Malcolm Bradbury - Doctor Criminale

‘It’s cheaper too,’ said Lavinia, ‘But since I’m the producer I thought it was important I should be somewhere close to the main action.’ ‘What main action?’ I asked. ‘I need to be near the banks and the ministries. And the coffee houses and the opera,’ said Lavinia, ‘But you’ll just be researching. You do understand?’ ‘Oh, of course, Lavinia,’ I said, ‘Don’t worry.’ ‘You were hoping we’d be in the same hotel,’ said Lavinia, beaming chubbily at me, ‘You wanted the room next door, didn’t you, Francis?’ ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘It’s just this bloody tight budget, you see, I have to keep an eye on,’ said Lavinia, patting my hand, ‘But I thought I’d get us tickets for the opera tomorrow night. And then you could come back and have a late-night champagne with me. Because we are here to enjoy ourselves too, aren’t we, Francis?’ ‘Well, yes, I suppose so,’ I said, ‘Remember, I haven’t done this before.’ Til teach you everything I know,’ said Lavinia, giggling, ‘Now what I really need is some more Schlag. Isn’t that what it’s called, darling?’ ‘What what’s called, Lavinia?’ I asked. ‘Cream, this lovely thick cream,’ said Lavinia, waving over a black-dressed, white-pinafored waitress, ‘More Torte mit Schlag.’ ‘Schlag, meine Dame, bitte?’ asked the waitress. ‘Cream,’ said Lavinia, ‘Thick thick cream.’ ‘Ah, mit Sahne,’ said the waitress, departing. ‘I thought you spoke German,’ said Lavinia, looking at me accusingly. ‘No, I don’t actually speak it,’ I said, ‘I just find I can understand some of it when they speak it to me.’ ‘My God,’ said Lavinia, ‘What happens if old man Codicil doesn’t speak any English?’ ‘I expect we’ll get along,’ I said, ‘Between the two of us.’ ’I’m not going to see him,’ said Lavinia, ‘You do the research and I’ll recce the locations.’ ‘What locations?’ I asked, ‘We don’t have any locations.’ ‘Local colour, I think I’ll start with Schonbrunn and the Kunsthistorisches Museum,’ said Lavinia, ‘And then one of us is going to have to go and fight for tickets for the opera. But I suppose that’s what we poor producers get our salaries for. Now remember, you’re an investigative journalist. You’re looking for a really big story, love and lusts and everything. Get old Codicil to pour his heart out. Ah, lovely, Torte mit Schlag. Oh, Fraulein, can I have more chocolate on the top?’ ‘Chocolate, meine Dame?’ asked the waitress. ‘The brown stuff, darling,’ said Lavinia, ‘Oh God, this is what I love about Vienna. It’s just so bloody cultured.’

Lavinia was still spooning in the delights of Viennese culture when, a little later, I took a cream-coloured Mercedes taxi and set off for the Hotel Von Trapp. It proved to be a good way out past the Belvedere Palace, well into the suburbs and not all that far from the railway marshalling yards. It was, nonetheless, grand in its own way. Henry James – I suddenly recalled from my random literary education – had once described England as having rather too much of the superfluous and not enough of the necessary. The Old Master had clearly never seen the Hotel Von Trapp. In its vast and imperial lobby, where Japanese tourists were chittering and chattering like Papageno and Papagena over the endless line of suitcases that were pouring off their coach, it took four serious black-jacketed desk clerks to check me in, as they passed ledgers and paperwork, passports and keys back and forth amongst themselves, much as their ancestors must have done in the red-taped heyday of the Habsburg Empire. Then it took me several minutes to walk across the lobby toward the Secession ironwork elevator, and even longer to ascend upward, ever upward, to my room.

