A Curable Romantic

by Joseph Skibell

  Professor Couturat next went over the rules that were to govern us: each language scheme was to be presented before the committee by a representative chosen by the language’s creator. In no instance should the author himself present his own case. After each presentation, members of the committee were free to question the presenters. Appointments for presentations were to last, it was hoped, no more than twenty to thirty minutes. At the end of our sessions, the committee would vote upon which language to adopt.

  “I think that’s everything,” Professor Couturat said. “And if not, well, as I’m fond of reminding Madame Couturat: wise are those who hold their tongues.”

  OUR WORK BEGAN immediately.

  Placing his fountain pen in the seam of his cahier, Professor Leau left the room and brought back the first of the presenters. They were seated in the hallway — I’d see them whenever I left the chambers in search of a bathroom or a telephone — each staring mutely at his competitors, some holding elaborate charts or other presentational devices, and their mind-goggling presentations continued on for days. Interspersed with our own private discussions, ably led by Professor Ostwald, we heard reports on Apolema, Balta, Blaia Zimondal, Dil, Dilpok, Lingua Filosofica Universale pei Dotti, Monoglottica, Orba, Spelin, Spokil, and Völkerverkehrsspache, among numerous others.

  The tedium was relieved only twice. Once, comically so, when a Mr. Streiff, presenting his own Bopal before the committee claimed that its superiority lay in the ease with which it could be committed to memory, and then couldn’t, under the scrutiny of an increasingly short-tempered Jespersen, remember a single word of it; next, and unnervingly so (at least for me), when a man named Boleslas Gajewski entered our chambers as an advocate for Solresol, a language invented eighty years earlier by the musician Jean-François Sudre.

  “THANK YOU FOR welcoming us here today, gentlemen,” Monsieur Gajewski said, laying his violin case upon our conference table. He was accompanied by a small boy, his son, I presumed, although the two looked nothing alike. The child stared at the members of the committee without saying a word, indeed, practically without blinking, while Monsieur Gajewski tuned his violin.

  The boy, I remember thinking, looked a little ill and underfed.

  At Monsieur Gajewski’s request, Professor Ostwald and Professor Baudouin jotted down a few sentences on scraps of paper. These were kept from the boy, whom Monsieur Gajewski had stationed at the far end of the room. Screwing a monocle into his eye, Monsieur Gajewski read each sentence silently before scratching out a phrase on his violin. The child, listening intently, turned to the blackboard and, with a piece a chalk, transcribed each of Professors Ostwald’s and Baudouin’s sentences faultlessly upon it.

  “Marvelous,” Professor Ostwald roared.

  “Yes, although I’ve seen such things performed in a circus,” Professor Jespersen said. More loudly, he called to Monsieur Gajewski: “Would you mind turning your back to the boy, Monsieur Gajewski? Oh, and young man,” he addressed the child, “if you would, please face away from your father.”

  “He’s not my father, sir,” the child answered politely.

  “Then from Monsieur Gajewski.” Professor Jespersen smiled with all the warmth of a man who hadn’t had a bowel movement in days. The boy complied, though it mattered little. Even with their backs turned to each other — as a precaution, I supposed, against some secret signaling — the child was able to translate our colleagues’ sentences without error.

  “Now,” Monsieur Gajewski said to me and Rector Boirac, “would you gentlemen kindly do the same?” He stepped away from our table as we hatched out half a dozen lines between us. I could barely think of what to write. The heart is crooked; who can know it? was one of my contributions, as well as The future is a thing of the past. I’ve forgotten what Rector Boirac jotted down, but nothing dissimilar. “Please hand the slips of paper to the boy, without my seeing,” Monsieur Gajewski said.

  With the sort of studiousness available only to a nine-year-old, the child looked earnestly, indeed almost sadly, at the slips of paper we’d handed him, as Monsieur Gajewski tied three colorful kerchiefs over his own eyes.

  “Gaston,” he said, “I’m ready now.”

