“Russia!”
He was amazed at it, its beauty and its importance. “In the post box of the coach?”
“Rupert didn’t know how long it had been there.”
“But do you know what this is?! It’s from the University! In Saint Petersburg! It’s my invitation!”
“Open it first,” I laughed, amused at his amazement, “and see if it is.”
“But it’s been lost? For months, even. Oh that coachman! It’s worth his being murdered, if he can’t find a letter in his own post box!”
“Just open it,” I said, without amusement.
He broke the seal and took out the folded sheets, of the same ivory linen as the envelope. “Yes, yes it is! Ha! Leonhard, I’m invited to be Chair of Mathematics!” He showed it to me: half the first page was a gilded printing of a two-headed eagle beneath three crowns, with a scepter and orb in its two claws. “The Tsar’s own arms! How’s that, Leonhard? And look, it’s dated just two months ago, even less, so it’s not so late.”
We both stared at least a minute at the perfect French script and the final signature, of the Chancellor of the new University. And finally, I asked, “What will you do with it?”
“Do with it? With the letter?”
“No! With the invitation.”
“Take it, you mean? Or leave it? Which?” He started to laugh from joy of the opportunity. Then the laugh died in his throat as he looked at me, and the letter, and at me again. “Do with it?” he said. “What should I do with it? Take it, and throw Basel aside, is that what you mean?” He continued to stare at me, harder and harder. “And step out of your way, you mean? That’s what you mean?”
“Daniel! No!”
“And just found, is it? The letter was lost in the post box? And it comes at just this moment? To your hand! How is it, Leonhard? How is it?”
“Daniel,” I said. “You’re mad. What are you saying, that the letter’s forged? It’s from Saint Petersburg. Look at it! You think I called on the Tsar and asked him to take you out of Basel, as a notion to my favor? What are you saying?”
He took a deep breath. “Yes, then, it is from Russia. It’s no forgery. And it’s Rupert that gave it to you?”
“Ask him. He’ll come tomorrow night from Freiburg.”
“I’m sorry, then. Forgive me Leonhard. A base accusation and I apologize. But it’s two days until the Election and the Brute will do anything to keep me out of the Chair. Even to put you up against me, and that’s not your fault.”
“I forgive you, Daniel. Of course.”
“I’ll trust you. I always will. But if any other hand than yours had handed me this, I’d have known it was a plot from Brutus. And it’s he who should ask your forgiveness, to raise your hopes for nothing.”
I swallowed my first answer and said, “I’ll be better for the lesson of it.”
“It’s a good lesson, I’ve had it myself. And hey, there’s a gathering at the University, I hear. A minor Physics lecturer who’ll give a mediocre lecture. Shall we go to hear him?”
“I’ll go.”
“And dusty, too. A minor and dusty man. Why, he’d be perfect to replace Huldrych!”
We’d stood and I followed him out. But I made sure, before I was in the sunlight, to catch the eye of Gustavus, who’d heard the whole of our conversation from his shadow.
There was no trace of dust on Staehelin. The University hall was full and listless. The warm, dry air had come in with the audience, and everything inside was dreary as the streets outside. The lecture was just as the lecturer had said it would be, not excellent, not poor. The subject was buoyancy, the principle that an object will float or sink in a fluid based upon the relative densities of the two. He spoke specifically on wood and stone in water. He didn’t describe the Mathematics of buoyancy, that the force propelling the object up is equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces, while the force down is equal to the weight of the object itself. And my mind wandered, or floated. I considered that air was like water, gas instead of liquid but still a fluid, and that we sat on the surface of the earth because we sank through the air, while a cloud, or smoke, was buoyant and would float. Huldrych had always disagreed with my opinions on this, though we had good discussions, while Staehelin considered the idea useless. And I thought further, how the lesser could supersede the greater, how oil could make its way above water, and what strategies could be learned from Staehelin’s lesson.
Then the lecture ended and all the black robes floated up and out of the lecture hall.
“That was Physics?” Daniel said beside me as we came out to the street. “That was? A mutter, a splot, a twitch. And that makes a lecture?”
“It was adequate,” I said. “And more than.”
“Not an equation in it! Not even a number. Nothing that Huldrych himself wouldn’t have said.”
“Daniel, you’re like vitriol. You need more grace.”
“Oh, it’s all feathers. All floating and away with the breeze.”
We walked a while without speaking, both of us in thought. Then I felt a breeze, a chill draught. We’d reached the Barefoot Square. It was midafternoon and the sun was still high, but there were shadows. The place seemed full of them like cobwebs clinging to the buildings.
In the Common Room, where shadows were spun, Daniel finished his hoisting of Staehelin. “Can you defend him, Leonhard? What can you say?”
“I said it was adequate.”
“And that’s all. And that’s generous. You’ll hear my lecture tomorrow and call it adequate?”
“Yours will be magnificent, Daniel. It will be worth the Chair.”
“Oh, it will be.”
“It will even be worth the Tsar’s Chair.”
“That. Yes.” He took the letter from his pocket. “Would I take a Chair in Russia? If you didn’t get Basel’s, would you take the Tsar’s?”
