An Elegant Solution

by Paul Robertson

  This had startled my imagination and I’d turned abruptly and looked back. At that instant, that very, elegant, instant, a meteor had cut the sky. It wasn’t just a thin line of white, what we often called “shooting stars.” It was a true sphere and engulfed in flame, and I saw it fragment, and all its splinters keep their line through the night. It was so quick that I couldn’t even spin my head fast enough to follow it, and by the time I did, it was gone. And it was silent; if I hadn’t turned, I would never have known that it was there above me. And it was very noteworthy.

  But it was gone. I didn’t know what meteors were, and where that one ended, or if it endured at all. The only truth I had of it was my memory. And as I’d returned to my trudge to Basel that night, I’d begun to doubt. I had only turned in reflex, at my own imagination, so that it might have been only more imagination that saw the meteor. And always later, I still wondered. What was real, what was visible, what was true about a memory? If Monsieur Descartes only believed to be true what he sensed himself, was my meteor true once I no longer saw it? Was memory a sense?

  So, after my talk with Nicolaus, I walked the short path home, saw no meteors, and I tried to remember, in truth, what I had seen and done that evening in Mistress Dorothea’s kitchen. I had entered; I had talked with Knipper; I had seen the trunk; I had left. Did I do anything else? Did I really do what I thought I had?

  And had there been a label on the trunk? Yes. It was in my memory that there had been, pasted on a side, too plain to be noticed. And it had not been still there when the trunk had returned to Basel.

  Even early as I was to fetch water Friday morning, there was life and motion in the Barefoot Square. The sun was up, though newly, and most houses were awake and awork, as this was Basel. I greeted Old Gustavus at the door to his Inn, watching the Square as a general his battlefield. And as I put my buckets under the water stream I heard a bell toll. It was sharp and very clean, to split the air as lightning splits the sky. I was impelled to look for the source. I’d never heard that bell before. Then it rang again. But it wasn’t a ring, it was so pure and pointed. It was a cry, a sigh, an exultation, and a song. Something very great and mysterious was speaking.

  I found it. The bell was the stone gate in the Wall, and the hammer was a chisel. It was Lithicus, high on his scaffold.

  The Wall was rooted deep into the city, in time, and in understanding of what the city even was. It was the city, this inner Wall. So the bell was Basel and that was why its ringing pierced so deep to anyone who heard it.

  “What is it you’re doing there, anyway?” I asked.

  Lithicus put down his hammer and decided to answer. “The Wall’s old and gate’s old, and the stone they’re made of is old, too.”

  “As old as all stone,” I said.

  “But there’s stones loose in the arch, and that’s new.”

  “It was just the shield on the capstone that was broken.”

  “The cracks go deeper. Deep into the gate. You can’t see from down there, but the whole arch is breaking.”

  And perhaps the cracks in Basel were deeper, too. “What do you do for that?”

  “Mortar them back in.”

  “It’s taking you weeks to do.”

  “Well, it’s not done quick, it isn’t.”

  “I guess you’re doing it well, then, instead.”

  He liked that. “Take any stone from an arch and the whole of it fails. And I need to take them all out.”

  “How do you?”

  “Match a brace to each stone, pull it out and put the brace in, then fix the stonework behind it, put new mortar in, and push the stone back in. And I’m carving in it. They want the lettering on the stones.”

  “What’s the lettering to say?”

  “What’s it to say? I don’t know. I only know the letters for each stone. I haven’t read them all out.”

  “Tell me the letters.”

  “E, G, O,” he said. “N, U, M, Q, U, A, M—”

  “C, A, D, O,” I finished for him.

  “You already knew!”

  “No, I guessed. Ego numquam cado. It means, I never fall.”

  “It won’t. Not when I’m done with it. And tell your Master Johann I’ll have his stone done, too.”

  “I will.”

  “Come tomorrow to my yard. I’ll have his drawing.”

  “I will come. Lithicus? Did you know Master Huldrych?”