  The boy secreted the pieces of paper into his pocket and stationed himself next to his master. The two seemed to lock hands, although upon closer inspection, it was evident that the child was fingering various parts of Monsieur Gajewski’s hand — the fingertips, the knuckles, the vales between his digits — as though it were the neck of a guitar. Monsieur Gajewski’s Adam’s apple juddered over his cravat. He cleared his throat.

  “The past is also a thing of the future, Yankl,” he recited, and my heart nearly leapt into my throat. I looked at Rector Boirac, but he had noticed nothing.

  Gaston again fretted at the Monsieur Gajewski’s large hand.

  “Didn’t I promise you we’d meet in Paris, my dear?” Monsieur Gajewski recited.

  And finally: “I only want to return the love you have given me.”

  I said nothing out loud, of course, but inwardly, I was trembling.

  “Let me see those papers, Gaston,” Professor Jespersen said, smirking behind his beard. He scanned the lines before returning the pages to the boy. “Well, not quite a hundred percent, is it?”

  Monsieur Gajewski pulled off his blindfold and snatched the slips out of the little boy’s hands.

  “Gaston!” he cried.

  The little boy shook his head. A terrible look passed between them: a silent threat from Monsieur Gajewski, a mute denial from the boy, the unspoken promise of retribution when the two had left our chamber. All signs of life drained from Gaston’s face; indeed, he seemed to have disappeared into himself.

  Monsieur Gajewski tried to push on, explaining to us that Monsieur Sudre had based his invention upon the tonic scale — “Solresol may be spoken, sung, played upon an instrument, whistled, or as Gaston and I have demonstrated to you today, although imperfectly, communicated via touch” — but it was too late. By the time Monsieur Gajewski had taken seven sheets of colored paper from his violin case, Professor Couturat was already standing.

  “Thank you very much, Monsieur … Gajewski,” he said, referring to his notes. “However, I think the committee can understand the rest of it on principle.”

  “On principle, yes. Very good, sir,” Monsieur Gajewski said.

  “We’re running over time,” Professor Leau added more kindly.

  “Over time, yes, I understand,” Monsieur Gajewski growled, unable to mask the violence of his anger. “Monsieur Sudre lived and died and gave his life to Solresol, with no one to advocate on his behalf until now, but you’re running out of time, I see.”

  “Léopold,” Professor Couturat said firmly.

  “Thank you, Monsieur Gajewski,” Professor Leau said, rising.

  “No, no, thank you, thank you, Messieurs,” Monsieur Gajewski said, recovering slightly. “I’ll only leave you with this grammar that I published at great expense to myself several years ago.”

  “We’ve all seen copies of it already, thank you,” Professor Couturat said.

  In reaction to the two Frenchmen, now both standing, Monsieur Gajewski hurried to gather his things, packing up his fiddle and muttering ill-tempered commands to Gaston, who I caught, at one point, gazing, I thought, a little too earnestly at me.

  (If he was, as in that moment I feared, the latest incarnation of Ita, there was little I could do, I told myself, to prevent his early death that evening at the hands of his enraged master, and I renounced for the thousandth time any thoughts I might have had of a Parisian dalliance with Ita. Clearly we wouldn’t be consummating our love any time soon!)

  CHAPTER 15

  The days passed and the sessions wore on.

  Idiom Neutral — the most recent reformation of Volapük — was presented to the committee by Eugène Monseur, a professor of Sanskrit from the University of Bruxelles. Professor Monseur’s demonstration — interrupted with twitters whenever
one of us, forgetting his academic title, addressed him simply as Monsieur Monseur — was less a positive defense of Idiom Neutral than a zealot’s denunciation of Esperanto.

  “All these -ajns and -ojns!” he complained. “One sounds like a Chinaman with a toothache! A Chinaman suffering from a rotten tooth that should be pulled out by its roots, by its Slavonic roots, gentlemen, if you understand my meaning.”