The room, I discovered, somehow lay beyond the scope of imperial elegance, and had doubtless been intended for someone’s hapless maidservant in grander times. High in the mansard roof, it was tiny, and so was the bed in the corner. Behind the rough plasterboard door was a notice that said: ‘In the happening of fire, ask for helps the fireman at the window. Do not evacuate in the lift.’ I sat on the bed (there was no chair) and unpacked the modest airport luggage, the knickers from Knickerbox, shirts from Shirt Factory, that I hoped would last me for the next couple of days. I took a quick shower (the ceiling of the shower box was so low you had to crouch in it) and then returned, re-robed, and set to work to look for the telephone directory. I found it at last, confusingly cased in an embroidered cloth cover with a portrait-of-Ludwig van Beethoven, not famous, especially given his deafness, for his association with the telephone, on the front of it. I scuffed through the pages, hunting for the number of Professor Doktor Otto Codicil.

I found nothing, and then realized that the professor was probably far too important to be listed. So I tried the number of directory enquiries, and had somewhat better fortune. Appar­ently, like most of the good professors of Vienna, his telephone was indeed ex-directory, but if I cared to say who I was and what I wanted, the switchboard would contact him and, if he was willing to talk to me, he would ring me back. I sat in the room for some time; the telephone failed to ring. Then it came to me that of course in the middle of the afternoon the good professor wouldn’t be at home anyway; he would be in the university about his academic business, giving lectures, examining students, marking essays, reading his learned jour­nals, doing the things that good professors professorially do. He would not be at home until the evening, so I might as well go for a walk. I went downstairs and out into suburban Vienna, duly finding my way to the cemetery of Saint Marx – where I discovered that there was a tomb to, naturally, Mozart, though, confusingly, he was not actually buried in it. As evening came, I returned to the Hotel Von Trapp, made my way to the enor­mous dining-room (‘Der Feinschmecker’), took an early dinner (‘Tafelspitz an Vhichy-Karotten und Petersilienkartoffeln’) in a spacious ambience where the waiters outnumbered the eaters by about three to one, then returned to my rooftop eyrie to await a call from Professor Doktor Otto Codicil.

Nothing came. I waited for an hour or so, then called directory enquiries again and persuaded the girl there to try the { number once more, in case my message had gone astray. Less I than five minutes later, the telephone by my bedside suddenly ; rang. The person on the other end was clearly not Codicil; it could well have been a maid, or just possibly a very subservient wife, but it was plainly his emissary. In German she enquired what I wanted; in slow English I explained I needed to speak to the professor on an urgent intellectual matter. There was a moment of silence, then the sound of footsteps skittering nervously away across parquet. After a few seconds, new, much heavier footsteps returned, then a very deep voice came on the telephone and said ‘Professor Doktor Otto Codicil, ja, bitte?’ I briefly introduced myself and made a small, considered speech explaining that I represented a leading British television company that wished to make a serious programme devoted to the life, the thought, the times, the influence, and indeed the general philosophical importance of that great man of distinction, Doctor Bazlo Criminale. There was another very long silence at the other end, and I began to think that Professor Doktor Otto Codicil did not speak any English at all.

I could not, I found a second later, have been more wrong. ‘My dear good sir, you really plan to make such a programme for the television?’ asked Codicil, ‘No, I really think you do not.’ ‘But we do,’ I said. ‘Then may I say to you in all total candour that for the very life of me I do not see the need for such a thing,’ said Codicil. ‘I’m sure you know British television is very good at this kind of show,’ I said, ‘We always like to keep our audiences abreast of the latest directions of contemporary European thought.’ ‘I can assure you, my dear sir, that all that can be said of or about our good Doktor Criminale is what that selfsame Doktor Criminale has already said of or about himself.’ ‘Yes, of course,’ I said, ‘But what we want to do is introduce him and his work to a more general audience.’ ‘There is no general audience that could possibly understand Criminale,’ said Codicil definitively, ‘To those who are blind, all things are obscure. So it is, and so it should remain. You know it is not so polite to try to telephone me like this. Out of the blues and with no letter or introduction. Please now may we terminate this call, which I am paying for, by the way?’