“Speak up if I’m tiring you, Johansson,” said the special adviser.
“Not at all,” said Johansson. Better that than you drinking too much, he thought, and personally he intended to wait for coffee and cognac, when from experience he knew that his host would be in a more contemplative state.
Already by course number two-pilgrim clams with tomato, asparagus and Avruga caviar-his host had left the scientific world and taken a sidetrack. Magdalen had a particular quality that distinguished it from all other colleges, not only at Oxford but in the whole world, and that especially ought to appeal to a man like Johansson.
“We have our own deer enclosure,” said the special adviser, smiling happily at his guest. “Think of it, Johansson. As an old hunter, I mean.”
In the midst of the medieval main street in the world’s foremost seat of learning, right behind the main buildings, walled in and along the river Cherwell, over three hundred years ago one of Magdalen’s many benefactors had had a deer park constructed.
“Sounds like fallow deer,” said Johansson.
“If you say so, Johansson,” said the special adviser with the usual hand waving. “Those brown things with white spots on their sides. Some of them have horns,” he clarified.
“Fallow deer,” said Johansson. “Quite certainly fallow deer.”
“Whatever,” answered the special adviser, and in any event it wasn’t the deer per se that was the point.
The point was better than that, and the special adviser did a proper job on all the details of the story while they enjoyed the third course, grilled king crab with veal sausage, grated potatoes, and a spicy sauce.
“Where was I now?” asked the special adviser as he wiped away a little sauce from his mouth and rinsed with an Alsatian pinot gris that was both refreshing and rich in minerals.
“The number of deer in the deer park,” said Johansson, who was unwillingly getting interested in the subject.
“Exactly,” said the special adviser, dabbing with his napkin. “As I’ve already suggested…”
The number of deer in the park should be, according to the donor’s will, equal to the number of full members of the college. At the present time there were sixty fellows and honorary fellows, and in the park behind the main building there was thus exactly the same number of deer.
“So you have your own deer,” said Johansson, raising his glass. A fat little rascal with a bad heart, gigantic head, short horns, and feeble legs. Approximately like the ones his children used to construct out of matches, pipe cleaners, and pinecones when they were little, he thought.
“Of course,” said the special adviser, sounding rather conceited.
“But that’s not all of it,” he continued.
The story was even better than that, and all according to the original statutes. As soon as a new member of the college was inducted, the deer herd was increased by one deer. And if one of them died, the proctor-the students’ own highest prefect-went out in the park and shot one deer, which was then served at the memorial dinner that was always held for the fellow who had taken leave of earthly life. The special adviser even claimed to have seen the proctor early one morning as he carried out this important task. Otherwise the deer were left in peace. Left to the pastoral peace that prevailed in the park at Magdalen College and in all the halls of learning.
“At the break of day, with the mist from the river sweeping into the park in its white veil, there comes the proctor in his long coat, his high black hat, with the worn-out shotgun in his steady hand. Imagine the shot, Johansson, that echoes out over the river Cherwell and the High Street,” said the special adviser, sighing as voluptuously as the male protagonist in a novel by the Brontë sisters.
Although the dinner itself was nothing remarkable, he remarked. Just an ordinary English gentlemen’s dinner, with venison steak, brown gravy, and overcooked vegetables. The wines on the other hand would usually be quite all right. A number of other benefactors had seen to that. The wine cellar at Magdalen was one of the foremost in Oxford. True, not like the one at Christ Church, with all those American Coca-Cola children, Arabian princes, and little Russian oligarchs, but quite all right, according to a connoisseur like himself.
“To be sure, English cuisine has little in common with this excellent filet of brill,” Johansson agreed, having secretly peeked at the menu as soon as they’d made it to the fourth stage in the bourgeois dinner. Filet of brill with globe artichoke and étouffée of crayfish tail.
“Not to mention this phenomenal Meursault,” the special adviser agreed, raising his large goblet of almost amber-colored wine. From his own cellar of course, and apart from the number of bottles completely in a class with the one served at Christ Church College, Oxford.
“There’s one thing I don’t really understand,” said Johansson.
“You’re much too modest, Johansson,” said the special adviser.
“How you manage to keep the same number of deer as members of the college. If you only shoot them when someone dies,” Johansson explained.
“What do you mean? Explain,” said the special adviser.
Johansson’s objections to the adviser’s story, his explanations, the questions and counterarguments from his host, the entire discussion took up the remainder of their dinner, as new courses were continually brought in. Glasses were filled, raised, and lowered…the gooseberry sorbet to cleanse the palate, venison noisettes, chanterelles grilled in butter, roasted cauliflower, Cumberland sauce, cheese soufflé, Brie and truffles with apple jelly, cream cheese with plums, chocolate terrine, the concluding small pastries. New wines all the time…red from Burgundy…white from Bordeaux…from the Rhône and Loire…while an indefatigable Johansson-like a cavalry officer from the days of the Crimean War-rode ahead with the discussion of the special adviser’s story about the deer in the park at Mary Magdalene’s own college.
According to Johansson the whole thing was very simple. An enclosure with sixty fallow deer ought to reasonably include twenty or so fertile does, which in turn meant that you could count on twenty-some fawns around the end of June every year. If the enclosure had been there for three hundred years and you shot a deer only when a member of the college died, then the number of members of the same congregation ought to amount to several million by now, and as far as the more precise calculations were concerned, he would happily leave those to his host.
“You must have enormous recruiting problems every summer. All those new fellows who will suddenly be elected,” said Johansson with an innocent expression.
There was really no question of that, according to the special adviser. He’d never really thought about how the exact details were solved. That the deer and their instincts would govern the selection of fellows was, on the other hand, inconceivable.
“What if a deer were to die? That sort of thing happens all the time,” said Johansson. “How was that resolved? By showing a fellow the door or perhaps even expanding the proctor’s assignment with the shotgun?”
This too was naturally ruled out, according to the special adviser who, however, promised to think about it.
“You are a real policeman, Johansson,” he said for some reason.
“Of course I am,” said Johansson. “Think about it, as we said.”
Then Johansson thanked him for dinner with a few well-chosen words, and his host got up from the table so they could continue their conversation in the library in peace and quiet, have a cup of coffee, and perhaps a glass or two of the special adviser’s downright remarkable cognac.
“Frapin 1900,” said his host with a happy sigh. “Think how good we rich people have it, Johansson.”