by Stephen Fry
“Ah, gentlemen! And which one of you is Michael Young?”
Suppressing a grin, I raised a tentative hand and rose. He looked at me and nodded briskly.
“And you must be Steven Burns, young man?”
“Yes, sir,” said Steve.
“Very good, very good. I wonder if you would be kind enough to hang on here for a while? I may ask you to come and join us later.”
“No problem, sir.”
“Perhaps Virginia might be good enough to hunt up a cup of coffee or a soda for you? Do help yourself to magazines and so forth. Good, good. So, if you’d like to come in, Mr. Young, we can have a bit of an old chat.”
Taylor held open the door from the top, so I stepped under his arm and into the office, casting a rueful look at Steve over my shoulder.
“Why don’t you sit over there, old man?”
The office walls were paneled in dark wood, with a desk in front of the main window. A dimpled leather chesterfield ran along one wall, and it was at this that Taylor pointed.
“Do feel free to smoke. You won’t mind my old pipe, I hope?”
I shook my head and felt for the pack in my shorts. As he leaned forward to light a squashed Lucky I couldn’t help gasping out in surprise—
“St. Matthew’s!”
“I’m sorry?”
“That tie. You’re a St. Matthew’s man.”
He nodded gently and shook out his match. “I have that honor.” He pulled a chair from in front of his desk and set it in front of the sofa, settling into it slowly. “That’s not a tie many here recognize. Tell me what you know about the place.”
While I prepared an answer, he reached out a long hand and picked up a buff file from the desk and opened it.
I was presented with a problem. There was no point, that I could see, in my revealing all that I knew about Cambridge and England. So far as my record would show him, I was born and brought up in the United States. Any knowledge of the strange details of a collegiate university would be most unusual in an untraveled American. The natural show-off in me, however, wanted desperately to baffle him with my intimate understanding of all things English. It would be so hard for him to explain. Perhaps it would force him to believe in astral projection and out-of-body experiences. I was beginning to understand that I could have fun and power in this new world.
“Well,” I said. “It’s a Cambridge college, isn’t it?”
“You ever visited Cambridge, Michael?”
“Er, not exactly, but you know . . . I’m interested in English things. My parents and all . . . so I’ve read quite a lot.”
“Mm. You told Dr. Ballinger that you actually lived in Cambridge, I understand? Cambridge, England. And St. Matthew’s was the college you mentioned.”
“Ah . . .” I screwed up my face. “You see, I woke up really confused this morning. I couldn’t remember anything. Anything at all.”
“You could remember how to speak.”
“Well, yes . . . obviously.”
“Obviously?”
“Well, I mean, isn’t that usual with amnesia?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “You tell me, young fellow.”
We allowed a pause to develop. It seemed to me that it was a battle of wills. Taylor lost. “Tell me then,” he said, “what you know about Cambridge generally. Everything that comes to mind.”
“Well, it’s the second oldest university in England. After Oxford, of course. It’s made up of colleges. Names like Trinity, King’s, St. John’s, St. Catharine’s, St. Matthew’s, Christ’s, Queens’, Magdalene, Caius, Jesus, that kind of thing.”
“Spell ‘Magdalene’ for me.”
I cursed myself and did so.
“Good. Now spell ‘Caius.’”
Oh well, I thought. In for a penny . . .
Taylor made a note on a pad. “And yet you knew they were pronounced ‘maudlin’ and ‘keys,’ didn’t you?”
“Well, as I say, I’ve read a lot about them.”
“I wonder which books? Do you remember?”
“Er, not really, no. Just books.”
“I see. And what about Princeton? What do you know about Princeton?”
I ransacked my mind feverishly for every nugget Steve had disgorged that morning when we had walked through the campus. “Nassau Hall,” I said. “Named after Prince William of Orange-Nassau, though it could have been named after someone called Belcher, but he was too modest. Washington came there and signed the treaty of independence. No, that was Philadelphia, wasn’t it? Well, Washington did come here and it was the capital of the union for a time. We are allowed to fly the flag at night, something like that. There’s a gate you shouldn’t go through until you’ve graduated. The west end of campus is known as the Slums. Oh, you know, lots of stuff. Wawa Minimart. Sophomores. You know . . .” I gestured airily.
