At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

by Alexander McCall Smith

  ‘A moving ceremony,’ said his host. ‘I am not a Member of the Academy myself, although I feel that it would be very appropriate to be one.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that,’ said von Igelfeld soothingly. ‘But I am sure that somebody will propose you for membership one of these days.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Cinco Fermentaciones. He paused, and looked at von Igelfeld. ‘You wouldn’t care to do that, would you?’

  Von Igelfeld gave a start. ‘I?’ he said. ‘I am only a Corresponding Fellow, and a new one at that. Surely it would be improper for me to propose a new member.’

  ‘Not in the slightest,’ said Cinco Fermentaciones. ‘Indeed, it would be virtually impossible for them to turn me down if you proposed me. It would imply a lack of confidence in your judgement.’ He reached into his pocket as he spoke and extracted a piece of paper. ‘As it happens,’ he went on, ‘I have the proposal form with me here, already filled in. All that you would need to do is to sign it. Thank you so much for doing this.’

  Von Igelfeld looked about him. Señor Gabriel Marcales de Cinco Fermentaciones had placed him in an acutely embarrassing position. If he turned him down, it would be an act of gross ingratitude to the man who, presumably, had arranged his own nomination as Corresponding Fellow. And yet, if he proposed him, the President and Members could be placed in a situation where they would be obliged to elect somebody whom, for all von Igelfeld knew, they may not have wished to elect in the first place.

  ‘This is where you sign,’ said Cinco Fermentaciones, placing the paper, and a pen, in von Igelfeld’s hands.

  There was really no alternative, and so von Igelfeld signed, handing the paper back to Cinco Fermentaciones with an angry glance. This glance either went unnoticed, or was ignored.

  ‘You are very kind,’ said Cinco Fermentaciones. ‘Now I am in,’ adding, ‘at last.’ He leant forward and embraced von Igelfeld, muttering further words of gratitude as he did so.

  Von Igelfeld bore the embrace and the words of thanks with fortitude. He had walked right into a South American trap, and perhaps he should have realised it earlier. But the important thing was that whatever the motive of Cinco Fermentaciones had been in proposing him, the fact remained that he was now a Corresponding Fellow of the Academy of Letters of Colombia, an honour which had eluded even Zimmermann. And even if the President of the Academy were to be annoyed with him for proposing Cinco Fermentaciones, he would probably never encounter the President in the future and thus there would be few occasions for awkwardness.

  Cinco Fermentaciones beamed with satisfaction. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘we – or, rather I, have planned a few days for you in the country, as a reward, so to speak, for your having come all this way. A very well-known lady, who has perhaps the finest literary salon in all South America, has specially invited us to her villa in the hills. It will be a real treat.’

  ‘I am most grateful,’ said von Igelfeld. A few days in the country, being well looked after, would suit him very well. He was not due back in Germany for over a week, and what could be more enjoyable than sitting on a shady verandah, listening to the sounds of flocks of tropical birds, and knowing that at the end of the day a fine meal awaited one.

  They returned to the hotel, where von Igelfeld packed his bags and had them carried to the car which Cinco Fermentaciones provided. Then, after a fortifying cup of coffee, they set off down a pot-holed road, through sprawling crowded suburbs, into the countryside. The warmth of the car and the drone of the engine made von Igelfeld feel drowsy, and by the time he woke up, they were driving down what appeared to be a private road, through plantations of fruit trees, towards a large, ochre-coloured house on the lower slopes of a mountain.

  ‘The home of Señora Dolores Quinta Barranquilla,’ said Cinco Fermentaciones. ‘Our journey is at an end. We have arrived at the Villa of Reduced Circumstances.’

  A servant met them at the large front door of the villa. He was a small man in an ill-fitting black jacket and wearing grubby white gloves. He took the suitcases from the back of the car and gestured for Cinco Fermentaciones and von Igelfeld to follow him. They went inside, into a house of high-ceilinged cool rooms, furnished with dark mahogany chairs and tables in the Spanish colonial style, with painted cupboards on which fruits,Virgins and hunting dogs competed for space with pink-faced cherubs. Then they passed through a portico into a courtyard, around the sides of which were arranged the doors which gave on to their respective bedrooms.

