An Elegant Solution

by Paul Robertson

  Others claimed that there wasn’t an hour lost or changed, just that the clock was kept to a different time. This was more than true, though. It was kept to a different time. Anyone in Basel knew that the city was not fully attached to the world around it. It had a different time and was a different place. The city was tied to some other foundation than the countryside, and the time was a telltale that it was a different world.

  There was a battle fought two hundred years ago in the Swabian war, within sight of the city Walls, between the Swiss and the Emperor Maximilian. Men from Bern and Zurich and Solothurn were in danger of defeat when reinforcements from Lucerne arrived with trumpets and shouting, bursting from the forest and routing the mercenary Germans. The people of Basel just watched from their Walls. The war was outside their Walls and so it wasn’t theirs. They hosted the armistice and treaty afterward to conclude the war, and took the opportunity to secede themselves from the Empire to join Switzerland. But they still kept all the gates, north and south, guarded. The city was really no more part of the Swiss than it was of the French or the Germans. The world was outside their gates, and so it wasn’t theirs.

  And the time that was outside their gates wasn’t theirs, either. They had their own.

  What else was different inside and outside? What was greater than the Walls? Even Basel couldn’t have one Mathematics inside its Walls, different than the Mathematics outside. No war, no clock, no machine, no plague, no death could change it. That alone made Mathematics beautiful and mysterious. There were other laws, laws of good and evil, laws beyond men, that again Basel couldn’t change. What from outside Basel could Basel’s Inquiry find the truth of?

  I’d stood on the Wall of Small Basel, farthest northeast in the city, and listened to the Munster bell sound twelve, then faint moments later heard the clock in Riehen five miles away answer with eleven. In Riehen, I’d heard that church, just outside my parents’ house and where my father is pastor, sound three, and then I’ve walked out into their garden to hear the Munster clock’s dim four.

  But I listened to distant clocks for another purpose than contemplating the separateness of Basel. Knowing the distance and the time between Basel and Riehen, I’d calculated the speed that sound moves through the air. Even sound had laws to obey.

  But now the bells were tolling for Knipper. It was his time. He was neither in Basel nor outside it.

  I stopped in the Barefoot Church to think a moment, and pray, but only briefly. And when I came out into the Square, Daniel was coming out of the Boot and Thorn opposite me. He almost turned away but then his compulsion to talk overcame and he came over. He was jittery and tense.

  “Now Leonhard,” he started, “for this Inquiry.” He was the most changeable man, all different from his morning cockiness, different again from his morning urgency.

  “What is it you want, Daniel? I won’t interrupt anything else for you today.”

  “Why would I ever want you to? But look here, there is something I want of you. You’ve been with Cousin and all his questions, and I know you talked with Old Huldrych. Do you think he would really have had a part with Knipper? What was it that Gottlieb asked him?”

  “For that, you’ll have to ask Master Gottlieb yourself. You know that.”

  “I won’t, and you know that. But you can tell me what his questions were. If there was anything he didn’t want known, he wouldn’t have let you know it yourself. So there’s no reason that you shouldn’t tell me.”

  “And no reason that I should, and so I won’t.” Then I thought perhaps I saw a pattern to Daniel’s eagerness. “But I don’t think Master Huldrych is guilty of anything, and I doubt Gottlieb thinks that, either. So he won’t be thrown from his Chair into the river, if you’re hoping that.”

  “Not in the river, at least.”

  “Daniel,” I said, “You already have a Chair in Padua.”

  “No. I’ve given it up.”

  “You’ve resigned it?” I hadn’t known. “But you said you might go back to it.”

  “I haven’t even told Nicolaus yet. I’m done with Italy.”

  “But why?”

  “I wrote a paper,” he said, and grabbed my shoulders in sudden passion. “It is genius. You’d say it is. Anyone would! And the Dean tore it in pieces. The very sheets.”

  “Why, Daniel?” I was incredulous. “How could he?”

