*
The next morning, I took a hearty European feast in the downstairs breakfast room (ham, cheese, salami, strawberries, melon, yoghurt, bran and buttermilk, if I remember rightly), and then set out, with plenty of time to spare, for my meeting with Professor Doktor Otto Codicil. By ten thirty I was already in the square outside fragile and mournful Votivkirche. As I’ve said already, Vienna does not in the end neglect its great men, and not even the one who explored the deeper dreams of the city of dreams, the stranger desires of the city of desire, who was then expelled by the Nazis, and who ended his days sadly in Hampstead, dying just one year more than fifty years before. The square outside the church, I gathered from my various maps and guides, had passed through several names and several histories – Dollfuss-Platz, maybe Hitler-Platz, certainly Roosevelt-Platz. Today it was Sigmund Freud-Park; in fact a statue of the old couch-artist stood there, pigeons roosting on its head, a plaint about human reason on its base. Freud hadn’t liked Vienna; Vienna felt much the same way about Freud. Now, though, he seemed to be enjoying almost a Mozartian revival. The newest operatic work to open in the city was, according to all the posters, Freudiana, and offered ‘the findings of Sigmund Freud, fantastic dreams’ – I bet – ‘and celestial-sounding music – the ingredients of Vienna’s latest musical.’ Soon, I realized, we’d all be out buying Freudkugeln (‘the sweet heritage of Sigmund’) and chocolate Wolfmen. So goes the world.
I stood outside the Votivkirche, and looked around. To one side stood the fine late-nineteenth-century buildings of the University of Vienna, decked out, like all university buildings, with its fair share of graffiti, the quick, modern way to publish. To the other were various notable buildings, and one of them, I suddenly realized, was the Hotel de France. And there, coming out of the beflagged entrance, ushered by a doorman, I was sure I saw Lavinia. The doorman helped her into a horse-drawn landau, and she jangled off, doubtless on another demanding day of producer’s duties. Stopping the passersby who were emerging from the metro at the Schottenpassage, I found one who spoke English, and was able to direct me to the Café Karl Kraus. This lay just round the corner in a sidestreet, one of those grandly elegant Secession cafés of which Vienna is still full. Looking through the window, I saw many tables, each of them overhung with fine brass lily-shaped lamps. At them, I saw, as I lifted the heavy door curtain and went inside, sat portly middle-aged people, people of substance; the men were mostly in loden coats, the women in embroidered blouses and porkpie hats with birdfeathers stuck in them. All had big winter boots on, and all of them were drinking coffee and reading newspapers stuck on very long wooden sticks.
An elderly and dignified head waiter approached me; ‘Grüss Gott, mein Herr,’ he said, looking me up and down. ‘Good morning,’ I said, ‘I’m looking for the professor.’ He looked at me strangely; I saw that many of the customers had set down their cakes and were raising their heads from their newspapers to inspect me. ‘You want the professor?’ he asked. ‘Yes, please, the professor,’ I said. ‘But, mein Herr,’ he said, ‘all the people here are professors. Over there, Herr Professor Doktor Stubl, the clinician, over there Herr Professor Magister Klimt, economistic. Over there is Herr Professor Hofrat Koegl, and over there Professor Doktor Ziegler, the famous Kritiker. Bitte, mein Herr, which professor?’ The professors were now all looking at me interrogatively, as if I had just arrived, late, for a viva on an examination in which I had not done at all well. ‘Professor Doktor Otto Codicil,’ I said. ‘Of course, the professor!’ said the maître d’, ‘He is at his usual table. Please to follow me.’ So I followed him right through the midst of the prodigious academic gathering to an alcove at the further end of the café, where behind curtains two men sat in conversation over coffee and cakes.
One was in his fairly late middle years, grey-haired, very large, formidably burly, and wearing an embroidered loden jacket that, for all its spacious fitting, somehow nowhere near contained his bulk. His companion was a good deal younger, little more than a youth. The maître d’ detained me with his arm for a moment, and went and whispered in the ear of the larger, older man. He put down his fork, turned, and stared at me analytically for some seconds. Then he rose enormously to his feet, came towards me, and held out an enormous hand. ‘My dear sir,’ he said, ‘Must I take it you are last night’s blandisher from the world of the ephemera?’ ‘I’m the man from British television,’ I said. ‘Exactly so,’ he said, ‘Professor Doktor Otto Codicil.’ ‘I’m Francis Jay,’ I said. ‘Then please be so kind as to join me at my table,’ he said, ‘But first before you sit down please meet my assistant, Herr Gerstenbacker. Our excellent young Gerstenbacker writes with me his habilitation and officially assists me in a variety of smallish ways.’
