Robertson Davies - The Rebel Angels

In scholarly terms this was fantastic generosity. If he had the letters I could have the historical commentary. Gorgeous!

Then he did a most uncharacteristic thing. He began to swear violently, and smashed his teacup on the floor; he snatched mine and broke it; he smashed the teapot. Then, shouting McVarish's name over and over again he broke the wooden tray over the back of a chair and trampled on all the fragments of china, wood, and tea-leaves. His face was very dark with anger. Without a word to me he stamped into his inner room and locked the door. I had shrunk myself as small as possible on the sofa, for safety and the better to admire.

Not a word about love, though. I was almost ashamed to notice such a thing when big scholarly matters were in the air. I did notice, however. But Hollier was so furious with McVarish that he had no time for anything else.

None the less, this had been a display of feeling from Hollier; he had shown human concern, even if most of it was for himself. It was when his scholarly zeal was excited that Hollier became something more than the preoccupied, removed scholar which was the man he showed to the world. When I had first told him about the bomari he had done something extraordinary: both times he told me about the Gryphius MS he had been greatly stirred and this time he had flared into anger. On all three occasions he had been a different creature, younger, physically alert, swept by passion into acts that were foreign to his usual self.

This was Hollier's root, not his austere scholarly crown. From time to time I heard him shouting. Sometimes things I could understand like – "And that blockhead wanted me to go to McVarish and tell him everything!" Tell what? Who was the blockhead?

I cleaned up the mess, and was happy to do it. Hollier's rage had cured my influenza.

Or almost cured it. When I went home that evening, Mamusia said: "Your cold is gone, but you look white. I know what is wrong with you, my girl; you are in love. Your professor. How is he?"

"Never better," said I, thinking of the storm I had seen that afternoon.

"A fine man. Very handsome. Has he made love to you?"

"No." I didn't want to go into fine detail with Mamusia.

"Ach, these gadje! Slow as snakes in autumn. I suppose there must be social occasions. They think a lot of social occasions. We must show you off to advantage. You must ask him here at Christmas."

We had quite a long argument about that. I was dubious about what Mamusia meant by social occasions; when Tadeusz was alive he and Mamusia never entertained anybody at home; they always took them to restaurants, to concerts or plays. The great change that had come over her since Tadeusz's death had obliterated all that; she had never had friends among the gadjo business and professional Hungarians, and she had dropped all the acquaintances. But when Mamusia took an idea into her head it was not in my power to change her. A Christmas party now dominated her imagination, although, as a Gypsy, Christmas was not a great festival for her. I tried being outspoken.

"I won't let you ask him here to parade me like a Gypsy pony you want to sell. You don't know how people like that behave."

"So at my age I'm a fool? I will be as high and fine as any gadji lady – so slick a louse would slip off me. Parade you? Is that how it's done, poshrat? Never! We shall do it like the great ladies of Vienna. We shall make him see he isn't alone in desiring you."

"Mamusia! He doesn't desire me!"

"That's what he thinks. He doesn't know what he desires. You leave that to me. He's the man I want for the father of my grandchildren, and it's high time. We'll make him jealous. You must ask another man."

What other man? Arthur Cornish? Arthur and I had been going out together fairly often, and were becoming real friends, but he had never made a move towards me, except to kiss me good night once or twice, which can't be said to count. Arthur was the last man I wanted to introduce into Mamusia's world.

She had been thinking. "To make Hollier jealous, you must ask somebody who is his equal, or a little better than that. Somebody with prettier manners, better clothes, more jewellery. Another professor! Do you know another professor?"

So that was how I came to ask Professor Darcourt to dine with my family on Boxing Day. He turned rather an odd colour when I wound myself up to the point of speaking about it – a pink that started below his collar and worked up, as if somebody were filling a wineglass. I was terrified. Had he heard that my home was a Gypsy home? Was he afraid he would have to sit on the floor and eat baked hedgehog, which is all the gadje ever seem to know about gypsy food? When he said that yes, he would be delighted to come, I was hugely relieved, and as I left his seminar room I was surprised to find that he was still looking at me, and was pinker than ever. But he would do very nicely. He was near to Hollier in age, and he had lovely manners and dressed smartly for a stout man, and though he did not wear what Mamusia would have thought of as jewellery he had a natty little gold cross hanging from his watch-chain, which draped over what I assumed was the forty feet of literary gut Professor Froats had mentioned. Yes, Simon Darcourt would be just the thing.

"A priest?" said Mamusia when I told her. "I must warn Yerko to guard his tongue."

"You make sure Yerko is sober," said I.

"Trust me," said Mamusia. Words I interpreted as generously as I could, but with reservation.

There was no need to warn Yerko to guard his tongue. He returned from New York heavy with concealed money, but light of heart, for he had found a god to worship, and the name of the god was Bebby Jesus. A friend had taken him to the Metropolitan Museum where, in the medieval section, a Nativity Play was being performed in celebration of the coming of Christmas. The friend thought that Yerko might be pleased by the medieval music, played on authentic old viols and some instruments of which one resembled the cimbalom, the gypsy dulcimer Yerko played like a master. But Yerko's incalculable fancy had settled upon the drama, the Annunciation, the Virgin Birth, the Adoration of the Shepherds, and the Journey of the Magi. In official matters, Gypsies call themselves Catholics, but Yerko's mind, uncluttered by education or conventional religion, was wide open to marvels; at the age of fifty-eight he was transfigured by his newly found belief in the Miraculous Child. Therefore he had purchased an elaborate crèche of carved and painted wood, and as soon as he came home he set to work with his great skill as a woodworker and craftsman to make it the most splendid thing of its kind his imagination could conceive. Nor was it anything less than splendid, though a little gaudy and bedizened, in the Gypsy style.

He set it up in our one living-room, already crammed with all the best pieces Mamusia and Tadeusz had spread through the big house when they occupied it all; the crèche dominated everything else. Yerko prayed in front of it, and never passed it without a low bow and a murmured greeting to Bebby Jesus who wore, when Yerko had finished his task of improvement, a superb little crown of beautifully worked copper and gold, and a robe of red velvet, made by Mamusia and decorated with tiny pearls.

I was not pleased with Bebby Jesus, who went contrary to what I hoped was my scholarly austerity of mind, my Rabelaisian disdain for superstition, and my yearning for – what? I suppose for some sort of Canadian conventionality, which keeps religion strictly in its place, where it must not be mocked but need not be heeded, either. What would our party guests make of this extraordinary shrine?

They thought it was magnificent. They arrived on our doorstep together, though Hollier had walked and Darcourt travelled by taxi, and they made the somewhat too extravagant protestations of being glad to see each other that people do make around Christmas-time. Before I could take his coat Darcourt had dashed forward and stood in front of the crèche, lost in admiration.