Seven full chapters, and in almost that number of days: I call that a success.
First, a whinge (possibly I should come up with a name for my whinge-column). This probably betrays my origins among the southern Edinburgh boowrrrrrrrrr-jwa-zie-ih (as we say in our native dialect) even more obviously than my belief that apple juice ought to come in glass bottles or getting me to say the word 'dear', but I must say it: why do people here in the Murano SSV not understand how door-intercoms work? You have to identify yourself! and give some semi-plausible reason for wanting in. I realise that saying aloud the words 'I've come to shove batches of postcards depicting scowling half-naked young men in horrible haircuts through everybody's letterboxes' might force a person to take a long uncomfortable look at their life and what they once dreamed it might be, but still, I can't let you in on the strength of 'hi'.
And now, we resume our serial.
"Rise and shine, Ottokar."
I was floating on the surface of a deep, dark, warm sleep. Who was calling my name? Why? Why this ungodly hour? And come to think of it, why did we even say 'rise and shine'? Didn't the sun more 'glow' than 'shine'? Shining implies reflection...
Such curious and disorderly thoughts as these swirled behind my eyes. I rubbed them, stiffly and sleepily at first, but with each press of my hands I became more lucid and when I was finished I felt already fully awake. I sat up, stretched dramatically, and let go a colossal yawn.
"Ahhhhhhh! Morning, Christian."
"Morning, Ottokar."
"Breakfast time, is it? I could eat a whole pig!"
"You're in good spirits," said Christian as if this were a harmless but telling vice. "And you can't have been asleep for too long, either, I know that. I got tired waiting to let you in last night and went to bed. Did you drink yourself off to dreamland? I keep trying and I always seem to end up in the hangover frontier."
I chuckled. "Sorry, old man, didn't touch a drop the other night. Keep trying, eh?"
"What a shame..."
"I'll be down in a moment, just let me get dressed. Skip along!"
Christian shrugged and left the room (not skipping, but on those treacherous stairs I could hardly blame him), leaving me to get dressed or, more accurately, change myself: I slept in my day-clothes even when I hadn't fallen asleep sitting up, for the attic was drafty and my blanket none too thick. My clothing was much the same from day to day: I had only the one coat and a few pairs of trousers, enlivened by a collection of differently-coloured neckcloths, which I'd somehow contrived to acquire in the course of my life without ever actually going into a shop and buying one.
I skipped along down to breakfast and found no whole pigs on offer, but my disappointment was limited: the food was good, and the conversation better (although Jan spent the meal with puff under his eyes, gargling and eying each mouthful suspiciously before swallowing it: he could cope with staying up all night, but merely late nights took it out of him for some reason). It was in a pause after I had just finished giving my thoughts about the Tsar of Russia's promises to the Poles in the most enthusiastic terms (don't ask me to remember what they were: like many students, I liked to have strong political opinions so much that I tried out new ones every week) that Madam Gottlieb said:
"This is all very well, Ottokar, but I'd be more fascinated to know why you missed dinner last night. If the story's a good one, I might even be persuaded not to charge you for it."
"Oh, I was smuggling books! That's excusable, surely?," I said with too much easy confidence.
"It might be. Do tell me next time. We had to divide your share up, and Christian and Rudi nearly came to blows over a chop."
The conversation moved rapidly on, and I finished up my plate - relieved that I'd been pressed no further about last night's events, but pretending even to myself that I was not, because after all what was there to be reticent about? Absolutely nothing! I told myself to get on with the day.
So I promptly went upstairs for my books and scarf, and then set out for the lecture with this Professor Amsel that Macebulski had set us on to - or rather, to find out when the lecture was, as I had never had the time yesterday to find out... But - I sent my train of thought away from that troublesome juntion - I didn't mind leaving early. It was a splendid day, cold and bright so that everything flashed with frost like an enormous ice-sculpture, and I wanted to be out in the city. I went to the philosophy department noticeboard, found the time, and then let the wind blow me by a roundabout route to the library to spend my surplus hours in some background reading. I saw some classmates there, and in the learned silence we nodded our heads in greeting.
Professor Amsel turned out to be a small gentleman who had difficulty keeping control of his bulky sheaf of notes (and yet never actually appeared to consult them) and was struck by coughing fits whenever the story of Great Moravia's decline and fall became especially exciting - but he knew an enormous amount about his subject and passed it one with such enthusiasm that you'd feel guilty if you didn't remember it. The two classes in attendance regarded each-other with a mutual suspicion that escaped the professor's notice.
