Unusual Uses for Olive Oil

by Alexander McCall Smith

  The director cleared his throat. At the same time, he shifted slightly in his seat and his left hand went up to his nose, as if to check that there was nothing wrong. Von Igelfeld looked away guiltily.

  ‘It is a very fine day,’ said the director nervously. ‘Sometimes Berlin can get very hot, you know. You have those mountains to keep you cool. Here we are at the mercy of the hot winds of the plains.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘I have always been fortunate on my visits to Berlin. I have always found the weather very agreeable.’

  The director nodded, acknowledging the compliment. ‘We do our best, of course.’

  There was a brief silence. Then the director spoke again. ‘I wonder if there is any way in which the Stiftung can help you, Herr von Igelfeld? We are familiar with your institute, of course, and we are certainly anxious to engage further in the cutting edge of language research. We have a major programme at the moment in neuro-linguistics.’

  ‘I am not interested in that,’ said von Igelfeld cursorily. ‘These days they are adding neuro- to everything. Neuro-ethics, neuro-theology and so on. It will be neuro-tennis next, I imagine.’

  The director laughed. ‘That would be neuro-tic,’ he said.

  Von Igelfeld stared at him. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said the director, waving a hand in the air. ‘All I would say is that in addition to our neuro-linguistics programme we have funds to support more conventional fields. We have people working on the acquisition of pidgin languages, for example. And we also have a very interesting research programme down in Frankfurt looking into the ability of animals to understand language commands. Most dogs respond to the sit command – that is more or less universal. It’s clear that domestic animals acquire a small vocabulary – a passive knowledge of language, of course – but what is not so clear is whether there are some languages that are easier for dogs to acquire than others. Is it purely a question of how many syllables there are, or are there other factors involved? How do animals cope with tonal languages, for example? All in all, it’s a fascinating bit of research.’

  Von Igelfeld nodded. ‘Yes, it must be. But I must point out that I have not come with a view to discussing a grant. I have come about the prize you have announced.’

  The director raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m afraid that we are somewhat past the closing date on that one,’ he said. ‘The judges – of which I have the honour to be one – have recently announced their decision on the shortlist. Perhaps you haven’t seen it. There are three names, actually, and one happens to be …’

  ‘Your cousin,’ interjected von Igelfeld.

  The effect of these words was instant. The director’s jaw dropped, and he moved back in his chair, as if pushed by an unseen hand. ‘You do not imagine …’ His voice was wavering and he did not finish the sentence.

  ‘I assumed that you and Professor Dr Unterholzer were cousins,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘There is, after all, a certain family resemblance.’

  ‘In what way?’ stuttered the director.

  ‘In the …’ Von Igelfeld was about to say in the nose, but stopped himself. This meeting was not going well.

  The director had now recovered his composure and leaned forward in his chair. ‘I must assure you, Herr von Igelfeld, that we are not related in any way. He is Unterholzer and I am Unterholzer too. But it is a very common name, you know. I can understand how if you are called von Igelfeld you may assume that all other von Igelfelds are relatives, but you are fortunate in that respect. We Unterholzers do not make the same assumption.’

  Von Igelfeld was beginning to feel embarrassed. His moral outrage had been replaced by the realisation that he had been wrong after all. And he regretted barging in with his accusation; it must be bad enough to be called Unterholzer in the first place without then being accused, groundlessly, of nepotism to other Unterholzers. ‘I am very sorry, Herr Direktor,’ he said. ‘I have spoken out of turn. I assumed – quite wrongly – that you were some relative of our Professor Dr Unterholzer just because of the name and your no— and other factors. Please forgive me.’

  The director smiled indulgently. ‘There is nothing to forgive, Herr von Igelfeld. It would make no difference if I were related to this Unterholzer of yours. I would never let such a factor sway me in any decision.’ He paused. ‘I take it that this is what you came to see me about? You were concerned about the possibility that ill-informed people might think that the presence of the name Unterholzer on that list was indicative of some sort of improper favouritism? Well, I suppose there is nothing that one can do to stop base-minded people thinking that. But it does not make it true, does it?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘But that was not really the aspect of the prize that concerned me. I came to see you because I thought that the committee had perhaps made a mistake and confused one person for another.’

  The director raised an eyebrow. ‘In what way?’ he asked. ‘In what way can we have been mistaken?’

  Von Igelfeld did not find it easy. ‘It occurred to others – not necessarily to me, of course – but to others that when the committee wished to honour Romance Philology in Regensburg, then they might have been thinking of my own work, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, rather than Professor Unterholzer’s somewhat less well-known work. That is what some people thought, and they brought their doubts to me. I, of course, dismissed these concerns, but thought it politic to raise the issue with you. That is all.’

  The director sat quite still. ‘You say you are the author of Portuguese Irregular Verbs, and not Professor Unterholzer?’

  Von Igelfeld caught his breath. There had been a mistake after all. ‘I am,’ he said. ‘It is my work that you are talking of.’

  The director put a hand to his brow. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘This really is most unfortunate. The committee received reports on a number of meritorious works. For some reason, the members were under the impression that Portuguese Irregular Verbs, which I must say is very highly regarded, was the work of Professor Unterholzer. That is why he was shortlisted.’