“I would. It would be history,” I said. “The first man to hold the Mathematics Chair at the University of Saint Petersburg.”
He nodded in sympathy with me. “It would be. And I’d take it. I’d even take it gladly. But it wouldn’t be spite enough against Brutus, so I’ll keep Basel instead.”
“That’s the only reason?”
“It’s enough.”
“Then give me Russia!” I joked.
He held the paper out for me to take, then grabbed it away. “No. I’ll hold this. Maybe I’ll win Basel, then throw it off for the Tsar. How’s that? I might. Spite Brutus, spite them all.”
“You sound as if you don’t even want the Chair in Basel.”
“I want to win it. But keep it? That’s more a question, now.”
“You’d be obliged, wouldn’t you?”
He frowned at that. “Maybe. Maybe I would, maybe not. That’s to think about.”
“You’re the same as you’ve always been,” I said. “And you always will be.”
“Constant in my inconstancy. Now, where’s that keeper? I think I want my horse.”
“I’ll bring your horse.” Daniel started at the deep voice, nearly at his elbow. He hadn’t seen Gustavus in the shadows, but I’d seen him. Him, and more.
“He was nervy this morning. He nearly ran down poor Leonhard.”
“He’s been rested now,” Gustavus said.
“I’ll wait in the Square,” Daniel said. He wanted out of the dark. But I stayed in the room. The fire was drowsy but watchful, and the hundreds of eyes looking out from the shelves all seemed satisfied.
“Do you see?” I asked.
Caiaphas came out of the shadows where he’d been with Gustavus.
“I heard you,” he said.
“He won’t stay. He’s not here for the Chair or for Basel. He’s only wanting to tweak his father. Once he has the Chair he’ll leave it for something else. He’s already resigned his Chair in Padua.”
He studied me. “And you would stay?”
“This is my home. This is all I want.”
“This city is Daniel’s
home, also.”
“If he wins the Chair,” I said, “I’ll convince him to leave it. The father and son are already set against each other. I’d know how to drive them so hard apart to break the University in halves.”
“You would ruin your own University?”
“You’ll lose everything you have here. Give me the Chair.”
I was searched. Like a wolf tears a fence to get the rabbits inside, I was torn and opened.
“Then I will give it to you,” he said. “But be careful with your treachery.” He still stared at me. “I think it more likely you’ll be thrown to the river than hold a Chair.”
I went out that night as I’d done four nights before. I waited in the alley behind Master Johann’s kitchen. It was a longer wait but the time came, and the door opened, and Master Johann came out with his candle. This time he didn’t leave it and return to the house. He descended into the cellar and closed its door behind him.
He was there for some ten minutes. I might have heard the box pulled out from the wall and the wall itself opened; or I might only have heard the noises of any night in Basel’s streets. Through slits in the door, the light from the candle moved, then was still, then moved again, back and around, and was held up and lowered.
Then the door was opened and the candle extinguished. He came out through the yard to the gate, and passed through it, just feet from me. He might have felt someone was there; or he might have felt the presences of any night in Basel’s streets.
Then he was silent and gone. His direction was toward the river, away from the Barefoot Square. I stayed.
The night was mainly timeless. Clocks sounded eleven but I had no measure of when he’d passed the gate. I’d left my house before ten.
But finally, in the quieter and quieter dark, I heard him returning, though only when he was already near. He opened and closed the gate, then his own door. Through the window I saw a candle lit in the kitchen and then taken on to the hall.
And then I went home.
A jitter vibrated the streets that Tuesday morning as I left my house toward Master Johann’s. Something unsettled, something jubilant, something uncontrolled was walking with me. Something anticipatory. I reached the back fence and gate at the usual time and found the usual activity inside: Mistress Dorothea pouring words, and her maid barely keeping her head above the tide of them, and still adding her own to the flood. And if one or two of the streams might have been pots or chickens or sheets, the majority was people. Then, given that they only used pronouns, the sentences become like a stew: “They told her mother to wash it himself, but he had his hat on her head and they boiled it, and she wanted them both, but she didn’t want either . . .” she was saying as I opened the door. I would rather have calculated a determinant of seven rows than calculate the meaning of those sentences! But when she saw me, she acknowledged me.
“You’re diligent, Leonhard. Diligent for a young man who might be made a Chair on the morrow.” It should have been a simple compliment or simpler statement. I couldn’t tell if there was some other meaning, perhaps suspicion.
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Please do all you have time for. You’ve other duties today that are more important.” And that was certainly the first she’d ever said such.
“I’ll finish everything.”
“Thank you.”
Then later, when she was upstairs, Little Johann had more to say. “Daniel has the Russia letter, and you gave it to him.”
“I did.”
“He said the coach driver had found it?”
“The coach driver said that.”
Little Johann doubted. “What did you do? How did you get it? Did you take it from Poppa’s desk?”
“No. Rupert truly brought it to me and told me he’d found it.”
“You must have done it somehow, Leonhard.”
“I didn’t.” I hoped that was also true.
“And Mama’s not pleased that he has it.”
“Because he might leave?”
“I think so. I don’t know.”
“What about your father? Is he pleased?”
