The 2 12 Pillars of Wisdom

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Von Igelfeld beamed. He was pleased to discover that instead of being insulting, the invitation was something of an honour. They must have taken soundings, he thought; they must have asked people for recommendations before they came to me. In fact, it was quite the opposite. The entertainments officer of the cruise company had chosen von Igelfeld’s name from a list of German writers on Portugal. Since the cruise was calling in at both Oporto and Lisbon, before steaming on to the Mediterranean, it had been decided that some of the lectures should reflect this fact. They had tried to get the services of an authority on port wine, who was known to give extremely interesting lectures on the history of the trade, but he was being treated in a clinic and could not oblige. So they had picked von Igelfeld more or less at random, noting that he had ‘written a wellknown book on the Portuguese language’.

  ‘He’ll be able to talk about amusing Portuguese folk tales and the like,’ said the entertainments officer. ‘With a name like that he could hardly be anything but entertaining.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said the manager. ‘Let’s give him a try.’

  ‘And you never know,’ speculated the entertainments officer. ‘He might be a success.’

  The cruise left Hamburg on a warm June evening. It was a large ship, and the voyage was fully subscribed. They would sail down through the English Channel and out into the Bay of Biscay. Their first port of call was Oporto, and after this they would make their way to Lisbon and Gibraltar before entering the Mediterranean. Von Igelfeld’s lectures would start after they arrived at Oporto and continue until they docked at Naples. Thereafter, un-encumbered by duties, he would be free to enjoy the remaining ten days of the voyage that would take them all the way to Piraeus.

  Von Igelfeld had been allocated a cabin on the port side. He was shown the way by a steward, who then left him standing in the doorway, contemplating his home for the next eighteen days. It was not very large; in fact, it was one of the smaller cabins, and von Igelfeld was very doubtful as to whether the length of the bed would be adequate. And although there was a small table, it was hardly large enough to write upon. Opening a cupboard, he noticed that there were only four coat hangers and a shoe rack with space for two pairs of shoes at the most, and small shoes at that.

  For a few minutes he was uncertain what to do. He had only been on a ship once before when, as a research assistant he had accompanied Professor Dr Dr Dr Dieter Vogelsang to Ireland. That was many years ago and he had very little recollection of the accommodation. But the situation was quite different now: far from being the young scholar, happy to make do with what was offered him, he was now Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, author of Portuguese Irregular Verbs. The thought of this spurred him on. If the shipping company thought that they could put the author of Portuguese Irregular Verbs in cramped accommodation like this, then they should be promptly disabused of that notion. The thought crossed his mind: You get the cabin you deserve in this life. Well, if that were the case he should get something very much larger and more suitable.

  Leaving his bags in the corridor, von Igelfeld made his way back to the central reception hall, where the purser and his staff were engaged in the myriad of tasks which accompanied the settling-in of passengers.

  ‘I regret to say, but I think there has been a mistake,’ said von Igelfeld, to a smartly dressed officer. ‘I need a larger cabin.’

  The officer looked him up and down.

  ‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘The ship is full. We can’t really change people around at this stage.’

  ‘In that case, I demand to see the Captain,’ said von Igelfeld.

  ‘He’s busy,’ said the officer. ‘The ship is about to leave port.’

  ‘I am busy too,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘There is a paper which I must complete on this voyage. I must see the Captain.’

  A small group of passengers, sensing that something was wrong, had gathered by von Igelfeld’s side.

  ‘Why can’t he see the Captain?’ said one elderly woman. ‘Is there something wrong with the Captain?’

  ‘Is the Captain ill?’ asked another slightly worried-looking passenger.

  The officer sensed that the situation was getting out of control. Ships were breeding-grounds for rumour and, if the passengers got it into their minds that the Captain was ill, or evading them, the whole vessel would be awash with panicky rumours by the following morning.

  ‘Please calm down,’ said the officer. ‘I shall take you to see the Captain.’