  Left by himself in his bedroom, von Igelfeld unpacked his suitcase and noticed, with satisfaction, a spacious writing desk on which supplies of paper, along with bottles of ink and a stick pen, had been laid. To the right of the desk was a bookcase housing several shelves of books. He glanced at the titles: there were collected essays, novels, works of philosophy, and several volumes of the poems of Pablo Neruda. He picked up one of the Neruda volumes, noting an inscription on the fly leaf: Quinta Barranquilla, from his life-long friend, Pablo Neruda: I am not worthy of your friendship, but I have it nonetheless, and am content. Von Igelfeld was intrigued; the salon run by Dolores Quinta Barranquilla was clearly every bit as distinguished as Cinco Fermentaciones had implied. He replaced the book and picked up the volume next to it, a Spanish translation of Hemingway. Von Igelfeld was not impressed by Hemingway, whom he had never read and whom he had no intention of reading. In his view, those who practised hunting and fighting in wars should not write books, as there was nothing of any interest to literature in those pursuits. Hemingway was a fine example of this. No German writer would have gone bull-fighting in Spain or deep-sea fishing off Cuba, and this showed in the almost total absence of these themes in German literature. He placed the Hemingway back on the shelf with distaste and looked out of the window. In the middle of the courtyard there was a small fountain, out of which water played gently. On a stone bench beside the fountain sat Cinco Fermentaciones, and at his side, engaged in earnest conversation with him, was a middle-aged woman in a red skirt and white blouse. This, von Igelfeld assumed, was Dolores Quinta Barranquilla. He moved closer to the window and stared at her, struck by her peaceful expression. It was a Madonna-like face of the sort that is not all that unusual in the Latin world; a face which Botticelli or Mantegna might have painted. He gazed at her, and as he did so, she suddenly looked up and met his eyes. Von Igelfeld froze, unable to move away from the window, but mortified to be caught in the act of spying upon his hostess. Then the spell broke, and he withdrew from the window, back into the shadows of his room.

  A few minutes later, when he heard the knock on the door, he imagined that it was Dolores Quinta Barranquilla, and that she was coming to ask him to explain himself. He answered with some trepidation, but found that it was only the manservant in his ill-fitting jacket, who announced that drinks would be served in the salon at seven o’clock that evening and that the Señora would be honoured by Professor von Igelfeld’s presence at that time. Von Igelfeld thanked him and the manservant nodded. If His Excellency was in need of anything, he was only to ring the bell which he would find in his room; they were short-staffed, alas! as things were not quite what they were in the past, but they would do their best.

  ‘We are deeply honoured, Professor von Igelfeld,’ said Dolores Quinta Barranquilla. ‘Is that not so, Gabriel?’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ said Cinco Fermentaciones.

  ‘To have a Fellow of the Academy of Letters in the house is always rewarding,’ went on Dolores Quinta Barranquilla, ‘but to have a Corresponding Fellow, why, that’s a very particular distinction! Indeed, I cannot remember when last that happened.’

  ‘Five years ago,’ offered Cinco Fermentaciones.

  Dolores Quinta Barranquilla thanked him for the information. ‘Five long years!’ she said. ‘Five arid years now ended!’

  Cinco Fermentaciones smiled. ‘Indeed, this evening is almost like a meeting of the Academy.’

  Dolores Quinta Barranquilla looked at him blankly, and he continued: ‘You see, my dear Seño
ra Dolores, we almost have two Members of the Academy in the room. I myself . . . ’

  Dolores Quinta Barranquilla clasped her hands together in delight. ‘ . . . have been elected! I am thrilled, Gabriel. At last those provincial fools have begun to understand . . . ’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Cinco Fermentaciones quickly. ‘Please note that I said almost two Members. I have been nominated. Indeed, my nomination is quite recent, but I have every reason to believe that it will lead to my election to the Academy.’

  Dolores Quinta Barranquilla turned to von Igelfeld and fixed him with a warm smile. ‘I suspect that we might have you to thank for this,’ she said. ‘Our dear friend Gabriel has not been given the recognition that he deserves, I’m afraid. It comes from being out of Colombia.’

  Cinco Fermentaciones held up a hand to protest. ‘You are too kind, Señora Dolores. My contribution is small.’