“Yes. I can tell. He even told Daniel, That was well done. Except it didn’t seem he was talking about Daniel being invited to Russia.”
“It was that I’d given him the letter,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“What about the other letter, from Paris?”
“He’ll have that soon, too.”
“He’ll be a Chair tomorrow. Or you will.”
“Or Staehelin,” I said.
“No. Poppa’s decided.”
“It’s by chance. No one can decide or know.”
“It was to be Daniel. It’s the way they’d look at each other. Daniel smirking, and Poppa angry. But it’s changed. Daniel can’t tell, but I can. He was always angry that it would be Daniel.”
“How could your father force the Provost’s hand to pick a stone?”
“I think Poppa is stronger than chance.”
“I think, this time, chance will be stronger.”
“But Leonhard,” he said. “We don’t want it to be, if he’s chosen you.”
“But it can’t be by his choice.” I looked at him closely. “It has to be that God moves the Provost’s hand.”
I had never seen my grandmother as unsettled as that morning. It might have been the disorder in Basel’s air; it might have been the anxiety she felt for me as I prepared for my lecture. My blacks and whites were clean and pressed and my wig smelled of new powder. I didn’t touch my shoes and their buckles: I slid in my toes and heels, and my smudging fingers never came near the polished exterior.
In the kitchen she inspected me as always, but not at all as always. If I’d been in a burlap bag I don’t think she would have noticed. She was unsettled.
“What will you say in your lecture?” she asked.
“Just what I’ve practiced. Physics is only understood by Mathematics. The first is nearly a branch of the second.”
“Will they understand you? Will they disagree?”
“They will consider it respectfully,” I said. “I’ll be upright and serious, though they’ll think I’m too young to be a Chair. And it won’t matter because the choice is in the chance when the name’s picked tomorrow. All I need for this lecture is to not be challenged and disqualified.”
“Then God be with you, Leonhard.”
“He is, Grandmother. With you, also.”
“He is.” Then she was at peace.
I’d been in the Lecture Hall so many times, but it seemed I never had; or that I had but only in imagination; or this was the imagination. All the professors and officials, the students, the gentlemen of the city, all were entering and being seated as if . . . as if a real lecture were being given.
The division between whether this room and time were imaginary, or real, ran deepest through my own thoughts. For all my doubts and feeling of pretense, I also knew that the time and purpose of the lecture were very real. In my hands were notes that described great truths. I would profess them with all assurance that my words were worth being heard.
I was standing in the front, in a corner, waiting. I stepped to the lectern. The iron casket was there, and below, on a shelf, the wooden tray of unused stones.
Every seat was taken. I tried to comprehend the faces. There were many I knew. Daniel, Nicolaus, Gottlieb, Little Johann, Great Johann of course. Desiderius, Vanitas, all the men I’d sat under in five years. The Provost, the Deans, the Mayor had all come, and Magistrate Faulkner. A hundred of my fellow students. There were so many I couldn’t name them to myself as fast as I saw them.
I heard clocks strike the hour. I set my papers on the lectern.
Even a man was there that I was sure I knew, but whose face seemed shrouded. When I looked closer, I didn’t see him.
Instead, I began.
“Gentleman, my subject today is the importance of Mathematics in the study of
natural philosophy, that philosophy to which we have given the name of Physics. It is my belief that the Creation in which we abide has been established by its Creator, established with a regulation by Mathematical principles, and these principles unfold with delightful intricacy and profound elegance.”
I’d opened my lecture with the strongest statement I could. I’d unfolded myself as a thorough Newtonian in a room sharply divided on his philosophy, but willing, even eager, to consider grounded arguments and valid assertions if they were presented clearly. As best I could, I did that.
I was not a man of gravity. I wasn’t imposing, as Master Johann was. I wasn’t formidable, nor solid. I didn’t have years of wisdom written on me. I was only somewhat tall and gangling, with a voice pitched like an old cat, and eyes too large and close about my angular nose.
But what I spoke to those men was full, great truth.
At the end I stood down. I was congratulated and my hand shaken. I’d shown that I was able to hold the Chair. I’d shown to myself that I was able.
Then in the sunlight, I recovered to my own self, but only nearly. I was surely different, and more than just the three corners of a hat could make me. Greatly learned men had listened to me and sat under my instruction.
Daniel and Nicolaus were jovial beside me. I breathed in the plain air and was relieved to be plain again. I was exhilarated but exhausted and I had a great yearning to be on a hillside, wearing brown, and running.
Only a half hour was to pass before the next lecture, hardly time for the listeners to return home, but a long wait in the hall. Daniel soon abandoned me and went back in. I took the time to walk the streets close by. Although I’d been often on each of those roads, I noticed small things I hadn’t before: gates and arches into yards and gardens. These houses, and even more their foundations, were very old, but there were still spaces between them, small pockets with rows of herbs and flowers and vines.
But then it was time to return. I was back just in time. I went up and shook Daniel’s hand and gave him some encouragement, and by the time I was looking for a seat, there were none. So I stood in the back with those too late to get chairs, and those to lowly to keep theirs.
An Elegant Solution Page 33