By now Gerstenbacker, too, had risen to meet me, his small face beaming beside and beneath Codicil’s great one. In appearance he seemed no more than eighteen, but he clearly made it his business to appear much older. He wore perfectly round spectacles, a small moustache, a black jacket, and a high-winged collar with a black bow tie. He bowed at me politely, remained standing to push my chair into position under me, and then said, ‘Welcome. Please, have a cake.’ ‘Gerstenbacker keeps an eye, or perhaps I had better say an ear, on my English,’ said Codicil, chuckling. ‘It is not necessary,’ said Gerstenbacker hastily, ‘Professor Codicil has a perfect English. He has once been the President of the Anglo-Austrian Friendship Society.’ ‘For my sins,’ said Codicil, ‘You must address it sometime. I will merely drop a word to my friend your British Ambassador.’ ‘I’m afraid there wouldn’t be time for that,’ I said, ‘I’m only here in Vienna for a couple of days.’ ‘Is that really?’ said Codicil, looking pleased, ‘So this is quite a fleeting sort of a visit, as they say. A here today and gone tomorrow affair.’ ‘Almost,’ I said. ‘Then maybe you will not mind if I am frank at once,’ said Codicil, looking me over again, ‘To me you are not at all what I expected.’ ‘No?’ I said, ‘What had you expected?’
Codicil leaned forward. ‘I had imagined,’ he said, ‘that someone seriously devoted to the difficult study of Criminale would be, and let me say I mean now no offence, of much older years and much greater stature. As I say, this means no offence. But you are a young man, no older than Gerstenbacker, a neophyte at the mysteries. Now please, do you prefer this cake, or that one? Or have both, or something else altogether? No need to hold your horses. Remember, this tab is entirely on me.’ ‘I’d just like coffee, if you don’t mind,’ I said, resisting this atmosphere of a school treat. ‘I think you like very much our coffee,’ said Gerstenbacker, as Codicil leaned back in his chair and waved his arm imperiously at the waiter, ‘I know the British admire it very much. I have been there, to your country.’
‘Yes, our young friend Gerstenbacker writes his thesis for me on a very interesting topic, Empirical Philosophy and the English Country House,’ said Codicil, ‘You are familiar with the British tradition of linguistic empiricism, important, of course, though in no sense as important as that of German idealism.’ ‘But quite important, don’t you think?’ asked Gerstenbacker anxiously. ‘Absolutely.’ I said. Gerstenbacker beamed. ‘Gerstenbacker’s proposal is that this tradition ignores the major continental heritage because your philosophers were all aristocrats or persons of Bloomsbury, for whom thinking was part-time,’ said Codicil. ‘The Country House is the home of the amateur spirit,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘That is why I concentrate there. Also these are very nice places to visit.’ ‘Of course I have told Gerstenbacker he too is a mere neophyte at the mysteries,’ said Codicil, ‘Really he must study for ten more years at least before he begins to understand anything. His real life of the mind has yet to begin. Isn’t it so, Gerstenbacker?’ ‘Exactly so, Herr Professor,’ said Gerstenbacker humbly.
Codicil suddenly turned to me. ‘And so, you think you have read my book?’ he asked. ‘As well as I could,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid my German is nowhere near as good as your English.’ Codicil beamed, then thought visibl
y, then frowned. ‘Then you have not read my book,’ he said, ‘To know a book you must know the soul, the heart and above all the tongue of the writer.’ ‘That’s why I wanted to meet you,’ I said. ‘To gather up my soul, my heart, and my tongue?’ cried Codicil, ‘Believe me, these treasures are not for sale. They can only be won by a lifetime of effort. And you also say you have read Criminale?’ ‘Quite a bit,’ I said. ‘The matter with Martin Heidegger?’ he asked. ‘The quarrel over irony?’ I countered. ‘Tell me,’ said Codicil, ‘do you accept that Criminale grasps both horns of the Heideggerian dilemma?’ ‘Well, perhaps one horn rather better than the other,’ I said. Codicil looked at me, considered, then clapped me heartily on the back. ‘I agree with you!’ he said, chuckling, ‘Heidegger was too clever an old fox to be defeated so easily. I knew him well, you see.’ ‘Of course the Professor has known everybody,’ said Gerstenbacker.
