What? The seven-day plan has compromised?! Alas, yes: economies have had to be made to fight off the fascist Essay forces; but the campaign is successfully concluded! And here's something: I redrafted as far as a likely-looking cliffhanger and stopped, so that very little actually happens. My chapters are too long anyway!, he protested, muchly.
Tonight's recipe is good for essaying as it's beyond simple (most of the cooking-time is spent on a chair by the oven), warm, filling, and sufficiently sticky to be eaten at a work-desk without risk of its falling off the fork. Take five-to-seven decent-sized potatoes and chop them into long wedges; boil these in salted water until al-dente. In the meantime chop about 100g of double gloucester into small cubes and slice up a small handful of chives. When the potatoes are done, drain them, put them back in the pan, and add a splash of vegetable-oil and half a big bag of small spinach-leaves. Cover the pan and leave it on a medium heat, shaking occasionally, until the spinach has assumed a mushy consistency; then reduce the heat and stir in the cheese, letting it melt and coat everything. Add the chives and season.
And your half-chapter:
The next day was less eventful than my first few in Vienna: it ended on the same sofa on which it had begun, which gave me the unmistakable feeling of being at home. For a long time after, I found it hard to get to sleep in even the softest bed if my legs didn't dangle over the end, as they dangled over that dear old sofa.
I received my first letter from my old home over breakfast that morning: the forwarding address written on the envelope was an unwelcome reminder of last night’s excursion, but I slit it open with the bread-knife, threw it away, and let unhappy memories dissolve in the new day's light.
The letter told me no more and no less than what I'd expected: my parents were anxious that all was well with me, they missed me, they hoped Vienna was good to me, they bade me remember this and that, and they were sorry that my allowance wasn't any bigger.
Upon reading this last message, I felt a momentary pang of guilt: for a squatter, the money came to quite a generous sum, and I had a nagging sense that I was defrauding them. But I felt that it would have been cruel to tell them I didn't need it, after they’d scraped it together from every saving and clipping in twenty years. And anyway, I reasoned further, I could always give the spare back later. But you never knew what might come up.
I went upstairs to gather up my studies (my worldly wealth may have fitted into a trunk, but at least my education required a shoulder-bag on top of that) and write a reply. It took me a long time to finish it and yet it still felt awfully short: almost a waste of the half-used paper. But what was I to say? I don't need all your money? Your brother-in-law is a cultivated brute? I'm living in a rickety boarding-house full of outcasts and renegades? I've gotten myself thoroughly drunk? I'm a member of organised crime? I've jumped into the Danube?
I'm happier here than I ever was back home?
I settled for telling them that was I happy, and that my aunt sent her warm regards.
Then I went to Kaltenbrunner's, and no sooner had I entered than someone called out: "Ottokar! Pull up a chair, old man!" Somebody from the class had called out to me. I couldn't put a name to the face then, at which I felt a little ashamed, but soon I had joined the chatter and the debate. At least two of us were always to be found in that cafe, like a night-watch constantly maintained.
From Kaltenbrunner's most of us proceeded to the university library. Strangely, it wasn't so overwhelming as Waechner's little bookshop had been: the big spaces and careful organisation put all the words at a distance. It was like a plain cathedral in its peaceful, solemn simplicity; I couldn't imagine anyone scooting along making a racket on a wheeled latter, least of all myself. Silence ruled in the reading-rooms: nobody spoke or even glanced up at one-another across the tables; but each of us knew why the others were there, and everybody somehow acknowledged everybody one's right to the place. I liked the library.
I came home later in the afternoon, after my mind had wondered from Slavic Philology: stories were coming off my pen in flash-floods of ink, most of them beginnings with no end. From my favoured position spreadeagled on the sofa, I turned out drifts of paper as thick as the snow outside, mostly beginnings without endings.
Dinner was a subdued affair, but nevertheless a merry one: last night's incident went unmentioned. If you couldn't have a joke at that dinner-table, where could you? We all offered our commentary on the latest scandal (a respectable girl had put arsenic in her lover's coffee or something): outcasts and renegades like nothing more than to be reminded that the best circles are no better than they are, and are probably worse.
After dessert, Jan and Christian asked mysteriously whether I'd like to attend a meeting of the 'Central Committee'. I eagerly assented and soon learned that this body, which met variously at all the student taverns and cellars in Neubau, was the Forbidden Knowledge Society's Central Committee for Beers, Wines, and Spirits. Its membership was the same as the Society's full strength, with the exception of Macebulski. "He's a professor," I was told, "Professors drinking with students is odd. We don't want to draw attention." "And anyway, he's Polish," put in Christian. "They drink undiluted paraffin."
(I had once tried a vodka, in some pan-Slavic spirit of adventure, at somebody's otherwise dull wedding back in Brno. I had to agree with Christian's assessment: that was a drink for winter on the great European plain - possibly also for starting bonfires and removing rust - but not for the delicate mouths of city-boys.)
We often took drinks together, always at a table of our own. Ten young friends who spent much of their time together scurrying through the darkened city with their eyes peeled for policemen needed all the time they could get in which to be merely ten young friends. I learned names and pseudonyms: to general amusement, we had someone called Andreas, who was not 'Andreas'. Some of them are now tremendously respectable people and would rather not have their real names given here, and I have been happy to oblige.
