An Elegant Solution

by Paul Robertson

  As I watched the Square, I imagined the city’s frailty in the face of such illness. As I did, the paving stones before me began a slow circle inward toward their center. I stepped quickly back into the church. Their motion accelerated and I held tight to my unmoving foundation. The Square became a Charybdis. Everything in it was pulled down into the center. The buildings tore loose from their moorings and began their descent. Only the Barefoot Church, and the Boot and Thorn, and the Old Walls were grounded firm and held firm.

  I shook off the vision. The Square returned to its old form; risen, changed and yet the same, though I still had the image of the wide spinning left in my mind. I kept it in my mind. A whirlpool was a Logarithmic spiral.

  I put my foot on the paving stones and they held firm. I walked across the Square to the Old Wall and the Coal Gate and called up into the scaffolding. “Oh, Lithicus!” To dust I was returning: the whole paving under the gate was covered in fine, gray stone dust.

  “You?” was answered. His face appeared white from the shadow like a cherub or monster of carved stone.

  “I’ll ask you about spirals,” I said.

  “Ask nothing about them,” he said.

  So I asked nothing. I dragged my boot through the dust on the ground, circling. “That’s the spiral you made for Master Jacob,” I said.

  “That is the spiral.”

  I wiped the dust smooth and drew again, as I’d seen in the whirlpool. From the center and out, but growing and widening. “That’s what they said they wanted.”

  “It’s no difference from the other!” he said, “but that it’s poor and wanton for a spiral.”

  “There’s no complaint against you, Master Stonemason,” I said, “and no fault in your craft. But this is a spiral, too, and the truth is, it’s the better one.”

  “Then they’d have shown it to me before instead of after.”

  “They should have. Who was it that gave you your instructions?”

  “Now, look, you! You’ve asked enough. You’ve asked enough! I’ve done nothing but what I was told, I was told nothing but what I had to do it! I’m no one to do anything else.”

  “Then there’s no fault to you,” I said. “They said a spiral, and you carved it. Only what you were told.” I tipped my hat to him, and I think it was then that he saw it was three-pointed, and fully comprehended that I was in a scholar’s gentleman costume.

  “As you say, Master,” he said, very sullenly.

  “And Lithicus,” I said. “Is it still the same stone in the arch you’re repairing?

  “No, Master. There’s more to do. The cracks are deeper than they’d first looked.”

  I finally walked my last steps home. In my room, I could feel again the sliding and twisting of the house and streets. It was my books that were stable and gave me a reference to my own motion. But suppertime was nearing and I had to turn my back on them and undress my solemnity and return to plain brown. But in doing that, I felt again the whipsaw movement of not being anchored fast. I changed myself many times in a week from near-gentlemanly student to near-commoner. But it wouldn’t always be. My ship would have to come to port someday, and there were many docks on just the Rhine. Nicolaus had been to Italy, and Daniel to Heidelberg, at my age.

  There was a principle in Mathematics called Elegance. It described a statement or a proof that was exactly right: not only correct, but also complete, and yet simple, encompassing every necessity for its meaning but nothing else. It was seldom that life was elegant. Mine own seemed to have become complex, burdened with disconnections and incompletions and particularly, on my head, this hat.

  I’d left my wig on my own head while I dressed and I was a strange sight, in plain wool brown with a pompous top; but now was the moment to put the wig off, and I’d hesitated for the reason of the hat. My old hat was still in Gottlieb’s keeping for lack of any other place to have put it when I stood at his door, and my neglect at retrieving it. The tricorne was still crowning me and I wasn’t sure it should crown my wood head, which had more common sense and fewer pretensions.

  I decided the wood wouldn’t mind and I put them all together. Now I was in the presence of a gentle-stump, and I was honored. As I studied it, respectfully of course, I knew I felt more comfortable and proper that the emblem of wisdom and respectability and maturity was on that head and not mine. Mine wasn’t ready.

