Paperweight

by Stephen Fry

  As this is the first time in my entire life that I have been outside Cambridge, you can imagine that I have suffered something of a fright over the past few days. Culture shock is I believe the terminus technicus employed over here to describe the massive sense of derangement and abstraction one feels. I can hardly believe that a whole other planet could afford as many surprises as this single taut, urgent city.

  The first thing to tell others who have not visited this island conurbation is that the buildings here are very tall. Oh yes. Enormously tall. Simply very, very high. This is a fact. They just go up and up. Even as I speak I am on the twenty-first floor of a building, and still not yet a third of the way to the top. When examining Persian palimpsests of the Cyprian dynasty on the sixth floor of the University Library in Cambridge I was wont to succumb to spasms, so you can imagine the painful and embarrassing scenes and remonstrations that resulted in the lift when I first essayed this building. I have vertiginous seizures just thinking about it. This extraordinary height of the buildings informs the skyline, as you will readily imagine. The result, really most surprisingly, is one of astonishing beauty. I must also tell you that the taximeter cabriolets, or taxi cabs as they call them for short, are coloured a gay and vivid yellow, not unlike a spring mimosa, that lends a seasonable splash of primrose to the place. I assume that they change colour throughout the year, red for autumn, white for winter and perhaps a cerulean blue for summer. Ah, no, the young engineer on the other side of the glass partition here is shaking his head. Clearly yellow is a settled thing.

  Now, to my speciality. They say ‘specialty’ here. The iotal elision, as we philologists call it, is not uncommon. They also drop the final letter ‘i’ from aluminium and deliver the word as aluminum. And who is to say them nay? One of the commonest subjects for discussion here is stress. It is talked about all the time. They appear to have established a causal relationship between stress and diet, which is very fascinating to me. I must say I am enchanted and encouraged with America’s interest in my discipline, in England most people seem not to consider philology or linguistics from one day to the next. But stress is certainly a talking point here. Take, for instance, Hong Kong. They say Hong Kong, which always seems to imply that there is another kind of Kong which they are anxious not to confuse with that of the Hong variety. Hong Kong. The stress on the first word. There is a proprietary blend of instant coffee you may know called Maxwell House. At least that’s what we call it. Maxwell House. Here it is called Maxwell House. A much less even stress. They somehow believe, though, if I am to believe the newspapers, that this stress problem is caused by smoking and lack of exercise as much as anything else. I had always understood that it was simply a result of the transhistorically separate development of British and American English and the Yiddish influence, as in chicken-soup. I have a great deal yet to learn.

  A gentleman approached me in the street earlier and asked, ‘Have you got a light mac?’ to which I replied, truthfully, ‘No, but I’ve got a dark brown overcoat.’ The reward for this candour was a bloodied nose. I think I am going to have to study the customs very much more closely before I dare venture out onto the streets again, alone. Thank you for listening.

  If Mrs Miggs is tuning in, as she promised she would, Don’t forget to dust the books, Mrs M, and remember that Milton’s worming tablets are on the tantalus beneath the Cotman etching in the study. You have to hold him down on his back and prize his jaws open to get them in. You may take next Tuesday off. Goodbye everyone.

  Postcard Number Two

  Donald Trefusis, Emeritus Professor of Philology and Fellow of St Matthew’s College, Cambridge, continues his stay in New York.

  Disastrous happenings! Calamitous events! Dear me, where to begin? I spoke to you last week, of my initial excitement with New York. I must confess that I have now begun to find life in this thrusting virile city a little fatiguing. My address to the philologists of Columbia University went very well. It was on the origins of the lazy ‘r’ in English urban dialects. I demonstrated the generic similarity between the Cockney’s lazy ‘r’ as in ‘Round the ragged rock the ragged rascal ran’ and the Brooklyners, as in ‘Round the ragged rock the ragged rascal ran’.1 This caused quite a sensation as you can readily imagine. Since that academic triumph my time became much more my own. I began to explore New York with great enthusiasm and interest. Such an ethnic gallimaufry. I ventured south, or down-town as they say here, this week, with fascinating and ultimately catastrophic results. I made towards Canal Street, to one side strikes Mott Street and Chinatown, a really extraordinary area. It is as if one had walked through a tear in the fabric of the time-space continuum and transported oneself directly to Hong Kong. Streets and streets of Chinese banks, restaurants, supermarkets, toyshops. But cross Canal Street and eccolà ! We are in Mulberry Street and Little Italy. At this table Joe Bandano died in a hail of bullets. In this restaurant Louis Farnese was filled with lead before he had a chance to finish his zabaglione. Into this gutter trickled the blood of Vito Matteole, the famous bel canto tenor, after succumbing to a nose-bleed.

