An Elegant Solution

by Paul Robertson

  “Only Master Gottlieb’s own written papers,” Lieber said. “Very neat he is, though he angles his lines to the bottom of the page. But the drawings were from old Master Jacob.”

  “Who carved them into the printing plates?”

  “I did that.”

  “I didn’t know you were an etcher.”

  “I apprenticed under Meynenden in Frankfurt, and he was a hard Master. He had me learn every skill of making a book.”

  “They’re excellent figures. Did Lithicus ever see them? He’d have appreciated good etching.”

  He lowered his forehead and looked at me through narrowed eyes. “And why are you asking, young Master Leonhard? Yes, I showed him the figures. I wanted him to see what could be done with the printing press.”

  “Surely you would,” I said.

  “And he didn’t like what he saw. He would have torn the pages out if I’d let him.”

  I nodded. “It was the spiral, wasn’t it?”

  “Aye, it was the spiral.”

  “He carved a spiral for Master Jacob’s epitaph stone. But it wasn’t the kind he’d been meant to carve. I think Master Johann wasn’t pleased with it.”

  “Lithicus wasn’t much pleased, either. And he wanted to know where I’d got the drawing that I made that etching from. He said he’d been looking years for that figure.”

  “You had them from Master Gottlieb,” I said.

  “Oh, I told him that, but I told him if he wanted to see it himself, he’d just need to visit Master Huldrych.”

  “Master Huldrych!” I said. “Why him?”

  “Master Gottlieb didn’t keep all those papers of Master Jacob’s. Master Huldrych kept them.”

  “Why did he?”

  “I don’t know the affairs of University men. That’s not my place!”

  “But how did you know that he had them?”

  “Master Huldrych came and stood just where you’re standing, to tell me to take care of the papers that Master Gottlieb had given me. He said he had them in his charge and he wanted them held safe. And I told him they would be.”

  I was a gentleman now, and of substance, and from speaking with Lieber, I took it upon myself to call on Cousin Gottlieb. I chose ten thirty in the morning as a respectable time to knock on his door. I was in complete black and white. All traces of anxiety and grief were cleared from my face. He answered the door himself. He saw me and understood that I was presenting myself as respectable, and accepted me as such, although it was a thin claim; he’d been the one to place the tricorne on my head. But we’d spoken as equals over Mathematics, and that alone was sufficient.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “Yes, good morning,” he answered. “What might I do for you?” It was abrupt, to let me know that my claim was accepted, but thin enough to not to be relied upon heavily.

  “It’s a very small thing, and I’m sorry to bother you.”

  “Well, go ahead.” That meant he was also sorry that I was bothering him.

  “I asked last week about the hat that I had? I remember of course you said it was lost.”

  There might have been a difference in his annoyed glance. “What of it? Yes, it was lost. I have an appointment, Leonhard, and no time. What do you want of me?”

  I hoped it was not another disrespectful student! “I still have a desire to find my hat.”

  “Then find it. Elsewhere. It isn’t here.”

  “But might you be able to tell me what became of it from here?”

  “It must have been thrown out. I don’t allow rags to be left about in my house.”

  “I really must insist,” I said, “to find what became of it.”

  “And why is that?” He was saying plainly that he wouldn’t answer.

  I paused a moment to prepare myself. “On the night that Daniel and Nicolaus returned from Italy, I saw Master Jacob’s trunk in the kitchen at their house. I think my hat will assist me in learning how that trunk came from Master Huldrych’s house to Master Jacob’s.”

  He raised an eyebrow and pursed his lips. “And I suppose Knipper the coachman was in the kitchen with it?”

  “He was. I spoke with him.”

  “I don’t see that your hat will be any assistance.”

  I might have piqued his interest, but he still seemed in a hurry.

  “I considered telling you before the Inquiry—”

  “It’s plain why you didn’t.” And Gottlieb’s tone made it plain that it was plain. “You’re tantamount to accusing one of us in the house of murder.”