‘Including Doctor Criminale,’ I said. Codicil looked coolly at me for a moment. ‘Only so-so,’ he said, ‘We were never what is called intimate.’ ‘I suppose he was a student of yours?’ I asked. ‘Of mine, no, never, not at all,’ said Codicil, emphatically, ‘I think in your ignorance you mistake our two ages. I am hardly older than he is. Further when he was here in Vienna after the war he studied only Pädagogie, never Philosophie. I know him only as one scholar knows another. We have had many congresses together, and so on.’ ‘But he’s in Vienna quite often?’ I asked. ‘Vienna is but one of his many home from homes, you know. Or shall I say homes from home?’ ‘Homes from homes?’ suggested Gerstenbacker. ‘And it was on visits like that he gave you the biographical material for the book?’ I asked. ‘A book, well, better call it a small hommage,’ said Codicil, ‘A hat one doffs to an academic confrere. It is hardly the most notable of my works.’ ‘But it’s the key work on him, and it’s full of good personal information,’ I said, ‘In fact he seems to have told you everything.’
Codicil stared at me, then laughed. ‘Everything, and what is everything?’ he asked, ‘Who has ever known everything, except Our Good Lord above. There is no everything. Do we begin to know everything about ourselves? Remember Wittgenstein, now you are in Vienna. What did he say? “How could I expect you to understand me, when I barely understand myself!” Or as Criminale himself put it better: “Where is the man who can even begin to name himself?”’ He smiled blandly at me. I knew very well that the role of elusive thinker and questioner had an undying charm for his whole profession, but I felt that he was using the art to divert me, so I ploughed on. ‘But Criminale did give you many of the biographical facts of your study?’ I asked. ‘A fact, explain me, what is a fact?’ asked Codicil, starting the fancy philosophical footwork all over again. ‘By a fact I just mean the plain simple details,’ I said, ‘Like where he actually was born, who his parents were, where he studied, who he married, who taught him, who influenced him.’ ‘But any ordinary scholar could find all this,’ said Codicil. ‘Not really,’ I said, ‘There seems to be an awful lot of misinformation around about Criminale.’
‘So, about what?’ asked Codicil. ‘About how he left Bulgaria after the war, how he got here to Vienna,’ I said, ‘About how he got on with the Marxist authorities, about his political attitudes. Half the stories contradict one another.’ Codicil pulled a face. ‘These things are not all facts,’ he said, ‘They are interpretations. If you like to be a dry-as-dust sort of person, you may well believe in facts. But surely you do not come to the home of linguistic philosophy and the Vienna Circle to waste your time only on some little facts.’ ‘I believe you’re described as a historian as well as a philosopher,’ I said. ‘So?’ asked Codicil. ‘So how would you judge Criminale’s role in recent political history?’ ‘In intellectual history, please,’ said Codicil, ‘Here he is of utmost importance. The great thinker of our time.’ ‘But don’t you find some of his thought ambiguous and contradictory?’ I asked. ‘What thought is not?’ said Codicil, shifting heavily on his bentwood chair.
I tried again. ‘I’m talking about his dealings with the Communist Party and so on,’ I said. ‘My dear sir, allow me to say this to you,’ said Codicil at last, ‘To understand thought, you must first understand thinking, and where it occurs. In the mind and in history. To understand history, you must first have experienced it. I will confess to you I think you understand neither one of these things. There is a saying: to think greatly, you must also err greatly. I do not say Criminale erred. But we are talking of a great mind, the Nietzsche of our long, dark, dying century. We cannot presume even to begin to advise such a man, a man bigger than men, how to understand history, or interpret it correctly. We may merely observe how he has chosen to understand it. Do you follow me?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And you agree?’ ‘Well, no, not quite,’ I said, ‘I think everyone can be held responsible for their thinking.’
‘So I see,’ said Codicil, ‘What is the time, Gerstenbacker?’ Gerstenbacker looked at him blankly for a moment, and then said, ‘Oh dear, your lecture, Herr Professor. I think your students are already waiting you.’ ‘Quite, now that really is what our very young friend would call a fact. Please excuse me, sir, I have duties to perform.’ Codicil stood up, vast, and waved at the waiter. He had evidently had enough, if not too much, of me; I saw I was about to lose him. ‘One more question,’ I said, ‘Would you be willing to appear in our programme, just saying this?’ ‘Ever the sweet sweet blandishments of the media,’ said Codicil, opening his wallet wide to pay the waiter, ‘No, I am not. I am a busy man. I am a friend of ministers. I am extremely sorry, but I really have no time for your little ephemera.’ ‘Then may we stay in touch?’ I asked quickly, ‘Can we come to you for advice?’
