A Curable Romantic

by Joseph Skibell

  “However,” Professor Jespersen silenced us again, “in contradiction to what Rector Boirac maintains, a number — a very small number, granted — but a number of worthy candidates for an international language have shown themselves in the course of our discussions and — forgive me, Rector Boirac — if I insist upon insisting” — he had begun to lose his temper — “that in a matter of such consequence for the whole of mankind, it will not do to leave a final choice to mere chance — ”

  “Mere chance?” Rector Boirac barked out.

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

  “ — nor,” Professor Jespersen shouted down both men, “to the most vociferous of propaganda campaigns!”

  “Do you realize what an idiot you’re sounding?” Rector Boirac nearly screamed.

  “I won’t be threatened or intimidated,” Professor Jespersen called back.

  “What do you propose? What is Professor Jespersen proposing?” Rector Boirac attempted to draw the table into the argument. “That we tear down our twenty years of building? Burn the books we’ve published for more than twenty years? Destroy the printing houses, disband our organizations?”

  “Certainly no one is suggesting that,” Professor Couturat replied fretfully.

  “Sir,” Professor Jespersen spoke more mildly, “I am not, as you well know, a practical man. I am, rather, a scientist, and I can only examine the matter before me with scientific detachment and clarity. Were I asked to judge the question of which language has most successfully built up its structures and marshaled its resources, then, of course, I would honestly concede, and gladly so, to Esperanto.” Rector Boirac and Professor Jespersen looked sadly into each other’s faces. “But that is not the question we have been called here to decide. Rather, we’re here to decide which language is best, not which has been the most successfully propagandized.”

  “Volapük lived and died, Otto,” said a Dr. Förster who, along with a Dr. Bouchard and a Professor Eötvös, was attending the proceedings that day. “Let it rest in peace.”

  “Let us be honest.” Professor Jespersen dropped his shoulders. “Let us speak plainly with one another, shall we? We all know that there are simply too many unreasoned and eccentric idiosyncrasies in Esperanto” — Rector Boirac nearly coughed up his coffee — “deriving no doubt,” Professor Jespersen continued over the commotion, “and I say this with only admiration for Dr. Zamenhof’s bold assay — deriving no doubt from the fact that the man is not a linguist.”

  “Not a linguist?” Professor Baudouin said. “Otto!”

  “He’s an oculist, for God’s sake!” Professor Jespersen laughed, straightening his tie. “Why, I’d no sooner presume to suggest he allow me to write my own prescription for eyeglasses!” Laughter rose up from the table on all sides, bathing Professor Jespersen in its warmth.

  “So what do you suggest, then?” Rector Boirac thundered.

  Professor Jespersen exhaled furiously. The polemics were clearly wearing on his nerves. “What do I suggest?” He returned to his seat. “A simple and elegant principle, and one with which our friend Ostwald here would no doubt agree, as it uses the least amount of energy to attain the greatest amount of good for the largest number of people.”

  “Oh?” Professor Ostwald said, intrigued.

  “I suggest, simply, that in assessing the internationality of a word, we count up the number of people who know that word already in some form in their native language and cleanse the vocabulary of whatever language we decide must be our committee’s choice from the obscure and little known choices resorted to by Dr. Zamenhof, who quite obviously worked without regard to scientific principle!”

  “Then,” Professor Baudouin raised his voice, glowering at the men before him, “we have no other work before us today than to vote Chinese in as the international language and be done with it!”

  “Chinese?” Professor Eötvös said.

  “What does Chinese have to do with an international language?” Dr. Bouchard said.

  Professor Baudouin had not finished. “You gentlemen from the western half of Europe have fallen once again, as you so often do, into the trap of thinking your small principalities represent some superior norm. The elements you can’t abide in Dr. Zamenhof’s Esperanto are precisely what make it so appealing to the majority of Europeans. Simply because a man is a Pole or a Russian does not mean he can’t have an original or a superior thought!”

  “You’re saying then, I take it,” Professor Jespersen challenged him, “that Esperanto simply can’t be improved?”

