An Elegant Solution

by Paul Robertson

  “I will take your time, Leonhard.”

  I suddenly thought of Jacob’s papers and wondered if I was to be asked for my payment. “Yes, sir?”

  But not. “You are a candidate now for the Physics Chair.” A lion would regard its cub with mercy but its prey with none, and each knew which it was. But I wasn’t sure.

  “I am, sir, yes.”

  “The University is a power in Basel. You may attain an authority you aren’t expecting.”

  “If I am chosen—”

  “Or, if you are not. I will not yield my own prerogatives in either case.”

  “And I would ever yield to you! Magistrate Faulkner, it’s a terrible thought to me that I would consider a challenge to anyone of your position, or at all to you. I—”

  “You may have no choice.” He sighed. “But, nor may I. What will come, will come.”

  I paused, thinking very hard, and he waited.

  “Sir,” I said.

  “Yes, Leonhard?”

  “I understand what Master Gottllieb meant was the danger to Basel.”

  “Then you also understand why Magistrate Caiaphas is here and why this Election is important to him.”

  “Yes, sir. But . . .” And I wasn’t sure how I was regarding him. “I will do what I must do. Because it is more than just Basel.”

  He didn’t understand. He frowned, and I didn’t know if he was disturbed or disappointed. He nodded and we stood, and I left.

  At home Grandmother had supper for me. I hadn’t seen her in the morning, or the evening before. We didn’t speak much, but I saw that neither had she slept the night before.

  I was so, so tired! Yet I still had more to do. I took my black cloak from its hook in the closet and wrapped it on.

  “Is the night cold?” Grandmother asked. She knew it wasn’t.

  “No, but I’ll wear it.”

  I went out. It was nights like this one when I saw so many things in the streets. Slow, heavy, unshod footsteps were behind every corner. The shadows of strange beasts were ahead of every turn. I wondered, when I was invisible, would invisible things more easily see me? But I didn’t have far to go. I came to my Master’s house, in the back alley. I chose the very darkest place. Then I stood and waited.

  I didn’t know how long I’d wait.

  I didn’t know how long I did wait.

  Finally the back door of the house opened and Master Johann came out with a small, dim candle. He went to the cellar door and opened it, and set the candle on the steps. Then he went back up into the house.

  Just a moment later he came out again, with a heavy bag in both hands. I couldn’t see just what size it was. He went down the steps into the cellar and another moment later took the candle in with him and shut the door.

  I waited, not long.

  The cellar door opened and he came out with just the candle. He closed and locked the door and went back into his house. I heard the bolt on that door turn.

  And then, I could finally be done with the day. I went home and to my room and threw myself into the bed.

  Water, water. It had not been long since the last rain, but all Basel seemed to be drying out. The fountains were all pinched. The streets were lethargic and filled with dust.

  Yet the fountains still brought out their stream, reduced but valiant. I filled my buckets, and as always on Fridays the coach’s preparation for departure was a performance for me to watch. I did watch and I saw no black, cloaked passengers.

  I would always hurry through my chores. Time was far too valuable to waste. Yet I paused there in the Barefoot Square for twice or three times the minutes it would usually take to get my water and leave. And finally, with the gray dawn light just at its last edge with morning, I saw a tall young man, black cloaked and crowned with wig and tricorne, slip quietly into the inn.

  I lifted my buckets but only carried them as far as the inn’s Common Room window. Then I stood still again. It was dark looking in and I didn’t try. I didn’t want to be seen through the window anyway.

  A property of the morning air was that it would often be very still. The Riehen church bell would sound as close as Saint Leonhard’s. The Rhine’s murmuring was like the streets speaking. I waited and finally I heard the voices I knew I would.

  “Why will you not come to my room?” which was Magistrate Caiaphas. “This is a poor place to talk.”

  “Negotiations must be neutral,” which was Nicolaus. “Not in father’s room, and not in yours.”

  “It’s no negotiation. It’s only a message. What is the message?”