We were of all sorts. Max I've established was a Marxist atheist; Andreas (that is, 'Andreas'), a dark and quiet young man who's observations were as sharp and sparkling and as rare as diamonds, was a theology student who meant to take holy orders and go back to some mountain church in the Tyrol; 'Der Freischütz', with his puff of blond hair always floating above his nimble frame as if naturally bouyant, seemed to have no religion but the theatre. 'Cherusker' was a Jacobin with a voice that could set the Forces of Reaction trembling in their palaces, but when he wasn't being slightly bitter at having been born a decade too late to have died on a barricade, he was amiable and good-hearted. 'Götz', on the other hand, with his tremendous ruddy face waiting impatiently to grow a beard, came from a family who had, so they told everyone, gone with the Hapsburgs on Crusade - but where 'DF' and he differed in politics, they always shared their jokes, occasionally to the confusion of the rest of us. 'Junius' was a Saxon by birth, with as fine a specimen of the dueling-scar as any in Prussia; 'Lafayette' was a scholarship-boy from somewhere above the middle-Rhine who'd never touched a weapon in his life.
As a unit, such disparate souls were as fond of argument as we were of drink (ideally, we liked to indulge both pleasures at once), and I had to wonder whether, if each had been left to speak his very different mind, we should ever have come to know each-other half so well. But the government's remarkable achievement of censoring all these diverse opinions had given us a common mission; and after it, over a hearty drink, we had forgotten factions and denominations, departments and faculties, lands and languages: we had found nine other boys who were short of cash, who struggled with their studies, who sometimes missed home, and who craved poetry.
We stayed in the cellar late that night. They had Pilsner - which if I'll be honest was the only thing I had really been missing about my old home, save for speaking Czech - and I indulged in it liberally.
Then home to bed, and sleep, and breakfast once again. Without ever realising it, I was learning the names of my fellow boarders.
It was Friday, and my lecture wasn't until the late afternoon. I felt that I had done what needed to be done, and so I took a rare few hours of complete leisure and wandered over the city. I went to the Prater, the old imperial hunting ground, to see it under snow. I trod this way and that, letting my new boots reshape themselves around my feet.
I met my classmates on the steps of the philosophy building. I'd been missed when they took lunch, I learned, and I must admit that this caused me more satisfaction than the news that my parents missed me at home - or rather, in Brno - had caused me distress.
They say that a winter in Vienna makes you a native; I hoped so.
"I strongly advise you all to attend a lecture being given by my colleague Professor Amsel tomorrow on the topic of the decline of Great Moravia. Philosophy A. There'll be plenty of room. Class dismissed."
The dismissed class surged forward with our questions, and by the time all of mine were done, the theater was emptying.
"Jánkovač, will you please see me in my office?," said Macebulski with the same dry tone he used to answer questions. I glanced at those who were waiting for me at the door. They were all a little apprehensive, so I gave what I hoped was a re-assuring smile as I clambered down to the podium - some small protective magic was broken - and followed Macebulski out of the back.
The professor wasted no breath on words. He swept to his office, locked the door, opened up his cupboards and his cupboards behind his cupboards, and brought out a neat pile: four Hungarian books. I recognised a couple of the names: they were poets.
"And now, Sts. C&M," he said, speaking Czech - to bamboozle any passing listeners, perhaps?, "A trick of the trade. This was expensive and time-consuming to make, so don't lose it."
In his other hand (I marveled at his aged strength) was a heavy-set collection of essays on Plato. He opened it... and inside was nothing, an empty cavity below a few true pages. He loaded it up and shut it.
"This old colleague of mine lives on the Mittersteig." He elaborated his directions; I understood the gist, and felt very pleased with myself for doing so. "Just knock and tell him I sent you. He's not used to deliveries from you boys. We two make our own arrangements, normally. But he has no idea these books have arrived, and I need to get them off my hands. Good luck."
And so, without fanfare, but one of many students bustling around with big books, I set off. My load was awkward and heavy and didn't fit in my bag, but I had to admire the ingenuity of it: who would ever look askance at a student for carrying around a heavy book? Who'd ever open a book about Plato in a spirit of casual inquiry? I was sure that if the secret police had appeared then and there and searched me cap to toe, they would not have thought to trouble with the pompous old geezer!
It was getting dark, but tonight I saw no reason to hurry (in any case I couldn't, not lugging that great hollow book with me): perhaps it was the romance of the enterprise, or perhaps it was the stillness of the evening, but I rather enjoyed my journey through darkening streets. My legs took on a mechanical rhythm; I hummed tunes to myself; I wondered where I was bound for and who would meet me there. An 'old colleague' of Andrzej Macebulski might be a linguist, a teacher, a smuggler, or perhaps - so went the whispers of the lecture-theatre, the cafe, and the beer-cellar - a revolutionist!
The enigmatic man's house, when I reached it at last, was revealed as a respectable but unexceptional place of fairly recent construction. The criss-crossing side-streets that led me there were ill-trodden, and midwinter still had a tight grip on them; the place itself was covered in thick, even snow like the icing on a cake. I followed a lone set of footprints up its front path. They had been all but obliterated by the evening's gentle snowfall, so I couldn't see who's they were or which way they were going.
I knocked gently - anxious not to disturb the smooth, shiny paint and brass, so unlike what I was used to - but excitedly. I was eager to meet the owner, eager and anxious! And I was cold and tired and rather hungry and I needed the toilet...
But for a while there was no sound of stirring from within. I huddled against the door for shelter from the chill, and let my muscles go utterly slack. One of the most significant meetings of my life thus caught me, appropriately, quite by surprise.
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