‘If you have questions, pass them through Gerstenbacker,’ said Codicil, pulling on his topcoat, ‘I am giving you Gerstenbacker.’ ‘I beg your pardon?’ I asked, not understanding. ‘My young assistant has offered to show you Vienna, since I think you do not know it very well,’ said Codicil, ‘He will give you his best assistance in any researches you like to make. However I fear you will quickly find that not everyone in this city likes questions. Also I think you will discover there is almost nothing to learn of Criminale in Vienna. His main life was always elsewhere, in other cities. But Gerstenbacker is helpful and a very good fellow. And as he told you he was in Britain once, so he knows your ways. Wiedersehen, young man.’ And Codicil patted my shoulder, shook my hand very firmly, and, the great professor, walked out through the other great professors, nodding gravely here and there. Through the window I could see him turn in the street, and stride off, briskly, largely, and I thought angrily, in the direction of the university buildings. I had not, alas, much advanced my quest for Bazlo Criminale.
4
In his wing collar, Gerstenbacker sat there . . .
So my man had gone. All I had left was young Gerstenbacker, sitting there opposite me in his natty wing collar, looking at me eagerly. Evidently he was waiting for me to say something; I did. ‘Professor Codicil certainly speaks very good English,’ I remarked to him. ‘Of course, they say he speaks the best English in the world,’ said Gerstenbacker, with the simple admiration of the perfect Germanic research assistant, ‘Now what do you like to do with yourself? I think you do not know Vienna so well?’ ‘My first visit,’ I said. ‘Excellent,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘Then to start I will take you to see some things you ought to see, and then you can tell me those things you would like to see. By the way, the Spanish Riding School is closed, and the Belvedere is not yet open. But Vienna, you know, is many things.’ He took out a little handwritten list from his top pocket. ‘First we will start at the Hofburg, if this is all right, and then we will do some more things. I know you would like to see our gay Vienna. So now do we go?’
Seeing gay Vienna was not, I thought, going to help much in my search for Bazlo Criminale. On the other hand, there was Lavinia, engaging in naked tourism, and I could see no reason to refuse. At the same time I thought it was odd that Professor Codicil, apparent
ly so determined to be unhelpful in most things, should have assigned his little assistant to take such good care of me. Still, as long as I had Gerstenbacker’s company, my path back towards Codicil was surely not closed completely. ‘Okay, fine,’ I said, ‘Let’s go.’ ‘Wiedersehen, meine Herren,’ said the head waiter as the two of us, young neophytes at the mysteries, went through the academic conclave in the café and out into the chilly street. Once there, Gerstenbacker pulled up his collar, turned, and began marching briskly along the Ringstrasse, through its great parade of late-nineteenth-century Habsburgian buildings: the imperial and the civic, the academic and the political, the theatrical and the musical.
As he walked on, Gerstenbacker began a kind of continuous commentary: ‘Here once were the city walls where we defended Europe against the Turk. Then our Habsburg monarchs, who ruled so much of the world, decided to make an imperial city. First do you see the university. One day you must go inside and see the hall where are displayed all our great professors.’ ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘There the Burgtheater, there the Parliament building, here the Rathaus,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘This is Vienna.’ Outside the Rathaus, a Christmas street market was in progress. The chestnut sellers and the sausage fryers were all out; there were stalls stacked with elaborate ribboned candles, peasant woodcarving, great piles of gold and silver baubles, bags of biscuits. I stopped to witness a triumph of kitsch: a stall covered entirely in pink fabric and laden with thousands of pink toy rabbits. A fair-haired very pretty girl stood behind the counter, in a pink rabbit costume; she was teasingly running a rabbit glove puppet up and down her arm to tempt the children crowded round her to buy. ‘Isn’t that wonderful?’ I said, turning to Gerstenbacker; he had gone. Then I saw him, yards ahead, still striding briskly onward. ‘In front the Nature History Museum, then the Art Historical Museum, opposite the Heldenplatz . . .’ he was still saying, to no one in particular, as I caught him up.
Doctor Criminale Page 7