  Such geopolitical compression is unnerving. After a lifetime in Cambridge where all types muck in together, Leavisites living down the corridor from structuralists, phenomenologists using the same launderette as Hegelian dialecticians, I find this ghetto life something of a confusion. The choice of cuisines was so bewildering that I thought it safest to hail a taxi and go in search of a steak and kidney pudding. I took down the following conversation in Trefusian, my own phonetic shorthand, I find it an invaluable way of recording street scenes and bodega conversation.

  ‘Okay bud, get in, where d’you want to go? Restaurant? Sheeze, what kind a restaurant? You want Italian? French? Indian? Japanese? Mexican? Thai? Chinese – we got Chinese Dim Sum, Chinese Szechuan, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Korean, we got Indonesian, Polynesian, Melanesian, you want Czech food maybe, a nice Schnitzel with polychinkas? Russian we got. Hungarian? Bulgarian? You like Cajun food, maybe? – that’s Louisiana, New Orleans – you know gumbo and jambalaya? Good Cajun restaurant on 26th and Lexington. African food you like maybe? Canadian? Scandinavian? You tell me, I’ll take you there. What’s that? English? The hell you say. An English restaurant? What you talking? Ain’t no such thing. Whoever heard of an English restaurant? There’s a New England style restaurant on East 19th and Park. But English I never heard of. Sri Lankan, Yugoslav, Malayan, Argentine sure – but English? You gotta be kidding.’

  A blow to national pride indeed. I was persuaded by this gentleman of the etiolated labials and baumannised vowels that Greenwich Village would be the most likely place in which to find an English restaurant, were such a thing to exist, a hypothesis which he frankly doubted. I told him that there were plenty of such establishments to be found in England – or in Cambridge at least, I have never ventured outside of Cambridge until now – but I fear he suspected me of being intoxicated. I was set down in Washington Square, a circumstance that could only delight. I stood in the middle of this bustling concourse and stared up at the houses around me, trying to imagine which one it was that so inspired Henry James to write his great novel Washington Square.

  My reverie was broken into by the approach of a large black man who spoke to me in a language that I could not understand. I tried what little kitchen Swahili and restaurant Matabele I knew, but to no avail. The man kept repeating the words crack, coke and dope. In exasperation I pretended to agree with him. No sooner were the halting words of assent out of my lips than a package was placed in my hands. I blinked in surprise and uttered words of protest and remonstration. This was too kind. But from out of the dark, unseen hands were suddenly laid upon me and something hard, cold and metallic clicked about my wrists. ‘Okay punks, you’re both busted.’

  I am speaking to you now from a police station, or precinct house, here in Greenwich Village, where I have been formally charged with the illegal possession of cocaine and cannabis. My black friend has denied any connectio
n with the large quantities of these narcotic materials discovered on my person and has stoutly maintained that I was trying to sell them to him. The police seem to be aware of my academic standing and intellectual accomplishments for they have constantly referred to me throughout our interviews as ‘Wise Guy’, the compliment is growing thin, however, and I yearn for liberty.

  I am being pressed to quit the microphone now, and must leave you. Mrs Miggs, if you are listening back home, don’t panic. Go to C staircase and tell Professor Steinitz of my straits, he is a lawyer and will have ideas. Otherwise, continue to feed Milton and dust my collection of petrified Danish pastries. Next week I shall try to broadcast again. Meanwhile love to all.

  1Clearly you have to imagine the sound here. Not quite ‘wound the wagged wock’, but gesturing towards it.