The philology set beat a hasty retreat once the lecture was complete, but at this point Professor Amsel stuck up his finger dramatically as if receiving a sudden revelation.
"Oh! Is there a Mr. Jánkovač here?"
I shuffled out of the throng to the piercing looks of the history students, ready to receive my sentence.
"Your professor asked me to tell Mr. Jánkovač that he'd like his book back. That's all!"
The history lot, as one, looked away with sighs and mutters. For people who ostensibly study words, this gang aren't very careful with them, mutter, mutter...
I withdrew into the shelter of my own people, face red. It took me a moment to hear the queries of my classmates: I was rather dazed, and unseeingly let myself be jostled out of the theatre.
My memory is a long way from being perfect and I often forget things; I have forgotten things far more important and irrecoverable than that false book. That alone would certainly not have left me in such a state. No: it was the realisation that this very day, without any more hems and haws and endeavours to think about something else, I would have to return to the Fruehauf household - to her house, as I suddenly found it was marked on the map of Vienna in my mind. I boiled over with excitement and nervousness too blended to distinguish, on which my rational mind tried resolutely to keep the lid.
"So, Ottokar, what might this book be? Ottokar?"
"Oh, just something I borrowed the other day - you can get a look at any of his books if you just ask." Truer than they knew! My inquisitors were satisfied, anyway, and the conversation turned to other things. I stayed quiet, and by the time we had reached the coffee-house my rational mind had re-asserted his control and squashed the objections of my fluttering heart, and other organs with agendas of their own.
My course was clear. That I could waste no time in recovering the false book was obvious: anything else would invite the wrath of Macebulski, which simply could not be contemplated (I contemplated it anyway, however: it seemed to involve hot knives). But I wouldn't go by myself: since they'd expressed some interest in my adventures of the last night, it would obviously be nothing more than good manners to bring along Jan and Christian and introduce them to my new friend. My rational mind was pleased with this elaboration, in particular 'my new friend'. I sought out my cohorts at their customary table.
"Say, chaps?"
"Yes?" "Yes?"
"I must go over to the scene of last night's business. I forgot, ah, I forgot my Plato." I took comfort in reminding myself that whatever happened, I still didn't actually have to read Plato for my fun. "Care to come along?"
"Certainly." Christian gulped down his drink (it was coffee, but he was a man of strong habits and stronger, leathery tongue). "If this 'old colleague' can keep you up half the night, he must be a very interesting man."
"Oh, he is. I think you'll get on with him very well, actually."
"Is that 'you'll' Jan and me, or just me?"
"Is it far? We do have a lecture in a bit," said Jan before we could carry that one any further.
"In Wieden. When's your lecture?"
"Three."
"Oh, you'll be fine. We needn't stay long."
"Wieden, eh?," said Christian. "On the right side of the tracks. One sort of expects Macebulski's old colleagues to live in ramshackle dens like ours, smoking opium, you know?"
"Oh no, it's very... well, you'll see it!"
We went up to the front to pay and set out on our way. I felt that strange sensation that one always gets from following by daylight a course that is only familiar by darkness, that sensation of walking through a world similar to the one you've known but somehow unnervingly different.
We discussed the Tsar of Russia and the Poles: Christian helped disabuse me or my current set of opinions by being acidly cynical about everyone and everything, as happened about once a fortnight. Jan, meanwhile, tried to wring more out of me about our destination and its inhabitant, but although I did explain how I had marooned the hollow book, I avoided replying with anything substantial. And why should I waste time telling him what he'd soon find out for himself, anyway? The Polish question was important!
By daylight, the Mittersteig seemed very white, even for Vienna under snow: it was full of large flat spaces where the sunlight could reflect. It was a street that could afford decent-sized houses (and could afford to clean them, which counted for something in those smoggy days) but didn't venture anything fancy: a bastion of the miscellaneous middle-classes. As a setting it rather suited Pascal, but I couldn't help thinking that it didn't suit... oh, go on, think it... Elke. But then, would any house really reflect her? She didn't have a domestic nature. She made me think of the distant lines of mountains in the south and east.
"This it?," said Jan, interrupting the reverie. "I rather like it. Comfortable, but without pretensions. No fake Greek stuff."