“Where’s Rockefeller College?”
“Er . . .”
“Dickinson Hall? The Tower?”
I gulped. “Excuse me?”
“And why, I wonder, did you say that Nassau Hall was named after Prince William of Orange-Nassau and might have been named after Jonathan Belcher?”
“Well, isn’t it true?”
“Yes, but you’re American, aren’t you?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Sure. I’ve just gotten this silly accent in my head at the moment. But it’s going all the time, I can feel it.”
“But you see, an American would never say that something was named after someone, would they? They would say it was named for them.”
“They would?”
“It’s one of those slight little differences. Everyone knows about sidewalks and pavements, flashlights and torches, drapes and curtains. But ‘named after’ and ‘named for’ . . . it’s very extraordinary that your change of accent should also include so precise a change of idiom. Don’t you think?”
I spread my hands. “I guess it’s on account of my parents,” I said. “I mean, they’re English after all. I probably picked it up from them, right?”
“Ye-e-s,” he said doubtfully. “They’ve been here a long time, however, and you were at high school and prep school in America, weren’t you?”
I sat dumbly, wondering where all this might lead.
“So let’s talk about your parents then, shall we?”
I looked at the carpet. “Sure,” I said. “What do you want to know?”
Taylor stood up and started to pace the room, fruitlessly lighting and relighting his pipe as he talked. “You know, this is all very peculiar, old chap. You’ve started littering the conversation with Americanisms like ‘I guess’ and ‘gotten’ and now you come up with ‘sure,’ complete with a hard American ‘r.’ You went to great lengths to persuade Dr. Ballinger that you were one hundred percent British, as English as the white cliffs of Dover, raised in Hampshire, and now you seem to be trying to convince me that you’re as American as apple pie and that your proper accent is returning as mysteriously as it disappeared.”
“Are you saying you don’t believe me?”
“I’m just trying to understand, old fellow. It all seems just a trifle inconsistent, doesn’t it? Much better we have the truth, don’t you think?”
“What is this, a police interrogation? I mean, damn it, I’ve met people here who know me. I’ve seen my driving license . . . fuck it, my driver’s license, my rooms in Henry Hall, credit cards, the works. I woke up with a bump on my head and a weird accent. That’s all there is to it. I thought the idea was that you and everyone else told me the truth. I’m the one with the fucked memory. All I want is to be able to get on with my life.”
“That’s all you want? To forget this ever happened, get on with your life and finish your tripos?”
“Yes! Exactly. I mean, that’s what I’m here for,
isn’t it?”
“And what are you reading?”
“Philosophy.”
“Well now you see I’m really puzzled. No university in the world except Cambridge uses the word ‘tripos’ to describe a degree course. And we at Princeton certainly do not use the word ‘read’ to mean ‘study.’ It’s all very difficult to understand.”
“Well bully for you, you’ve got a case study that can make your reputation. What’s the problem?”
“The problem, old chap, is that none of this makes sense.”
“So you think I’m lying? You think I’m trying it on? If so, great. Yes, you’re absolutely right. It’s all a con. A gag. A jape. A rag. Whatever the right word is. I’ve done it for a bet. I’m all better now. I’m as American as apple paah. You’re darn tooting, pardner, I’m a mean mothah-fuckah ’merican, and aah thiyunk, if it’s all the same to you, aah’ll be a-moseying along now apiece, thankee kahndly for your taahm, good suh.”
“Dear me!” said Taylor, eyebrows raised once more in full Alastair Sim astonishment.
