A Curable Romantic (72 page)

Transporting little dishes of hors d’oeuvres and flutes of Champagne, they took shelter inside the synagogue’s tiny library, where they were soon joined by a third man, a Professor Leau. Despite his physical superiority — Professor Leau possessed the dashing good looks of a
matinee idol — he seemed to defer to the stubbier Professor Couturat in all matters, at times even standing behind him like an Oriental wife.

From my chair outside the bridal chamber, I could see them through the doorway of the library as now one, and now the next, paced before it, each speaking passionately, it seemed, although I couldn’t hear a word they were saying; though I watched them from this small distance, my mind was on other things, naturally. I had only two thoughts, really. The first, concerning Loë, beat like a drum inside my brain: When will she call for me? When will she summon me? And what have I done
now
to alienate her affections? The second (namely: I wish
I
had a kite) announced itself whenever I thought of the children I happened to have glanced, during Herr Bernfeld’s departure, through the open doorway of the synagogue, playing in the square with their tails and their twine. If I possessed a thought concerning Dr. Zamenhof, it was probably something along these lines: How good it is to see the Majstro basking in the admiration he so richly deserves from even the haughtiest of our French intellectuals.

“HUSBAND,” LOË SAID.

The door of the bridal chamber opened, and naturally, I lost track of Dr. Zamenhof and the two professors still conversing in the library. I started to rise from my chair, but before I could, Loë crossed the threshold and fell at my knees. She laid her head across my lap.

“Why can he not understand how much I love you!”

“Oh, darling,” I said, caressing her hair.

“Why would he come all this way? Just to ruin this day for me, for us!”

“Oh, no, no, it’s not ruined, Loë, no.”

“He thinks just because I threw that bracelet away when I was nine, he knows everything there is to know about me!”

“Bracelet?”

“When I was nine.” She nodded tearfully.

“He told me it was a necklace.”

“You see!” She laughed for a moment and wiped away a tear. “That’s how much he knows!” Then she began to cry all over again. “And now everything is ruined!”

“It isn’t, believe me!” I said, lifting her head and kissing her brow. “The reception is still going on. You can hear it upstairs.”

“Oh, Kaĉjo, you’re so sweet and kind! Thank God I married you.”

“What did he say to you?”

She blew her nose. “It doesn’t matter what he said, although it was terrible, terrible. I called him a liar, and I told him I never wanted to see him again.”

“What was in that dossier?”

She shook her head. “Let’s not talk about that. Never. Let’s never talk about that. Rather kiss me instead.”

Her kisses were wet and salty from her tears and from some sort of moisture that was coming from her nose. I gave her my handkerchief, and she prettied herself. It took a while, but eventually I convinced her to come upstairs with me to join the others. However, by the time we made our way as a couple to the reception hall, the band were packing up their instruments and most of the guests had gone.

CHAPTER 13

Loë and I returned to Vienna as man and wife and established our residence in her apartments. Relations with her father appeared to have been irreparably damaged, and though we lived in the same building with him and saw him often — for meals and family gatherings and such — the chill between father and daughter never thawed. Loë exhibited towards him what I can only describe as a cordial hostility. They were correct with each other, polite and precise, but there was an unmistakable hatred in her attitude that was quite obviously breaking the old gentleman’s heart. I tried to befriend him, but he would have none of it. Though I attempted, in his presence, to bring the conversation round to subjects that might interest him, he continued to treat me with disdain, a circumstance that only incensed Loë further, so that I stopped speaking to him altogether out of fear of worsening the situation.

Despite everything, I was taken on by the firm of Bernfeld & Sons, Inc., so that I might at least appear to earn a salary commensurate with the needs of the class to which I now belonged. Neither the Bernfeld daughters nor the Bernfeld sons-in-law were granted positions of authority inside the family empire — a network of markets and economies overseen by the six Bernfeld brothers and their sons exclusively — and my workdays were an empty canvas. With little to do, I established a free clinic in our offices and saw to the ocular needs of our Viennese employees. My hours were my own, and I’m certain no one would have noticed had I run off to join Herr Franz’s Marvelous & Astonishing Puppet Theater, an idea I spent far too many afternoons in contemplation of.