"This is it." I went up to the door, and paused, trying to order my thoughts and come up with some idea of what might happen when I knocked. Possible futures flickered before me, vivid yet maddeningly vague. As I stood there, Christian reached over my shoulder and knocked briskly. Ah, well.
He turned to me. "Tell us more about this mysterious 'old colleague', Ottokar. You've kept us quite in the dark. An old colleague of Stańczyk could be any of several interesting things."
"That's what I thought, too, actually. He's a linguist, I think. He knows a great deal about names-"
At that point the door, on which Christian was resting his arm, was pulled aside without warning.
"Argkh!"
"Ottokar! I thought it might be you."
"Ow."
"Oh, sorry." Elke glanced down and up again and down again. "...Do you want a hand up?"
Christian, looking rather alarmed at the idea, got back onto his legs with an agility surprising for his bulk.
"I'm quite alright, madam." He brushed down his coat and removed his cap. "Christian Graf von Hoyerswerda, at your service."
"You're an impoverished student-prince, then! Are you another book-smuggler?"
Jan had reached the threshold; he had put an unlit cigar to his mouth, solely so that he could now remove it with a dramatic flick and crush it under his boot-heel.
"Please, madam. We prefer the term 'gentlemen bibliophiles'."
"Speak for yourself, Jan. Myself, I'd rather be a book-smuggler," I said.
"I'd rather you were a book-smuggler, too!"
"But whatever you wish to call it, madam, I'm interested to know how you're aware of our... operation." I could tell that Christian's question was directed firstly at me; I smiled gingerly.
"She caught me red-handed, I'm afraid."
"I did! Those books were for me, anyway." Elke closed her eyes and extended four fingers. "There was János Arany, unexpurgated..." she checked it off, and suddenly her eyes snapped open again. "Gosh, I haven't even started reading any of them!" She grinned. "I blame you, Ottokar."
"Oh, not Ottokar, madam!" Jan was about to continue when she cut him off with a girlish chuckle. She held a hand up to her mouth as if to arrest the escaping air.
"Why is everyone calling me 'madam' today? I'm Elke!"
Christian had gone over to close the neglected door, through which some snow was blowing. It shut with a heavy click, and at this Elke hugged herself and shivered, as if she hadn't noticed the chill until it was brought to her attention. She certainly wasn't dressed for the weather: she was wearing exactly what she had been yesterday. I remembered with a twinge of guilt that, thanks to me, she'd fallen asleep in her clothes.
"Brrrrrrrrr! I feel dreadfully sorry for you, tramping all over the city. I mean, I like tramping over it, but this is a day to watch through the window with a fire and a drink and a blanket. It wasn't nearly this cold a couple of days ago. I always feel it's slightly unfair when it gets colder after the new year."
"It's the wind changing," I said as I hung up my coat. "We're getting southerlies now. Winds like a wild dog, howling and whining all the night, and gnawing at your bones!"
"I like that! How you said it, I mean, not the winds as such. A chilly wind's not the worst though, hailstones are the absolute worst."
"Oh, yes!," I said, enthused. "Now, hailstones are like the tatar horde! They come storming in, they make everyone hide indoors, for the fear of their stinging whips, and they go as soon as they come, leaving wreckage."
I hung up my cap, and caught a glimpse of Jan and Christian engaging in a synchronised eyebrow-raise.
"Gosh, we could do this all day!," said Elke obliviously, sounding as if she were all in favour of the idea. "What're we? Hrm. You'd be snow! You come from the north in the middle of winter and you're very literary and a bit mysterious."
...Really? I was still digesting this information when she reached up and ruffled my fringe. "You have some snow in your hair, too, which is a dead give-away, really. What am I?"
"A... a South China Sea hurricane! You're wild and swift and sudden, and where you pass the ground is strewn with debris!" I wondered, immediately after having said this, whether it was the right thing to have said; but my mouth didn't seem to be receiving orders from my brain in the ordinary way. The same went for quite a lot of my body, actually.
"That's me!" Elke twirled around on the spot and made wind noises. "I'd be a very moral hurricane, though, because I'd only sink slave-ships and opium-traders. When there were no slaves on board, obviously! But I'd sink the opium."
"I", said Christian decisively, "am slush. I'm cold and wet and dirty and nobody will be happy until I melt. What was all that talk about fires and drinks?"
"Oh, hush, Christian." Jan, having hung up his outdoor gear, gave me what was possibly the least subtle wink in the whole history of everything. Elke, fortunately, wasn't looking at him but at Christian. She had to crane a little, this close-to.