  “I was afraid I might be misunderstood to be, so I said nothing.”

  “It might well not have been a misunderstanding. But I’m not any Inquisitor now, so I won’t ask you any more of it. And it’s still nothing to do with the hat.”

  “And I realize,” I said, proceeding, “that it had been you who had the trunk taken to Master Huldrych’s in the first place when you arrived in Basel twenty years ago.”

  “Who else would have? Jacob asked me to keep it away from Johann. This still isn’t worth bothering me over a hat.”

  “And you had Knipper carry it there for you. Then he would have recognized it later when he saw it. He was very anxious at it being in Master Johann’s house. I’d never seen him so distraught.”

  “I’m sure he was so. He should have been. When I first sent him with it to Huldrych’s, I instructed him very strongly to never tell Uncle Johann he knew anything of it.”

  “And later, some few years ago,” I said, “Lithicus the mason carried it to Master Johann’s.”

  “The mason? Who was killed just yesterday? Why do you say it was him?”

  “He was told where Master Jacob’s papers were. It was just by chance. And he knew Master Johann wanted to find them.”

  “The papers were still in the trunk?”

  “Yes.”

  “All of them?”

  “I don’t know how many there ever were.”

  “How many did you see?”

  “I didn’t see them myself. I only saw the trunk.”

  “Who did see them?” he said, and he was still as impatient, but only that I wasn’t answering quick enough.

  “I have a witness . . . but I won’t say who it is.”

  “There aren’t many who it could be. What else does this witness claim?”

  “Only that there were papers in the trunk, and they were Jacob’s.”

  “Tell me who this witness is. Would he know also who killed Knipper.”

  “I pledged that I wouldn’t tell.” But after a moment, I said, “I still wonder what has become of my hat.”

  “Why do you want it? What does it have to do with any of this?”

  “I do think it would be of help to me.”

  “Then tell me,” he bargained, “who is your witness? What papers did he see? And I will consider the hat.”

  “Little Johann. But I told him that I’d not tell anyone that he’d looked in the trunk, or even seen it.”

  He frowned at that. “And that was who came here to take your hat, and I made the same pledge to him.”

  We stared at each other for a moment, considering.

  “What was the danger you spoke of at the Inquiry?” I asked. “You said there was a danger to Basel.”

  He wasn’t angry at my question, and that seemed to show he was accepting me. “If it comes, Leonhard, you’ll know. If it doesn’t, then you needn’t know.”

  “Is it the plague?”

  “I think it is not. It will be from outside, not within. Though plague might be part of it.”

  “I have a few other questions,” I said, “though I doubt you would answer them.”

  Gottlieb had put his hand back on the doorknob to close it, but he paused, with almost the same look for me that he’d had for Daniel at the inn during their questioning and jousting.

  “What are they?”

  “I wonder what Magistrate Caiaphas has to do with this danger. I wonder why he demanded the Inquir
y, but then tried to prevent it. And I wonder what you meant to ask Caiaphas. I believe that you pressed the Inquiry because you had questions of him that you wanted answered, which had nothing to do with Knipper.”

  “You are correct, Leonhard,” Gottlieb said. “I won’t answer those. And you are impertinent. I hope you find your hat.” The dismissal was polite. He pushed the door to close it.

  “Thank you,” I said. And just before the door was shut, “Actually I did find it. I have it.”

  My Friday began dark and full of storms. I didn’t need to go out for water; a great deal of water was coming directly to us. Our barrel beneath the eaves was flowing over. I knew it was without looking. As I lay in bed, dark before the sun, I listened to the rain and I could hear the pattering of the drops on the surface. It brought me to thinking also about Grandmother’s warning that a pot will overflow and I wondered how full any pots were, and what sounds would change when they were full. I also thought how a tricorne had more purpose than to make a gentleman, because its practical use was to shed rain.