  A true Mathematician must be a gentleman, so I would need to wear that hat. But someday.

  That evening I ate supper with my grandmother. “Must you attend the Inquiry tomorrow morning?” she asked. Inquiries were respected and approved of in Basel, yet they made a thin fear like frost that chilled the city.

  “Yes, Grandmother. I’m only a clerk. I won’t be even noticed.”

  “What has Master Gottlieb learned?”

  “I don’t know. He knew much more before his questions than I knew even after them.”

  “You asked your own questions, also. Why are spirals important to you?”

  “Because they’re marvelous. They are to any Mathematician.”

  “That you ask a stonemason about them?”

  “Master Jacob chose a spiral for his epitaph, and someone chose a spiral to mark the trunk. They were different spirals. But now I know they were meant to be the same.”

  “What does that mean of the trunk? That it belonged to Master Jacob?”

  “I believe it did. I believe he’d chosen the Logarithmic spiral as his emblem.”

  “Then why was it a different spiral on his epitaph?”

  “The stonemason didn’t know there were different types of spirals and carved the wrong one. And I didn’t want to ask him much about it, Grandmother. He seems very vexed and angry at the mention of it, and suspicious, even after twenty years.”

  Thursday morning dawned chill. Light was latecoming and when it came, from just the edge of the sky, the streets hid behind the houses’ long shadows. Only the open square of Bare Feet welcomed radiance. I was there as usual to get water, and the face of the church, all white, was in silhouette of the sun rising behind it. But I saw an amazing light in it, as if it was glowing of its own. Then I saw across the Square that the Boot and Thorn, with the sun direct on it, was all dark. The church had its light. I didn’t know how the inn was able to spurn the sun and the church embrace it. I went in the church, through its gleaming door.

  Saint Leonhard’s parish, which both my father and grandfather pastored, and of which my grandmother and I were part, was a church I closely loved. The Church of Bare Feet was different and I loved it just as well. There was something both less and more personal about it. It was the visible of Saint Leonhard’s that was dear to me; the servants of the church and families who worshiped there. It was the invisible of the Bare Feet that drew me to its benches.

  Beyond the brilliant front, the church inside was dim, but only so that the light through the windows could be immense and eternal, entering with vast strength and stepping down from heaven onto the receiving floor and laying hands on the willing walls. I’d seen it many mornings but never like it was this morning.

  The light walked toward me slow and stately as a king. It touched the bench two ahead of me, and that plank seemed to shake from it. Outside, the sun was seeming to rise of its own in the sky, but it truly seemed that those steps down the aisle were the motive, and the sun was pulled through the window by them. They came to the row just ahead of me and I heard a sigh, or a gasp, and I stayed as still as I could and waited.

  Somewhere in Bern Knipper’s coach was standing in front of an inn or was already a storm driven toward Basel. In Basel’s inn, brooding black across the Square, Caiaphas the magistrate like a barb was pierced into Basel’s skin. In the Watch barracks, Knipper was undisturbed and beyond the disturbance he was the center of. I could see them all, those three: the coach, Caiaphas, and the corpse. The bench ahead was filled with gold whiteness and that purity was coming toward me. And there was something else I saw: my Master’s house, and my
Master’s presence inside it, like a fixed stone that the waves of turmoil could only break against.

  “Leonhard!” It was Daniel, just come in. “It’s never hard to find you, even if no one else would be where you’d be. I need you, and quick.”

  I hesitated; the light was inches away.

  “Now, quick, fast!” he said. “Come!”

  “I’m coming,” I said and I stood. Daniel needed me.

  “What do you want?” I asked, running, and already halfway to his house. I still had buckets in my hands! He was already dressed in his finest.

  “For you to hurry.”

  We were quick to the Munster Square and his front door, and most of the water I’d pulled spilled on the streets behind us. I left the buckets and what was left in them at the door, and we both bowed our way in. “I’d have been here in an hour.”