  “That it’s been done.”

  “That’s what I want.”

  “Do you have a reply?” Nicolaus asked.

  “There’s no reply.”

  “There is a second message.”

  “What message?” Caiaphas’s voice was suspicious.

  “That there be a different choice.”

  “What use would that be to me?” He was speaking quietly, but there was no difficulty hearing him. Something was torn with every word. “My reply is, I’ll have the choice I’ve made and the bargain I’ve made, and it’s no matter to me that he detests it. Give him that reply.” It was a challenge, not a refusal.

  “There is a third message, then.”

  “Then tell me the third message.” Caiaphas was intrigued, and even pleased, as if he’d expected it.

  “That it will be to your profit.”

  “That’s the message?”

  “That’s all of it. There are no other messages.”

  “My profit? That’s no matter to him! He’d care more for a gnat than he’d care that I’d profit.”

  “But he says, that it will be to your profit.”

  “Then take this reply. I’ll account to myself what’s to my own profit and what isn’t.”

  Nicolaus was silent, then, as he always was when he had more to hear. And Caiaphas finally said, “I will account which is to my profit. Make that the reply. And I’ll tell him if I account any difference.”

  “I’ll tell him.” But Nicolaus stayed, and still waited. He would wait when he knew there was something else to be said, and he waited, and it became impossible for it not to be said.

  “I know the choice he wants,” Caiaphas said, “and I have already begun that accounting.”

  “Good day, then,” Nicolaus said, and stood.

  I was gone out from the Square before anyone else came out into it.

  I hurried through every chore my grandmother had for me, and then all that Mistress Dorothea had. But as I finished there, I was thinking all the more of the papers I’d read of Master Jacob, and I said to her, “Mistress.”

  “Yes, Leonhard?”

  “I want to tell you that I have seen repentance.”

  She stopped to give me close attention. Then she said, “Thank you.”

  Then I heard Daniel’s laugh in the hall as he was coming toward the kitchen. I didn’t want to talk with him. As I had already done once that morning, I left before I was seen.

  That Friday ran long and hard. I had my lecture to write but I held myself away from it. I had my letter to Paris to write, but I restrained from that, also.

  Instead I gave time to thought. I sat in the Barefoot Church from before noon to long after sunset.

  At home, at night, no book on my shelf seemed fit for reading. I put myself in my bed and eventually slept.

  The quality of early light was thin, clean, sinless, and Adam-like innocent. I’d seen many dawns. The gray and the quiet were one mixed thing and I walked the morning like an ash mote floating from a fire; we were only ashes. Or like a raindrop in the river, traveler on the road and part of it. I came in solitude through air like water to the Barefoot Square and filled my pails with water clear as air. Then I set them by the door and went in to the Boot and Thorn.

  The Common Room was empty but for Charon the cat half sleeping on a shelf of tankards, who were all half sleeping, as well. I sat at a table to think and wait. A very t
hin pall from the near dormant hearth and even from the last night’s candles just turned the air from pure to impure, though the difference was so fine. I knew I wasn’t undetected though I’d been silent. A few of the tankards were alert enough to call their Master. And in only a minute there was a tread in the hall and shadow in the door. Old Gustavus looked in on me. The only light was from the windows, and it was absorbed in vacant space before it reached the far wall. Gustavus watched in silence. Then he came closer.

  “How can I serve you, young Master?” I was in black and white, as fine as I could make them without my grandmother’s touch. And they were fine enough. The ambivalence I’d kept was lost and I would only wear brown a few more times. It was strange that it was with Gustavus that the change seemed most significant.

  “May I ask about a day twenty years ago?”

  “Twenty years. Yes.”

  “The day that my Master Johann returned to Basel. Do you remember?”

  “Yes. I remember.” His arms were folded and he waited for me. I’d never seen him impatient. I thought his servants were too afraid to have ever kept him waiting. And for all his strength and fearsomeness, he was always greatly respectful to his customers. But this was a different waiting, as if he were in a place he knew I would come to, and he had been waiting for me to arrive.