  A bit of historical elucidation here: Idiom Neutral was created by Volapükists who, having conceived a desire to preserve Volapük, replaced Father Scheyler’s strange inventions with variants more resembling those of western European speech until the language bore no relationship to Volapük at all.

  “You see where these reforms will lead you?” Rector Boirac whispered to me, as Monsieur Monseur took his leave, although not quietly enough that the rest of the committeemen didn’t hear him. “Ah, speaking of which, here’s the marquis now. Sinjoro Markizo!” he cried, standing up.

  The Marquis de Beaufront strutted into the chamber, twirling his cane. “Ho! Karaj amikoj!” he cried, heading for our chairs. Pulling me to his chest, he pressed his lips against each of my cheeks, leaving a moist impression. Clasping my hand between both of his, he intoned: “Forteco, kuraĝo, eleganteco, ĉu ne?” He made a great show of speaking Esperanto with the rector and afterwards with Professor Couturat, who nodded blankly, so that I doubted, despite his claiming to be an Esperantist, that he understood unu vorton de kio diris la markizo.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen, to order!” Professor Ostwald pounded his gavel.

  “Oui,” Professor Leau concurred, briskly clapping his hands.

  Professors Jespersen and Baudouin left off their conversation and returned to their seats, as did the rest of us. A waiter from the collège refilled our cups. A few committeemen lit cigarettes or pipes, and everyone settled in.

  “We all know the marquis, I believe?” Professor Couturat said. “Welcome, Monsieur Marquis. Gentlemen, the Marquis de Beaufront has graciously elected to take time away from his young charges to speak with us today about Esperanto, isn’t that right, Monsieur Marquis? And how are the children?”

  Le Marquis Pierre Josselin Gerard Eugène Albert Louis de Beaufront looked at Professor Couturat with a wounded sense of incomprehension: why, before such an illustrious committee, would the professor refer to the fact that having lost his fortune, the poor fellow must now tutor the children of his wealthier friends? Reading through his pince-nez, held at chest level in his hand, he busied himself with papers he’d taken from a leather portfolio. “They’re well, Professor,” he answered tartly, letting the spectacles fall against his vest.

  “Gentlemen,” he said in that velvety and solemn voice of his, “illustrious friends, dear colleagues. I speak to you today on behalf of Dr. Zamenhof, who, in abiding, as others have not, by the restrictions imposed upon him by your august committee, has remained far from these proceedings and has elected me, in his stead, to present and defend — yes, and to defend, if it comes to that” — in jest, he affected the stance of a pugilist, to no small laughter — “the one artificial language in the world that needs no introduction and no defense at all.”

  He shook his head at us, as though he were a schoolman confronting a gang of rowdies. “I daresay, were it not for the great renown and practical success achieved internationally by Esperanto, none of us would be here today. This committee and the delegation it represents would not exist. Certainly none of you men would be taking time away from his essential endeavors to concern himself with as quixotic a chimera as a world language.”

  The marquis turned his back on our table, strolled over to the tall windows, and gazed out through them. “The fall of Volapük, wounded first by its own deficiencies, and then killed like Othello” — he spun around dramatically — “by its former friends, did much harm to our cause, and as a consequence, Esperanto had to pitch its tent on a wind-swept ledge where the world said nothing could survive, and yet, in that high and rocky place, gentlemen, we have not only survived, we have flourished!”

  I can only reproduce this scene now with chagrin. This should have been the marquis’ finest hour, the culmination of his twenty long years of self-sacrificing devotion to our cause. For twenty years, when it came to the question of Esperanto, the marquis had been the staunchest of conservatives, and in that hour, he championed his position (a position, I might add, even more extreme than Dr. Zamenhof’s) with a fiery elegance. Had it all ended here, without its subsequent and multiple dénouements, there might now be de Beaufront Streets running alongside the many Zamenhof Streets throughout the world or at least (as would perhaps be more appropriate) crossing them at every turn.

  Instead one need only consult an atlas to realize that there are none.