  “Don’t be an ass, Otto. Of course, it can be improved, just as French or German can be improved. However, just as I wouldn’t presume to dictate those improvements to the French or the German, neither would I do so with the Esperantists, who represent a substantial community of speakers. Rather, we must leave these sorts of changes up to the actual — ”

  At the word ass, however, the uproar Professor Baudouin caused drowned out the rest of what he was saying.

  “We have a committee that oversees such things,” Rector Boirac shouted, though no one seemed to be listening to him. “There are procedures! There are rules!”

  “I thought you were here as a private citizen, Rector Boirac,” Professor Jespersen said abrasively.

  “A private citizen who just happens to be the president of the Esperanto Language Committee,” Dr. Bouchard said chidingly.

  “Look,” Professor Jespersen ripped his glasses from his face and threw them down upon his notepad, “a language must change or die. You cannot impose your will upon a living language.”

  “That’s true for a natural language, Otto,” Professor Baudouin said, “but not for an artificial one!”

  “Oh, rubbish!” Professor Jespersen complained.

  “Do you really think, Otto,” Professor Ostwald asked, “that Idiom Neutral with its fifteen verb forms can be made to work worldwide?”

  “No, of course not, not as it stands now, but we would change all that with improvements.”

  “But that is not the mandate of this committee!” Rector Boirac roared.

  Exhausted by the bickering, I left the chamber and hurried to the nearest door, my shoes clacking against the marble floors of the hallway. Outside, the sky was grey and the air was sharp with the threat of winter. Taking refuge beneath a barren tree, I lit a small cigar and took a calming puff.

  “Hey, since when are you smoking again?” Loë said.

  “Ah, what are you doing here?” I exhaled, greeting her. With my gloved hand, I stirred the cloud of smoke until it thinned.

  “You know I don’t approve.”

  “No, and neither do I.”

  “Still, give us a puff all the same.”

  Glancing over her shoulders to make certain no one was watching her, Loë accepted my cigar. With her head lowered, she took in a mouthful of smoke. “I’ve come to take you to lunch, Kaĉjo. How has the day been so far?”

  “Oh God! Terrible, just awful, in fact! No, I have such a headache! Just look at me!” I lifted my hands to show her how much they were trembling. I paced back and forth, the gravel of the cinder path crunching beneath my shoes. “None of the procedures are being followed! Inventors are presenting their own languages! A Professor Peano, after presenting his own language, was invited to sit on the committee! And no one can agree on anything! I mean, what good is an international language if there’s more than one? Do you see what I mean?”

  In this vexed state of mind, I couldn’t help eying Loë with a smallness of spirit. “I’ll light you your own, if you wish,” I addressed her sharply. She’d ceased passing back the cigar and was keeping it to herself, puffing in and out quickly, the smoke leaving her mouth in small staccato bursts.

  “Oh God, no,” she said. “You know how I hate these things.”

  Before I could stop her, she’d tossed the one-franc cigar onto the gravel and, raising her skirts, stamped it out with the toe of her shoe. “You shouldn’t be s
moking in any case. You’re not as young as you once were, you know.”

  “It’s absurd,” I said, lighting the other one I’d purchased. “The inventors can’t even speak to one another. Their years of selfless labor have left them with nothing but an idiolect, understood by one solitary person or, as in the case of Mr. Streiff’s Bopal, not even that!”

  “If the deficiencies of these other schemes are that obvious to you, Kaĉjo, surely the other men on the committee will see them.”

  “You’re right, you’re right,” I said.

  “They’re not fools. And after Esperanto is presented to the world as a fait accompli, no one will ever bother again about Dilpak or Blague Blague or whatever it’s called.”

  “Langue Bleu,” I said.

  “Where on earth do they come up with these names?”

  WE ATE OUR lunch at a café overlooking le pont St. Louis. Though I’d worried that it had been a mistake to ask Loë to join me on this trip, my fears were unfounded. Away from Vienna, beyond Herr Bernfeld’s unhelpful reach, we were discovering ourselves again. As I watched her slathering apricot jam upon her croissant, taking as much care with it as a bricklayer might with his trowel, I couldn’t help exulting in her beauty: her hands were so small; her fingers so elegantly articulated; her lips plump and pouty, as though they’d been stung by a bee. Delicate lines appeared on either side of her mouth whenever she chewed.

