by Stephen Fry
“Ho,” said Bill and looked back down at his desk.
Too much to expect him to take pleasure in my triumph. Who will ever penetrate the embarrassment of the late-twentieth-century servant-master relationship? Even to call it a servant-master relationship is going a bit far. The porters had their Sirs, Ma’ams and bowler hats and we had the foolish, hearty and sycophantic grins that tried to make up for it all. We would never know what they called us behind our backs. They, presumably, would never know what we actually got up to all day. Perhaps it was the porters’ sons and daughters who wrote Killagrad 85 up on walls. Bill knew that some students stayed on, wrote doctoral theses and became fellows of the college, just as he knew that others flunked or went into the world to become rich, famous or forgotten. Maybe he cared, maybe he didn’t. Still, a bit more of Denholm Elliott in Trading Places and a bit less of Judith Anderson in Rebecca would have been welcome. I mean, you know? Yeah? Exactly.
“Of course,” I said weighing the briefcase in my hands with what I hoped was rueful modesty, “it has to be examined first . . .”
A grunt was all I got out of that, so I turned to see what the post had brought me. A thick yellow parcel was poking from my pigeonhole. Cool! I pulled it out tenderly.
Printed on the address label was the logo of a German publishing house that specialized in history and academic texts. Seligmanns Verlag. I knew their name well from research, but how the hey could they know my name? I’d never written to them. It seemed very odd. I certainly hadn’t ordered any books from them . . . unless of course, somehow, by reputation they had heard of me and were writing to ask if I would consent to their publishing my Meisterwerk. Coo-oool!
For my thesis to be published was naturally the greatest, deepest, dearest, closest wish of my entire bosom. Seligmanns Verlag, woah, this was going to be a peach of a day.
Whole dreams, visions and imaginative constructions of the future were building inside my head like time-lapsed film of skyscraper construction; timbers and king posts, girders and joists winking into place to a cheeky xylophone track. I was already there, in the fully furnished and fully let Michael Young Tower, accepting awards and professorships and signing elegantly produced Seligmanns Verlag copies of my thesis (I could even see the color of the book, the typeface, the jacket illustration and the dignified author photo and blurb) in the infinitesimal fraction of time between first seeing their label on the parcel and subsequently registering, with a squeal of brakes, a screeching of tires and a billowing of air bags, the name of the actual addressee. Bit of a metaphorical shit heap there, but you know what I mean.
“Professor L. H. Zuckermann,” it said. “St. Matthew’s College, Cambridge. cb3 9bx.”
Oh. Not Michael Young, MA, then.
I looked at the pigeonhole immediately beneath mine. It was crammed to overflowing with letters, flyers and notes. Alphabetically the last, below even “Young, Mr., M.D.,” came “Zuckermann, Prof.” I stared at the Dymo label, hot with disappointment.
“Damn,” I said, trying to wedge the package into its proper home.
“Sir?”
“Oh, nothing. It’s just that there’s this thing in my pigeonhole for Professor Zuckermann and his pigeonhole’s full.”
“If you’ll give it to me, sir, I’ll see that he gets it.”
“It’s all right, I’ll take it to him. He might be able to help me with . . . with an introduction to some publishers. Where’s he hang out?”
“Hawthorn Tree Court, sir; 2a.”
“Who is he, in fact?” I asked, sliding the package into my briefcase. “Never come across him.”
“He is Professor Zuckermann” was the prim reply.
Officialdom. Tch.
MAKING TROUBLE
Diabolo
“But I am a German!”
“No, you are nothing. These papers tell me you are nothing. Nothing at all. You do not exist.”
“One day! They are out of date by one day, that is all.”
“Sir, this gentleman comes through all the time.” Klingermann gave Alois an uncomfortable look. “He is . . . he is well known to me. I can vouch for him.”
“Oh, you can vouch for him, can you, Klingermann? And why do you think the Imperial government in Vienna spends a fortune every month on papers, stamps, passports and vouchers, then? For fun? What do you think a voucher is? It is a stamped piece of paper to be carried around at all times, legitimizing the bearer. Or does this nonexistent citizen of nowhere imagine that he will carry you around as his voucher?”