  “Was it Knipper driving?”

  “There was no driver but Knipper.”

  “Do you remember,” I asked, “the day ten years before that, when Master Johann left Basel for Holland?”

  “Yes. I remember.”

  “Was that also Knipper?”

  “There was no driver but Knipper.”

  I didn’t doubt that he remembered, but I wanted assurance. “What time of year was it?”

  “It was an April day. The coach left in a thunderstorm.”

  “And the day they returned?”

  “In August, and also in a storm.”

  “It was near the day that Master Jacob died.”

  “It was that day,” Gustavus said.

  “The day itself?”

  “It was that day.”

  “Gustavus,” I said, “do you know how Master Jacob died?”

  “I know all of how he died.”

  “I guess that he was ill.”

  “He was.”

  “And he died of his illness.”

  “He did.”

  “Was Black Death his illness?”

  For every question I’d asked, he’d only paused a moment to answer. Again, with his dark eyes intent on me, he answered immediately. “His family has held that as secret.”

  “It was Black Death,” I said. “I know it was. And he died before Master Johann arrived? By hours? By minutes?”

  Gustavas didn’t answer. He was just still and intent on me, as if he was measuring.

  “Why did you come here, Master?” he asked me.

  “Master Johann took the Chair of Mathematics after Jacob died,” I said.

  “He did.”

  “Daniel wants the Chair of Physics.”

  “He does.” It was unusual for an innkeeper to admit to knowledge of University affairs or a gentleman’s desires.

  “Master Johann stayed four weeks in Strasbourg on his travel to Basel. Did he send any messages while he was stopped there?”

  “He sent messages.”

  “Did Magistrate Caiaphas send any messages?”

  “Why did you come here, Master?” he asked me again.

  “Master Gottlieb was also in Strasbourg with Master Johann, though he didn’t stay as long. He came back a week earlier. And Master Desiderius came here from Strasbourg.”

  “There has been coming and going between the cities for many years. The coach has been well used.”

  “I’d like to speak with Magistrate Caiaphas,” I said. “I’ll come back tonight.”

  “And you are welcome to come any time, Master.”

  “Please tell him it will be the same conversation he had with those other gentlemen.”

  “I will tell him you wish to speak with him.”

  The light was still clean and innocent, and, it seemed, pure, though that was always hard to tell.

  “Leonhard,” Grandmother said, even as I came in the door. “Where have you been?”

  “Just walking,” I said. “It’s very dry. There hasn’t been rain.”

  “You’re dressed fine.”

  “It seemed proper for the early morning. The morning light was very clear.”

  “Stay in it,” she said. “Stay out of the shadow.”

  “But I’ll change now for my chores.”

  I did my chores, though perhaps not well. Then I had a hard time reading, like pouring water into an overfull barrel. It seemed that three o’clock would never come.

  Mistress Dorothea’s speech was so continuous that her silence was inscrutable. In its shadow I followed up her stairs. I saw her looking at me with eyes very narrow.

  “Why did he do it?” I said, and it was like thunderbolts thrown.

  “Just ask him, Leonhard.”

  That was all I could muster and that was the only answer she could have made, and the worst. She knocked on his door. The “Enter” following was deeper and from deeper. The room was larger and darker and the candle on the table was far, far away and the journey to it was eternal.

  Before I’d even sat, he began our lesson, and it was as if nothing had happened in all the last weeks. “Consider a simple quadratic,” Master Johann said. “But one having no intersection with the horizontal axis.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Does it have roots?”

  We have discussed this before. “I believe that it does.”

  “Even with no intersection?”

  “They aren’t seen.” Then I knew that perhaps he was answering.

  “An unseen number? Describe it to me.”

  “The principle,” I said, “is that negative numbers might have square roots. If a positive number is multiplied by itself, the result is positive. If a negative number is multiplied by itself, the result is also positive. So, the root of a negative is neither positive or negative. It is something else. So it is unseen. I’ve read about these numbers since we talked about them before.”