"I might let you have something to drink," she said severely. "Have you brought me anything to read?"
Christian shot me a glance as if to say that this was my problem. I hesitated: I hated to wipe the look of excitement and anticipation from her face. Jan saved me.
"Have pity on poor Christian, ma- Elke, he's an alcoholic. Tell you what! Next time he's round here, Ottokar can bring over the book he's writing! That way we wont go dipping any further into the Forbidden Knowledge Society's resources, which is entirely... out of the question... I'm afraid..." He trailed off: she had already spun around.
"Are you really?"
I reddened. "Not really, Jan's just, ah... it's a lot of short stories, or the starts of them, and strange ideas I had to write down while they lasted. They're all in Czech, anyway."
"You must translate them for me! I like translating things. It shows you what's different about languages, how they understand things. I like that. And I like your strange ideas!"
"Right, splendid, excellent, that's settled, then," said Christian. "About that drink...?"
Elke giggled again.
"Good things come to those who wait! I shouldn't say that, though, it's very hypocritical of me. I like to go and get things!"
"Oh, I absolutely agree," said Jan, taking out another cigar to twirl around. We finally proceeded into the hall, where we passed by Jutte the maid: a tremendous, sweaty, powerful figure of a women with an air of permanent bustle, over forty but you'd be afraid to guess more precisely than that, whose usual expression was of sharp disapproval. This she gave us now.
"Isn't there an arrangement, young miss? I don't do your studies for you and you don't answer the door for me?"
Elke defiantly stuck out her tongue. "I got there first, and I do a very fine job receiving vistors, don't I? Say I do!" The three of us obeyed and Elke went on, satisfied. "Do you know where the brandy is, Jutte?" She turned to us. "Do you like brandy?"
"We love it." Christian's voice allowed for no contradiction.
"Me too! Plum-brandy is best."
Jutte intensified her disapproval, but nevertheless bustled away.
"Thanks, Jutte!"
We continued into a living room. It was cluttered, but in a neat way, the way of a meticulously organised room in which by force of habit a little too much has been organised over the years. It was quite unlike Elke's room, which had an enclave of territory on a table by the fire, creaking with books and crumby dishes. There was a sofa pulled up to this table, on which I recognised several cushions from Elke's chair upstairs, peaking out from under a blanket embroidered in a lively eastern peasant fashion.
"Help me move this, would you?" Between us, we shifted up another sofa opposite the first; then Elke burrowed under the blanket and emerged on the other side. "Sit down, everybody, sit down!"
Jan abandoned his usual predatory grace and threw himself full-length on the newly-arrived sofa. "Oi, Jan, budge," said Christian. I hovered.
"Come on, Ottokar, there's enough blanket for both of us. I'm not very big! Not that I'd blame you if you didn't notice. I'm big in spirit."
I wasted no further time in burrowing in alongside Elke, and Jan conceded Christian a space.
"Right! This is nice." Elke stretched out and murmured contentedly. "We're not moving, we've got a blanket, so you two had better pour the drinks."
"Not much of a hostess, this one," said Christian to Jan, pretending to whisper.
"Oh, I can't stand the hostess type!," said Jan. "Eh, Ottokar?"
Jan, you bastard, I thought. "Well, I've never gotten to know any, really, so I feel a little off at judging them, but really I don't want to get to know any. All they do is host, talk, and knit, and knitting's a great profession and somebody's got to do it but with all that time, perhaps they could think of something worthwhile to talk about! But it all seems to be chatter about what people are wearing and whose having affairs with who. Lying about nothing seems worse than lying about something."
Elke nodded approvingly. "See, Christian? At least you know I'm honest."
"You're right, of course," said Christian. "Can't stand 'em."
"But if you upset them," Jan added, "They become like tigers! Tigers!"
"Tigresses."
"Excuse me, Elke, you're quite right. Tigresses."
"Now, Elke," said Christian, "Tell us, if you'll forgive the cliché, about yourself. I fear we've been sorely misled. When Ottokar told us that we were meeting an old colleague of our smuggling-chieftain, we were expecting a man, not to put too fine a point on it. A grown man."
"I'm grown! Just not very much..."
This was true, I must confirm: we were pretty close-in under the blanket, close enough to tell a young woman from a girl. Perhaps I wasn't keeping myself to myself as much as I might theoretically have done, but it was a small sofa and who will judge me? By the standards of those days, when the arbiters of fashion were stuck on bare shoulders for some reason, Elke dressed very modestly, of course - ah, 'modest', there's a tricky word. To be modest is to conceal what you've got, and she'd got it, alright.