“But as a German, I am allowed free passage into Austria!”
“But you are not a German. You may have been, from these papers, a German yesterday. But today, today you are no one and nothing.”
“I have a living to make, a family to support!”
“I have a living to make, a family to support . . . ?”
“I have a living to make, a family to support, sir.”
“So have Austrian carpenters a living to make and families to support, sir! For every one of these tawdry pieces of German crap that is bought here, bread is taken from the mouth of an Austrian carpenter.”
“Sir, with respect, they are not pieces of crap, they are toys, handmade with love and with care and, so far as I am aware, no one in Austria makes them at all, so I can hardly be said to be taking bread from the mouths of anybody.”
“But the money that is spent by poor, respectable Austrian parents on these corrupting German trinkets would otherwise be spent on healthy food grown by Austrian farmers. I see no reason why I, as the Emperor’s accredited agent, should allow such a state of affairs. Do you?”
“Corrupting? Sir, they are the most innocent—”
“What are they called? Hm? Tell me that. What are they called?”
“Sir?”
“What is their name?”
“Diabolos, sir. You must have seen them before—”
“Diabolos, precisely. Diabolo is the Italian for devil. Satan. The Corrupter. And you call them innocent!”
“But, Herr Zollbeamter, they are only called diabolo because they are . . . they are fiendishly difficult. To master. A challenge, a test of coordination and balance. Fun!”
“Fun, Herr Tischlermeister? You think it fun that the youth of Austria should waste time that would otherwise be profitably spent in study or manly exercise on some satanic German toy?”
“Sir, perhaps . . . perhaps you would like to try one yourself? Here . . . a gift. I think you will find them harmless and amusing.”
“Oh dear,” Alois licked his lips. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. A bribe. How unfortunate. A bribe. Dear me. Klingermann! Form ki 171, plenty of sealing wax and an Imperial Stamp!”
MAKING FRIENDS
The History Muse
Diabolical Thought Number One occurred to me on my way to Zuckermann’s rooms.
I had passed through the Porter’s Lodge and was walking around Old Court toward the archway that led to Hawthorn Tree. I might legitimately have been able to shortcut across, not around the court, but I wasn’t exactly sure that I was entitled to walk on the grass. The sign said “Fellows Only” and I had never plucked up the nerve to ask if this included Junior Bye Fellows. I mean, it sounds so feeble to put the question. You know, as if you’ve just been made a prefect at school and you want to find out if that means you can wear trainers or call the teachers by their Christian names. Wet, or what?
Assert yourself, Michael, that’s the thing. I mean, how much more has to happen to you before you’ll believe that you’ve got as much right as anyone to inhabit the earth? A new attitude is needed: some dignity, some gravitas, something consonant with our new position in life . . .
These amiable thoughts were interrupted by a rumbling, a tumbling and a squawking as I passed the open stone doorway of F staircase in the corner of the
courtyard. A figure rushed out in a squeaking blur and stamped across the lawn. He was carrying a pile of CDs, a plaster bust, three velvet cushions and a rolled-up poster. I knew him for Edward Edwards, Double Eddie, someone with even less right than me to walk across the grass. He shared rooms and a life with another second year, James McDonell. They enjoyed embarrassing me by catcalling me and shouting, “get that tush!” or “ker-yoot!” and other such shit when I walked past. A very sweet pair really, but prone to enacting hysterical scenes and bruiting abroad the supposedly superior virtues of their sexuality.
Double Eddie was shedding CDs at a great rate across the lawn.
“Woah!” I called after him. “You’ve dropped these.”
Double Eddie didn’t turn round or stop walking. His angry back turned to me, he just said, “Don’t care!” and sniffed.
Oh dear, I thought. Another row. I followed him, treading the grass gingerly, like a responsible father testing the ice to see if it will bear the weight of his children.
Behind us a voice shrieked out clear and high, echoing off the stonework and windows of the court. I looked round to see James framed in F staircase doorway, eyes flashing and arms akimbo.
