The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

by Alexander McCall Smith

  ‘I always have to do an hour or so’s reading before I go to bed,’ he announced. ‘And this sea air makes me so sleepy.’

  The ladies had nodded their agreement. It was very important, they felt, to get a good night’s sleep when at sea, and, indeed, on land as well.

  Von Igelfeld rose to his feet, thanked his hostess, and made his way out of the dining room. Frau Jens, who had been waiting for her moment, reached the door just as he did.

  ‘Why, Herr Professor!’ she said. ‘It’s you!’

  Von Igelfeld nodded weakly.

  ‘I was just going for a stroll on the deck,’ said Frau Jens. ‘It would be a great pleasure if you were able to accompany me.’

  Without waiting for an answer, she took him by the arm and led him away. Within the dining room there were sharp intakes of breath at several tables.

  ‘Did you see that!’ hissed Frau Martinhaus. ‘That shameless woman!’

  ‘Desperation knows no bounds,’ agreed her table companion. ‘ Inter arma silent leges.’

  ‘Auf Englisch könnte Mann sagen: Fat arms, tiny legs,’ said Frau Martinhaus, somewhat less than charitably.

  Von Igelfeld walked round the deck with Frau Jens for five minutes. Then, wresting his arm from her grip, he excused himself and rushed back to his cabin. There were several ladies in the corridor, and these stopped him briefly, under the pretext of finding out details of tomorrow’s lecture.

  ‘We shall all be there!’ said one of them brightly. ‘Notebooks at the ready!’

  Again, it took von Igelfeld several minutes to extricate himself, but eventually he succeeded in reaching the sanctuary of his cabin. Once inside, he locked the door firmly and collapsed into his chair. The day had been a nightmare from start to finish, and he wondered how he could possibly last out for two further weeks. It was all that journalist’s fault. If she had not asked him about marriage, then all these ladies would not have had the idea placed in their heads that he was a suitable candidate for them. Perhaps he could ask her to publish a correction: to say that there had been a misunderstanding, and that he actually was married? The problems with that scheme were that she would presumably refuse – as it would make her look foolish – and that it was inherently very improbable that anybody could make so fundamental a mistake. There seemed to be no way out of it: he would have to brave it out for the remaining two weeks, taking as many meals as possible in his cabin and remaining locked up there for as much of the day as was consistent with remaining sane.

  The next day, as it transpired, was even worse. Von Igelfeld was pestered from breakfast onwards, constantly being approached by ladies claiming to have an interest in Romance philology. When he retreated to his cabin there was no peace. Either the telephone rang, with an invitation from one of the ladies to join a bridge four or play table tennis, or there was a knock on the door from a caller with the same sort of invitation. The lecture, of course, was now even better attended, and the ladies attempted to outdo one another in donning their finest outfits and more extravagant jewellery. Hans-Dieter Dietermann’s audience had now gone down to three, and the third lecturer, who was giving a short series of talks on the history of Gibraltar, had nobody at all to listen to him.

  After a further two days, they reached Naples. Von Igelfeld, who had now completed his lectures, received numerous offers to have dinner ashore, but politely turned them all down. The ship stood offshore, rather than docking, and the passengers were conveyed to land in large launches hired for the occasion. Von Igelfeld’s launch was dangerously overloaded, as most of the ladies tried to secure a place on it once they knew he was on board, with the result that it almost overturned on the way in. For von Igelfeld, this was the final straw. When he got ashore, he rushed off, leaving the ladies, and hailed a taxi. This he instructed to take him to the railway station. Then, paying off the taxi driver, he gave him a substantial tip on the understanding that the driver would return to the harbour and leave word with the launch office to the effect that he had been called away on urgent business and was not returning on board for the rest of the cruise. It being Naples, however, where research has revealed that sixty-eight per cent of the population is profoundly dishonest, the taxi driver merely pocketed the money and did not perform this commission. But von Igelfeld was not to know this; he merely purchased a single ticket to Siena, via Rome, and boarded the next available train. He did not care about his possessions on board ship. These could be sent on to him when the ship returned to Hamburg. He had simply had enough: the whole venture had been misconceived from start to finish.

  The ship left Naples early the following morning. Von Igelfeld’s absence was noticed at eleven o’clock, when they were five hours out to sea. Enquiries were made and the Captain concluded that the most likely explanation was that he had gone ashore in Naples and simply not returned. This was investigated, and it was at this point that the disturbing information surfaced that the launch tallies added up. Three hundred and eighteen people had gone ashore in Naples and three hundred and eighteen appeared to have returned. This was a miscount, in fact; only three hundred and seventeen had returned, but in these circumstances the Captain was obliged to reach a more sinister conclusion.

  Man-overboard procedures were begun. The ship stopped in its tracks and a thorough search was made of the entire vessel. There were announcements made on the public-address system and the shocked passengers were asked if anybody had seen Professor von Igelfeld that morning. Unfortunately, at this point another fatal error was made. Two elderly sisters, of failing eyesight, went to report that they had seen him on the deck that morning at eight o’clock. He had been leaning over the rail, they said, and they were, moreover, sure that it was him. They had been at all his lectures and they knew exactly who he was. They had, in fact, been looking at one of the stewards, who was not yet in uniform, and who was looking out for flying fish at the time.