  What were the chances, I asked myself, given the sad history of my sentimental education, that I, Ya’akov Yosef Sammelsohn, might find myself in a pleasant café on a quiet street on an island in the Fourth Arrondissement overlooking the grey waters of the Seine with a beautiful woman who, acting upon her own desires, had become my wife?

  If I hadn’t already decided to renounce Ita forever, I would have done so then and there.

  “What if I skip the afternoon session?” I said to Loë, walking along the river back towards the collège. “We could go back to our hotel room and take a little nap.”

  I put my arms around her waist and leaned in to kiss her. She struggled to unclasp herself from the bracelet of my arms. “Not here! Kaĉjo!”

  “Isn’t it time we had a little infanon of our own?”

  “Perhaps, but this isn’t the place to talk about it.”

  “Let’s go back to the hotel then, and make a little idon, shall we?”

  “I admit it’s enticing,” she said, finally moving nearer to me.

  “And we’ll raise the little prince speaking only Esperanto, keeping him away from the harsh world of multiple international languages, as though he were the Buddha himself.”

  “All right, all right,” she said, and she kissed me, rising on the tips of her toes. “But not now.”

  “No?”

  “You’ve got work to do.”

  Another kiss. We were in Paris, after all.

  “Tonight,” she said. “I promise.”

  “Tonight then.”

  She took my arm and, like Ariadne, escorted me through the labyrinth of my own dour thoughts, back to the Collège de France. In that moment, I felt possessed of a perfect happiness. In Loë’s presence, everything made sense. The men of the committee will come to their senses, Professor Couturat will live up to the promises he had made (in writing, I might add) to Dr. Zamenhof. Esperanto will be endorsed by the committee as the international language. Little by little, the entire world will begin speaking it, an occurrence that will usher in a golden age. The dark world of separation and exile — known only too well to me from my childhood in Szibotya — will disappear, and with a dawning sense of excitement, and perhaps even with a sense of adventure, men will begin recognizing one another as brothers. Science and technology, no longer the private domain of separate nations, will progress rapidly as a worldwide endeavor, unhampered for the first time since the fall of Latin by a confusion of tongues. Man’s health and his living conditions, as a consequence, will improve; as privation and suffering disappear, the need for war will cease. No longer forced to live in fear, every man will tend to his garden until the entire world is one rich and thriving garden.

  Loë and I arrived back at the chamber as the presentation of Novlatin was ending and the committeemen were preparing to depart for lunch. Professors Couturat and Leau were leaving with Rector Boirac. A good sign, I thought, although when the rector caught my eye, he lifted his eyes to the ceiling and pantomimed an exaggerated sigh, his arms raised slightly, his palms exposed. I understood his gesture as a signal of chagrin — a lunch in the company of Messieurs Couturat et Leau could be a trial — though, in retrospect, I realized, he looked like a martyr being carried down from his cross.

  CHAPTER 16

  That evening, when Professor Ostwald insisted on buying drinks for everyone in a tavern across from the Sorbonne, I found it difficult to get away. Five drinks into it, he further insisted upon giving over his views on immortality and individuality and was stopped only when Professor Baudouin borrowed a guitar from one of the students and Professor Jespersen a fiddle, and the three men sang songs from their own university days. They were tipsy and sentimental, and the crowd of students who encircled them, aware of who these illustrious gentlemen were, loved it.

  “Thank you,” Professor Ostwald intoned, unsteady on his feet. “And I hope we’ve passed the audition.”

  “Where’s Couturat?” he said, joining me, a moment later, at the bar.

  “Dinner appointment.” I sipped my drink.

  “And Leau?”

  “No idea.”

  “Baudouin” — he pointed with his forehead towards the door, where the linguist could be seen leaving with two girls, one on each arm — “is off to one of his mysterious political confabulations. Best not to inquire too deeply there. That leaves only you and Jespersen and me, I suppose.”