"Don't talk nonsense, Christian," said Jan. "Elke is clearly not our 'colleague', just because she lives here doesn't mean she's any 'colleague', and if Ottokar neglected to mention her, what of it? You need more surprises in your life!"
Christian chuckled resignedly. "I do, I do."
At that point, the brandy arrived: Jutte saved Jan and Christian their labours by pouring us a glass each and then withdrawing the bottle. "I know what students are like, miss, and I know what you're like. The only thing I don't know is which of you is worse."
Elke stuck out her tongue.
"Spoilsport!"
"Shall I fetch Mr. Fruehauf?"
"You needn't bother him. Thanks!"
Jutte bustled away; Jan and I sipped; Christian and Elke downed. She foamed a little more than usual for a moment.
I, meanwhile, was exploring the pile of papers on the table before us. There was a notebook filled with an intense, baffling onslaught of numbers and symbols that might as well have been Hebrew to me; there was a book about calculus filled with same; there was a sheet headed 'Questions to ask Mr.Ansbacher'. The questions included:
1. So who did invent it, then, Newton or Leibniz?
2. If Mr. Leibniz was so clever, why didn't he invent anything fun? Newton was better. I liked the story about the apple. It just goes to show, sometimes the cleverest people need a bit of fresh air and a hard knock!
3. Anyway, what's the point?
"Bah!," said Elke, noticing my curiosity. "Wretched calculus! I don't like it, because it isn't real!"
Christian raised his eyebrows. "On the topic of reality, Elke, I have to point out that you are in fact not a South China Sea hurricane. This mathematics textbook, on the other hand, seems perfectly apparent."
She leaned over towards him, putting her hands on the table for support. "Yes I am! Shwoooh-shweeoh-shwoouh! Krakoom!
"
"...'Krakoom?'"
"That was a thunderbolt, stupid!"
"I see her point, though," I said, truthfully. "We all know what 'hurricane' means, what it looks like, what it is. I say 'hurricane' and you see one, and only after that do you start coming up with abstractions to explain it. Calculus is all abstraction. In one way, the way we think, or I think, anyway, it's less 'real' even than things which are fantastical or absurd. When I say 'kobold', you think of a kobold, no abstraction about it."
Elke beamed. "'Sright! Kobolds are real, though. Seen 'em."
At this exact moment we heard the polite little cough of a man who wants to intrude without intruding. Pascal had entered the sitting-room unnoticed and settled down to read. He now removed his reading-glasses and folded them up.
"Excuse me, young sirs. Elke has a very low tolerance for alcohol, I'm afraid."
Elke giggled irrepressibly.
"If I'll be honest, and I am always honest," said Christian, "she strikes me as someone for whom the drink is not so much the cause as the excuse. I'm not criticising, of course, I'm the same."
"'Sright! I'm just happy, is all! I am... ekhem! 'Perfectly lucid, composed, and sober', I am. My diction is exquisite! Wir Wiener Wäscheweiber würden weiße Wäsche waschen, wenn wir wüssten, wo weiches warmes Wasser wäre! See? If I wanted to, I could derive that equation right now. I just don't. Want to."
Pascal smiled. He was one of those kindly souls for whom a smile does the work of a sigh and a shake of the head.
"Mr. Ansbacher goes to a lot of trouble on your behalf, Elke."
"And I go through a lot of trouble on his! I don't...," her she broke down laughing and then recovered, "...I don't derive any pleasure from calculus!"
Pascal smiled again. "I'd hate you boys to get the wrong impression. She's a very diligent learner."
"Oh, don't worry, don't worry!," said Jan, and here Christian interjected: "Not at all. That was actually pretty funny." Jan gave him a look. "Don't worry, I was just saying. Our fault entirely, for getting Miss Vanderschmidt diverted, eh, Ottokar?."
Oh, don't you raise your eyebrows!
Pascal rescued me. "May I ask to what I owe the pleasure of your visit?"
Jan opened his mouth.
"Ottokar left a false book we use round here the other night. We just dropped by to pick it up," said Christian.
Jan closed his mouth.
"And you are...?"
"Sorry, I'm Christian Graf von Hoyerswerda. They call me Goethe. This is Jan Dietrich Wilhelm 'Il Capitano' Oberkirch, and this is Ottokar 'Sts.Cyril and Methodius' Jánkovač, you've met."