“Simply come back!” he screamed.
Still Double Eddie strode on. “Never!” he said, without a backward glance. “Never, never, never, never, never.”
“Oi!”
Now Bill the Porter had emerged grimly from his lodge. “Off the grass, gents, if you please.”
Since Double Eddie had already reached the other side of the lawn and Bill had used an unambiguous plural, there now was the answer to my question about Junior Bye Fellows and lawns. Verboten.
As Double Eddie stalked through the lodge trying, without success, to whistle jauntily, I started to pick up the fallen CDs, blushing furiously under the porter’s eye.
“Sorry!” I mumbled. “I’ll just get these and . . .”
Bill nodded grimly and watched my too much haste and not enough speed fumblings. “Festina lente. Eile mit Weile,” I babbled to myself. When you’re an academic and under pressure, you blather in Latin tags and foreign languages to remind yourself of your superiority. It never works.
I clumsily collected together Cabaret, Gypsy, Carousel, Sweeney Todd and the rest and tripped quickly back to James, who leaned against the doorway, his eyes wet with tears.
“Um, here you are then.”
His hand fended them away. “I don’t want the horrid things! You can burn them for all I care.”
I put a hand to his heaving shoulder. “I’ll keep them for you then. Listen, I’m really sorry,” I said. “I mean, it’s a bummer. Being jilted.” He said nothing, so I continued, this time offering him all the benefit of my recent experience. “I should know, man. I’ve been ditched too, you know?”
He stared at me as though I were mad. I thought perhaps he was going to tell me that in my case it wasn’t the same thing at all. Instead he wailed that it simply wasn’t fair. Then he turned away and stomped up the stairs, leaving me with the CDs.
No, it isn’t, I thought as I miserably trailed my laces through the archway and cut into the car-park, it simply isn’t fair at all. To be left is indeed the bummeriest bummer of all. How to separate the humiliation from the loss, that’s the catch. You can never be sure if what tortures you is the pain of being without someone you love or the embarrassment of admitting that you have been rejected. I had already been playing with the idea of persuading Jane back so that I could be the one to do the jilting, just to even things up.
And in the car-park thar she blew: four thousand quidsworth of Renault Clio. My Killer Loops on the dash, I noticed. Bloody having them. I dropped the briefcase on the ground by the car, scrabbled out my set of keys, opened the door and put them on. Does one assert one’s self more or less when wearing dark glasses? You’re hiding your eyes, which ought to count as timorous and weak, but then you’re looking cool and way inscrutable. There again, you can’t see so well in a car. I could make out a tube of mints in the floor-well, they were mine for sure. Remembered buying them at a service station. Come to think of it, half those tapes belonged to me too. I grabbed as many as I could hold. General mixture: bit of Pulp, Portishead, Kinks, Verdi, Tchaik, Blur, the Morricone and Alfred Newman collections and of course all my beloved Oily-Moily. She could keep the Mariah Carey, the k.d. lang, the Wagner and the Bach, I reckoned. Severed childless relationships in this age revolve around the custody of record collections, so it’s essential to get your claim in first.
That was when Diabolical Thought Number One actually hit. I leaned further into the car and yanked the college parking permit from the inside of the windscreen and tore it up into tiny little shreds. Hee-hee.
Diabolical Thought Number Two struck as the tapes joined Double Eddie’s CDs in my briefcase and I came upon that little bottle of Liquid Paper.
For a man of the keyboard generation I have to confess I do have top handwriting. My godmother gave me an Osmiroid Calligraphy Set for Christmas when I was about fourteen and I really got into it for a while. You know, forming the letters properly, two strokes for an “o,” the dinky upward italic serifs on the descenders and ascenders, thick thin, thick thin, all nicely proportioned, the whole ball of wax. Should have seen my thank-you letters that year. Storming.
I leaned over the bonnet of the Renault like a suspect assuming the position for a US highway patrolman, poked my tongue out of one side of the mouth and got to work. It struck me as likely that the solvents in Liquid Paper would do something fabulously corrosive to the paintwork, making my little message of love extremely difficult to remove without a whole boring, time-consuming and highly expensive respray. Cool. This, surely then, was the assertive Michael Young we had been looking for. My heart went thump-a-thump-a-thump as I stood back to get the full effect. Never really done anything like this before. Felt like shoplifting or buying pornography.
