In the corridor they had an awkward conversation.

“What did you think of the lecture?”

“It was okay. I would have liked to talk about the late works.”

“Well, he didn’t live very long. In that sense there are no late works.”

“The works he wrote towards the end of his life.”

“Goethe didn’t like him, you know.”

“I think he offended Goethe’s morals.”

“Goethe was moral. He was totally moral.”

“Richard?”

“Yes?”

“You said that already.”

“Mmm — ” he acknowledged. “Are you coming to the welcoming party tonight? Sebastian Beetjes!”

“Yes, I’ll be there. You?”

“Claro,’” he said, with an unaccountable use of Bavarian slang. “Es wird eine geile Party sein!”

“Das wird eine geile Party,” she said. “I also think as a student of Germanistik you could find a better word than geil.^[4] But the principle of it is right — anyway, I’ll be there.”

He stood there, face stunned like a beatific angel as she moved down the corridor.

The modern age was, in some intangible manner, a time of Kulturschwund, the “disappearance of culture” increasingly manifest in European society defined by Thomas Mann, whose works he had been brushing up on though shamefully only in English translation — he didn’t have time, at sixty-four, to be wrestling with those sorts of sentences — and this disappearance of culture was only buttressed by the surfeit of printed, aural, and electronic media. Nothing was as sure to generate idiocy than having a mile of newspaper to fill each weekend. But the old geniuses, in the days when they might even have been plural, would surely have devoured the New York Times each week with venomous greed. And in fairness — apart from such eloquent definitions of conditions as above — Germans had hardly been a great help in the upkeep of the best of European culture.

As good as anything, then, was Der Spiegel or Le Monde that he had brought with him for airport Schiphol; he wanted to create just the right impression to whichever English academic came to meet it; it was quite a surprise, then, when Baummüller appeared, speaking stately English with a slight Irish lilt, or rather tilt, and looking just as much the European gentleman as himself. The academic had suggested they drink a coffee together at an airport newsstand.

Sebastian recognized quickly that what he had before him was another type of artificiality: what the French language has down as a renonçant, the native who renounces their own culture…

“This,” he said after a period of silence, “is a great honour for the College.”

“That’s nice to hear,” said Sebastian after another while. “I’ve always wanted to come to Dublin.”

“I have been in Dublin for nearly twenty years.”

“It must have changed.”

“I should say, it’s become a metropole — a European city! James Joyce said it was the seventh city of Christendom but now it’s at least fifth.”

“Rather expensive, though,” said the older man.

“A lot of the people are rich, it’s true. But don’t worry. The college will provide you with a small house for your purposes.”

“Denn ist recht,”^[5] said Sebastian, hitting the r with Dutch gutturalness.

He had had German once and plenty through one of his first girlfriends, in Amsterdam when exactly twenty; Frieda from Aachen. They realized early on that if they both spoke their local dialects they had a common language but occasionally there was room for her standard variety too: the singing of Schubert Lieder, a quote from Faust, drinking songs. One day he remembered her sitting at a window and plaiting her hair; he would never forget that.

Sebastian recognized quickly that what he had before him was another type of artificiality: what the French language has down as a renonçant, the native who renounces their own culture. There was to be no trace of Germania about Professor Baummüller, save perhaps the size of his frame within the awkward cut of his suit, save perhaps a tiny hissing in his shs. This gentleman had devoted a life-time and probably not inconsiderable intellectual resources to honing a perfect imitation of the average middle-class Englishman — and what was the point of that?

“There are some good students, some bad. The language skills are negligible. I long ago gave up trying to teach them German and now hope they will learn it via osmosis.” He laughed, Sebastian less. “You will get to meet them at a party tonight.”