Professor Walsenberger

I could not hear what the head housekeeper, who had her back to me and always spoke in whispers, had asked him. I heard only his answer.

Not only, he replied as was his habit, slow and with such a smile that you would have thought he had rested all day. Not only. And with a gesture he invited her to move on down the corridor.

I admired the tired gray eyes of the Professor as he took off his glasses and wiped them slowly with a corner of his waistcoat, which, in fact, at that point, was a bit worn. The cooks must have arrived, for from downstairs wafted up aromas of marinated meats and cinnamon, and we could hear voices and hurried footsteps.

He put them back on and we both looked at the rain-streaked window. This weather will slow down everything, I remember thinking. The guests will arrive late, we will have to wait for dinner and everything will be so rushed and nothing will be quite right; Magdalena especially will be annoyed. I was doubly nervous, as I had the simultaneous awareness that my celluloid collar and torn cuffs would certainly be noticed and would label me, perhaps irreparably, at such an elegant evening – and that my anxiety was misplaced like never before. You do worry too much, the old teacher used to say. You are always anxious for the future and worried about the results of your actions. Learn to quieten down and you will find that half the work is done.

Just then he gave me a look that seemed to me like a mysterious invitation. And when I overcame my fear and reverence and dared to approach him for the first time, almost resting my hand on his, asking in a voice that didn’t want to escape from my mouth, “Do you, Professor, do you really mean that every life of every man is repeating and repeating for all eternity, for an infinite number of recurrences? That different souls come back and return to the earth to inhabit the same body, living the same experiences, performing the same actions, right and wrong, solemn and trivial, repeating the same lines as actors on a stage, all playing as in Hamlet night after night, year after year? That our lives are fully and in detail, written? That, in my next recurrence, I could be you, and hear someone else, identical to what I am now, addressing this same question?

He paused for a moment and then looked at me, his mouth slightly open, the fine wrinkles of his neck clamped in a narrow and overly starched collar, perhaps surprised by the sudden courage of a not particularly brilliant student who had never dared to speak to him, maybe taken aback by my unexpected insight into his thinking, or perhaps somewhat annoyed by my trivial and inexact interpretations.

Not only, he answered with the half-smile that I had learned to love so much. Not only.

The first guests came in, and before they could rid themselves of their coats, the old waiter offered them champagne. I walked fast to get myself a cup and embrace the beautiful lady guest.