  The officer escorted von Igelfeld up a steep flight of stairs and onto the bridge. The Captain, dressed in his formal uniform, was standing over a chart, talking to another officer, while several others were engaged in various tasks. The officer who had escorted von Igelfeld up spoke briefly to the Captain, who glanced in the professor’s direction and frowned.

  ‘I really must insist on something more appropriate,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘If nothing is available, then I must ask you to release me from my obligation to lecture.’

  The Captain sighed. If von Igelfeld withdrew, the lecture programme would be thrown into disarray and there would be complaints, which were always troublesome. They only had three lecturers on board as it was, and that was cutting matters somewhat fine.

  ‘Have you nothing else?’ he asked the junior officer.

  ‘No, sir. Everything’s occupied.’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ said the Captain. ‘Professor von Igelfeld, you may have my cabin. I’m sure that I shall be comfortable enough in yours.’

  Von Igelfeld smiled. ‘That’s very generous, Herr Kapitan! I had not intended to inconvenience you, but I am sure that this arrangement will work very well. Thank you.’

  Before the ship put to sea, von Igelfeld was transferred from his inadequate, cramped cabin to the Captain’s gracious quarters behind the observation deck. Not only did he receive a larger sleeping cabin, but he also had a substantial sitting room, with a bureau. This suited von Igelfeld extremely well, and he had soon unpacked his clothes into the copious wardrobe and spread his papers about the bureau. His earlier ill-humour had deserted him and to celebrate the beginning of the voyage he decided to go down to the bar and take a small sherry.

  They put to sea in the evening, with the ship sounding its horn and the lights of the pilot boat weaving about in the half-darkness. Von Igelfeld returned to his cabin and spent an hour at work before dinner. In the dining room, he discovered that he had been given a table with several other passengers but a firm complaint to the steward resulted in his being moved to a solitary table near the door. This suited him very much better, and he enjoyed a good meal before retiring to his cabin for the night.

  It was three days before they reached Oporto and the first lecture was to be delivered. The company liked to give the passengers a choice, and so at the time that von Igelfeld was to deliver his introductory talk, Early Portuguese, one of the other two lecturers, the popular novelist, Hans-Dieter Dietermann, author of a slew of relentlessly contemporary detective novels, was scheduled to deliver his own introductory talk, The Modern Sleuth. Von Igelfeld had met Dietermann briefly at a reception given by the Captain, but had exchanged only a few words with him. He had no idea why the company should engage such a person to lecture to their passengers, and he only assumed that it was to cater for those passengers who found it difficult to concentrate or who would be out of their depth in listening to a real lecture. Poor Dietermann, thought von Igelfeld: a perfectly decent man, no doubt, but not one who should be attempting to lecture to anybody.

  The lectures were due to take place at ten o’clock in the morning, while the ship was still five hours out of Oporto. There was an announcement on the ship’s public address system as von Igelfeld made his way to the room in which his lecture was to be given. Chairs had been placed in rows, and at the head of the room there was a table with a jug of water and a lectern.

  Von Igelfeld walked up to the table and placed his notes on the lectern. Before him, dotted about the room,
was his audience of seven passengers. He glanced at his watch. It was five minutes after the advertised time. He was to be introduced by one of the purser’s staff, who now glanced at him sympathetically.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry about the turn-out,’ whispered the officer. ‘Perhaps people are doing something else.’

  ‘Perhaps they are,’ said von Igelfeld coldly. ‘Perhaps my lecture was not sufficiently well advertised.’

  ‘But it was!’ protested the officer. ‘There were posters all over the place. And there was a big notice in the ship’s newspaper.’

  Von Igelfeld ignored this. ‘Let us begin, anyway,’ he said. ‘There are at least some intellectually curious passengers on this ship.’