  The hat would be first manufactured round and very wide brimmed. Then the three curl folds would be done to make it an equilateral triangle, the two sides angled toward the front to make the high prow, and the back as a wide, low stern. When the storm would rage and the sea flood over it, the water would empty from the stern’s port and starboard corners. Thus, the gentleman’s back was spared the spouts, which spewed to the sides.

  The hat of a student would begin with the same wide round shape, but would be rolled on just its two parallel sides, and the flood would then pour directly down his robe. This would certainly be an impetus to the young scholar to finish his studies and be graduated, so that his back would stay dry.

  But it was a noteworthy point to consider that the two hats began the same. This might also have been a reminder to both the student and the professor that in the shaping, a man would be made one thing or another. We were only earthen vessels, and all made of the same dust.

  As I prepared to leave my room for the morning, I took both hats in my hands: my secondhand tricorne and my torn and rumpled student widebrim. They were both as clean and brushed as I could make them. The one was from my father, precious to me but never again to be worn. The other was from Gottlieb, from the University, from the wide world, from Basel, and I would wear it until a new one came.

  I would take neither though, for that day. I was in brown and neither the child nor the man.

  When the sun had taken hold of the sky and cleared it, I went to the Barefoot Square, not to collect water from the fountain, but to watch it. I’d filled my buckets there so often; again, I wondered on the water’s source. I wondered again on the ancient-ness of Basel’s fountains. The Romans had had fountains in the city.

  Beyond, the Birsig Flow’s deep path beneath the city was unknown; it came to the Rhine somewhere between the Munster and the Bridge. I walked to the Outer Wall. The Stone Gate was a high, narrow tower over the road from the Birsig’s valley, and the Birsig entered its tunnel in a culvert beside the gate. I walked out the gate and followed the stream.

  Outside the city, before its cloacal length, it was a good, pure stream, ten or more miles long and as wide as three houses where it came to the Walls. I’d walked its length, before and it always reminded me of walking with my father beside the Rhine. I set out to walk it again.

  It passed its first mile well ordered, with quiet banks by farms and pastures on the left and a nice hill on the right. After two miles and the villages of Therwil and Oberwil, it turned right through a wide valley with low peaks on either side. The hamlets came every mile: Benken, Leymen, Rodersdorf, Biederthal, Wolschwiller, each smaller and less changed from its far past. There was a road directly from church to church, but I followed the path beside the stream, under trees with new unfurled leaves and by wildflowers needing to be seen.

  The companionable stream became narrower and more talkative as I stayed with it. I just listened, as it had many interesting things to say. There were men in the fields and women in gardens. The air was a very tolerable and drowsy warm. Near the end, the water was pure garrulity, and childish, and I didn’t pay close attention. I counted cattle in meadows, then steeples. On one hill I could see seven.

  At the very end the water was just rivulets that hadn’t even learned to speak. The whole of the stream’s life had passed by me, from old and hard working in the city to this infancy. For my own life, I could not walk back and forth the length of it. I could only be in one moment and move in one slow tread, in one direction and pace. What if I could skip forward and back beside and see all my life, and know what was to come?

  There were horses plowing, led by farmers on their hard journey back and forth through the fields. There were horsedrawn carts on the road. And once, a white horse free in a field watched me a moment and then with an easy gallop was gone behind a hill. I watched a moment. Then I ran. Not after it, but on my own path by the river. If the horse could run, I could, too!

  So all the way back, I ran, and what a run! Up and down, but more down, faster than the water, faster than the breeze, breathing the breeze, being the breeze. Once I was started I couldn’t stop.

  I didn’t tire the whole length of the stream. But finally, when I knew Basel’s Walls would soon confront me, I paused. I came to the top of a crest, which the water cut through. Behind me, I could see the stream’s valley and the high hills containing it, and the road, empty of living things; before me was Basel full within its Walls. All the sky was blue and blue, empty of any bit of cloud. I rambled down, in view of my home city but reluctant to finish my journey. I paused again.