  “He said I had strayed from Mathematics. My Chair was in that subject and I was to remain within it.”

  “What was the subject of the paper?”

  “Hydraulics. The motion of fluids.”

  “What did you write?” For a moment, Italy receded. I was very interested in Hydraulics.

  “The forces, the flows and rates, the pressures. All of it. It’s what I’ve been doing in Italy. Oh, it was beautiful!”

  “But that’s all Mathematics.”

  “But the fool claims that Mathematics is a Logical Philosophy, and Hydraulics is a Natural Philosophy, and not to be bewildered into each other.”

  I was even more amazed. “Daniel. You had equations . . . pages of them . . . and he tore them?” It was beyond belief; I was nearly crying at the thought. “But you have copies?”

  “It’s easy enough to write them again.” He shrugged off his grief, and also mine. “I’ve already done most of it. But for that I wouldn’t stay. I resigned on the spot. And it was a relief.”

  “And you haven’t told anyone?”

  “None. You’re the first. I don’t want the Brute to hear it.”

  “Well, I won’t tell him. And Daniel, there are other Universities.”

  “Leipzig? Konigsburg? I know you wouldn’t say Groningen, not to me. But none of them are Basel.”

  “Then outside of German states. Paris. It’s more than equal to Basel.”

  “In Theology. In Latin. Not in Mathematics. Not now.”

  “There must be somewhere else that’s worthy of you.”

  He thought for a moment. “There’s Russia. You said it yourself! That I might ride to Russia.”

  “I was joking.”

  “But don’t you know, Leonhard? The Tsar is beginning a University.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “It’s a grand endeavor. A new academy in Saint Petersburg, and the patron is Peter the Tsar himself.”

  “That would be excellent!” I said strongly. “Daniel! You’d be part of the beginning.”

  “I would be.” But then he shrugged off the thought. “But Russia . . . it’s barbarian. I might be in America, for being so far.”

  “But Saint Petersburg! All that’s said about it! It’s a marvel.”

  “If they wrote me,” he said, “I might think more. But I won’t beg.”

  “Would they write?”

  “The Chair of Physics in Padua, Romini, received a letter. And I’ve heard of others.”

  “You’re well known, Daniel,” I said. “And young. They would invite you.”

  “And when I win the Paris prize, then even more! But Russia.” He shook his head. “No, I want Basel.”

  “But there are no Chairs open.”

  He almost answered me. The words were so close out of his mouth I should have heard something of them. But he caught them back. “Not yet,” he said.

  “Or anytime soon.”

  “If we need to act, we will.”

  I could only stare at him. “You’ve been talking with Magistrate Caiaphas.”

  “Him? You’re mad, Leonhard. What would I want with him?”

  “You didn’t want your father to talk to him before you had.”

  “You’ve got business to attend!” he said in answer. “The Inquiry’s only an hour off and you’re key to it!”

  “Daniel—”

  “And Cousin is pure spite, so he’s requiring me to be part of it, too. To the Chamber, and bring your hot irons.”

  And he was pure confusion. I gave him up and went on. He was right, that I had business to attend. I had to change to black and white.<
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  Thirty minutes later, the usual preparations of stocking and coat and buckle were accomplished. With all the pomp I could muster, I put on my wig and my wig put on its tricorne and grandly together we entered my kitchen. Grandmother was waiting and her two-edged sword was in her hand.

  She was pleased with my straight back and honorability, but her sharp eyes searched me for pride. Of course, all that I had quickly withered. That was good. I knew it would be a hard fought day and I needed all my focus and no distractions.

  “That will do,” she said. “Do you know what’s to be said at the Inquiry?”

  “No one does. Gottlieb’s been silent. I don’t think he knows at all who killed Knipper.”

  “Is that what the Inquiry is for?” She knew it wasn’t.

  “No. But I’m not sure what it is for. Everyone believes that Magistrate Caiaphas has some reason.”

  “Truth will come out anyway. It won’t be hidden forever.”

  “I hope it does come out.”