"Ah, Andrzej has mentioned you two, but not by your real names. Wilhelm, meaning 'vehement defender'... goes well with Dietrich, actually..."
"Mentioned us flatteringly, I hope?," said Jan with a grin. Good, he'd finally stopped giving me pointed looks!
"Oh, very. Now, 'Dietrich' is the same name as 'Theoderich'-."
"Theoderich the Goth."
"Yes, indeed, Elke, Theoderich the Goth-"
"His regime," she said confidently and with the brandy suddenly gone from her voice, "was not at all doomed to collapse from the start as some have suggested. The religious divide between Goths and Romans would have lessened over time, given that he enforced tolerance and allowed conversions. Arianism in isolation always tended to die out. If he hadn't been let down so badly by his heirs, I don't see any reason why the Goths couldn't have gone the way of the Franks."
I blinked. I had known Theoderich had been a Goth, and I was fairly certain he had fought Romans; that was the extent of my knowledge.
"I like history the best," said Elke by way of explanation. "It's the only subject where you do better by disagreeing with whatever the book says."
"I thought you'd make a good philologist, myself. You love languages and words."
"You're right, actually! I just never had lessons in them. I picked up my languages in bits and pieces and I read and read and read." She was altogether sober now; I felt perhaps that Christian had been right and she had never been really drunk. "You should teach me Czech! I'd like to learn it."
"I suppose I could give you those stories in the Czech as well, to start with-"
"Yes! And you must teach me how all your funny letters work."
"They're actually quite simple. It was a lot harder five-hundred years ago when we had to try and write everything in the German alphabet! The 'funny letters' were invented by Hus, back when we were starting the Reformation and beating the armies of all Germany while we did it," I said with a facetious grin. This, I may note here as well as anywhere, is the one bit of nationalistic chauvinism I permit myself. Those were fraught times, in many ways, between our peoples - though in other ways not nearly so fraught as the present - and I certainly held myself a patriot, and my smuggling to be in some vague sense on behalf of the much talked-about Nation; but I've never seen any reason to dislike the Germans and Germany. I was fed up on Goethe and Schiller in my youth, as every educated Czech still was; raised in what was then a mostly German town; and I feel I've always known the Germans too well not to be rather fond of them, though reserving the outsiders right to laugh or shake his head. I'd never liked the idea of going around setting fire to effigies of the emperor and who knows what else: to me, the vaunted National Revival meant speaking our language and reading it and, indeed, teaching it. And of course I've good fortune in the Germans I've met!
"I've always loved alphabets," said Elke. "Maybe one day I'll be like Jan Hus and make my own! There's lots of languages that aren't lettered. I'd like to go and make up alphabets for them all, for a living, and all my alphabets would be entirely different. I think it's wrong for all languages to look the same. Everyone writes Romanian in Latin letters now, as though it were Italian. Bah! Look at Asia! They have a hundred alphabets there, sometimes more than one for the same language. That's what we should be like."
"I quite agree. It's not as though they're hard to learn! And the Latin script is so bland when you look at some of those Indian ones, so blocky. They look like you'd have to be careful pronouncing them, or you'd catch your tongue on all those jagged edges."
Elke nodded keenly. "Tibetan, most of all, Tibetan or Mongolian! You could kill someone with those letters! But I like Arabic, it's exotic but gentle. I think Arabic letters might have killed lots of people long ago, but they're all tired out now, and very kind, really. Ooh!" She puffed up excitedly into my face. "I shall show you my..."
"Ahem."
I started about: Jan, Christian, and Pascal had left the room entirely without my notice and returned with the book of even-hollower-than-usual Plato.
"It's been delightful, Mr. Fruehauf," Christian was saying, "But I'm afraid we have a lecture to attend in a while. We'll call back soon, I imagine." Are you implying? Stop implying! "I'm sorry we couldn't stay longer."
"Oh, that's quite all right, dear boy. Elke ought to be getting on with her work in any case."
"Bah! I was just going to show Ottokar our qu'ran. Ah, well. It'll still be there tomorrow..."
She smiled hopefully. I was debating whether to point out that I didn't have any lecture to be attending, and had just reached my decision and mustered my resolve when Jan broke in.
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, but tomorrow is impossible. You see, it's theatre night-"
Christian blinked. "Is it?"