  ‘It was an honour to be able to propose Señor Gabriel Marcales de Cinco Fermentaciones,’ contributed von Igelfeld. ‘His work in . . . ’ he paused, and there was an awkward silence as they both turned to look at him. Von Igelfeld was quite unaware of his candidate’s work. Had Cinco Fermentaciones written a book? Possibly, but if he had, then he had no means of telling what it was and whether it was good or bad. Of course, one did not become a cultural attaché for nothing, and he must have done something, possibly more than enough to deserve membership of the Academy of Letters. He took a deep breath. ‘His work in all respects is well-known.’

  Dolores Quinta Barranquilla raised an eyebrow. ‘There are those who say that he bought the job,’ she said, going on quickly. ‘But I hasten to say that I am most certainly not one of those! There are so many people in this country who are consumed by envy. There are even some who say that I bought this villa, would you believe it?’

  ‘And you did not?’ asked von Igelfeld.

  ‘Certainly not,’ replied Dolores Quinta Barranquilla. ‘Everything you see about you belonged to my paternal grandfather, Don Alfonso Quinta Barranquilla. I have bought nothing – nothing at all.’

  ‘The Señora is modest,’ said Cinco Fermentaciones unctuously. ‘Even in her grandfather’s day, the villa was the centre of intellectual life in Colombia. Everybody of any note came out from the capital at weekends and participated in the discussion that took place in this very room. Everybody. And then, more recently, in the days of her father, Neruda began to call when he was in this country. He would spend weeks here. He wrote many poems in this very room.’

  ‘I am a great admirer of his work,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘His Spanish is very fine.’

  ‘He is still with us, I feel,’ said Dolores Quinta Barranquilla dreamily. ‘Do you not feel that, Gabriel? Do you not feel Pablo’s presence?’

  ‘I do,’ said Cinco Fermentaciones. ‘I feel that he is with us here at the moment.’

  ‘As are all the others,’ went on Dolores Quinta Barranquilla. ‘Marquez. Valderrama. Pessoa. Yes, Pessoa, dear Professor von Igelfeld. He travelled up from Brazil and spent several weeks in this house, in the time of my father. They talked and talked, he told me. My father, like you, was fluent in Portuguese. He and Pessoa sat here, in this very room, and talked the night away.’

  Von Igelfeld looked about the room. He could imagine Pessoa sitting here, with his large hat on the table by the window, or on his knee perhaps; really, these were most agreeable surroundings, and the hostess, too, was utterly charming, with her mellifluous voice and her sympathetic understanding of literature. He could talk the night away, he felt, and perhaps they would.

  The conversation continued in this pleasant way for an hour or so before they moved through for dinner. This was served in an adjoining room, by a middle-aged cook in an apron. Von Igelfeld had expected generous fare, but the portions were small and the wine was thin. The conversation, of course, more than made up for this, but he found himself reflecting on the name of the villa and the parsimony of the table. These thoughts distressed him: there was something inexpressibly sad about faded grandeur. There may well have been a salon in this house, and it may well have been a distinguished one, but what was left now? Only memories, it would seem.

  Von Igelfeld slept soundly. It had been an exhilarating evening, and he had listened attentively to his hostess’s observations on a wide range of topics. All of these observations had struck him as being both perceptive and sound, which made the evening one of rare agreement. Now, standing at his window the following morning, he looked out on to the courtyard with its small fountain, its stone bench, and its display of brilliant flowering shrubs. It was a magnificent morning and von Igelfeld decided that he would take a brief walk about the fruit groves before breakfast was served.

  Donning his newly acquired Panama hat, he walked through the courtyard and made his way towards the front door. It was at this point, as he walked through one of the salons, that he noticed a number of rather ill-kempt men standing about. They looked at him suspiciously and did not respond when von Igelfeld politely said, ‘Buenos Dias.’ Perhaps they were the estate workers, thought von Igelfeld, and they were simply taciturn. When he reached the front door, however, a man moved out in front of him and blocked his way.

  ‘Who are you?’ the man asked roughly.

  Von Igelfeld looked at the man before him. He was wearing dark breeches, a red shirt, and was unshaven. His manner could only be described as insolent, and von Igelfeld decided that much as one did not like to complain to one’s hostess, this was a case which might merit a complaint. Who was he indeed! He was the author of Portuguese Irregular Verbs, that’s who he was, and he was minded to tell this man just that. But instead he merely said: ‘I am Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld. That’s who I am. And who are you?’

