Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

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.”

He lectured for an hour and twenty minutes. His face was imperturbably solemn throughout — except that twice he made a grotesque donnish pun, and gave a shy smile. At that sign, the whole room rocked with laughter, as though he had revealed a ray of humour of the most divine subtlety. When he frowned, they shook their heads. When he sounded triumphant, they nodded in unison.

Even those who could understand his English must have been very little the wiser. For he was analysing some esoteric problems about words that he had just discovered; they were in a dialect of Soghdian which he was the only man in the world to have unravelled. To add a final touch of fantasy, he quoted long passages of Soghdian: so that much of the lecture seemed to be taking place in Soghdian itself.

He would recite from memory sentence after sentence in this language, completely incomprehensible to anyone but himself. The strange sounds finished up as though he had asked a question. Roy proceeded to answer it himself.

“Just so,” he said firmly, and then went on in Soghdian to what appeared to be the negative view. That passage came to an end, and Roy at once commented on it in a stern tone. “Not a bit of it,” he said.

I was sitting with a handkerchief pressed to my mouth. It was the most elaborate, the most ludicrous, the most recherché, of all his tricks: it was pure “old-brandy”, to use a private phrase. He knew that, if one had an air of solemn certainty and a mesmerising eye, they would never dare to say that it was too difficult for them. None of these learned men would dare to say that he had not understood a word.

An hour went by. I wondered when he was going to end. But he had set himself five words to discuss, and even when he arrived at the fifth he was not going to leave his linguistic speculations unsaid. He finished strongly in a wave of Soghdian, swelled by remarks in the later forms of the language, with illustrations from all over the Middle East. Then he said, very modestly and unassumingly: “I expect you may think that I have been too bold and slapdash in some of my conclusions. I have not had time to give you all the evidence, but I think I can present it. I very much hope that if any of my colleagues can show me where I have been too superficial, he will please do so now.”

Roy slid quietly into his seat. There was a little stupefied applause, which became louder and clearer. The clapping went on.

Ammatter got up and asked for contributions and questions. There was a long stupefied silence. Then someone rose. He was an eminent philologist, possibly the only person present who had profited by the lecture. He spoke in halting, correct English: “These pieces of analysis are most deep and convincing, if I may say so. I have one thing to suggest about your word—”

He made his suggestion which was complex and technical, and sounded very ingenious. At once Roy jumped up to reply — and replied at length in German. In fluent, easy, racy German. Then I heard the one complaint of the afternoon. Two faces in the row in front of me turned to each other. One asked why he had not lectured in German. The other could not understand.

Roy’s discussion with the philologist went on. It was not a controversy; they were agreeing over a new possibility, which Roy promised to investigate (it appeared later as a paragraph in one of his books). The Rector made a speech to thank Roy for his lecture. Ammatter supported him. There was more applause, and Roy thanked the meeting in a few demure and solemn words.