"Yes of course it is, Christian, you silly ass. It's theatre night, and we have tickets for the Josefstadt, which is obviously an opportunity we can't pass up, can't afford to pass up..."
"Oh, well. The day after, then. I insist!," said Elke. "What are you seeing?"
"Oh, I can't tell you that. Smuggler's secrets." Jan rolled these two words about in his mouth with relish.
"Well, that's stupid, isn't it? If I really wanted to know, I could always just go to the box office and see what's on."
"You could, I can't deny. Girls are altogether too clever these days, would you not agree, Christian?"
"I decline comment."
"Well, Elke, if you're going to be like that, I suppose we'll have to take you along to keep you quiet."
She bounced on the spot.
"I'll finish everything I'm supposed to do for three days, Pascal, I promise! Can I?"
"Well, I think you should reimburse these gentlemen for your seat. Students have to work hard to make ends meet, Elke..."
"I will!"
"Ahem. What are we doing about tickets, anyway? Ahem," said Christian pointedly.
"Ahem. Tickets are fixed, as you know, and as for her seat suppose we'll just have to ask good old Maxi, who as you know is also coming, whether he'll be a good chap and give up his seat. Unless you want to? Ahem."
I had sat through all of this dumbly: it didn't take a brilliant mind to see that Jan was making it all up, or to discern why. Part of me wanted to protest, but other parts raised treacherous objections. Just what was I protesting? Having matters taken out of my hands!, said my rational mind indignantly.
You'd just sit there fiddling with them and never get anything done and you know it, said a treacherous part. It's Jan's watch now, isn't it? And she's thrilled! Do you not care what she thinks, hmm? Some gentleman you are.
Well, said my rational mind, there are such things as standards.
Ah, that smile of hers..., said the treacherous part.
My rational mind fumed silently and so, indeed, did I.
"Well then," Jan was saying, "We'll pick you up here, uh, when we pick you up. It's a secret! Be ready."
He bowed and then darted away like an exceptionally polite criminal caught in the act; Christian sighed.
"Goodbye, Mr. Fruehauf, on my colleague's behalf as well. Goodbye, Miss Vanderschmidt."
I stood up hurriedly.
"I, ah, ought to be going as well. I'll see you soon."
"Tomorrow, in fact!" Elke sprang up after me and tugged at my arm. "Wait a second!" Christian had already left the room, but she held me back, leaned close to me with an air of criminal conspiracy, and whispered:
"What's the play? I promise not to read it if you tell me what it is!"
"We've established that that is a secret!" I grinned outwardly and groaned inwardly. Argh, Ottokar, why are you an idiot?
Elke giggled. "This is tortuous!," she said at her normal volume. "I think I shall sleep in tomorrow to keep the wait short. I can do my work this evening if I put my mind... but no, you absolutely have to see that Qu'ran! I must find it. Pascal, do you have any idea where it might be?"
"I don't know," said Pascal, who had returned his reading glasses to his nose and his nose to his book. "It is yours, Elke. You remember? It was a present. We just don't keep it in your room because the shelves aren't big enough."
"I know, I know! Well, it must be somewhere."
"Books do sometimes seem to move about by themselves. I have my suspicions," I said.
"Not this one, though! It's very heavy and dignified. Oh, you must see it!"
We were in the cloakroom now, and I was buttoning up my coat.
"Well... I'm sure you'll have found it by tomorrow!" Such an idiot...
"Tomorrow!" The very concept seemed remarkable and wonderful to her.
"Tomorrow, then!" I stepped out of the door, and she hopped up to the threshold.
"Tomorrow!" We waved for a moment; then she shut the door and I stood for a moment, remembered my purpose, and broke into a run.
I caught up with Jan and Christian near the corner of the Mittersteig, panting a little, and brought them to a halt with a shout containing no coherent words. I contained no coherent words, and so for what felt like longer than it was Jan and I merely engaged in a staring contest. Well, I stared penetratingly; he feigned innocent surprise.
He was the first to speak. I scored that as a victory for myself.
"Something you must understand, Ottokar, is that I never come to any type of occasion or entertainment if I've been invited."
I felt another staring/surprise contest coming on, so I pre-empted it.
"...Is this relevant?"
"It means, alas, that I am quite unable to be your best man... or indeed anybody's best man, come to think of it. Any marriage schemes you've been forgetting to tell me about, Christian?"
I went back to the penetrating stare. Jan was not perturbed. "If you take my advice, you'll have an autumn wedding."