  The Captain ordered the ship about and a slow, melancholy search was made of the portion of sea which the ship had been traversing at roughly eight thirty that morning. Alas, nothing was found, and by the time light faded that evening the grim conclusion was reached that Professor von Igelfeld had been lost at sea. A signal was sent to the company in Hamburg and early the next morning a telephone call was made to the Institute of Romance Philology in Regensburg informing them of the tragedy.

  Von Igelfeld had reached Siena on the same day as his sudden departure from the ship and had spent the evening in his usual hotel there. The next morning he had contacted his friend, Professor Roberto Guerini, who had immediately invited him to spend some time on his wine estate near Montalcino. This suited von Igelfeld very well, and over the next few days there were many enjoyable walks through the woods and evenings spent in the company of his Italian friends. There was even a dinner party at the house of the Conte Vittorio Fantozzi, which was, as such occasions invariably were, a noted success.

  After the pleasant interlude in Montalcino, it was time to return home. Von Igelfeld, who had been provided by Guerini with clothing and a small suitcase, packed his bag and bade farewell to his friends. Then, thoroughly rested by the break, he caught an express train from Siena to Munich. When he arrived in Regensburg, he decided to go straight from the railway station to the Institute to deal with his mail. Then he would go home and answer the letters that had no doubt piled up there in his absence.

  Not having seen the German press while he was in Italy, he had of course failed to read the item which was carried by most of the nationals: GERMAN PROFESSOR LOST AT SEA! Nor had he read the fulsome tribute from Prinzel, quoted at length in the same newspapers, or the remarks of other members of the philological community, including Unterholzer, who had referred in most generous terms to Portuguese Irregular Verbs and had commented that it was a very great loss indeed that there would now be no successor volume. Even had he read these, he might not have expected to find, on his return to the Institute, that things had been changed, and that a new name had appeared on his
door.

  ‘Why are you in my room?’ he asked, as he opened the door of his office to find Unterholzer sitting at his desk.

  Unterholzer looked up, and turned quite white. It was as if he had seen a ghost.

  ‘But you’re dead!’ he blurted out after a few moments.

  ‘I most certainly am not!’ said von Igelfeld.

  ‘Are you sure?’ stammered Unterholzer.

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous, Herr Unterholzer,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘There are very few things of which we can be sure in this life, but that, I should have thought, is one of them.’

  ‘I see,’ said Unterholzer, lamely. ‘The only reason why I am here in this office is that the papers said that you had been lost at sea. I thought that you would like the thought of my having your office after you’d gone.’

  Von Igelfeld bristled. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ he said sharply. ‘I might well have quite different ideas.’

  Unterholzer had risen to his feet. ‘Oh, Moritz-Maria, I am so pleased that you are alive! I cannot tell you how sad I was . . . ’ He stopped as he realised his terrible solecism. He had addressed von Igelfeld by his first name, and they had only known one another for, what was it, fifteen years?

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he rapidly continued. ‘I didn’t mean to call you that. It was the emotion of the occasion . . . ’

  Von Igelfeld raised a hand to stop him. He was touched that Unterholzer, for all his faults, had been so upset at his death. One might even overlook his presumption in taking his room, or almost . . .

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ he said, adding, ‘Detlev.’

  It was a terrible effort for von Igelfeld to utter Unterholzer’s first name, but it had to be done.

  ‘Yes, Detlev, we have known one another for many years now, and it might be appropriate to move to first-name terms. So it will be du from now on.’

  Unterholzer looked immensely relieved. ‘Let us go down to the café and drink . . . ’

  ‘And drink a toast to Bruderschaft,’ said von Igelfeld kindly. It was good to be alive, he thought. Life was so precious, so unexpected in its developments, and so very rich in possibilities.

  They left the Institute and walked down to the café.

  ‘To Bruderschaft!’ said Unterholzer, raising his glass. ‘To brotherhood!’

  ‘To Brüderschaft!’ said von Igelfeld.

  They sipped at the wine. Outside in the streets, a passing band of students suddenly raised their voices in song, singing those wonderful haunting words of the Gaudeamus:

  Gaudeamus igitur,

  Juvenes dum sumus.

  Post iucundum iuventutem,

  Post molestam senectutem,

  Nos habebit humus,

  Nos habebit humus! 1

  Von Igelfeld smiled at Unterholzer. ‘Aut nos habebit mare!’2 he joked. And Unterholzer, who had not heard so good a joke for many years, laughed and laughed.

  1 Let us rejoice therefore / While we are young. / After a pleasant youth, / After a troublesome old age, / The earth will have us.

  2 Or the sea will have us!

  VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2004

  Text copyright © 2003 Alexander McCall Smith Illustrations copyright © Iain McIntosh

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

  Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any

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  systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer,

  who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of

  Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. First published in

  Great Britain in 2003 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd, Edinburgh.

  Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of

  Random House of Canada Limited.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948–

  The finer points of sausage dogs / Alexander McCall Smith.

  (Portuguese irregular verbs trilogy)

  “A Professor Dr von Igelfeld entertainment”.

  I. Title. II. Series: McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948–

  Portuguese irregular verbs trilogy.

  PR6063.C326F’.914 C2004-904091-X

  www.randomhouse.ca

  Typeset by Antony Gray, London

  Printed and bound in Canada

  www.randomhouse.com

  eISBN: 978-0-307-42858-5

  v3.0