  “What did Monsieur Descartes say about such numbers?”

  “He derided them and called them imaginary. He considered them foolish. But he did concede they might exist.”

  “Why foolish?”

  “Real numbers can be seen and counted with real objects. He said that imaginary numbers can’t be counted. There was no use for them.”

  “Does that make something foolish, if it can’t be seen?”

  “No, Master,” I said. “There are many things that can’t be seen, and they are more real than what can be seen. Numbers don’t need usefulness to exist. They exist on their own whether anything seen ever reaches their count or not.”

  We talked longer, not about theorems or proofs, not solving problems. We didn’t write, we only talked. He questioned me, and I him, on meanings and reasons.

  And at the end, after a Saturday afternoon unlike any I’d ever had, I paused and gathered my thoughts. “Master Johann, thank you for your nomination.”

  “It was the committee’s nomination. Each of the members approved.”

  “I don’t believe that I could be qualified.”

  “You don’t believe that?”

  I had to pause again. “I believe that I will become so. But Master Daniel and Master Staehelin both are, already.”

  “The Chair is both for now and for the time to come.”

  He gave me no exercises for the next week. When I came home, I could only tell my grandmother that we’d talked, and I wanted very much to study Mathematics for my whole life.

  15

  The Tree, Throne, and Candle

  After dinner I went to my room to rest. I lay on my bed some while, delaying my visit back to the Boot and Thorn. I nearly fell asleep, but finally I put my wi
g and hat back on my head and went out. It was dark night by then.

  The Square was empty, as far as I could tell, it was so dark. There was only one light to be seen anywhere, if it could be called light. The windows of the Boot and Thorn seemed to pulse red. Somehow I didn’t see anything of the Barefoot Church.

  As I came close to the Inn, I felt its heat. I stepped across the threshold and all outside vanished. I didn’t think I could have gone back out. The streets I’d left had been empty, but now the Common Room was full and bubbling. The smell was sharper, too, earthy and hot and damp. I couldn’t make out any one person at the tables, but every bench was full and nothing was still, every hand and shoulder and head were moving. The sound was like the smell, sudden and overwhelming and of too many parts to distinguish any one. Only the light was low and undersaturated. It was just the fire in the hearth. There were no candles and no lamps. It was just red, and orange, and throbbing. Chthonic Charon nodded to me and his eyes were red as the fire.

  I stood in the doorway and then in the room, unseen. I might have been seeing what was invisible any other time, and I would be invisible to it. But there were crossings between two different worlds, and nephilim who straddled both. All along the walls the tankards and steins were jostling and striving against each other for space on their shelves. They shoved with their thin legs and arms, and I could hear them grunting. Their fat eyes, though, slowly fixed on me, one by one, and they went still. Then Old Gustavus saw them watching me, and they watched him come to me in the door. “Welcome, Master,” he said, and he seemed curious to find me in this dark half of the world.

  “Gustavus. I said I’d return.”

  “Come.”

  He led me. I followed. Down that hall that twisted and amazed, ignoring the stairs and doors and side passages that grew from it, we stayed in the taproot, down and into. The heat and pressure increased, yet I shivered; and we finally came to a door framed in bedrock. There was no latch or lock. He pushed and it opened.

  It was a cellar, a cave, a meat cooler, a larder, a pantry. Hooks held sides of cattle and shelves great barrels of ale, a close, crowded place, with walls not of stone but living rock, and floor and ceiling, also, and it wasn’t carved by human hand. Part of one wall was only a void and a bottomless roar. Anyone in Basel would have known it was the Birsig Flow that rushed by in that black hole, the stream buried in ancient times beneath the city, and this room was some eddy of its old course, worn into the rock by its constant force. I could have put my hand into its cold water. Beside the foodstuffs, there were other things stored here: a few very old wooden chests with locks on them, fitted into the rock as if it had grown around them.