At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances by Alexander McCall Smith Read Free Book Online

examples is Featherstonehaugh, which is pronounced Fanshawe. Then there is Cholmondeley, which is simply pronounced Chumley, and of course anybody called Beauchamp is usually Beecham.’
    Von Igelfeld nodded. ‘I have noticed that,’ he said. ‘There was a Professor Chumley at a conference once and he pointed out that the spelling of his name was rather different. That would not happen in Germany.’
    ‘No,’ said Plank. ‘I gather that German is spelled as you pronounce it. Curious, but there we are.’
    ‘So how do you spell Plank?’ asked Matthew Gurewitsch.
    ‘Haughland,’ said Plank.
    Von Igelfeld could not conceal his astonishment. ‘Haughland?’
    ‘Indeed,’ said Haughland (
voce
, Plank). ‘It’s an old family from the eastern fens somewhere. Virtually in the water.’
    ‘But your humour remained dry,’ observed Matthew Gurewitsch.
    This remark brought silence, which was only broken when Dr C. A. D. Wood rose to her feet to leave.
    ‘I have to go, Plank,’ she said curtly. And then, more genially: ‘Good afternoon, Professor von Igelfeld. Good afternoon, Mr Gurewitsch. I look forward to seeing you at dinner.’
    That afternoon, von Igelfeld spent several very rewarding hours with the Hughes-Davitt Bequest before returning to his rooms to write a letter to Prinzel.
    ‘This is an extraordinary place,’ he wrote. ‘Nothing is as it seems. However, I am immensely pleased with the Library and with the Hughes-Davitt Bequest, which has some first-rate material, wasted in this country, if you ask me; it would be far better looked after in Germany. However, at least I can put it into some sort of order and I shall eventually publish a paper on it. So my time here will be well-spent.
    ‘However, there is the issue of my colleagues. So far I have not met one, not one, who would survive in a proper German academic institution, apart from the other visitor at the moment, Mr Matthew Gurewitsch from New York. He is very well-informed and has a fund of information about operatic matters. I fear that he may not be properly appreciated here, but we shall see what sort of response he gets to his lecture at the beginning of next week. Poor man! The mathematicians and the like who live in the College are unlikely to understand what he has to say; for the most part their minds are taken up with mathematical disputes and with plotting against one another. This has made the Master a nervous wreck, and indeed he is close to tears most of the time.
    ‘How I long to be back in Germany, where everything is so solid and dependable. How I long to be back in the Institute common room, exchanging views with my colleagues. I am even missing Unterholzer, although I cannot quite bring myself to write to him yet. Perhaps next week. Please make sure, by the way, that he does not try to take my room while I am away. I know that he would like to do this, as he has done it in the past. I am counting on you to see that it does not happen.

    ‘In this pallid land, then, I remain, Your friend eternally, Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld.’
    He posted the letter in the College post-box, and then, it being a pleasant evening, he went for a stroll through the Fellows’ Garden and out along the river. The Fellows’ Garden was peaceful, in a way that only an English garden can be peaceful, and even the thought of de Courcey’s detached skull did not disturb the feeling of
rus in urbe
which the garden encouraged. He found the giant wisteria bush which the Master had mentioned, and he found, too, a magnificent fuchsia hedge which ran along the southern boundary of the garden. There were benches, too, carved stone benches on which weary Fellows might sit and enjoy the flowers and shrubs, and it was on one of these that von Igelfeld was seated when he heard footsteps on the gravel behind him. He turned round, jolted out of a pleasant reverie in which he was back in Italy, in Tuscany, with the smell of lavender and rosemary on the breeze. Dr C. A.