  The lecture began. After fifteen minutes, two of the passengers seated near the back slipped out. Three of the others, all elderly ladies, now nodded off, while the remaining two, sitting together at the front, took copious notes. After an hour, von Igelfeld stopped, and thanked his audience for their attention. The two passengers at the front laid down their notebooks and applauded enthusias-tically. The three who had been sleeping awoke with a start and joined in the applause. Von Igelfeld nodded in the direction of the two in the front and walked out of the room.

  On his way back to his cabin, he found the corridors blocked by passengers streaming out of one of the other rooms. Like most of the passengers on the ship, they were almost all middle-aged women, and they all seemed to be in an exceptionally good mood. Pressed against the wall to allow them to pass, von Igelfeld heard snippets of conversation.

  ‘So amusing . . . I haven’t read him I confess, but I shall certainly do so now . . . Do you think that the ship’s book-shop has his books? . . . Oh they do, I saw a whole pile of them . . . Very interesting . . . I can’t wait for his next lecture . . .’

  Von Igelfeld strove to catch more, but the comments merged in the general hubbub. One thing was clear, though: this was the crowd on its way from listening to that poor man, Hans-Dieter Dietermann. He must have had an audience of at least three or four hundred, and they all seemed to have enjoyed themselves. How misguided can people be!

  He sat alone at his table over lunch, reflecting on the morning’s humiliation. He had never before had so small an audience. Even in America, where he had been obliged, through a misunderstanding, to deliver a lecture on sausage dogs, there had been a larger and distinctly more enthusiastic audience. It was obviously the company’s fault – possibly the fault of the Captain himself, and there was no doubt in his mind that the Captain should do something about it.

  ‘I am most displeased,’ he told the Captain, when he confronted him on the bridge immediately after lunch. ‘Not enough has been done to ensure support for my lectures.’

  The Captain smiled. ‘But I heard that there had been a very large crowd this morning,’ he said. ‘I understand that it was a great success.’

  ‘That was the other lecturer, Herr Kapitan,’ interjected one of the junior officers. ‘That was Herr Dietermann.’

  Von Igelfeld turned and glared at the junior officer, but refrained from saying anything.

  ‘Oh,’ said the Captain. ‘I see. Everyone went to the other one and not to yours.’

  ‘Yes,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘And I would like something done about it.’

  ‘Well, we can’t change the programme,’ said the Captain. ‘That just confuses everybody.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I could get some of the crew to go. That might swell the audience for the next one.’

  Von Igelfeld nodded. ‘I am sure that they would find it very interesting.’

  The Captain nodded. ‘I’m sorry I won’t be able to come myself,’ he said. ‘Somebody has to stay up here. By the way, is my cabin comfortable enough for you?’

  ‘It is quite adequate,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘I hope that you are comfortable in . . . in that other cabin.’

  ‘I don’t notice these things,’ said the Captain politely. ‘I’m usually so busy I don’t get much time to sleep.’

  ‘Most unfortunate,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘Sleep is very important.’

  He left feeling quite mollified by the Captain’s sympathetic view of the situation. He had great confidence in the Captain, and indeed at the next lecture, which took place after they had left Oporto, some twenty members of the crew, acting under Captain’s orders and all neatly attired in their white uniforms, sat in two solid rows, listening to von Igelfeld’s remarks on the development of the gerundive in Portuguese. Their expression, von Igelfeld thought, tended to the somewhat glassy, but they were probably tired, like the Captain.

  The next day, von Igelfeld received a visit from the officer who ran the ship’s newspaper. She was planning a short interview with all three lecturers, so that she could publish a profile for the passengers to read over their breakfast. She spoke to von Igelfeld about his work and about his interests, noting his replies down in a small notebook. She seemed particularly interested in Portuguese Irregular Verbs, and von Igelfeld spent some time explaining the research which lay behind this great work of scholarship. Then she got on to the personal side of his life.

  ‘Now tell me, Herr Professor,’ she asked, ‘does your wife mind your going off on these lecture cruises?’

  ‘I am unmarried,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘I was almost married once, but that did not work out.’ Unterholzer! he thought bitterly. Had Unterholzer not outflanked him in the courtship of Lisbetta von Brautheim then history would have been very different.