  The man, who had been leaning against the jamb of the door, now straightened up and approached von Igelfeld threateningly. ‘I? I?’ he said, his tone unambiguously hostile. ‘I am Pedro. That’s who I am. Pedro, leader of Moviemento Veintitrés.’

  ‘Moviemento Veintitrés?’ said von Igelfeld, trying to sound confident, but suddenly feeling somewhat concerned. He remembered the warnings uttered by Cinco Fermentaciones in the hotel in Bogotá. Had Moviemento Veintitrés featured in the list of those who were dangerous? He could not remember, but as he looked at Pedro, standing there with his hands in the pockets of his black breeches and his eyes glinting dangerously, he thought that perhaps it had.

  Von Igelfeld swallowed. ‘How do you do, Señor Pedro,’ he said.

  Pedro did not respond to the greeting. After a while, however, he turned his head to one side and spat on the floor.

  ‘Oh,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘I hope that you are in good health.’

  Pedro spat again. ‘We have taken over this house and this land,’ said Pedro. ‘You are now a captive of the people of Colombia, as are the so-called Señora Barranquilla and Señor Gabriel. You will all be subject to the revolutionary justice of Moviemento Veintitrés.’

  Von Igelfeld stood stock still. ‘I am a prisoner?’ he stuttered. ‘I?’ Pedro nodded. ‘You are under arrest. But you will be given a fair trial before you are shot. I can give you my word as to that.’

  Von Igelfeld stared at Pedro. Perhaps he had misheard. Perhaps this was an elaborate practical joke; in which case it was in extremely poor taste. ‘Hah!’ he said, trying to smile. ‘That is very amusing. Very amusing.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Pedro. ‘It is not amusing at all. It is very sad . . . for you, that is.’

  ‘But I am a visitor,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘I have nothing to do with whatever is going on. I don’t even know what you are talking about.’

  ‘Then you’ll find out soon enough,’ said Pedro. ‘In the meantime, you must join the others. They are in that room over there. They will explain the situation to you.’

  Von Igelfeld moved over towards the door pointed out by Pedro.

  ‘Go on,’ said Pedro, taunting him. ‘They are in there. You go and join them, Señor German. Your pampered fri
ends are in there. They are expecting you.’

  Von Igelfeld entered the room. Sitting on a sofa in the middle of the floor were Señora Dolores Quinta Barranquilla and Cinco Fermentaciones. As he opened the door, they looked up expectantly.

  ‘Señor Gabriel Marcales de Cinco Fermentaciones,’ said von Igelfeld, ‘what is the meaning of all this, may I ask you? Will you kindly explain?’

  Cinco Fermentaciones sighed. ‘We have fallen into the hands of guerrillas,’ he said. ‘That is what’s happened.’

  ‘It’s the end for us,’ added Dolores Quinta Barranquilla, shaking her head miserably. ‘Moviemento Veintitrés! The very worst.’

  ‘The worst of the worst,’ said Cinco Fermentaciones. ‘I’m afraid that there is no hope. No hope at all.’

  Von Igelfeld stood quite still. He had taken in what his friends had said, but he found it difficult to believe what he was hearing. This sort of thing – falling into the hands of guerrillas – was not something that happened to professors of philology, and yet Pedro was real enough, as was the fear that he appeared to have engendered in his hosts. Oh, if only he had been wise enough not to come! This is what happened to one when one went off in pursuit of honours; Nemesis, ever vigilant, was looking out for hubris, and he had given her a fine target indeed. Now it was too late. They would all be shot – or so Pedro seemed to assume – and that would be the end of everything. For a moment he imagined the others at coffee on the day on which the news came through. The Librarian would be tearful, Prinzel would be silenced with grief, and Unterholzer . . . Unterholzer would regret him, no doubt, but would even then be planning to move into his room on a permanent basis. Was that not exactly what had happened when he had been thought to have been lost at sea?

  Von Igelfeld’s thoughts were interrupted by Dolores Quinta Barranquilla. ‘I am truly sorry, Professor von Igelfeld,’ she said. ‘This is no way for a country to treat a distinguished visitor. Shooting a visitor is the height, the absolute height, of impoliteness.’