“And if it comes to peculiar,” I added, “where the hell do you get off with all this ‘old chap,’ ‘old fellow,’ poker-up-the-arse business, hey? No real Englishman has talked like that for thirty years. You sound like a strangulated version of Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Never mind,” I said. “You won’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of Peter Sellers, have you?”
I could tell by his blank expression that he had not.
I suddenly realized that there might now be whole swathes of movies that never existed, movie actors whom the war and circumstance had pushed into stardom in my world but were unknown here. Strangelove, The Longest Day . . . good God, Casablanca. There was no Casablanca!
But then think . . . think of all the new movies from this world made in the last fifty years that I could catch up on.
Christ! I could make a fortune. I could write Casablanca! Damn it, I knew it nearly word for word, frame for frame. The Third Man! I could write that too . . . Stalag 17, The Great Escape, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Jesus . . .
Taylor had stopped pacing the room and was once more seated in front of me, swinging his legs open and closed so that I could see the wrinkled, sweat-stained crotch of his linen trousers.
“Now, listen to me, Michael. I’m going to be absolutely straight with you. Fair enough?”
I pushed the dreams of screenplay glory from my mind and nodded cautiously.
“I can’t pretend to you that I understand exactly what is going on inside your head. Hypnosis is one possibility, of course. Self-hypnosis another.”
“Are you suggesting that I . . . ?”
“I’m merely running through the possibilities, old chap. Someone may have hypnotized you, perhaps for a joke, perhaps for less savory reasons. It may be that you have done this to yourself, accidentally or deliberately; it’s very hard to tell. It may even be that you are not who you say you are.”
“What?”
“There are, of course, various tests that we could undertake.”
“Surely it’s just the result of a bump on the head. I mean that happens, doesn’t it?”
“Not in my experience, Michael, no. I think the best thing for us to do is to keep you under observation for a while.”
“But I feel fine. It’s wearing off, I can feel it.”
“I don’t necessarily mean confining you to bed. If you would agree to submit to some tests over the next few days, I think I can guarantee that you will be allowed to remain at liberty. It may be better if you handed in your driver’s license, however. We wouldn’t want you wandering off. After all, I’m sure you can understand the . . . er, implications of all this?”
“Implications?” I said, baffled to hell. “What implications?”
“It might be a good idea if we were in touch with your parents. You haven’t telephoned them yourself?”
“I don’t even know their . . .” I began, then stopped myself. “That’s to say, I don’t even know they’re at home at the moment,” I said. “I mean, they’re probably at work. I didn’t want to worry them.”
“Nonetheless, I’m sure someone will be in touch. Now, if you wouldn’t mind waiting outside, I’d like a word with Mr. Burns.”
I stopped myself just in time from asking who the creosoted fuck Mr. Burns might be, realizing he meant Steve, and walked dazed to the door, Taylor’s long arm around my shoulder and my driver’s license in his hand.
Arrangements were made that the very next morning I would report to the Faculty of Psychology’s laboratories for testing. Meanwhile, Steve was lumbered with me once more.
He seemed subdued on the way back through the campus.
“What did he say to you?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing,” he replied, “just asked me things. You know, how long I’d known you, stuff like that.”
“This is a real bore for you, isn’t it?” I said. “You know, if you want to leave me alone, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
“Can’t do it, Mikey. You’d get lost and it’d be my fault. ’Sides,” he added tactfully, “it wouldn’t be fair. You need someone.”
I considered this. “Thanks,” I said. “I know I keep thanking you, but thanks anyway.”
He shrugged.
“What did Taylor mean though,” I asked, “when he said that there were ‘implications’ to all this?”
Steve shook his head resolutely. “What say we talk about something else?”
I wanted to ask him so many things. I wanted to know about history. I wanted to know everything there was to know about the history of the last sixty years. Sixty-three years. European history since 1933. I wanted to know who the movie stars were, the rock stars, the president damn it. The president, the prime minister, everything. I realized such questions would freak him out, so I stilled my tongue. I would slip away later and find a library.
Firstly, I felt, I owed him something.