Stare. One might even have said 'glare'.
"Gosh, this is the thanks a fellow gets!"
Wintry silence.
"Well, mustn't dither! Four tickets to the Josefstadt the night before the show is doable in this city, for the man who knows a thing or two - and I know at least five - but that's not to say it's going to be easy... Christian, you reckon she likes Shakespeare? Pfuh, stupid question, let me rephrase it: Christian, what's her favourite Shakespeare, do you reckon?"
"I strongly suspect she favours plots of great historical importance with some witchcraft or ghosts or something and some nice juicy gore."
"You know, Christian, I think you're right. Something in her disposition... Well, we'll see what's on. Christian, you'd better sign my name and take my notes at the lecture. Wish me luck!"
Jan finally deigned to notice my ongoing attempt to stare him into shame (about what I was increasingly unsure) and an explanation (now that I could certainly do with!): he cheerfully scarpered.
"Ah, typical."
I looked expectantly at Christian, who had leaned against a wall with all the grim dignity of a martyr accepting his fate. He seemed like a man with an explanation on his lips.
He sighed. "Jan is fond of the eccentric-uncle-who-introduces-our-tender-young-lovers role, but he prefers to leave the tedious business of explaining to me. Oh, I could tell you so many stories... Ahem! I am digressing. Let Uncle Christian set things straight here."
I shuffled uncertainly before settling against the wall.
"Now, Ottokar, you come from a provincial town. Your parents, I may hazard a guess, were respectable pillars of the lowest middling sorts... perhaps 'cobbles' is better than 'pillars', if architecture is my metaphor. You've had a different upbringing from Jan, or me, and we're happy to look after you a bit while you adjust to the dip in the cold water. Don't worry, we don't have much money, and your moral upbringing will come right back when the cash runs out. But not to get away from the point: we like you. You're a good soul. You remind me a little of myself before I was a degenerate. Jan's always been a degenerate, of course. We're letting you share the room, and money counts more than anything in this time we live in, just listen to Maxi. Cash nexus, isn't it? We're doing you some real favours. Well, this business? Jan thinks he's doing you another favour, so why don't you do him one and humour him?"
He paused.
"And since I'm always honest, I don't think it's a bad idea, anyway. I'm not an expert in women and Jan is less of one, but I know that one's out of the ordinary and I think she deserves the ordinary to be well out of it. I'm out of the ordinary myself - I'm going to be a baron and I haven't got any money - and I feel an urge to look after the tribe, soft heart that I am. Well, we know what a moderate income and a pretty face add up to..." I thought of my aunt and flinched "...But you throw in an education and that changes everything! Probably couldn't fix Miss V what is called a good marriage for cash down in any civilised nation or America. And anyone can see she's off-her-wits in love with you, and vice-versa-"
"...!"
"Yes, what?"
"..."
"I thought as much. Where was I? Yes, you being desperately in love with her. I can see you're new to that show and I can see why anybody wouldn't want Jan and his harebrained matchmaking schemes dogging them, I'm not blind. And since I'm not blind, and since neither of you is any good at hiding anything... So why not do yourself a favour? Lose a bit of the bourgeois sense of decency? Try your luck? Make a confession? Anyway, we're taking her to the theatre, that's pretty bourgeois. If you knew some of what happens in this city..."
Christian chuckled to himself.
"Anyway, I don't mind the idea of going to see a show when there's no way in hell jan can make me pick up the price. Quite the treat for you, and once money changes hands it's a treat you can't refuse! Cash nexus, like I said, cash nexus or whatever it is. So, why not enjoy it? You've got every reason." He smiled, and I realised then how seldom he did. I couldn't help but smile back. "I'll let you have a think. After all, I'm not Jan."
I nodded and felt relieved and, as is the way with such things, made a point of not having a think all day. It was a good thing for my academic career: I was so determined not to have a think that I caught up with all my notes and required reading.
And at length I silently gave in, gathered up my little bits of paper, found a favourite, and began to translate it into German -scrupulously not thinking what I was doing. I was still at it when I fell asleep.
Author's note:
I confess: even though one (1) thing happens to advance the plot, this chapter is one of my favourite pieces of writing. I like doing Jan and Christian's speaking parts: they're such lads. And Elke's offensively cheery and un-Scottish disposition is rather catching; and it's fun watching Ottokar arguing with himself. I just like bouncing the characters off each-other. And it does give you more insight into them as people, or should, anyway.
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