As the time for the Delegation Committee neared, everything changed, however, and my office was suddenly inundated with mail. Multi-colored brochures, pamphlets, grammars, dictionaries began arriving upon my desk at a furious rate, forwarded through Paris from all across the world.

Like the other members of the Delegation Committee, I received prospectuses for nearly two hundred artificial languages and also Professors Couturat and Leau’s compendious
Histoire de la langue universelle.

THE DELEGATION COMMITTEE
was the brainchild of these two Frenchmen whom I’d seen Dr. Zamenhof speaking with at my wedding. May I say: as far as French intellectuals went, they were la vraie chose. Inspired, as had been so many of their countrymen, by the Paris Exhibition of 1900, dazzled by the array of international congresses that had been held in its wake, Louis Couturat and Léopold Leau were convinced that the time for a universal language had at last arrived. Putting aside their own work — Professor Couturat was a philosopher of renown, Professor Leau a prominent mathematician — they formed la Délégation pour l’adoption d’une langue internationale, and they hoped, through their delegation, to influence the prestigious International Association of Academies into deciding, once and for all, which artificial language deserved to be adopted universally. Should the association, a federation of the most important scientific organizations, find itself unwilling to cooperate — and this proved to be the case: the association declared itself incompetent in the matter — the delegation, according to its own bylaws, was free to appoint its own committee to examine the question and, afterwards, to found a society to promote the chosen scheme.

Having secured the participation of a host of intellectual illuminati (they bandied about such names as Bergson and James with ease) — it was their plan to bestow upon Esperanto two gifts of incalculable worth: the renunciation of its many rivals and the ringing endorsement of a body of illustrious men.

Dr. Zamenhof expected little from their delegation. Further, he believed the enterprise was fraught with danger. Their committee possessed no political power, no power at all, really, besides the illustrious reputations of its participants. “And anyone who hasn’t been convinced by the facts or by the strength of our movement will not be convinced by even a thousand Ostwalds!” he told them at my wedding. “Worse: informed by your committee that there are many artificial languages, more
or less of equal worth, people will say to themselves that although one prestigious committee has chosen one language today, that’s no guarantee that tomorrow another, more prestigious committee will not choose another!”

“Pish!” Professor Couturat answered him. “We’d have to have selected our committeemen very poorly for that to happen!”

“Indeed,” Professor Leau said, “we’d have to be perfect comedians to perpetuate such a buffoonery!”

HOW I CAME
to sit on the Delegation Committee is a story in itself.

Though it was more than a year away, and though la Tria Universala Kongreso lay before it, talk of the Delegation Committee threatened to overwhelm the Geneva congress, and the excitement was palpable. Everywhere one looked, one saw les professeurs Couturat et Leau — planning, scheming, conferring, dashing off to send a telegram to this or that distant luminary. Though both Henri Bergson and William James had declined to sit upon the committee, the professors’ enthusiasm for the work remained undiminished.

And one afternoon, when Dr. Zamenhof, Loë, Klara and I had taken a respite from the busying work of the congress, Professor Couturat emerged so unexpectedly from a grove of trees in the Parc de l’Ariana, I was reminded of the character of Rumpelŝtilskino in
Fabeloj de la Fratoj Grimm
, which I was then reading.

“One last thing!” he cried.

“Forgive us for detaining you,” Professor Leau said, following him out. “The ladies especially.”

“However, the matter is urgent,” Professor Couturat said, dropping his pince-nez into his pocket and bowing hastily.

“Professor Couturat and I have been conferring,” Professor Leau explained to all of us, while Professor Couturat bore in on Dr. Zamenhof, “and we’re of the opinion that Rector Boirac’s presence on the committee is an absolute necessity. A must! He’s your best advocate.”

“Unanimous votes from the committee will certainly gather around his name.”

“Oh, it would be laughable,” Professor Couturat said, and Professor Leau obliged him by laughing, “and useless, of course — ”

“Useless,” Professor Leau echoed.

“ — if the whole of the committee were formed of Esperantists. Nonetheless, we believe it’s essential that Esperanto have at least one strong supporter there.”

“En fin: Rector Boirac.”