  A sudden thunder of hooves was all that warned me. I jumped aside and a black mount flew over the crest, Daniel on its back. He saw me and waved but wouldn’t and couldn’t slow his flight. And he hadn’t passed me even when the white charger I’d seen far back in the fields was after him.

  Like lightning they went. I’d seen one race before from the Walls. Now they were faster. Half across the open field the white was even with the black, still pulling ahead. As the Wall approached, it pulled back. Daniel’s horse, the winner by default, slowed. Daniel finally took charge of his reins, laughing loud. I was there. I’d run behind them. I was no match with two legs for four, but once they’d slowed I caught them fast. And already the white horse was gone, back out the road and over the hill.

  “What’s that?” Daniel cried to me. “I’d say you frightened my Coal, but he doesn’t frighten.”

  “He’s a good racer,” I said. “They both were.”

  “Both?”

  “The white horse. I’ve seen you race him before.”

  “What white horse?”

  So I laughed. “If you couldn’t see him, your Coal could.”

  Inside the Walls, among Basel, I went to return Master Desiderius’s book.

  “Was there any lesson in it?” he asked me.

  “The well-known one,” I said. “But it’s no danger to learn it again.”

  “Learning is hard, and un-learning is often too easy.”

  “Master Desiderius, how is it to be on a nominating committee?”

  It was a strange, weak smile he gave me. “You mean, how does it feel to be the offerer? To be Mephistopheles?”

  “Oh no! It wasn’t what I meant—”

  “It’s not an enviable place.”

  “I didn’t mean that. But,” I said, “there are Fausts I’ve read that have an unwilling Mephistopheles. He’s not eager to make the bargain. He warns against it.”

  “Then should I warn a candidate against taking the Chair, or even be reluctant to nominate?”

  “What do you gain from the candidate winning the Chair? Not his soul.”

  “Though for winning the Chair, he may lose it.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Oh, Leonhard, I have a fear of the Election. It unburies things.”

  “Master Desiderius. Do you have regrets over you
r own Election?”

  “I didn’t know this city five years ago. I do now.”

  “I don’t understand you,” I said.

  “I might have chosen differently. Thank you for returning this; I will read it again myself. Have you noticed the weather, Leonhard?”

  “It’s rained.”

  “Yes, but I think that was the last. It will be very dry. I feel it.”

  “What have you written this week?” Grandmother asked as we sat at supper.

  “Several pages. I’ve thought more about waves and that they can go on without stopping. It was Master Johann’s puzzle of the Reciprocal Squares that led me to these ideas.”

  “What does he think now of your solution?” She knew this wouldn’t be a simple answer.

  “I believe it troubles him. He’s very intrigued by it. But doubtful, too, of course.”

  “Are you still sure your solution is correct?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “If it is true, can it be proved false?”

  “No. Mathematics doesn’t allow such a thing. All the principles of Mathematics are true once they’re proven, and Mathematicians accept proofs if they’re according to the principles. That’s part of the elegance of Mathematics. It is only made of proofs, and nothing else. There are a very few simple truths that are accepted as themselves, and all the rest is proved from them. I think there’s no end to it.”

  “And will Master Johann be persuaded, then?”

  “He will, I think.”

  “Then Mathematics is very different from most other things,” she said, “if it can overcome a stubborn man’s beliefs. What troubles him with this proof?”

  “It might be that it’s unlikely that a young, poor, un-noteworthy student would solve it correctly.”

  “But if it is true, it couldn’t matter who first proved it.”

  “It couldn’t. It may be that he is just jealous. But he’s too great a man to be resentful.” I tried to be sincere, but she knew he was very capable of resentment. “And Daniel accepts it. And Nicolaus and Gottlieb have doubts but still accept that it might be true. But also . . .” I was afraid to say it. It was such a boast on my part.