Short of a KEEP OUT sign on its door, it possesses everything a nineteen-year-old Steppenwolf in search of a cultural safe haven could decently ask. But now it has genealogy as well. Any further doubts he may have are quickly dispelled by fate. Without Dr. Mandelbaum he would never have plumped for German. Without German he would never have signed up for weekly tutorials on Bishop Wulfila's translation of the Bible into Gothic. And if he hadn't signed up for Wulfila, he would never have found himself, on the third day of his first term at university, sitting buttock-to-buttock on a chintz sofa in North Oxford with a diminutive polyglot Hungarian spitfire called Ilse who takes upon herself the task of leading a motherless six-foot-four virgin to the sexual light. Ilse's interest in Wulfila, like Mundy's, is an accident of life. After an academic safari through Europe, she has descended on Oxford to expand her understanding of the roots of contemporary anarchism. Wulfila wormed his way into her syllabus.
Summoned at darkest night to the Surrey villa, a bereft Mundy cradles his father's sweated head and watches him spew out the remaining fragments of his wretched life while Mrs. McKechnie treats herself to a ciggy on the landing. Other mourners at the funeral include a fellow alcoholic who is also a solicitor, an unpaid bookmaker, the landlord of the Golden Swan and a handful of its regulars. Mrs. McKechnie, still firmly twenty-nine, stands to attention at the open graveside, every inch the courageous Scottish widow. It is summer and she is wearing a black chiffon dress. A languid breeze presses it against her, revealing a pair of fine breasts and a frank outline of her remaining assets. Masking her mouth with her Order of Service, she murmurs to Mundy from so close that he can feel her lips fluttering the little hairs inside his ear.
"Look at what you might have had if you'd asked nicely," she says in her mocking Aberdonian brogue, and to his outrage brushes her hand across his crotch.
Safely back in his college rooms, a trembling Mundy takes stock of his humble patrimony: one red-and-white carved ivory chess set, much damaged; one army-issue khaki knapsack containing six handmade shirts by Ranken & Company Limited, Est. Calcutta 1770, By Appointment to HM King George V, with branches in Delhi, Madras, Lahore and Murree; one pewter hip flask, much dented, for sitting under neem trees at sundown; one tin penknife, Burmas for the use of; one truncated ceremonial Gurkha kukri engraved _To a Gallant Friend;__ one multigenerational tweed jacket with no maker's attribution; one copy of _Selected Readings from the Works of Rudyard Kipling,__ foxed and much thumbed; and one heavy leather suitcase with brass corners, found hidden or forgotten beneath a sea of empty bottles in the Major's bedroom wardrobe.
Padlocked.
No key.
For several days he keeps the suitcase under his bed. He is the sole possessor of its destiny, the only person in the entire world who knows of its existence. Will he be mountainously rich? Has he inherited British American Tobacco? Is he the sole owner of the secrets of the vanished Stanhopes? With a hacksaw borrowed from the college butler he spends an evening trying to cut his way through the padlock. In desperation he lays the suitcase on his bed, draws the ceremonial kukri from its scabbard and, in thrall to its power, makes a perfect circular incision in the lid. Drawing back the flap, he smells Murree at sunset and the sweat on Rani's neck as she crouches at his side peering into the rock pool.
Official army files, British, Indian, Pakistani.
Faded parchments appointing Arthur Henry George Mundy to the rank and condition of second lieutenant, lieutenant, captain in this regiment, then a lesser regiment, then the one below it.
One yellowed, hand-printed playbill of the Peshawar Players' production of _Snow White,__ featuring E. A. Mundy in the role of Dopey.
Letters from unhappy bank managers
Summoned at darkest night to the Surrey villa, a bereft Mundy cradles his father's sweated head and watches him spew out the remaining fragments of his wretched life while Mrs. McKechnie treats herself to a ciggy on the landing. Other mourners at the funeral include a fellow alcoholic who is also a solicitor, an unpaid bookmaker, the landlord of the Golden Swan and a handful of its regulars. Mrs. McKechnie, still firmly twenty-nine, stands to attention at the open graveside, every inch the courageous Scottish widow. It is summer and she is wearing a black chiffon dress. A languid breeze presses it against her, revealing a pair of fine breasts and a frank outline of her remaining assets. Masking her mouth with her Order of Service, she murmurs to Mundy from so close that he can feel her lips fluttering the little hairs inside his ear.
"Look at what you might have had if you'd asked nicely," she says in her mocking Aberdonian brogue, and to his outrage brushes her hand across his crotch.
Safely back in his college rooms, a trembling Mundy takes stock of his humble patrimony: one red-and-white carved ivory chess set, much damaged; one army-issue khaki knapsack containing six handmade shirts by Ranken & Company Limited, Est. Calcutta 1770, By Appointment to HM King George V, with branches in Delhi, Madras, Lahore and Murree; one pewter hip flask, much dented, for sitting under neem trees at sundown; one tin penknife, Burmas for the use of; one truncated ceremonial Gurkha kukri engraved _To a Gallant Friend;__ one multigenerational tweed jacket with no maker's attribution; one copy of _Selected Readings from the Works of Rudyard Kipling,__ foxed and much thumbed; and one heavy leather suitcase with brass corners, found hidden or forgotten beneath a sea of empty bottles in the Major's bedroom wardrobe.
Padlocked.
No key.
For several days he keeps the suitcase under his bed. He is the sole possessor of its destiny, the only person in the entire world who knows of its existence. Will he be mountainously rich? Has he inherited British American Tobacco? Is he the sole owner of the secrets of the vanished Stanhopes? With a hacksaw borrowed from the college butler he spends an evening trying to cut his way through the padlock. In desperation he lays the suitcase on his bed, draws the ceremonial kukri from its scabbard and, in thrall to its power, makes a perfect circular incision in the lid. Drawing back the flap, he smells Murree at sunset and the sweat on Rani's neck as she crouches at his side peering into the rock pool.
Official army files, British, Indian, Pakistani.
Faded parchments appointing Arthur Henry George Mundy to the rank and condition of second lieutenant, lieutenant, captain in this regiment, then a lesser regiment, then the one below it.
One yellowed, hand-printed playbill of the Peshawar Players' production of _Snow White,__ featuring E. A. Mundy in the role of Dopey.
Letters from unhappy bank managers
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