The 2 12 Pillars of Wisdom (4 page)

‘Very well,’ mumbled von Igelfeld. Adding, in his confusion, ‘Not bad, in fact.’

‘Good fellow,’ said O’Leary. ‘Absolutely. Good for you.’

O’Leary now seized both suitcases and led the visitors off to a somewhat battered car which he had parked up against the edge of the quay. Then, with von Igelfeld in the back seat and Vogelsang sitting beside the Irishman, they drove off erratically in the direction of the redbrick guest house in which the two visitors were to spend their first night in Ireland. It was all very strange to von Igelfeld, who had never before been further than France and Italy. Everything was so
here and there
; so well loved and used; so lived-in. There were men with caps, standing on the street corners, doing nothing; there were women with jugs propped up in their doorways; there were orange cats prowling on the top of walls; churches with red walls and white marble lintels, and white religious statuary.

The next two days were spent largely in the company of O’Leary. He showed his visitors the university; he took them to lunch in hotels where the proprietors greeted him by name and appeared to make a great fuss of him; and he spent long hours locked in his study with Vogelsang – meetings to which von Igelfeld was not admitted. On these occasions, von Igelfeld walked through the streets of Cork, marvelling at the softness of the light on the warm brick buildings, sniffing at the heavy, languid air, savouring the feel of Ireland. Occasionally, small groups of boys followed him on these walks, calling out to the tall German in a language which von Igelfeld did not understand, but which he assumed to be the local dialect of English. Once, on a bridge, a woman threw a stone at him, and then crossed herself vigorously, but this occurrence did not trouble von Igelfeld in the slightest, as the stone missed, making a satisfactory plop in the water below.

That evening, O’Leary forsook Vogelsang, who wanted to retire early, and took von Igelfeld to a bar. It was a splendid, mirrored room, in which men in dark, shapeless suits leaned against the counter drinking black stout.

The barman greeted O’Leary with the same warmth that seemed to herald his every appearance in Cork.

‘Now then, Paddy,’ said the white-aproned tender. ‘What is it this evening for you and your Teutonic friend over there.’

Paddy! thought von Igelfeld. That must be the name to use, and he replied to O’Leary’s offer of a drink: ‘A beer, if you don’t mind, Paddy!’

The drinks poured, O’Leary guided von Igelfeld towards a section of the bar, where two of the men in dark suits were standing.

‘Fitz, my friend,’ said one of the men, slapping O’Leary on the back. ‘Sure it’s yourself, so it is!’

Fitz! thought von Igelfeld. Perhaps this was an alternative name which close friends used, just as his childhood friends had called him Morri, until they had put behind them the childish things. If that were the case, then he should avoid it, as its use would claim an intimacy which did not exist and the Irishman would think him rude. But just as this was resolved, the other man said:

‘Pat, if it isn’t you, then who is it?’

Von Igelfeld frowned. Here was another name – obviously a contraction of Patrick. That was plain enough, but what puzzled him was the choice of names. Was it an entirely free one? Could Pat become Paddy if one felt like it? Or could Fitzcarron become Fitz if a change seemed desirable? And what about O’Leary – was that ever used? He gazed down upon the white head to the glass of dark beer and wondered whether it was wise to leave the certainties of home. He had read that to travel is to expose oneself to all sorts of vulnerabilities, and surely this was true.

‘Now then, von,’ said O’Leary cheerfully. ‘Tell me about yourself. You seem a fairly tall sort of person.’

The drinking companions nodded their heads in agreement, looking up at von Igelfeld with a mixture of awe and amusement.

‘He is that,’ said one, gravely. ‘You’re right there, O.’

Von Igelfeld put down his glass. O? Was that yet another contraction? Really, there was something very strange – and unsettling – about Ireland.

The two days in Cork ended with a trip to the railway station in O’Leary’s old car and prolonged, emotional farewells on the platform. O’Leary slapped von Igelfeld on the back several times, to his considerable discomfort, while Vogelsang, with whom he had only shaken hands, looked on in undisguised amusement. Then their train drew out and they passed from the warm warren of red brick into the lush greenness of the countryside. Hedgerow-lined fields, low, folding hills; stone houses, white-washed, red-doored; lanes that wandered off into tight valleys; a blue curtain of sky that would without warning turn white, releasing sifting veils of rain; a sudden sight of children on a wall, tousle-haired, bare-legged, waving at the train; thus were they drawn deep into Ireland.