  ‘So you would like to get married one day?’ she asked.

  ‘Indeed,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘It is simply a question of finding the right person. You could say, I suppose, that I am ready to propose marriage should the right lady present herself.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the journalist. ‘You are a professor in search of a wife.’

  Von Igelfeld smiled. ‘You might say that,’ he said. ‘However, my heavy workload prevents my being too active in that respect most of the time.’

  ‘But one might have time on a cruise, might one not?’ said the journalist playfully.

  Von Igelfeld allowed himself a slight laugh. ‘One never knows,’ he said. ‘Life is full of surprises, is it not?’

  The profiles of the three lecturers appeared in the ship’s newspaper the next morning. There was a fairly long description of Hans-Dieter Dietermann and a summary of his recent novel. He, it was revealed, was married to a Munich kindergarten teacher and they had three young children. The other lecturer was accompanied by his wife, and there was a photograph of the two of them standing at a ship’s railing, looking out to sea. Then there was the feature on von Igelfeld, with a word-for-word account of the discussion about being single and looking for a wife. Von Igelfeld read this with a certain amount of embarrassment, but he was pleased enough with the lengthy discussion of Portuguese Irregular Verbs.

  This book, the article said, is generally regarded as one of the most important books to be published in Germany this century. As a work of scholarship, it is said by many to be without parallel and is known throughout the world. It is clearly a book that we all should read, if we ever had the time. The Company is honoured to have one of the most distinguished scholars in the world lecturing to its passengers – another example of the high standards of excellence which the Hamburg and North Germany Cruise Line has long maintained.

  Von Igelfeld re-read this passage several times. He resolved to drop a note to the officer who wrote it and thank her for her perceptive and accurate remarks. He might send a copy to the Librarian at the Institute – just for record purposes, of course, and Prinzel and Unterholzer would probably like to see it as well, now that one came to think of it.

  He arose from his breakfast table, folded the newspaper carefully, and walked out of the dining room. As he did so, some sixty pairs of eyes, all belonging to the middle-aged widows and divorcees who formed the overwhelming bulk of the cruise passengers, followed his progress from the room. These same eyes had just finished reading the profile in
the paper, skipping over the paragraph about Portuguese Irregular Verbs but dwelling with considerable interest on the passage about von Igelfeld’s single status. That was a matter of great significance to them, as it was undoubtedly the case that of the three hundred widows on the ship, at least two hundred and ninety of them harboured a secret wish in her heart that she might meet a future husband on the cruise. Unfortunately, for complex reasons of demography, von Igelfeld was the only unmarried man on the boat, apart from the younger members of the crew, who were too young and who were anyway under strict instructions not to socialise with the passengers; and the two hair-dressers, who were not suitable, for quite other reasons.

  ‘What a nice, tall man,’ whispered Frau Krutzner to her friend, Frau Jens. ‘Such a distinguished bearing.’

  ‘So scholarly!’ said Frau Jens, dreamily. ‘And such a waste! I do hope that he meets a suitable lady soon. In fact, I’m sure that I could look after our dear Professor von Igelfeld myself.’

  ‘Frau Jens!’ said Frau Krutzner. ‘You have many talents, my dear, but I fear realism may not be one of them. Poor Professor von Igelfeld will be looking for somebody a bit younger than you.’

  ‘Such as you?’ retorted Frau Jens.

  ‘I was not going to suggest that,’ said Frau Krutzner. ‘But since you yourself have raised the possibility, well, who can tell?’

  There were many similar conversations amongst friends, the general gist of which was to discuss the prospects of snaring von Igelfeld before the voyage was out. Strategies were laid; outfits which had been brought ‘just in case’ were retrieved from trunks and pressed into service. The two hairdressers, busy at the best of times, were inundated with requests for appointments and there was a serious danger that supplies of hair dye would be exhausted before there was time to replenish stores at Marseilles.