Eva Ibbotson: The Morning Gift

He smiled, remembering the excitable, affectionate Bergers, the massive meals in the Viennese apartment, and the wooden house on the Grundlsee. There’d been an accident-prone anthropologist whose monograph on the Mi-Mi had fallen out of a rowing boat, and a pig-tailed little girl with a biblical name he couldn’t now recall. Rachel…? Hannah…?

‘I’ll go,’ he decided. ‘If I jump ship at Izmir I can connect with the Orient Express. It won’t delay me more than a couple of days. I know I can trust you to see the stuff through the customs, but if there’s any trouble I’ll sort it out when I come.’

The pigeons were still there, wheeling as if to music in this absurdly music-minded city; the cobbles, the spire of St Stephan’s glimpsed continually from the narrow streets as his taxi took him from the station. The smell of vanilla too, as he pulled down the windows, and the lilacs and laburnums in the park.

But the swastika banners now hung from the windows, relics of the city’s welcome to the Führer, groups of soldiers with the insignia of the SS stood together on street corners — and when the taxi turned into a narrow lane, he saw the hideous daubings on the doors of Jewish shops, the broken windows.

In Sacher’s Hotel he found that his booking had been honoured. The welcome was friendly, Kaiser Franz Joseph in his mutton chop whiskers still hung in the foyer, not yet replaced by the Führer’s banal face. But in the bar three German officers with their peroxided girlfriends were talking loudly in Berlin accents. Even if there had been time to have a drink, Quin would not have joined them. In fact there was no time at all for the unthinkable had happened and the fabled Orient Express had developed engine trouble. Changing quickly into a dark suit, he hurried to the university. Berger’s secretary had written to him before he left England, explaining that robes would be hired for him, and all degree ceremonies were much the same. It was only necessary to follow the person in front in the manner of penguins.

All the same, it was even later than he had realized. Groups of men in scarlet and gold, in black and purple, with hoods bound in ermine or tasselled caps, stood on the steps; streams of proud relatives in their best clothes moved through the imposing doors.

‘Ah, Professor Somerville, you are expected, everything is ready.’ The Registrar’s secretary greeted him with relief. ‘I’ll take you straight to the robing room. The Dean was hoping to welcome you before the ceremony, but he’s already in the hall so he’ll meet you at the reception.’

‘I’m looking forward to seeing him.’

Quin’s gown of scarlet silk, lined with palatine purple, was laid out on a table beside a card bearing his name. The velvet hat was too big, but he pushed it onto the back of his head and went out to join the other candidates waiting in the anteroom.

The organist launched into a Bach passacaglia, and between a fat lady professor from the Argentine and what seemed to be the oldest entomologist in the world, Quin marched down the aisle of the Great Hall towards the Chancellor’s throne.

As he’d expected in this city, where even the cab horses were caparisoned, the ceremony proceeded with the maximum of pomp. Men rose, doffed their caps, bowed to each other, sat down again. The organ pealed. Long-dead alumni in golden frames stared down from the wall.

Seated to the right of the dais, Quin, looking for Berger in the row of academics opposite, was impeded by the hat of the lady professor from the Argentine who seemed to be wearing an outsize academic soup tureen.

One by one, the graduates to be honoured were called out to have their achievements proclaimed in Latin, to be hit on the shoulder by a silver sausage containing the charter bestowed on the university by the Emperor Maximilian, and receive a parchment scroll. Quin, helping the entomologist from his chair, wondered whether the old gentleman would survive being hit by anything at all, but he did. The fat lady professor went next. His view now unimpeded, Quin searched the gaudily robed row of senior university members but could see no sign of Berger. It was eight years since they had met, but surely he would recognize that wise, dark face?

His turn now.

‘It has been decided to confer the degree of Doctor of Science, Honoris Causa on Quinton Alexander St John Somerville. The public orator will now introduce Professor Somerville to you.’

Quin rose and went to stand facing the Chancellor, one of whose weak blue eyes was partly obscured by the golden tassel hanging from his cap. While the fulsome platitudes in praise of his achievements rolled out, Quin grew increasingly uneasy — and suddenly what had seemed to be an archaic but not undignified attempt to maintain the traditions of the past, became a travesty, an absurd charade mouthed by puppets.

The oration ceased, leaving him the youngest professor in the University of Thameside, Fellow of the Royal Society, Gold Medallist of the Geographical Association and the Sherlock Holmes of pre-history whose inspired investigations had unlocked the secrets of the past.

Quin scowled and climbed the dais. The Chancellor raised his sausage — and recoiled.

‘The chap looked as though he wanted to kill me,’ he complained afterwards.

Quin mastered himself, took the scroll, returned to his place.

And now at last it was over and he could ask the question that had haunted him throughout the tedious ceremony.

‘Where is Professor Berger?’

He had spoken to the Registrar whose pale eyes slid away from him.

‘Professor Berger is no longer with us. But the new Dean, Professor Schlesinger, is waiting to greet you.’

‘I, however, am not waiting to greet him. Where is Professor Berger? Please answer my question.’

The Registrar shuffled his feet. ‘He has been relieved of his post.’

‘Why?’

‘The Nuremberg Laws were implemented immediately after the Anschluss. Nobody who is not racially pure can hold high office.’ He took a step backwards. ‘It’s not my fault, I’m only —’

‘Where is Berger? Is he still in Vienna?’

The Registrar shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Many Jews have been trying to emigrate.’

‘Find me his last address.’

‘Yes, Professor, certainly, after the reception.’

‘No, not after the reception,’ said Quin. ‘Now.’

He remembered the street but not, at first, the house. Then a particularly well-nourished pair of caryatids sent him through an archway and into the courtyard. The concierge was not in her box; no one impeded him as he made his way up the wide marble staircase to the first floor.

Professor Berger’s brass plate was still screwed onto the door, but the door itself, surprisingly, was ajar. He pushed it open. Here in the old days he had been met by a maid in a black apron, but there was no one there. The Professor’s umbrella and walking sticks were still in the stand, his hat hung on its hook. Making his way down the passage with its thick Turkey carpet, he knocked on the door of the study and opened it. He had spent many hours here working on the symposium, awed by Berger’s scholarship and the generosity with which he shared his ideas. The Professor’s books lined the wall, the Remington, under its black cover, stood on the desk.

Yet the silence was eerie. He thought of the Mary Celeste , the boat found abandoned in mid-ocean with the cups still on the table, the uneaten food. A double door led from the study into the dining room with its massive table and tall leather-backed chairs. The Meissen plates were still on the dresser; a cup the Professor had won for fencing stood on the sideboard. Increasingly puzzled, he moved on into the drawing room. The paintings of alpine landscapes hung undisturbed on the walls; the Professor’s war medals lay in their cases under glass. A palm tree in a brass pot had been watered — yet he had never sensed such desolation, such emptiness.