  “There’s truth that you’ve hidden, Leonhard.”

  “When I know what the truth is it will come out. But I have to hide it now.”

  “Will harm come of that?”

  “It may. Harm will certainly come if I don’t hide it. Scandal and accusation would be attached to Master Johann’s family.”

  “And if you are asked for the truth?”

  “I would never lie, Grandmother.”

  6

  The Holbein Chamber

  The painter Holbein came to Basel two hundred years ago. It has been said that he saw deep and drew deep. His pictures were very real but filled with symbols and hidden powers; I’d looked at them for many hours and I believed he could see invisible things. His most profound work in Basel was ordered by the Town Council, which didn’t realize its consequence: He was charged with the painting of their meeting chamber. His murals covered its walls.

  In two centuries they have darkened and strengthened from great age. Dozens of scenes from classical and ancient ages brooded over the council. Saul was berated by Samuel, Croesus was burning on the stake, and Achilles was sulking in his tent. They were scenes of folly. Their purpose was to instruct the councilors on the importance of wise governance, and to remind them of the consequences otherwise. They accomplished this with a powerful elegance beyond words. There were invisible laws not made by man which governed man, and Holbein drew them into his pictures; they were still seen and unseen now. It was in this room and under these stares that the Council and citizens of Basel gathered to hold their Inquiry.

  The citizens entered first. Wealth and lineage were the criteria for their seats, and there were both men and a few women. They sat on three rising rows of benches which followed the room’s back and sides. As noon approached, these filled. Curiosity was really the only reason to attend. The great citizens were as fascinated as anyone else.

  At one end of the side benches, near the front, was a row set apart by a surrounding rail. This served different purposes: to seat the accused, or petitioners, or men called to answer to the Council. It seated four witnesses for the Inquiry. Daniel wore his defiant wine red coat, just as I’d seen him at sunrise. Beside him was Old Gustavus in brown coat and breeches and heavy boots; the only brown worn in that room. Master Huldrych was in his University gown which should have been black but was only dust. Nicolaus alone wore the black suit that every other gentleman wore. Of the few women present, Mistress Dorothea sat in the audience seat closest to her sons, with only the rail separating her from Nicolaus, and Little Johann sat in her shadow.

  The center of the room was empty.

  Then the council entered. These were seven men cut of the same black and white cloth as the audience. They were all merchants, sons of the councilor merchants who’d ruled the city from before the Reformation. They sat behind the Council Table.

  That table was as heavy as the deliberations that had taken place around it, as old and wise as the walls, and worn dark and smooth. Wars had been made; fortunes had been awarded or destroyed by the grant of a single trade tolerance; men had been condemned or released, allowed back into the streets or taken direct to the bridge and thrown to the river. The table had never been moved from its place across the front of the room. Behind it, built into the wall, were the Councilors’ seven seats. The high-backed center was for the mayor. He wore a gold chain with a medallion of office, and velvet robe, and the heaviest wig. Great above the table was Holbein’s largest mural, of captive Valerian, the Roman Emperor, stooped on the ground as Persian king Sapor used him as a footstool to mount his horse. This was to remind the Council that the consequences of their actions would be brought back onto them.

  Another high chair was placed to the right of the table, against the wall, for a Magistrate, when he attended. He wouldn’t sit on the council but beside it as judge, parallel, and advisor. This occasion was unusual, though. Three magisterial chairs were evenly spaced against the right wall, and above them was another mural, of the triumvirs Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, with their right hands held in peace and their left hands hiding daggers.

  Opposite these chairs, on the left of the council, was another chair. Gottlieb sat in this place, behind a desk table, and below another trio, of Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar. Aside from them was one last single chair, the most exposed and humbling of all in the council room.

  Magistrate Faulkner entered. There were many hues of black in Basel: sober black, arrogant black, studious black, respectful black, intimidating black, imperious black. All of these would be seen in the streets every day. Magisterial black was particular among them all. His robe had a strange billowing weight that lifted with his movement and settled slowly. Blacker, but not as black, Caiaphas entered just behind him, and his robe seemed rigid like armor. The gendarme, Foucault, came in at his side, and took his position standing in the corner behind them.