  “I knew him.”

  “Did you know him well?”

  “I only knew him quick, and now dead.”

  “You’re carving his epitaph. Did you ever even speak with him?”

  “Why is it,” he asked, angry again, “that you keep asking about that spiral? I’ll not speak more of it!”

  “I wasn’t either. What did Huldrych have to do with the spiral?”

  “I’ll not speak of it, I said. I’ll not speak of infernal spirals, I’ll not speak of spirals on stone, I’ll not speak of spirals on paper, I’ll not speak of lot stones.” And his hammer landed on his chisel and all Basel shook.

  I watched him for a few moments. It was impressive to see a master at his craft, but even more to hear Basel ring. But then he sent me off. “I’ll have the drawing tomorrow night. Come for it then. Now leave me alone.”

  I did leave him, but not alone. The Square was filling as it would in the morning, Rupert the new driver was climbing onto the coach, and Gustavus still watched. I turned back to watch. I saw Lithicus raise his hammer and with all his might bring it to his chisel. The air split, the Square shook, the inn trembled, and the church sang.

  My studies with my father long ago were not allowed to remain abstract. My Botany he taught in the garden, my Latin in the Bible, my History in the ruins, and my Theology in life. For Geometry, as I studied triangles and rectangles and the theories of congruence, my father put me to practical work learning carpentry. If an angle was not defined properly as a right angle, the cabinet door would not close; and just as there were many different quadrilaterals which could have sides of the same length, there were many shapes other than square that a box would form if it wasn’t properly braced.

  I’d had more practice under Mistress Dorothea, who was not interested in geometric theorems but was very interested in the sturdiness and level of cupboards and tables. So that Friday morning I was forcing a table to be parallel to the floor beneath. Both lengths and angles needed correcting. “It’s this leg,” I said. “It was cut crooked, and pulling it straight has made it too long. But I don’t want to push it back crooked again.”

  “Do what’s proper,” she said. Proper meant that it must not be done easily, or quickly, or unconventionally. Instead, proper meant that it must be done carefully, and laboriously, and frugally. To add complication, Daniel was watching me, and he found my task amusing.

  “Cut it until it’s long enough, hey?”

  “Subtraction by a positive always results in a lesser value,” I said.

  “But can you prove it Mathematically?”

  “I can prove it with a table leg, but I won’t.”

  “Is that Cartesian?” he laughed. “A proof by senses?”

  “It’s proof either way,” I said. “But Daniel, if you accuse me of Cartesian thoughts, tell me this: Was Master Johann really accused of being a Cartesian?”

  He laughed louder. “You want to see? Here, come on, I’ll show you.” He jumped to his feet. “Come on!”

  I went with him to the stairs, and up, three flights, to a hall I hadn’t seen since I’d been there with him before years ago, and to a door, and through to his bedroom.

  There were memories for me there. As a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old it had been a refuge when he took me there to escape. There were no chores, no frowns, no confusion in that room, just Daniel’s attention and friendship. It still held that feeling, as a pie rack holds its smells. The room was the proper size for a Basel gentleman’s younger son, with more space than it needed for a bed and desk and dresser, but only just. He�
�d always had a good shelf of books, though not as mine, and I saw that now they were less on strict Mathematics and more on the new topics of Physics, mostly Hydraulics and gases. There weren’t many books on those subjects, and he had more than I knew had been written.

  His desk was fairly clear, but that was because he was actually very orderly. There was another shelf of fileboxes, and I knew what those were filled with. He had a vast correspondence all over Europe, as he was as quick with his pen as he was with his tongue.

  “Are they useful?” I asked, meaning his books. He had to see where I was looking to know how to answer.

  “Those? No. Vacuums, all of them. Pure emptiness.”

  “You’ll write one, then?”

  “It’s started, Leonhard, be sure of it! I don’t use all my time riding the countryside.”

  I would have asked him all about it, but I knew he’d be impenetrable until he wanted to tell me, and then he’d be uncontainable. “But what did you want to show me?”