  “For?”

  “Why, for dinner, of course! At my expense, naturally. No, I’m insisting.”

  THOUGH THE NIGHT air seemed to sober my companions, it did nothing to diminish their high spirits. “That’s the effect of Paris,” Professor Jespersen said, taking in a deep breath.

  “No, not of Paris,” Professor Ostwald corrected him, “but of the Latin Quarter. Don’t you feel it? I always feel like this when I’m here …”

  “Ah, yes,” Professor Jespersen concurred, looking about him, his eyes gleaming.

  “It has its own genius loci.”

  As we strolled past l’Église St. Séverin and la Bibliothèque de l’heure joyeuse, and a thousand and one other bookshops, I knew what my companions meant: the winding narrow streets of the quarter were vibrant with activity. All about us, students were lugging their books, and downing their coffees and their beers, immersed in philosophical inquiries. Everything lay before them; all roads remained equally open. Here, in this kingdom of the mind, I told myself, one could become anything one wished. Strolling through its streets in the company of these two dignitaries, I couldn’t help feeling I’d finally arrived where I always belonged.

  “Yes, that’s exactly it!” Professor Ostwald said, wrapping his ursine arm about my shoulder and rubbing my hair with his hand. “That’s exactly how I feel. As though I’m finally home indeed.”

  Professor Jespersen said, “It’s been a marvelous week, hasn’t it been?”

  “Em,” Professor Ostwald concurred, stroking his rosy-golden beard.

  “Even though,” Professor Jespersen added ruefully.

  “Ha!” Professor Ostwald laughed.

  “I know, I know!” I complained.

  “I could have done without those endlessly tedious demonstrations.”

  “What were they thinking!” Professor Ostwald shook his head.

  “Couturat and Leau,” I said, shaking mine.

  “Their book come to life, I suppose, day after day, before the eyes of a captive audience.”

  “Well, thank God that’s over and done with, and we can finally get down to what matters!”

  “And how do you see us proceeding?” I as
ked Professor Ostwald.

  “Excellent question,” he said, pulling me a bit closer to himself. “An excellent question. You’re an astonishingly excellent chap. Isn’t he, Professor Jespersen? An astonishingly excellent chap?”

  “Sammelsohn? Oh, yes. First rate. No doubt about it. Happy to have him on board.”

  “Well,” Professor Ostwald rubbed his hands together as he steered us into the restaurant he’d chosen, “my first action will be to found a scientific journal in the new language, a popular magazine, nothing too erudite, you understand. But we’ll need an editor. I couldn’t take on the responsibility myself.”

  “What about Sammelsohn here?” Professor Jespersen said, as the waiter showed us to our table.

  “But would he do it?” Professor Ostwald asked Professor Jespersen. “That’s the question.”

  “Well, I’m flattered to be considered for the position,” I said. “But of course I would. No, I will! Certainly, I’ll do it. The decision requires no further thought, gentlemen. Consider me in.”

  “Ah, excellent!” Professor Ostwald said.

  “Good,” Professor Jespersen said, “and I’ll make contributions on linguistics.”

  THE WAITER PLACED a napkin in my lap. I took a sip of water. Professor Ostwald had insisted I telephone Loë and invite her to join us. While we waited for her to arrive by taxi, Professor Ostwald ordered a few dishes in advance. Soon, a rare Chablis from the Château Duhart-Milon was perspiring in a brass tub at our table; plump oysters, garlanded by lemons and garlic, lay on a bed of iridescent ice; next to them were ramekins of caviar and a tray of escargot, with little tools for extracting the snails from their shells.

  “Here. Let me assist you with that,” Professor Ostwald said, taking the utensils from my hands and removing a number of escargot on my behalf. “It’s clear you’ve never eaten these before.”

  “No, I haven’t.” I laughed, abashed.

  With his large hands, Professor Ostwald squeezed a bit of lemon juice onto the snails and dipped them into the garlicky butter before laying them out on a tiny plate for me.