The lettering was not as large as I would have liked, but a small bottle of Liquid Paper won’t go far, even on the compact bonnet of a Clio. Nonetheless, the effect of white on Dubonnet Red was striking, and the wording, I reckoned, more or less on the money.
i have been stolen by a mad bitch
I stood admiring this for a little while, wondering whether or not I should also have a go at removing that pathetic, absolutely pathetic, sticker on the rear window, GENETICISTS DO IT IN VITRO hardi-fucking-har, when I realized it must be nearing eleven. I still had to deliver Zuckermann’s bloody parcel, drop off the Meisterwerk in Fraser-Stuart’s room and get to my own, where a first year would be awaiting a supervision. If I remembered rightly she was late with a Castlereagh and Canning essay, on whose delivery I had sweetly granted two extensions already. She could expect the shortest of short short shrifts from me if she was late again. I, who had completed a two hundred thousand word thesis of closely reasoned, intensely researched, innovatively presented, elegantly phrased historical argument, was not going to have any truck with lazy, shiftless undergraduates, however good my mood. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Meet Dr. Nasty.
I stooped to pick up the briefcase when IT happened. The most dreadful thing that could have happened did happen. A really shitty thing on its own, but which set in train what was possibly the shittiest event (or non-event) in the history of humanity. Of course, I couldn’t have known that at the time. At the time, the personal disaster represented by this shitty happening was all that consumed me; believe me it was bad enough in its own right, without knowing that the destinies of millions hung on the event, without having even the vaguest idea that I was setting in train the explosion of everything I knew.
What happened was this. As I picked up my briefcase by its handle, the clasp, worn from years of handling and toting and tugging and hefting and lugging and kicking and dropping and schlepping, chose this moment to give way. Maybe it was the unaccustomed burden of Do
uble Eddie’s CDs, my music tapes, the Meisterwerk and that incorrectly pigeonholed package from Seligmanns Verlag. Whatever. The brass three-tiered plaque that received the tongue of the clasp broke free from its rotten stapled moorings, pulling open the perished mouth of the briefcase and sending four hundred unbound pages of closely reasoned, intensely researched, innovatively presented, elegantly phrased historical argument into the eddying tornadoes of mid-May breeze that swirled around the car-park.
“Oh no!” I howled.
“Please no! No, no, no, no, no, no!” as I chased from corner to corner snatching at the flurry of flying pages like a kitten swatting snowflakes.
There’s a TV program where celebrities do this with money. A thousand currency notes are sent into the air by a wind machine and the celeb has to get hold of as many as possible. “Grab A Grand” it’s called. Presented by that guy who looks like Kenneth Branagh in bearded Shakespearean mode. Edmunds, Noel Edmunds. Or possibly Edmonds.
Most of the table of contents had landed under the wheels of my/Jane’s Renault in a safe bunch. The rest, the mighty body of the noble work, including appendices, tables, bibliography, index and acknowledgments, flew free.
Bending double to hold the rescued pages against my chest, I staggered from one whirl of paper to the next, clutching and clawing like a herring gull. Yes, all right, I can’t have been like a kitten swatting snowflakes and a herring gull.
“God in helling pants, no! Come here, you bastards!” I screamed. “Please!”
But I was not alone.
“Dear, dear! This is unfortunate.” I turned to see an old man walking slowly through the car-park calmly picking up page after page.
It seemed to me, in my fever and frenzy and grateful though I was for assistance, that it was all right for him, for everywhere he went the currents of air seemed to be stilled and the pages just fluttered lifelessly to the ground, content for him to pick them up. That couldn’t be happening. But I stopped and stared and saw that it was happening. It really was. Really. Wherever he walked, the wind dropped before him. Like the wizard calming the brooms and buckets in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice sequence in Fantasia. Which cast me, of course, as Mickey Mouse.