  He had a filebox already open and was riffling papers. “I’ll find it,” he said, and then, “Ah, yes! So Leonhard, you’ve heard the legend, how Brutus was accused of heresy in Holland.”

  “Of being a Cartesian?”

  “The very. What would he do now, if someone made that accusation?”

  “No one would accuse.”

  “Because he isn’t a heretic?”

  “Well . . . he isn’t, but I also don’t think anyone would even dare.”

  “Yes, that’s it. They’d end up accused of heresy themselves, or thievery, or murder. And if a student tried? Do you think he’d even get an answer?”

  “No. He’d be out of the University instead.”

  “But in Holland he wasn’t the emperor he is in Basel. Here. It was a student who accused him in Groningen. And old Brutus did answer him. See this.”

  It was a printed pamphlet of just a single sheet folded to make four pages, titled on the first as a Dire Warning to the Rector of the University of Groningen by the student Petrus Venhuysen. I read the first page.

  “The Latin is so poor, I can hardly understand it. It says Master Johann opposes the Calvinist faith?” I turned it over. “He follows the teachings of Descartes, and so he deprives all believers of their comfort in Christ?”

  “The Brute’s the last to give anyone comfort and the first to deprive them of it. But he doesn’t bother with anyone’s Theology. So what do you think he did about the charge?”

  “Would he answer it?”

  “Sure he would! And in twelve long pages, too! Look at this!”

  He gave me another pamphlet, thicker and more expensively printed. My eyes caught a few lines:

  . . . all my life I have professed my Reformed Christian belief, which I still do . . . he would have me pass for an unorthodox believer, a very heretic; indeed very wickedly he seeks to make me an abomination to the world, and to expose me to the vengeance of both the powers that be and the common people . . .

  “It’s a terrible charge,” I said.

  “Keep reading!”

  . . . I would not have minded so much if Venhuysen had not been one of the worst students, an utter ignoramus, not known, respected, or believed by any man of learning, and he is certainly not in a position to blacken an honest man’s name, let alone a professor known throughout the learned world . . .

  “Oh! Poor Venhuysen!” I said.

  “And see?” Daniel laughed. “Known throughout the learned world! He says it himself.”

  “He is,” I said. “And he was then, too.” Then I had to laugh, too. “But it seems low of a great professor to call a student an ignoramus.”

  “I’ll take that back before you read more. I can’t take the risk of you ever admitting I showed it to you, even by inadvertence.”

  I handed it to him. “I won’t.”

  “This little epistle has a fame of its own, and I’m not the only one with a copy. And you can see how he’s aged. The spirit’s the same, and more, but he’s doesn’t waste words or swat flies in public where he’s seen doing it. He saves his vitriol for worthy opponents.”

  I had to shake my head. “I know that what you say has truth in it, Daniel. But I still think he’s better than that.”

  “Do you know the student Gluck, from Zurich?”

  “I saw him in your father’s lecture.”

  “He won’t last the month. Not even the week.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He was disrespectful to a Chair.”

  “How was he? Gottlieb said the same of him.”

  “That’s all that’s been said.” Daniel leaned close to me, though the room was empty besides us, and smirked. “But I’ll tell you. He called on the Dean and demanded his tuition be returned. He said he was dissatisfied with his Master’s lecture.”

  “That would be poor to say of any Master,” I said, “and poorer to say to the Dean. But which Master?”

  “The very wrong Master to slight in any way. The Master, in fact, who lives in this house.”

  “I feared so. But I’ve heard nothing of it but from you and Gottlieb.”

  “You’ll hear nothing else but cautionary whispers. The Brute won’t let his own name be dragged into it. But I still have it in my head to take that pamphlet to Lieber the printer and have him make me a hundred copies. Everyone knows the Brute’s a tyrant, but then they’d see how petty he is, too.”

  “You won’t. And Lieber wouldn’t print it anyway.”