  Postcard Number Three

  VOICE: Donald Trefusis, Emeritus Professor of Philology and Fellow of St Matthew’s College, Cambridge, sent us his postcard from New York last week informing us that he had been taken into custody by the New York Police Department, arrested and charged with peddling drugs in Washington Square. Professor Trefusis has just sent us this postcard.

  Heavens! A week of great events and excitements. When I was a child, adventure stories for boys always had at least one chapter headed ‘Alarms and Excursions’. Such a title would suit this morning’s postcard well. When I left you last week, I was ignominiously empenned in the city gaol of the Greenwich Village precinct of the New York Police Department, enduring the tart insults of Captain Donahue. I had been wrongly arrested and charged with possession of cocaine and cannabis resin and attempting to distribute the same for profit. It transpires that Washington Square, where the arrest took place, is one of the centres for drug bartering in New York City. The man who had pressed the narcotics upon me in the dark, a gentleman by the name of Winston Millington, continued to deny all knowledge of them. I had been left holding, as it were, the baby.

  Those who know me well, and indeed those who can claim only slight acquaintanceship with me, would chorus indignantly at such ill-usage, they know that I am not the narcotic type. My first and last experimentation with serious drugs took place in my hot youth, when, in a moment of madness, for which I still reproach myself, I assisted my friend Professor Lehmann in his effort to synthesise a drug which would enable the user to leap great heights and accomplish astonishing feats of physical endurance. I tested the drug for him and was apprehended by the University Proctors clambering on the roof of Great St Mary’s singing ‘Where Will the Dimple Be?’ and ‘My Very Good Friend the Milkman’. As I explained to the good police captain, that is the whole history of my life with drugs. I took down in Trefusian, a phonetic Pitman’s of my own devising, the conversation that took place between us.

  ‘Don’t come it with me, wise guy. I know you’re into this right up to your shaggy eyebrows. The crack operation in New York is growing out of control.1 We knew there was a mastermind behind it. You got careless and took to the streets yourself. Listen, punk, I got no time for people like you. You ever taken a look at the results of your operation? Go down the subways, down the alleys. There’s kids there weighing a hundred pounds, stomach cramps, dying a slow death because of mothers like you. You make me tired. This crack we found on you, 90 per cent pure cocaine. Those rocks kills, mister. And I’m going to bang you in the hoosegow so long by the time you come out your clothes will be back in fashion. Now, how about that statement, you mother.’

  Officer, how many times must I tell you that I haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about. I am not a mother. I have never been a mother, I have no intention of ever becoming a mother. I am completely innocent, and demand to see the English ambassador.’

  And so the conversations wore on.

  Fate, however, rescued me. Winston Millington’s apartment had been routinely searched as had been my hotel room. In my hotel room they found nothing more offensive than a foxed and well-thumbed copy of Schopenhauer’s Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. In Millington’s flat however they uncovered enough cocaine to service Hollywood for an afternoon. Tons of the substance.

  ‘I dunno what to say, Professor Trefusis. I guess I owe you an apology. You’re on the level after all. My advice is steer clear of areas like Washington Square. How can I make it up to you?

  Listen, you interested in seeing New York? Tell you what I’ll do. How’d you like to come round in a patrol car with me tonight? See the real city? Whaddayasay? Least I can do.’

  I didn’t confess to Captain Donahue that my greatest interest, as a philologist, was not in seeing the town, but in hearing more of his fascinatingly attenuated vowels and delayed fricatives, and consented readily.

  That journey will form the substance of my next postcard. Meanwhile I wish to thank all of you who sent in messages of good will to me. I found it all most sustaining. Particular thanks to F.G. Robinson of Glasgow for the bubblegum and words of support. Thank you Nedwin Sherrin for the Black Forest Cherry cake, you must have dropped one of your nail files into the mixture, which the police confiscated, I have it now and will return it to you when I get home.

  Meanwhile, Mrs Miggs, the crisis is over. New York is suddenly very friendly again. Stroke Milton for me and remember to Pledge the Second Republic escritoire in the study. Love to all. Mr Sheen will do if we’ve run out of Pledge.

  1At this time almost no one in England had heard of crack: it was only just getting out of control in New York, with disastrous results as we all now know. Crack is cocaine baked in an oven with bicarbonate of soda: the resulting crystal is called a rock and is smoked in a glass pipe.