  I knew it, thought von Igelfeld. I was right all along. There has been a terrible mistake. Then he thought: fifty thousand euros.

  ‘However,’ said the director, ‘as it happens no damage has been done. The judges met again yesterday and reached their final decision. The prize has been awarded to Professor Capobianco. So it really makes no difference. Had it been awarded to Professor Unterholzer, then it would have been very complicated. But the jury has come up with its verdict and the matter has gone the other way. We have yet to announce the outcome, of course.’

  Von Igelfeld bit his lip. ‘You mean that the judges decided that Professor Capobianco’s book was more worthy than Portuguese Irregular Verbs? Is that what you’re suggesting? That they preferred ephemera?’

  The director winced. ‘I wouldn’t have put it that way,’ he said. ‘Not in the presence of the author of Portuguese Irregular Verbs, your good self. But I suppose that is an inevitable inference from the outcome.’

  The two men stared at each other for a few moments. Von Igelfeld found his eyes drawn to the director’s nose. It is the same nose, he said to himself. It is definitely the same nose. And that is just too much of a coincidence to be discounted. There was something not quite right about this situation, but he could not put his finger on it. It seemed very unlikely that the members of the prize committee could have laboured under the mistaken view that Unterholzer had written Portuguese Irregular Verbs unless … unless they had been deliberately misled by the director of the Stiftung, who no doubt had been charged with the duty of preparing a précis of each nominee’s achievements. If this Unterholzer were a nepotistically inclined cousin, as von Igelfeld now once again suspected, it would not have been difficult for him to effect such a deception.

  Von Igelfeld rose to his feet and took his leave of the director. There would be plenty of time to think about this matter on the train back to Regensburg; back to Regensbur
g and away from scheming, duplicitous Berlin, full, as it was, of Unterholzers and their equivalent. And during this time of reflection he could ponder his next move. He could confront Unterholzer, revealing that he knew that this was a case of an Unterholzer awarding a favour to another Unterholzer; or he could remain silent, rising above the whole sordid matter. He decided on the latter. There was, after all, an element of doubt, no matter how suspicious it all looked. And a man was innocent until proved guilty in a court of law, and that presumption should be extended to Unterholzer, even if he did not deserve it.

  So when von Igelfeld saw Unterholzer in the coffee room at the Institute the next day, he congratulated him warmly on being shortlisted.

  ‘I have heard that I have not won it,’ said Unterholzer. ‘And I did tell them, you know, that if anybody should be on the list it should be you. I told them that Portuguese Irregular Verbs was the book that really put this place on the map.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Of course.’

  There was no doubt that Unterholzer was telling the truth, decided von Igelfeld, as he looked down into his cup of coffee. How complex this world is, he thought; how easily may things appear to be one thing and then prove to be another. And how easy it was to see the worst in humanity when what we should really be looking for is the best.

  ‘That was very kind of Professor Dr Unterholzer,’ said the Librarian. ‘Do you not think so, Herr von Igelfeld?’

  An Intriguing Meeting

  It was only a few days after von Igelfeld’s return from Berlin that the issue of marriage was raised in the Institute’s coffee room. At the end of the discussion nobody was quite sure who had been first to mention the matter; it might have been Professor Dr Dr Florianus Prinzel, or it might have been Unterholzer – von Igelfeld was later unable to recall exactly who had started the debate. He did know, however, that it was not the Librarian, Herr Huber, whose wandering conversation was entirely reactive, and never introduced a new or challenging topic.

  And marriage was a challenging topic as far as von Igelfeld was concerned. As a young man, still a student, he had had the occasional girlfriend, but these relationships had never got anywhere very much, as the young women in question rapidly tired of von Igelfeld’s single-minded devotion to scholarship, his tendency to divert any conversation to linguistics, and his utter lack of any sense of romance. You’re a very nice boy, Moritz-Maria, one of these girlfriends had written in her parting letter, but do you really think that girls are interested in hearing about Portuguese verbs, or whatever it is you spend all your time thinking about? If you do, then for your own sake I must tell you that you really don’t understand how we think. Sorry to be so frank, but you really need to know: Portuguese verbs are not romantic!

  Von Igelfeld had been puzzled by this letter. He did not mind the rejection so much – his feelings towards the writer of the letter had been barely lukewarm – but he wondered why she should at one and the same time be terminating the relationship as well as describing him as very nice. If she liked him, then why was she ending things? And how could she speak for all girls and say that they were not interested in philology? How did she know that? Then, finally, there was the terrible howler at the end: Portuguese verbs are not romantic. That was terribly funny, unintentionally, of course. Portuguese was a Romance language, everybody knew, which meant if there was one thing that Portuguese verbs were, it was romantic! Silly girl!