  With more pathos than I’d ever heard it before, the marquis next recounted the story of his abandoning Adjuvanto. “Gentlemen, I, the son of nobility and a student of Müller’s, was neither too proud nor too foolish to submit to another man’s greater genius, though he was a nobody, not a grand intellectual like ourselves, but an impoverished oculist with no formal training in the lingual arts, and as it turns out, a Jew.” His nostrils flared, and his tone grew even more oleaginous. “On the contrary, it was with love in my heart for all mankind that I burned my own project in a self-inflicted auto-da-fé: dictionaries, grammars, flash cards, the works! The chambermaid, hearing a fire crackling on the hottest day in July, ran into my rooms, thinking to save me from some dire mishap. Understanding everything in a glance, she threw herself upon the fire, plunging her hands into the flames to save whatever remnant she could, singeing herself pitiably. ‘Non, non, old mother,’ I cried. ‘Non, non! Let it go, let it burn.’ ‘But, Master, your work!’ she wept, as I salved her burnt fingers with my tender kisses.”

  Moved to silence by his own words, the marquis stared at an empty space in the room, as though seeing the scene before him once again. We were all silent for a moment, until, coughing, Professor Jespersen cleared his throat and said, “I’d like to address the question of the supersigns, if I may?”

  The marquis, regaining his composure with apparent difficulty, replied, “By all means, by all means, certainly.”

  Professor Jespersen stood and removed his glasses. “It appears to me,” he said, twirling them by their stems, “that, here, Idiom Neutral has the advantage over Esperanto, possessing as it does a natural alphabet unblemished by circumflexed consonants that Esperanto alone, of the hundreds of languages we’ve studied so far, dares to offer to the world.”

  These two combatants, sizing each other up, proceeded to joust over the supersigns, the accusative endings, the plural -js, and a host of other philological concerns, the marquis parrying each of Professor Jespersen’s potentially lethal thrusts with consummate skill, I thought. Their debate was enthralling, and the marquis’ performance — deft, witty, inspiring — left the men of the committee stimulated and amused.

  SO MUCH SO, in fact, I imagined the marquis’ presentation might prove decisive for the committee. However, the discussion that followed it turned quite fractious.

  “I say we’ve heard enough!” Rector Boirac surprised everyone by pushing away from the table, his forehead flushing scarlet. “How much longer can this go on? Yes, it’s been a fascinating intellectual voyage. Marvelous that so many cranks and eccentrics can scare up cab fare to appear in the Fifth Arrondissement, each with his own more or less inadequate scheme. Gentlemen, gentlemen!” Rector Boirac was forced to raise his voice as the others grew restive. “I move that this committee immediately vote to accept Esperanto en bloc and let this exercise in intellectual pharisaism end so that we can all go home to our wives and our dinner, happy to have contributed to the welfare of mankind.”

  “The table recognizes Professor Jespersen,” Professor Ostwald barked above the commotion Rector Boirac’s outburst had pulled in its train, pounding his gavel like a smithy hammering an anvil. Professor Jespersen unfolded his long body and stood with his han
ds pinioning his coattails against his hips. He scowled in Rector Boirac’s direction, before turning, in this guise, to take in every face around the table.

  “Perhaps it would have been more prudent of me, like many of our good friends, to have remained a distant observer of this committee and its goals.” He laughed grimly and shook his head. “Certainly doing so would have spared me many a vexation.” Inside the opening of his beard, his mouth became a bloodless line. “There have been too many days of work and too many nights without sleep since this whole rigmarole began!”

  “Hear, hear!” everyone chorused.

  “However,” he raised his hands to silence the grumbling he himself had elicited, “because of a certain impetuosity in my nature, once I have determined which course is right, it is impossible for me to remain passive. Now,” he said sharply, “Rector Boirac is correct. Perhaps our good secretaries have been too meticulous, too thorough in their researches. It’s a failing we all, as scholars, should aspire to, and let me be the first to say it: Bravo, Messieurs Couturat et Leau! Bravo!”

  “Bravo, congratulations, good work, gentlemen!” was heard around the table.