would continue by saying, His colleague, Professor Dr Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, author of Portuguese Irregular Verbs, remarked sadly yesterday that nobody had been aware of Professor Dr Unterholzer’s double life. ‘Criminals can be very cunning,’ the professor said …
The door at the end of th
e waiting room opened and a rather rotund man peered out. He was smartly dressed in a double-breasted grey suit and was sporting a carnation in his buttonhole. The man smiled at von Igelfeld. ‘My dear Herr von Igelfeld,’ he said, stepping forward to shake his visitor’s hand. ‘What a pleasure it is to see you. And how kind of you to call in during what must be a very busy visit to Berlin. That, you see, is the trouble with Berlin. All our visitors are so very busy we have to fight for the tiniest part of their time.’ And here he indicated a very small amount of time by placing a thumb and forefinger very close to one another.
So, thought von Igelfeld, this is another Unterholzer altogether; Unterholzer is not holding down two positions, and yet this is an Unterholzer, as the name on the door so proudly proclaims. He must therefore be some relative of Unterholzer – and that would explain why Unterholzer was shortlisted for the prize. And just as fraud was being excluded, something as corrosive was in the process of being uncovered – gross and blatant nepotism.
As he sat down in the chair on the other side of the director’s desk, von Igelfeld glanced quickly at his host’s nose. Unterholzer’s entirely unsuitable nose was very individual, and it would be interesting to see whether this Unterholzer’s nose was in any respects similar. If it were, that fact would provide an additional element of proof in his case. Even if the director denied any relationship to Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer, then the evidence of genetics, incarnate in a large, potato-farmer’s nose, would clinch the matter.
He looked at the nose. Yes, it was large, and yes, there was the same sort of uneven bumpiness that was so prominent a feature of the topology of Unterholzer’s nose, the ur-nose, so to speak. If only the director would turn slightly to the left, von Igelfeld thought, then I would be able to see whether there is that very characteristic bulge on the bridge.