And then, in the distance, the hills appeared. The soft slopes merged into blue expanses, and the skies opened to wide canvases of cloud. The houses shrank, transformed themselves into clusters of tiny stone dwellings; and beyond was the sea, silver-blue, stretching out towards the pale, glowing horizon, and America.

‘This is where Irish is spoken,’ pronounced Vogelsang sacramentally. ‘In these farmhouses, the verbs, the nouns, the differentiated adjectives – they’re all still there.’

Von Igelfeld looked out of the window. Little droplets of rain coursed across the glass and made the countryside quiver. He had been thinking of how landscape moulds a language. It was impossible to imagine these hills giving forth anything but the soft syllables of Irish, just as only certain forms of German could be spoken on the high crags of Europe; or Dutch in the muddy, guttural, phlegmish lowlands. How sad it was that the language had been so largely lost; that it should survive only in these small pockets of the countryside. This was happening everywhere. The crudities of the modern world were simplifying or even destroying linguistic subtleties. Irregular verbs were becoming regular, the imperfect subjunctive was becoming the present subjunctive or, more frequently, disappearing altogether. Where previously there might have been four adjectives to describe a favoured hill, or the scent of new-mown hay, or the action of threading the warp of a loom, now there would only be one, or none. And as we lost the words, von Igelfeld thought, we lost the texture of the world that went with them.

It was at this moment, as the train drew into the small, apparently deserted station at which the two passengers were due to alight, that von Igelfeld realised what his life’s work would be. He would do everything in his power to stop the process of linguistic debasement, and he would pick, as his target, the irregular verb. This moment, then, was the germ of that great work,
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
.

The station was not deserted. An ancient station master, surprised at the arrival of passengers, emerged from a green wooden building and agreed to take them to the small hotel which was to be found at the nearby loughside. There they settled in, the only guests, and ate a meal, while a succession of people passed by the dining room window, affecting nonchalance, and then staring in hard at the two Germans.

The next day was the first working day of the field trip. Vogelsang had been told of the existence of an extremely old man who lived on a nearby hillside and who spoke a version of Irish which was considered by all to be exceptionally archaic. If there were to be any vestiges of Old Irish extant, then in the words used by this old man might such linguistic remnants be found.

‘You can certainly call on old Sean,’ said the hotel proprietor. ‘But I can’t guarantee your reception. He may speak interesting Irish, but he’s an extremely unpleasant, smelly old man. Not even the priest dares go up there, and that’s saying something in these parts.’

Undaunted, Vogelsang led the way up the narrow, unused track that led to Sean’s cottage. At last they reached it and, carefully negotiating the ramble of surrounding pig-sties, they approached the front door.

Vogelsang knocked loudly, and then called out (in Old Irish): ‘We are here, Sean. I am Professor Vogelsang from Germany. And this young man is my assistant.’

There was silence from within the cottage. Vogelsang knocked again, louder now, and this time elicited a response. A frowning, weather-beaten face, caked with dirt, appeared at the window and gesticulated in an unfriendly fashion. Vogelsang bent down and put his face close to the window so that his nose was barely a few inches from Sean, but separated by a pane of clouded glass.

‘Good morning, Sean,’ said Vogelsang. ‘We have come to talk to you.’

Sean appeared enraged. Shouting now, he hurled words out at the visiting philologists, shaking both fists in Vogelsang’s face.

‘Quick,’ said Vogelsang, momentarily turning to von Igelfeld. ‘Transcribe everything he says. Do it phonetically.’

As Sean continued to hurl abuse at Vogelsang, von Igelfeld’s pencil moved swiftly over the paper, noting everything that the cantankerous and malodorous farmer said. Vogelsang nodded all the while, hoping to encourage the Irishman to open the door, but only succeeding in further annoying him. At last, after almost three quarters of an hour, Vogelsang observed that the visit might come to an end, and with the echoing shouts of Sean following them down the hill, they returned to the hotel.