“If he doesn’t agree …” Professor Couturat pulled an exaggerated frown.

“We don’t see what Esperantist we could put in his place.”

“Perhaps the marquis?” Dr. Zamenhof suggested, no doubt thinking of our staunchest anti-reformer.

“The marquis?” Professor Couturat repeated with a blank face.

“The marquis?” Professor Leau repeated as well.

“De Beaufront,” Dr. Zamenhof elaborated helpfully.

A series of complicated expressions crossed Professor Couturat’s face.

“That would be impossible, I’m afraid,” Professor Leau said, translating Professor Couturat’s grimaces.

“You can’t expect us to throw an unknown individual — ”

“One without professional or academic standing — ”

“ — in among the august specialists whose participation in the Delegation Committee we foresee.”

Dr. Zamenhof conceded the point. “I’ll speak to Rector Boirac.”

“Do.”

“And urge him to agree. The rector is the necessary link between Esperanto and the delegation, the living symbol of our alliance.”

“With him …” Professor Leau said.

“Everything will succeed; without him …” Professor Couturat made a small clicking sound with his mouth.

“Nothing is certain.”

Dr. Zamenhof frowned. “Yes, but I’m only wondering …”

“Wondering?” Professor Couturat smiled impatiently.

“… is it fair?” Dr. Zamenhof said.

“Fair?” Professor Couturat repeated.

“To the creators and proponents of the other artificial languages to so stack the deck in favor of our cause?”

“The other languages?” Professor Couturat scoffed. “As you yourself have said, none of these are more than theoretical schemes.”

“Not living languages at all!” Professor Leau said.

“What hope do they have of succeeding?”

“None,” Dr. Zamenhof said, “with the cards so stacked against them.”

“None, in fact,” Professor Couturat stated emphatically, “even if they weren’t.”

STILL, IT WASN’T
easy convincing Rector Boirac to join the Delegation Committee. To begin with, as a government official, he lacked the freedom to leave his academic post in Dijon and come to Paris for indefinite periods of time. Unable to partake in the committee’s decisions fully, he would nevertheless seem to have sanctioned them with his own name. And secondly, he didn’t trust Professor Couturat.

“Let me ask you only this, kara sinjoro,” Rector Boirac said to Dr. Zamenhof, as the two sat in the hotel bar over a late afternoon glass of kvass, smoking their interminable cigarettes. “Why would he want me, of all people, the president of the Esperantiso Language Committee, to sit on his committee when he’s promised a lack of partisanship to the competing schemes?”

“Why indeed?” Dr. Zamenhof sighed. “I brought the matter up with him myself.”

“Yes? And?”

“He assured me it has nothing to do with partisanship. It’s a foregone conclusion that Esperanto will prevail.”

“But …”

“I know, I know.”

“He’s a strange little man.”

Dr. Zamenhof shrugged. How could he not? How many times had he himself been called a strange little man? He made a clicking noise with his tongue. “He appears sincere, if a bit unworldly. Certainly he won’t be able to deliver everything he hopes, and yet, if we can’t stop
him — and I suggest we can’t — we might as well profit from all he wants to give us.”

Rector Boirac threw back his head and forced the last drops of his drink down his throat before signaling to the bartender for two more. “And on the days when I can’t be present at the meetings?” he asked.

Dr. Zamenhof blew out a cloud of cigarette smoke before nodding towards me. “We’ll send Dr. Sammelsohn here as your second.”

Loë and I were sitting at the next table over, listening in to their conversation, a fact that must have been obvious to Dr. Zamenhof, otherwise he would never have addressed me so directly. Embarrassed to have been caught out eavesdropping, I pretended not to have heard him at first.

“Dr. Sammelsohn,” he said, ignoring my silly pretense, “Rector Boirac and I are discussing the possibility of sending you to Paris to sit upon the Delegation Committee as his second.”

“Ah, yes,” I said, deciding not to ask them to fill me in on all the details I’d already heard. “Anything I can do for the movement. And as you know, I have the time.”

“Good.” Dr. Zamenhof lowered his voice. “I thought it might not hurt for you and the sinjorino to get away from Vienna for a while.”