  “You’re right, Leonhard, he wouldn’t. He’d be run out of town. Or worse. Far worse.”

  I strayed past the Boot and Thorn midafternoon. A half dozen students were at a table and I joined them. Gluck was among them, very glum.

  “We’re toasting Gluck, on his departure!” I was told.

  “What’s he departing for?” I asked.

  “Master Cassini’s told him that his studies aren’t satisfactory, and he’ll not have him any more in his lectures.”

  “And Master Paleologus has said the same.”

  “And his room at Frau Minn’s is needed for another boarder, so he’s to be out of it.”

  He himself turned to me from the end of the table. “It’s good riddance, too,” he said. He took off his student’s brimmed hat. “And I just bought it. Who would buy it from me?”

  A student at the table, who was also new to Basel and who’d been friendly with me, said, “Sell it to Leonhard. He needs one.”

  But another student, who was my elder, answered, “No. He’s a gentleman now. He won’t wear a low student’s hat.” I was in brown, the only one at the table so.

  “But look at him!” They took to jesting with me, which I didn’t mind. “In brown? He’s no gentleman!” “But you’ve seen his tricorne!” “Is he below us or above us?” “Is he buoyant or sinking?”

  “I lost my hat,” I said. “And I’d dear like it back.”

  “Then I’ll sell you this,” Gluck said, and named a price.

  “I’ll find mine own instead.”

  “Too expensive?” the elder student said to me. “Ask Gustavus. He has old robes and hats and rags.”

  “Plague-ridden rags, you mean!” he was answered.

  “He’d have burned anything from a plague house.” Besides the clothes of plague victims, innkeepers would gather clothing from any sickbed, usually to burn, though sometimes to sell to travelers.

  So then, the talk turned to Huldrych and plague. I said to Gluck, “No, I’d like my old hat. My father gave it to me.”

  “Afraid he’ll roast you for losing it? My father’ll chop me to pieces when he hears I’ve been sent down.”

  “You should keep your hat,” I said. “You may find yourself at another University.”

  “I will,” he said, the hat in his hand. “And no Master Johann at it.”

  Friday evening I took early to my room. My grandmother would have questioned me about my day but I had my door closed before she had all the kitchen cleaned.

  The t
houghts in my brain were like a billow of starlings, too many to count and too whirling to hold. I did what I only could, then. I took paper, and pen, and ink, and lit my candle. I knew when I did that I would just blink and hours would go by.

  I thought of squares, and circles. I put my quill on the pages and took it around a circle. The ink drained from the feather to the paper. But instead of putting it back to the well, I kept it travelling the path it had made. Around it went, and again, and again around. There was no end to its infinity.

  I felt something in my coat pocket and I pulled it out, and it was Desiderius’s Faustbook. This Faust was a man who sold his soul for knowledge. And renown? The man in Basel who held the greatest renown was Master Johann; and there was renown for any man who won a Chair in Basel.

  The circle continued to return to its beginning, though it had no beginning.

  Why had Desiderius pressed this book onto me?

  Knipper had been in Master Johann’s kitchen.

  From the edge of the paper, the quill would only seem to go up and down. And from the top of the paper, the quill would only seem to go back and forth. But as I looked down, from above and outside the page, I could see the whole circle.

  Huldrych had choked on the dust. And the trunk had been in his house. And Jacob, who had owned the trunk, had died . . . of the plague also?

  The circle was an infinity contained on a single sheet of paper.

  Daniel had stood at one side, seeking everything about his Uncle Jacob. Then he’d been on the other side, claiming he didn’t care at all.

  Master Johann was the center, never moving, but with everything orbiting him. Caiaphas was a meteor from some far end of the cosmos appearing in flame.

  What was a Chair worth? What would anyone give for it? Or do for it?

  And then I understood. I knew. I was Saul with my face toward Damascus. I didn’t deduce it myself, but instead I was told. It was given to me. I just knew. I took my paper and ink and began writing. It was so elegant.