A further attempt to visit Sean was made the next day, and the day after that, but the visitors were never admitted. They did, however, collect a full volume of transcribed notes on what he shouted at them through the door, and this was analysed each evening by a delighted Vogelsang.

‘There is some very rare material here,’ he said, poring over von Igelfeld’s phonetic notations. ‘Look, that verb over there, which is used only when addressing a pig, was thought to have disappeared centuries ago.’

‘And he used it when addressing us?’ said von Igelfeld wryly.

‘Of course,’ snapped Vogelsang. ‘Everything he says to us is, in fact, obscene. Everything you have recorded here is a swear word of the most vulgar nature. But very old. Very, very old!’

They spent a final day in the hotel, this time not attempting to visit Sean, but each engaging in whatever pursuit he wished. Von Igelfeld chose to explore the paths that wound around the lough. He took with him a sandwich lunch prepared for him by the hotel, and spent a contented day looking at the hills and watching the flights of water birds that rose out of the reeds on his approach. He met nobody until, at the very end of the day, he encountered Vogelsang coming in the opposite direction. Vogelsang looked furtive, as if he had been caught doing something illicit, and greeted von Igelfeld curtly and correctly, as one might greet a slight acquaintance on the street of a busy town. Von Igelfeld began to tell him of the wild swans he had seen: ‘Four and twenty were there,’ he began; but Vogelsang ignored him and he stopped.

The next day they returned to the railway station and boarded the train back to Cork. The mountains were now behind them, shrinking into a haze of blue. Von Igelfeld looked back wistfully, knowing, somehow, that he would never return. In Cork they only had a few hours to pass before the steamer sailed. These hours were filled by Patrick Fitzcarron O’Leary, who materialised from the railway station bar and was soon locked in earnest discussion with Vogelsang over the lists of words which had been obtained.

It was dark by the time they boarded the steamer. After they had been shown their cabins (to von Igelfeld’s relief he had been allocated a berth) they both stood at the railings and looked down on the quay. It was raining, but only with that light, warm drizzle that seems always to embrace Ireland, and it did not deter them from standing bare-headed in the dampness. O’Leary had taken up position under the shelter of a crane, and he waved to them as the boat edged out from the quay. He continued to wave until they were out of the harbour, when he extracted a torch from his pocket and waved that. That was the last they saw of Ireland, a tiny pin-prick of light moving in the darkness, winking at them.

Back in Munich, von Igelfeld was greeted warmly by Frau Hugendubel and shown up to his spotlessly clean room. When she withdrew, he unpacked his suitcase, noticing the jar of honey, which he had not touched. This he put on a shelf for future use. Then he sat down and spread out on his desk the lists of words which he had transcribed during their encounters with Sean. Vogelsang wanted them arranged alphabetically and tabulated, with approximate German translations written opposite. Von Igelfeld began his task.

After an hour of work, von Igelfeld felt the desire to go out and have a cup of coffee in his favourite café nearby. He would buy a newspaper, read the Munich news, and then get back to his desk for further work. It would be a way of returning to Germany; his head, he feared, was still full of Ireland. He slipped out and walked briskly to the café.

A short time later, his half-read newspaper under his arm, he returned to the house and made his way upstairs. His door was open, and Frau Hugendubel stood in his room, be-aproned, clutching a feather duster.

‘Dr von Igelfeld,’ she said, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘I must ask you to leave this house immediately.’

Von Igelfeld was astonished.

‘To leave?’ he stuttered. ‘Do you mean to move out?’

Frau Hugendubel nodded.

‘I would never have known you to be a . . .’ she paused. ‘A pornographer!’

Von Igelfeld saw her throw a frightened glance towards his desk and he knew at once what it was all about.

‘Oh that!’ he laughed. ‘Those words . . .’

Frau Hugendubel cut him short.

‘I do not wish to exchange one more word with you,’ she said, her voice firmer now. ‘I shall not ask you for the rent you owe me, but I shall be grateful if you vacate the room within two hours.’

She cast a further disappointed glance into the room, this time at the jar of unopened honey, and then, shuddering her way past her deeply wronged lodger, she disappeared down the stairs.

When he heard the next day of the misunderstanding and of von Igelfeld’s plight, Vogelsang declined to intervene.