  Much later, it had occurred to him that marriage would be a desirable state, and he had decided to make an effort to get to know better his dentist, the charming and attractive Dr Lisbetta von Brautheim. To this end he had presented her with a copy of Portuguese Irregular Verbs, which he subsequently discovered she was using to stand on while operating her dental drill, as the bulky book was just the right height in relation to her supine patients. His feelings might have been hurt by this, had not a far greater cause for offence soon presented itself. This arose after he had recommended her to Unterholzer, who needed to see a dentist about a worrisome crown. The encounter had been both professionally and socially productive, as Unterholzer later revealed that he had seen Dr von Brautheim for lunch. It was by then hardly appropriate for von Igelfeld to renew his own invitation for lunch, for Unterholzer had proposed and, mirabile dictu, been accepted.

  Von Igelfeld tried to put a brave face on this disappointment, but it was hard. With both Florianus Prinzel and Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer married, he was the only one of the three professors of the Institute who was single. Herr Huber, of course, had never been married and von Igelfeld considered it inconceivable that anybody would ever wish to marry him, but the Librarian was a special case, and was not really counted for most Institute purposes. The difficulty for von Igelfeld was that marriage, it seemed to him, was an impossibly complicated matter. If it were a simple process – on a par with, say, obtaining a passport or answering a call to a university chair – then he would have felt quite up to it. But there was the whole business of asking somebody to marry one, and how on earth was that done? Will you marry me, although an unambiguous enough question, none the less seemed rather abrupt and could always elicit the simple answer no, which would be devastating. And when exactly did one make the proposal? He had read that this could be done over dinner, but it was not specified at what stage of the dinner it was appropriate to pop the question. Did one have to do it before coffee, or was it better to get round to the subject at the coffee stage of the meal? What if the restaurant were noisy, as so many restaurants were, and the question was not heard at all?

  But most daunting of all was the task of meeting somebody suitable. Von Igelfeld’s life, revolving as it did around the Institute and its affairs, rarely brought him into contact with suitable, unmarried women. It was true that some of the women staff were single, but they tended to be rather younger than von Igelfeld and he was realistic enough to understand that these young women would hardly be attracted by a man in his late forties, even if he prided himself on carrying no extra flesh and being attractively tall. He had heard that women liked tall men, and in that respect at least he would be a good catch, but height alone would never carry the day with these young secretaries, with all their giggling and their fascination with the glittery world of popular magazines. And of course they had very little in common in terms of intellectual interests, of which, he believed, they had none at all.

  He briefly considered Herr Huber’s assistant, a woman in her early thirties, whom he believed to be unmarried. But when he got to know her better, through her occasional appearances in the coffee room, he realised that some of the Librarian’s worst traits had rubbed off on her and he did not think that he could tolerate for any length of time her rambling conversation on matters of very little interest. For the rest, there were few opportunities. There was the odd social occasion, including, now and then, dinner parties, but everybody at these functions appeared to be married or to have other existing arrangements. It sometimes seemed to von Igelfeld that he, alone, was alone.

  The conversation about marriage – whoever started it – got on to the topic of the advantages of cooking for two.

  ‘It’s much cheaper,’ said Prinzel. ‘Indeed, we usually cater for six, and then freeze the remaining four portions for use at a later date. It is called an economy of scale, I believe.’

  ‘How very interesting,’ said Herr Huber. ‘The chef at the nursing home – the one my aunt is in – was telling me that he has to cater for forty-two and—’

  ‘Yes, yes, Herr Huber,’ said Unterholzer. ‘The real point is that there is no difference – in labour terms – between making one portion or two. They both take exactly the same time. Another argument in favour of the married state!’

  Unterholzer threw von Igelfeld a glance at this stage, which von Igelfeld returned icily.

  ‘How interesting,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘At the same time, one must not forget that cooking for two reduces one’s culinary choices by exactly fifty per cent.’

&n
bsp; There was a silence while this remark was digested. Prinzel looked particularly puzzled. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘I really don’t see …’

  ‘Nor do I,’ snapped Unterholzer.

  Von Igelfeld smiled. ‘A moment’s thought will confirm the truth of what I’ve said. Any two people will naturally like different things. If, therefore, there are, shall we say, twenty available recipes, we may assume that person A will like ten and person B will like ten. These preferences will be different, because people have different tastes. So there will probably only be ten that will be accepted by both people. Some of these will not be the first choice of both. Each person will therefore probably only get five courses that he really likes. That restricts choice by fifty per cent.’

  There was a further silence, eventually broken by the Librarian. ‘My aunt cannot abide spinach. If she has spinach—’

  He did not finish. ‘I don’t see that at all,’ interjected Unterholzer.

  ‘Oh, I assure you, Herr Unterholzer, she has never been able to eat—’

  Unterholzer ignored the Librarian and addressed von Igelfeld again. ‘A single person would like ten of the twenty, you say? Well then, if he is sharing with somebody else they’re surely going to find ten that they both like, or can eat. So in each case he’s having ten. That’s not less choice – it’s the same.’

  Von Igelfeld smiled. Unterholzer was just not getting the point. Prinzel, who was also puzzled, now steered the conversation back to marriage. ‘There are many shared moments in a marriage,’ he said. ‘That is one thing you discover when you marry.’

  ‘But, forgive me, Herr Prinzel,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘Forgive me for pointing out that surely most people would know that before they get married. Spending time together, I would have thought, is a fundamental feature of marriage – something that everybody knows.’