  “That’s an hour too late.” He took my arm in a tight grip, as if he was above a horrible drop, and I was a tree and his only hold. He pulled me into the dark entrance and to the stairs, more and more urgent.

  “What is it?” I said. We scrambled up one floor. He didn’t seem afraid, just determined and frenzied. We climbed a second floor. “What do you want of me?”

  We came to the hallway I knew well, but only from Saturdays. This wasn’t Saturday and the hall was decidedly different: it was not a place I should have been.

  “Knock on that door,” he said.

  It was my door, but not mine when it wasn’t Saturday.

  “For what?”

  “As if your life depended on it!”

  “But who is in—” There was no finishing that question. Daniel beat on the door himself. The house shook with the pounding, enough to wake anyone in it.

  “Just break it up,” he said.

  He beat again, enough to wake the next house.

  “Just stop them,” he said.

  The echoes died. In the terrified silence I heard a chair scrape. There were footsteps. The handle rattled and the door opened with an angry jerk.

  I was face to face with Master Johann.

  And Magistrate Caiaphas was seated at the table behind him.

  And Daniel was vanished.

  It was a difficult moment. Master Johann was confused to see me as I was to be there at all.

  “Master Johann,” I said. I mustered enough confidence to seem that I knew my purpose.

  “Yes? What is it?” He was still bewildered, which I knew would last at most very briefly more. But I thought for a moment that he was also distracted, and I realized I was, also, by the third presence.

  “I was sent . . .” I didn’t know which word would come next from my lips. I listened closely to hear it. “For Magistrate Caiaphas. I’m sorry—”

  My apology was unnecessary, and even unheard. The name I’d uttered had been like a pistol shot. The Magistrate sprang to his feet and Master Johann turned to him in irritation. “Who knows you are here?”

  “No one!” he said. “Who sent you?”

  “Who sent you, Leonhard?” Master Johann repeated.

  I didn’t know who’d sent me. I only knew who’d brought me, but that name wouldn’t be any help. “The Inquisitor,” I said. “I’m his clerk.”

  Caiaphas was shaken. “How did he know I was here?”

  “I went to the Inn—”

  “The innkeeper told you?”

  I was more a spectator to my own words even than the other two. “I asked in the stable and a boy said he’d seen you.”

  “Tell the Inquisitor that Magistrate Caiaphas would not speak with you,” Magistrate Caiaphas said to me. “Tell him that you asked at the Inn and were sent away.”

  “But Master Gottlieb—” I began, and was very glad to be interrupted.

  “Tell him only that! Only that!”

  I looked at Master Johann, who had stood back from the conversation. He frowned, then sighed. Then he nodded.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “And you must go,” Johann said, and I thought he meant me, but he was speaking to Caiaphas.

  “We have not finished.”

  “I have finished,” Master Johann said. “Your Inquiry will be held as you demanded. I will not stop it.”

  “I want it stopped.”

  “It is too late. I will not stop it.”

  Caiaphas was shaking in anger. “The truth is perilous for you—”

  “And for you, sir. You should not have demanded an Inquiry before learning more. I will manage it.”

  “Else, I will act!” Caiaphas said loudly. Then he seemed to notice again that I was there. “If I must act, I will,” he said quietly. He looked at me. “Give that message to your Inquisitor,” he said. “I will act.”

  He swept past me. I was pushed back, and I thought to make my own retreat in his wake. But my Master caught me with his eyes.

  “Leonhard.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  He had not forgotten I was there. “Master Gottlieb sent you.”

  “Master Johann, I—”

  “You will be at the Inquiry today.”

  “I will, sir.”

  “Use wisdom.”

  It was unclear what he meant. The last thing at that moment I felt was wise. “Yes, sir.”

  “And this moment will not be discussed again.”

  That seemed only somewhat more clear. “And I’m sorry to have knocked so loudly—”

  “Did you?” he said, and I didn’t know how to answer. “I know the lion by his paw.” Then he closed the door.