“Hey, how about this?” I offered. “How about we slide over to the Barrister and Alchemist and have ourselves a drink?”
“Alchemist and Barrister,” he corrected mechanically.
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I’m not saying, get hammered or anything. You never know, a little alcohol and I may just click out of it all and be my old self again.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “But easy on the vodka.”
“Easy on the vodka,” I promised, thinking of Jane and May Week parties.
The Alchemist and Barrister was low and dark and inviting inside. The barman there seemed to know me and winked with the distant friendliness one gets to recognize in those who work in university towns. Students are all jerks, the wink seemed to say, but you spend money and we know how to look as if we think you’re cool and interesting.
Steve and I sat outside drinking pleasant English-style beer under a long canvas awning, watching people walk by. At the table next to us, two men in plaid shortsleeved shirts were looking at a map and arguing over walks.
“I suppose you get a lot of tourists coming here?”
Steve shrugged. “A lot for New Jersey, I guess.”
“Those two might see the map better if they took off their dark glasses,” I said, blowing out a contented cloud of tobacco smoke. “But I suppose tourists are tourists everywhere.”
Steve nodded distractedly and took a sip of beer.
“You’ll think I’m mad, I know,” I said, “but I’m supremely happy at the moment.”
“Yeah?” Steve sounded surprised. “How come?”
“You wouldn’t understand if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“I’m happy because when I asked you earlier, you told me that you’d never heard of Adolf H
itler.”
“That made you happy?”
“You can have no idea what that means. You’ve never heard the names Hitler or Schickelgruber or Pölzl. You’ve never heard of Brunau, you’ve never . . .”
“Brunau?”
“Brunau-am-Inn, Upper Austria. It’s not even a name to you and that makes me the happiest man alive.”
“Well that’s jake for you.”
“You’ve never heard of Auschwitz or Dachau,” I bubbled. “You’ve never heard of the Nazi Party. You’ve never heard of . . .”
“Woah, woah,” said Steve. “Okay, so I’m not like Mr. Knowledge, but what do you mean I’ve never heard of the Nazi Party?”
“Well, you haven’t, have you?”
“Are you nuts?”
I stared at him. “You can’t have done. It’s impossible.”
“Oh sure,” said Steve, wiping froth from his lips, “and I’ve never heard of Gloder and Goebbels and Himmler and Frick, right? Hey look out!”
Steve grabbed my wrist to straighten the bottle in my hand. A fizzing lake spread on the table between us and over the edge flowed drop after drop of dark cold beer.
POLITICAL HISTORY
Party animals
“The Sternecker Brewery?” Gloder repeated, striving to keep the contemptuous disbelief from his voice.
Mayr smiled. “This is Munich, Rudi. Everything that happens in Munich has something to do with beer, you know that. Hoffman’s three thousand radicals met in the Löwenbräu. Leviné began his April revolution in a beer hall, the unemployed Augsburg scum met in the Kindlkeller, the last of the Jew Bolsheviks were shot in a beer hall. It is only fitting, after all: the politics of this city run on beer just as the war ran on petrol.”
“And why should I spend a hot evening listening to yet another gathering of crankish professors and crazed Thulists?”
“Rudi, my department is short of men I can trust. I need reliable Vertrauensmänner, spokesmen, observers and organizers who can talk sense to all these groups and spot the dangerous ones. Only last week there was an ex-Corporal whose dependability I could have sworn to—Karl Lenz, Iron Cross with Oak Leaf, impeccable references from his Brigade Major. I needed a man to go to Lechfeld, which we believed to be Bolshevistically and Spartacistically contaminated . . . don’t scowl, that’s the current jargon, not my fault . . . so I sent this Lenz as part of an Aufklärungskommando to speak about the Terms and explain the army’s views on political groupings. Turns out he was secretly some sort of Red himself. Lauterbach tells me he persuaded half the people gathered there that Lenin was a better bet than Weimar. You see the kind of thing I’m up against.”
