Iain Pears - An Instance of the Fingerpost

It was Grove who invited me to lodge at New College when building works made my home uninhabitable. Death and a delayed election to a Fellowship had created a vacancy in a room and the college, as was its practice, had decided to rent the space out until a new Fellow staked a claim. I had never before enjoyed the common life, even as an undergraduate myself, and was more than content to put it behind me when I gained my first preferment. As a professor, of course, I was entitled to marry and keep my own home, and so it was near twenty years since I had lived cheek-by-jowl with others. I found the experience strangely entertaining, and the solitude of my own room suitable for work. I even regretted my youth and wished again for that irresponsibility when all is still to be done, and nothing is certain. But the feeling soon passed, and by this time, the appeal of New College was waning fast. Apart from Grove, all the Fellows were of low quality, many were corrupt and most inattentive to their duties. I withdrew more and more, and spent as little time as possible in their midst.

Grove was my companion on many evenings, for he took to knocking on my door in his desire of discussion. I did my best to discourage him at first, but he was not easily put off, and eventually I found that I almost welcomed the disturbance, for it was impossible to brood overmuch when he was there. And the disputes we had were of high quality, even though we were often sadly mismatched. Grove had trained himself in scholastic disputation, which I had done my best to shake off as constricting the imagination. And, as I endeavored to point out to him, the new philosophy simply cannot be expressed in terms of the definitions and axioms and theorems and antitheses and all the other apparatus of fonnal Aristotelianism. For Grove this was fraud and deceit, as he held, as a matter of doctrine, that the beauties and subtleties of logic contained all possibilities, and that if a case could not be argued through its forms, then that proved the flaw of the case.

“I am sure you will find Mr. Cola an interesting disputant,” I said when he told me that the Italian would sup that same evening. “I gather from Mr. Lower that he is a great enthusiast for experiment. Whether he will understand your sense of humor I cannot predict. I think I will dine in myself, to see what results.”

Grove beamed with pleasure, and I remember him wiping his red, inflamed eye with a cloth. “Splendid,” he said. “We can make up a threesome, and maybe drink a bottle together afterward and have a real discussion. I will order one. I hope to have great sport with him, as Lord Maynard is dining, and I wish to show my skills in dispute. Lord Maynard will then know what sort of person will be taking his living.”

“I hope this Cola does not take offense at being used in such a fashion.”

“I’m sure he will not even notice. Besides, he has a charming manner and is perfectly respectful. Quite unlike the reputation of Italians, I must say, since I have always heard it said they are fawning and obsequious.”

“I understand he is Venetian,” I said. “They are said to be as cold as their canals, and as secretive as the doge’s dungeons.”

“I did not find him so. Muddle-headed and with all the errors of youth, no doubt, but far from cold or secretive. You may find out for yourself, though.” Here he paused and frowned. “But I forget. I have no sooner offered you a bottle than I find I must withdraw my invitation.”

“Why is that?”

“Mr. Prestcott. You know of him?”

“I heard the tales.”

“He sent a message wishing to see me. Did you know I was his tutor once? Tiresome boy he was, not intelligent and no head for learning. And very strange indeed, all charm one moment, sulks and tantrums the next. A nasty, violent streak in him as well, and greatly given to superstition. Anyway, he wishes to see me, as it appears the prospect of hanging is making him reconsider his life and his sins. I do not want to go, but I suppose I must.”

And here I took a sudden decision, realizing that, if I was to trade with Prestcott, I had best do it as soon as possible. It may have been mere whim, or perhaps an angel guided my lips as I spoke. It may have been simply that I did not trust a sudden display of piety from Prestcott, who I had been told only the day before was in no repentant frame of mind. It does not matter; I took the fateful decision.

“You certainly must not,” I said firmly. “Your eyes look fearfully sore, and I am certain that exposure to a night wind will only weaken them further. I will go in your place. If it is a priest he wants, I suppose I can do that as well as you. And if it is you he particularly desires to see, then you may go at a later date. There is no rush. The assize does not come for more than a fortnight, and waiting will only make the boy more compliant.”

It required few of the arts of persuasion to make him take my advice. Reassured that a needy soul was not being neglected, he thanked me most sincerely for my kindness and confessed that an evening tormenting an experimentalist was very much more to his liking. I even ordered the bottle for him as his eye was so bad; it was delivered by my wine seller, and placed at the foot of the staircase, with my name on. That was the bottle Cola poisoned, and why I know it was intended for myself.

I see from my commonplace book that I spent that day in an ordinary fashion. I attended divine service at St. Mary’s as usual, for I always gave my loyalty when in town to the university church, and endured a tedious (and quite erroneous) sermon on Matthew 15:23, in which even the most ardent could find no merit, even though we tried in discussion afterward. I have sat through many such in my life, and find myself having some sympathy for the papist style of worship. Irreligious, heretical and ungodly it may be, but at least Catholicism does not so greatly expose its members to the nonsense of pompous fools more in love with the sound of their own voices than with their Lord.

Then I attended to business. My correspondence took an hour or so, for I had few letters to answer that day, and I passed the rest of the morning at work with my book on the history of the algebraic method, writing with great ease those passages wherein I demonstrated with unchallengeable proofs the fraudulent claims of Vieta, all of whose inventions were, in fact, conceived some thirty years previously by Mr. Harriot.

Small stuff, but it occupied me fully until I donned my gown and descended to the hall, where Grove introduced me to Marco da Cola.

I cannot put in words the suffocating loathing I felt on first casting eyes on the man who had extinguished Matthew’s life so carelessly and with such ruthlessness. Everything about his appearance disgusted me, so much so that I felt my throat tightening and thought, for a moment, that nausea would overcome me entirely. His air of amiability merely pointed up the magnitude of his cruelty, his exquisite manners reminded me of his violence, the expense of his dress, the speed and coldness of his deed. God help me, I could not bear the thought of that stinking perfumed body close to Matthew, those fat and manicured hands stroking that perfect young cheek.

I feared then that my expression must have given away something, informed Cola as that I knew who he was and what he was to do, and it may even be that it was the look of horror on my face which prompted him to move faster, and attempt my life that same night. I do not know; both of us behaved as well as we could; neither, I think, gave anything away thereafter and, to all outsiders, the meal must have appeared perfectly normal.

Cola has given his account of that dinner, wherein he mixes insult to his hosts with exaggeration about his own conversation. Oh, those splendid speeches, those reasoned responses, the patient way in which he smoothed ruffled feathers and corrected the egregious errors of his poor seniors! I must apologize, even at this late date, for not having appreciated his wit, his sagacity and his kindliness, for I confess all of these fine qualities completely escaped my notice at the time. Instead, I saw (or thought I saw, for I must have been wrong) an uneasy little man with more mannerisms than manners, dressed like a cockatoo and with an insinuating assumption of gravitas in his address which failed completely to disguise the superficiality of his learning. His affectation of courtly ways, and his scorn of those kind enough to offer him hospitality, was apparent to all who had the misfortune to sit near him. The flourish with which he produced a little scrap of cloth to vent his nostrils excited the ridicule of all, and his pointed remarks—in Venice everyone uses forks; in Venice wine is drank from glass; in Venice this, in Venice that—aroused only their disgust. Like many who have little to say, he said too much, interrupting without courtesy and favoring with the benefit of his wisdom those who did not desire it.