  “Masterful!” Daniel said. Exactly as the door closed, he was present again. “Pure mastery! Oh, I knew you were the man. That was wit, to throw in Cousin.”

  And I was still shaking and it was difficult to move my muscles even to turn to face him. “Daniel, I’m the one thrown. What lunatic scheme was this?”

  “That’s no matter, now it’s over. Come along, get downstairs before the beast comes out of his lair.”

  “No matter?” I let him pull me to the stairs and down them. I was more concerned with breathing again. “How can you say that? Look, Daniel,” I said as we reached the dark hall where just some crack of light was cutting through the door and air, “I’m near dead of fright and you’re saying it’s no matter. What were they doing in there that you’re so desperate to stop?”

  “I wasn’t desperate to stop. Not ever.”

  “You weren’t?! Yes you were! What were they talking about?”

  “How would I know?” Daniel said. He was calm now, joking as his usual self. “I can’t hear through walls, can I?”

  “Then why did you want me to interrupt them?”

  “I wouldn’t have done, would I? There’s no cause for either of them to know I even knew they were there.”

  “But you were. You wanted it stopped.”

  “It’s no matter now, I said.” He put his arm on my shoulder and put the most calming comfort into his voice and eyes. “Leonhard, there’s nothing to even remember about it.” He opened the door and the light of the Munster Square, slowly filling from the low rising sun, came billowing in. It was full morning now. “See, here’re your buckets. Just get them filled and be on with your day. You’ll be back for Mother’s chores?”

  “I will.”

  “Then hurry, you’ll be late to it. And the Inquiry! It’s no day to be late for anything.”

  He was right on that, and I didn’t waste more time talking. I took my buckets. They were empty from the running and spilling, and I was feeling empty and spilled, too.

  I came to the Barefoot Square. The sunlight had moved on. It wouldn’t be shining into the church window as it had been. But then of a sudden I was caught in a white circle, so bright I had to turn my eyes from it. The sun was reflecting from a window, concentrated lens-like on just me.

  When I returned a half hour later to my Master’s house I saw only Mistress Dorothea, and she whipped me and her maid girl with work. But before I was done she paused, and I paused.

  “T
hat’s enough. Be away, Leonhard, for your true day’s work. There’ll be hard tasks, to make chopping wood seem like play.”

  “I’m to go to Master Gottlieb next.”

  “Do as he bids. I’ll be at the Inquiry myself.” No function of the University would suffer a woman to attend, but the intricacies of Basel’s laws and traditions allowed matriarchs of Mistress Dorothea’s position to attend the public events of the Town Council. “I’ll see if you shirk your duties.”

  She knew I wouldn’t, though.

  I left that house and kitchen for the streets. It was still mid-morning but the time would pass and noon would come. As I walked, the clocks rang through their hours; hours waiting in line since the beginning, entering, walking past, and exiting to where they would remain until the end. The designated hour was in place to take its turn and I had to be ready. In Basel, though, even time was changed.

  The city had Basel Time. Stand outside the city until the sun is highest, and it was noon. Faint chimes from far off village clocks would confirm this. But enter any gate and walk to the Munster Square. The journey would seem to only take a few minutes, but the shadow of that same sun fell on the sundial at well after one o’clock. The Cathedral’s dial was the Master of time in Basel and it bowed to no clock carried in from outside. If an outside clock disagreed, that one was wrong, even if it had been set by every church warden in Europe.

  It might be that the city Walls have had some effect on time, and when a traveler passed through a gate, an hour of his life would be taken. Some people have wondered what happened to the hour lost at the gate. I’d found from experience that it’s not lost, it was just kept for safekeeping, a ransom held against a visitor’s good behavior. When the visitor left, the hour would be regained from hiding. A man born in Basel would find this reversed. He’d be given an hour when he left the city, but must surrender it to return.