I tip-toed in, across the great cold rooms. Then, worried and tense, I meant to satisfy myself that he was no worse. I went to his bedroom door. I stopped outside. Through the oak I could hear voices, speaking very quietly. One was a woman’s.
I lay awake, thinking of them both. Could Joan calm him, even yet? I wished I could believe it. It was much later, it must have been four o’clock, before I heard the click of a door opening. By that time I was drowsing fitfully, and at the sound I jumped up with dread. Another door clicked outside: Joan had left: I found it hard to go to sleep again.
27: Under the Mercury-Vapour Lamps
Roy did not refer to Joan’s visit. She stayed with the Eggars a day or two longer, and then moved on to some friends of the Boscastles in Stockholm. I saw her with Roy only once. She seemed precariously hopeful, and he gentle.
For the rest of my week in Berlin, he was quiet and subdued, though he seemed to be fighting off the true melancholy. He took time from his work to entertain me; he arranged our days so that, like tourists, we could occupy ourselves by talking about the sights.
We slippered our way round Sans Souci, stood in the Garrison Church at Potsdam, sailed along the lakes in the harsh weather, walked through the Brandenburg villages. We had often travelled in Europe together, but this was the first time we had searched for things to see: it was also the first time we had said so little.
I did not meet Schäder again, nor any of his official friends. But I saw a good deal of Ammatter and the university people, in circumstances of fairly high-class farce. Months before, Ammatter had interpreted Schäder’s interest in Roy to mean that the university should give him some honour. Ammatter promptly set about it. And, academic dignitaries having certain characteristics in common everywhere, his colleagues behaved much as our college would have done.
They suspected that Ammatter was trying to suck up to high authorities; they suspected he had an eye on some other job; they could not have been righter. The prospect of someone else getting a job moved them to strong moral indignation. They promptly took up positions for a stately disapproving minuet. What opinions of Roy’s work besides Ammatter’s had ever been offered? Ammatter diligently canvassed the oriental faculty in Berlin, Tubingen, Stuttgart, Breslau, Marburg, Bonn: there seemed to be no doubt, the senate reluctantly admitted, that this Englishman was a scholar of extreme distinction.
That step had taken months. The next step was according to pattern. Though everyone would like to recognise his distinction (which was the positive equivalent of “in his own best interests”), surely they were prevented by their code of procedure? It was impossible to give an honorary degree to a man of twenty-nine; it would open the door to premature proposals of all kinds; if they departed from custom for this one orientalist, they would be flooded with demands from all the other faculties. It was even more impossible to make him a Corresponding Member of the Academy: the orientalists were already above their quota: it would mean asking for a special dispensation: it was unthinkable to ask for a special dispensation, when one was breaking with precedent in putting forward a candidate so young.
Those delays had satisfactorily taken care of several more months. I thought that the resources of obstruction were well up to our native standard — though I would have backed Arthur Brown against any of them as an individual performer, if one wanted a stubborn, untiring, stone-wall defence.
That was the position at the time of our dinner with Schäder. Ammatter had taken Schäder’s question as a rebuke and an instruction to deliver a suitable answer in quick time. So, during that week, he conferred with the Rector. If they abandoned the hope of honorary degrees and corresponding memberships, could they not introduce the American title of visiting professor? It would recognise a fine achievement: it would cost them nothing: it would do the university good. No doubt, I thought when I heard the story, there was a spirited and enjoyable exchange of sentiments about how the university could in no way whatsoever be affected by political influences. No doubt they agreed that, in a case like this which was crystal-pure upon its own merits, it would do no harm to retain a Minister’s benevolent interest.
The upshot of it all was that Roy found himself invited to address a seminar at very short notice. At the seminar the Rector and several of the senate would be present: Roy was to describe his recent researches. Afterwards Ammatter planned that the Rector would make the new proposal his own; it would require “handling”, as Arthur Brown would say, to slip an unknown title into the university; it was essential that the Rector should speak from first-hand knowledge. Apparently the Rector was convinced that it would be wise to act.
I heard some of the conferences between Ammatter and Roy, without understanding much of them. It was when we were alone that Roy told me the entire history. His spirits did not often rise nowadays to their old mischievous brilliance: but he had not been able to resist giving Ammatter the impression that he needed recognition from the University of Berlin more than anything on earth. This impression had made Ammatter increasingly agitated; for he took it for granted that Roy told Schäder so, and that his, Ammatter’s, fortunes hung on the event. Ammatter took to ringing up Roy late at night on the days before the seminar: another member of the senate was attending: all would come well. Roy protested extreme nervousness about his address, and Ammatter fussed over the telephone and came round early in the morning to reassure him.
I begged to be allowed to come to the seminar. With a solemn face, Roy said that he would take me. With the same solemn face, he answered Ammatter on the telephone the evening before: I could hear groans and cries from the instrument as Ammatter assured, encouraged, cajoled, reviled. Roy put down the receiver with his most earnest, mystifying expression.
“I’ve told him that I must put up a good show tomorrow,” he said. “But I was obliged to tell him that too much depends on it. I may get stage fright.”
Roy dressed with exquisite care the next morning. He put on his most fashionable suit, a silk shirt, a pair of suede shoes. “Must look well,” he said. “Can’t take any risks.” In fact, as he sat on the Rector’s right hand in the oriental lecture room at the university, he looked as though he had strayed in by mistake. The Rector was a bald fat man with rimless spectacles and a stout pepper-coloured suit; he sat stiffly between Roy and Ammatter, down at the lecturer’s desk. The theatre ran up in tiers, and there sat thirty or forty men in the three bottom rows. Most of them were homely, academic, middle-aged, dressed in sensible reach-me-downs. In front of their eyes sat Roy, wooden-faced, slight, elegant, young, like a flâneur at a society lunch.
It was an oriental seminar, and so Ammatter was in the chair. He made a speech to welcome Roy; I did not understand it, but it was obviously jocular, flattering, the speech of an impresario who, after much stress, knows that he has pulled it off. Roy stood up, straight and solemn. There was some clapping. Roy began to speak in English. I saw Ammatter’s face cloud with astonishment, used as he was to hear Roy speak German as well as a foreigner could. Other faces began to look slightly glazed, for German scholars were no better linguists than English ones, and not more than half a dozen people there could follow spoken English comfortably, even in a tone as clear as Roy’s. But many more had to pretend to understand; they did not like to seem baffled; very soon heads were nodding wisely when the lecturer appeared to be establishing a point.
Actually Roy had begun with excessive formality to explain that his subject was of great intricacy, and he found it necessary to use his own language, which of course they would understand. His esteemed master and colleague, his esteemed professor Ammatter, had said that the lecture would describe recent advances in Manichaean studies. “I think that would be much too broad a subject to attempt in one afternoon. It would be extremely rash to make such an attempt,” said Roy solemnly, and uncomprehending heads began to shake in sympathy. “I should regard it as coming dangerously near journalism to offer my learned colleagues a kind of popular précis. So with your permission I have chosen a topic where I can be definite enough not to offend you. I hope to examine to your satisfaction five points in Soghdian lexicography.”