  He was in uniform and armed with a short sword, which was very unusual. The Sergeant of the Watch, in the other corner behind Gottlieb, usually held the only weapons in the council room. This was a noticeable concession by Basel to the prerogative of Strasbourg.

  The empty chair between them, beneath the Roman Triumvirate, now received its occupant, and this was Master Johann. He entered in his academic gown, black with scarlet chevrons, and every other black was reduced to gray. Only Faulkner held his own. Master Johann wasn’t a magistrate, though he had served as one temporarily in the past.

  But he dominated. By position, Chair of Mathematics was high but not highest. Instead, he took his place as center of the ritual by a deeper and ineffable power. Everything about his attendance was extraordinary, that he sat between two Chief Magistrates, that he exhibited an authority over the Inquiry so openly, and that no one questioned his right. He was Master Johann of Basel.

  He leaned first to his right, murmuring to Magistrate Faulkner, then to his left, with an undisguised familiarity, to Magistrate Caiaphas, with whom he had a longer whispering. Neither seemed pleased, and this might have been the first resumption of their interrupted meeting in the dark morning. Then Master Johann turned back to his right, caught the eye of the Mayor, and nodded. He, a visitor to the council, was giving it instruction to start the proceedings.

  But perhaps I was the only one who saw the glance. I was in the other chair, the chair behind Gottlieb, most exposed and alone, and from my angle I could see what most others in the room couldn’t. And I was in black, also, tremulous, uncertain black: black coat and breeches and boots, with my tricorne complacent beneath my chair. At that moment I would have easily given up all pretense of a black and white future for the safety and un-remarkability of brown.

  I sat beneath Icarus, and Daedalus wept at my side.

  There were a few quiet words at the Council’s table and I surveyed the room, especially the Holbein murals, which I’d always appreciated. On the side wall was King Rehoboam wagging his finger as he boasted to the Israelites, and beside that was Esau eating Jacob’s stew. The edg
e between these was also the line of the witness box, where Daniel yawned in ease and boredom, and Nicolaus saw me watching him and smiled. Between them Old Gustavus was still as a cold hearth, and Master Huldrych very pale, and his hands were shaking. I’d never before seen him so agitated. The next mural, just outside that box, above Dorothea and Little Johann, was Oedipus and Jocasta.

  Gottlieb stood from his chair. A heavy blanket fell on all sound except the clap of his heels on the wood floor. With fate and doom he took the podium. He spared no glance at anyone but the council and prepared to speak. The Mayor lifted his hand, palm up, which was the signal to begin.

  “Humble before Mighty God,” Gottlieb said, “I come to state truth.” Every Inquisitor began their case with these words. “Those who deceive shall be exposed and set to the left. Those who are blameless shall be known and set to the right. Then may God have mercy and be just.”

  The mayor answered. His name was Burckhardt, and his family had been cloth merchants for generations. “Master Inquisitor. We measure you to the standard that you measure others, and to twice their reward, whatever we judge it will be. Begin your Inquiry.” And so, it began.

  “You have charged me,” Gottlieb said, “to inquire into the murder of Knipper the coachman. I have done as I was charged, and so I warn the Council that there is a danger to Basel.” The audience and Council all took note of what he said.

  It was then that I noticed for the first time that Master Desiderius was also an observer among the townspeople, beneath a mural of Ephialtes of Trachis bowing to Xerxes. Desiderius had always seemed to me more interested in past or distant than in present, yet he was very alert to the proceedings, and to the expressions and glances of all the actors.

  Gottlieb pronounced, “I first summon Gustavus, who keeps the Boot and Thorn.”

  The man stood and came to the center of the room where he settled, feet apart, arms crossed, and beard bristling, just as he would in his own kitchen, and a whiff of his fires was with him. “I am Gustavus.”