  Postcard Number Four

  VOICE: Donald Trefusis, Emeritus Professor of Philology and Fellow of St Matthew’s College, Cambridge, continues to report on his visit to New York. Last week, under arrest for drug-peddling, he was exonerated by police captain Donahue who offered to make up for his wrongful arrest by taking him out one night in his patrol car and showing him New York from a busy patrolman’s point of view.

  Okay, Prof, you sit next to me, and we’ll hit the patrol. We’ll be around the Stuyvesant Square region tonight. Now, it could get dangerous here, so whatever happens, you stay in the car. An average night, I gotta deal with firearms, kids on angel dust, everything. Angel dust? It’s a drug. The kids get high on it and believe me it gives them the strength of ten. I’m not kidding, I’ve seen a kid dusted up, it took twelve of my men to hold him down. You see that gun there? The stubby little thing on the floor in front of you? Right, that’s like no gun you’ve ever seen. That’s a stun-gun. It gives the punks an electric shock, stuns ’em. The only way we can deal with them. It’s dangerous though, can kill a guy with a weak heart. What can we do?

  ‘Hold on, there’s the radio. That was the precinct, putting out a general call, disturbance on Stuyvesant Square south, sound of shooting. Ten four, control, car 59 in the area and responding. Put on your seat belt, Professor, we’ll be jumping lights and driving fast.’

  You can imagine my excitement. To be here, as a Professor of Philology, sitting right next to the most fascinating fricative I have ever heard. He had a way of squeezing his ‘r’ sounds that wasn’t quite a rhotacism, that I found thoroughly satisfying. ‘Patrol’, not exactly ‘patrol’, and not exactly ‘patwol’. The secret lies in the softened, half-voiced dental ‘t’ sound that precedes the ‘r’.

  We arrived in Stuyvesant Square to discover a Mexican shooting pigeons. He just wanted to eat. However the NYPD, as the police here call themselves, take a dim view of fire-arms being loosed off in densely populated urban areas, and soon Pedro was in the back seat, under arrest. This was a marvellous opportunity to test a theory I have about the intonal relationship between Mexican Spanish and Afrikaner Dutch. I took down every word he said in Trefusian, my patented phonetic shorthand.

  ‘Gee, I’m sorry mister, but I was so hungry. You gonna book me? I tell you now, I am illegal immigrant. I have no green card. But if you send m
e back to Mexico I will be killed. My brother-in-law, he is a big wheel in Acapulco, he kill me. I beg you, just let me go. Keep my gun but let me go, I will cause no more trouble I promise you.’ I couldn’t but interrupt.

  ‘I say would you mind very much repeating the word “gun” again, there was a very interesting “u” sound, there. My name’s Donald by the way.’

  ‘Captain, do I have to share the car with a loco? He want me to say the word gonn? What kind of gringo you got here, Captain, what he do wrong? He kill someone?’

  ‘You hold your tongue there, Spick. That’s Professor Trefusis, he’s a friend of mine. Uh-oh. There’s the radio. Someone holding up a liquor store down the street. Ten four car 59 on the scene and responding. Jesus, there’s three of them. Car 59 requesting immediate back up. Stay in here you two.’

  Three frightful young hooligans in balaclava helmets were emerging from an off-licence. They had shotguns in their hands and had already fired at the captain as soon as he sprang out of the car door. The windscreen shattered and Pedro and I felt that it would be safer on the street than marooned in such a sitting target.

  ‘Professor get the gonns from the car, quick. You take the electric stonn-gonn, I’ll take the magnum.’

  ‘You two get back in the car. Let me handle this on my —’

  An ugly shot rang out and Captain Donahue grabbed his leg. Pedro fired twice and two of the robbers fell to the pavement. A wailing of sirens in the distance indicated that help was at hand, but one of the criminals was at large, still armed, screaming Hispanic obscenities from his cover. I moved noiselessly on my stomach, giving thanks to what I had previously thought of as wasted years in the South Cambridge Cub Pack. As I eased forwards I heard the sound of rapid, irregular breathing. I took a deep breath myself and called out in firm, clear tones: