By now Gerstenbacker, too, had risen to meet me, his small face beaming beside and beneath Codicil’s great one. In appear­ance he seemed no more than eighteen, but he clearly made it his business to appear much older. He wore perfectly round spectacles, a small moustache, a black jacket, and a high-winged collar with a black bow tie. He bowed at me politely, remained standing to push my chair into position under me, and then said, ‘Welcome. Please, have a cake.’ ‘Gerstenbacker keeps an eye, or perhaps I had better say an ear, on my English,’ said Codicil, chuckling. ‘It is not necessary,’ said Gerstenbacker hastily, ‘Professor Codicil has a perfect English. He has once been the President of the Anglo-Austrian Friendship Society.’ ‘For my sins,’ said Codicil, ‘You must address it sometime. I will merely drop a word to my friend your British Ambassador.’ ‘I’m afraid there wouldn’t be time for that,’ I said, ‘I’m only here in Vienna for a couple of days.’ ‘Is that really?’ said Codicil, looking pleased, ‘So this is quite a fleeting sort of a visit, as they say. A here today and gone tomorrow affair.’ ‘Almost,’ I said. ‘Then maybe you will not mind if I am frank at once,’ said Codicil, looking me over again, ‘To me you are not at all what I expected.’ ‘No?’ I said, ‘What had you expected?’

Codicil leaned forward. ‘I had imagined,’ he said, ‘that someone seriously devoted to the difficult study of Criminale would be, and let me say I mean now no offence, of much older years and much greater stature. As I say, this means no offence. But you are a young man, no older than Gerstenbacker, a neophyte at the mysteries. Now please, do you prefer this cake, or that one? Or have both, or something else altogether? No need to hold your horses. Remember, this tab is entirely on me.’ ‘I’d just like coffee, if you don’t mind,’ I said, resisting this atmosphere of a school treat. ‘I think you like very much our coffee,’ said Gerstenbacker, as Codicil leaned back in his chair and waved his arm imperiously at the waiter, ‘I know the British admire it very much. I have been there, to your country.’

‘Yes, our young friend Gerstenbacker writes his thesis for me on a very interesting topic, Empirical Philosophy and the English Country House,’ said Codicil, ‘You are familiar with the British tradition of linguistic empiricism, important, of course, though in no sense as important as that of Ger­man idealism.’ ‘But quite important, don’t you think?’ asked Gerstenbacker anxiously. ‘Absolutely.’ I said. Gerstenbacker beamed. ‘Gerstenbacker’s proposal is that this tradition ignores the major continental heritage because your philosophers were all aristocrats or persons of Bloomsbury, for whom thinking was part-time,’ said Codicil. ‘The Country House is the home of the amateur spirit,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘That is why I concentrate there. Also these are very nice places to visit.’ ‘Of course I have told Gerstenbacker he too is a mere neophyte at the mysteries,’ said Codicil, ‘Really he must study for ten more years at least before he begins to understand anything. His real life of the mind has yet to begin. Isn’t it so, Gerstenbacker?’ ‘Exactly so, Herr Professor,’ said Gerstenbacker humbly.

Codicil suddenly turned to me. ‘And so, you think you have read my book?’ he asked. ‘As well as I could,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid my German is nowhere near as good as your English.’ Codicil beamed, then thought visibly, then frowned. ‘Then you have not read my book,’ he said, ‘To know a book you must know the soul, the heart and above all the tongue of the writer.’ ‘That’s why I wanted to meet you,’ I said. ‘To gather up my soul, my heart, and my tongue?’ cried Codicil, ‘Believe me, these treasures are not for sale. They can only be won by a lifetime of effort. And you also say you have read Criminale?’ ‘Quite a bit,’ I said. ‘The matter with Martin Heidegger?’ he asked. ‘The quarrel over irony?’ I countered. ‘Tell me,’ said Codicil, ‘do you accept that Criminale grasps both horns of the Heideggerian dilemma?’ ‘Well, perhaps one horn rather better than the other,’ I said. Codicil looked at me, considered, then clapped me heartily on the back. ‘I agree with you!’ he said, chuckling, ‘Heidegger was too clever an old fox to be defeated so easily. I knew him well, you see.’ ‘Of course the Professor has known everybody,’ said Gerstenbacker.

‘Including Doctor Criminale,’ I said. Codicil looked coolly at me for a moment. ‘Only so-so,’ he said, ‘We were never what is called intimate.’ ‘I suppose he was a student of yours?’ I asked. ‘Of mine, no, never, not at all,’ said Codicil, emphatically, ‘I think in your ignorance you mistake our two ages. I am hardly older than he is. Further when he was here in Vienna after the war he studied only Pädagogie, never Philosophie. I know him only as one scholar knows another. We have had many congresses to­gether, and so on.’ ‘But he’s in Vienna quite often?’ I asked. ‘Vienna is but one of his many home from homes, you know. Or shall I say homes from home?’ ‘Homes from homes?’ suggested Gerstenbacker. ‘And it was on visits like that he gave you the biographical material for the book?’ I asked. ‘A book, well, bet­ter call it a small hommage,’ said Codicil, ‘A hat one doffs to an academic confrere. It is hardly the most notable of my works.’ ‘But it’s the key work on him, and it’s full of good personal in­formation,’ I said, ‘In fact he seems to have told you everything.’

Codicil stared at me, then laughed. ‘Everything, and what is everything?’ he asked, ‘Who has ever known everything, except Our Good Lord above. There is no everything. Do we begin to know everything about ourselves? Remember Wittgenstein, now you are in Vienna. What did he say? “How could I expect you to understand me, when I barely understand myself!” Or as Criminale himself put it better: “Where is the man who can even begin to name himself?”’ He smiled blandly at me. I knew very well that the role of elusive thinker and questioner had an undying charm for his whole profession, but I felt that he was using the art to divert me, so I ploughed on. ‘But Criminale did give you many of the biographical facts of your study?’ I asked. ‘A fact, explain me, what is a fact?’ asked Codicil, starting the fancy philosophical footwork all over again. ‘By a fact I just mean the plain simple details,’ I said, ‘Like where he actually was born, who his parents were, where he studied, who he married, who taught him, who influenced him.’ ‘But any ordinary scholar could find all this,’ said Codicil. ‘Not really,’ I said, ‘There seems to be an awful lot of misinformation around about Criminale.’

‘So, about what?’ asked Codicil. ‘About how he left Bulgaria after the war, how he got here to Vienna,’ I said, ‘About how he got on with the Marxist authorities, about his political attitudes. Half the stories contradict one another.’ Codicil pulled a face. ‘These things are not all facts,’ he said, ‘They are interpretations. If you like to be a dry-as-dust sort of person, you may well believe in facts. But surely you do not come to the home of linguistic philosophy and the Vienna Circle to waste your time only on some little facts.’ ‘I believe you’re described as a historian as well as a philosopher,’ I said. ‘So?’ asked Codicil. ‘So how would you judge Criminale’s role in recent political history?’ ‘In intellectual history, please,’ said Codicil, ‘Here he is of utmost importance. The great thinker of our time.’ ‘But don’t you find some of his thought ambiguous and contradictory?’ I asked. ‘What thought is not?’ said Codicil, shifting heavily on his bentwood chair.

I tried again. ‘I’m talking about his dealings with the Com­munist Party and so on,’ I said. ‘My dear sir, allow me to say this to you,’ said Codicil at last, ‘To understand thought, you must first understand thinking, and where it occurs. In the mind and in history. To understand history, you must first have experienced it. I will confess to you I think you understand neither one of these things. There is a saying: to think greatly, you must also err greatly. I do not say Criminale erred. But we are talking of a great mind, the Nietzsche of our long, dark, dying century. We cannot presume even to begin to advise such a man, a man bigger than men, how to understand history, or interpret it correctly. We may merely observe how he has chosen to understand it. Do you follow me?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And you agree?’ ‘Well, no, not quite,’ I said, ‘I think everyone can be held responsible for their thinking.’