An Elegant Solution

by Paul Robertson

  “You weren’t thrown in?”

  “I threw myself in.”

  “The river is cold,” he said.

  “I’m cold from it.” I shivered.

  “And why did you jump in the cold river?”

  “The Watch was chasing me.”

  “The Watch chases lawbreakers and criminals. And criminals are given to the river at the Yoke Chapel.”

  “I did a crime, Father.”

  “A crime. What was the crime?”

  “I was in Master Johann’s house without his permission.”

  “Why?”

  “To take this.” It was still in my pocket from when I’d taken it from the cabinet. I handed it to him.

  “A key.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Then you’ve done well, son.” He handed the key back to me.

  “Thank you.”

  “Use this properly.”

  “I will. Are you walking today, Father?”

  “I’m walking back to Riehen, from Basel.”

  “You were in Basel?”

  “I was there this morning.”

  “I gave my lecture this morning.”

  “I watched your lecture.”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “Some things even you can’t see, Leonhard.”

  I smiled. “I did. Just at the beginning. I didn’t recognize you.”

  “I’m always close,” he said.

  “In the chase,” I said, “there was a man in a cloak and hood. He was my enemy.”

  “He was.” My father’s eyes hadn’t left me in our whole time.

  “How would he be defeated?”

  “Not by strength. Be on your way now, the path back is long.”

  “Yes, Father, I’ll be on my way.”

  “I’m always close.” He watched me as I started back to Basel. When I turned, later, I couldn’t tell if I still saw him or not.

  It was long into the afternoon when I saw the city Wall over the riverside meadows. In my pocket was the extra hour any man receives when he leaves Basel, and it was now time to give it back.

  With the river, the Blaise Gate faced north. I came to it just as the sun, red as dye, was coming to rest on the hills west. Its path across the planet’s far side was certain, but mine was less so. I watched it descend into the earth, redder and bloodier, firing the sky, leaving void in its wake, and the east horizon was already black. The last hot spark extinguished and the sun was gone to me. I began my own descent.

  I entered the Blaise Gate. The Day Watch and the Night Watch were changing, one into the other. I wasn’t noticed; I didn’t really know if, to them, I was a fugitive or only myself. But the two men at the gate, whom I knew though not by name, didn’t even nod to me as I came in; and they were the only men I saw.

  This was a first assurance that in all the chase I’d never been recognized.

  The streets of Basel were always darker than their sky. I walked the main passage of Small Basel, the houses darker than the streets, and all empty. When I came to the bridge, finally there was another man besides myself, and then a second, both Watch. Beside the Night Watch just arrived, the Day Watch was still there and I heard him telling a story.

  “And I saw him,” the Day man said.

  “What did you see?” the Night man asked. “They say he was a monster.”

  “Not him. He was only his shadow to be seen, and fast as wind.”

  “All the city’s filled with stories.” I still didn’t see anyone, besides these two, and they hardly saw me. “And he vanished into the river?”

  “I saw him leap. And then, nothing left of him.”

  “He drowned, then. I hear they found his robe. But why would he jump? That’s better than the Watch taking him?”

  “That’s the real story,” the Day man said. “It wasn’t the Watch he was fleeing.”

  “Then who?”

  “I saw a man in the shadow, by the Bridge Gate. A huge man, hooded, and with an axe.”

  “You saw that?”

  “I did. He was after the thief. I wouldn’t want an enemy as terrible as that after me.”

  “Then that’s the one the storytellers were saying about,” the Night man said. “They said a monster. But what monster is in Basel? There are none.”

  “Simeon saw him, too, and he doesn’t imagine.”

  “And an axe? Who could it have been?”

  “Not anyone of Basel. Nor the thief, and he’s dead and drowned.”

  “Too bad for him.”

  Too bad for him! I left them talking and walked out on the bridge. At the Yoke Chapel I stopped. Too bad for him. He was dead and drowned. But not that only. He was also raised, the same though changed, Resurgo Eadem Mutata. So on and into the city I went.

  In the rapid dusk, my shadow was only made by the light of thin cracks in the shutters of shuttered windows. I climbed the hill from the bridge, not on the main street, but in lanes and alleys. I didn’t expect to be noticed, or that anyone knew I was someone to notice; I just wanted to be in those narrower places. I passed the University and behind Saint Martin’s Church, and then by ways where I could hold my arms and touch the houses and fences on either side. I touched the fence behind Master Johann’s house, and the gate that I’d opened many, many times. I didn’t open it. I went on.

  Through the wide streets, all still empty; and then the Barefoot Church was high above me. It was all dark, and I couldn’t remember when I’d ever seen it with no candles, no lamps, no lanterns, in any of its windows.

  I waited.

  Someone must have been in the church. Through one high window I saw a lantern descending, though I didn’t know of any high stairs against the front. A small candle was lit in that window. Then the lantern came to another window, nearer the ground, and set another candle. Then I saw candles, one by one, come to all the windows, with pinpoint flames, but the flames grew. The walls themselves began to glow, as I’ve often seen them.

  I went in the door and the whole lofty room was bright with dozens or hundreds of candles. The air was warm and scented. No one was in the whole room but me. I sat to wait.

  And then I went back to the door. The Square outside was dim from the evening but men and women strolled in it, and walked through it, entering and leaving the Inn and the houses. A few of the day’s booths were just finally being removed. A student I knew nodded to me as he passed. The clocks began chiming, eight o’clock as the coach from Freiburg rattled in from the bridge. I’d returned the hour given to me. I was finally wholly back from the river.

  Standing in the door, I felt a tug on my sleeve and turned to see Little Johann, eyes intent on me. “Come here, Leonhard,” and he pulled me back into the church. His brow was set and determined. I wouldn’t have dared contradict him.

  The candles were gone but for the few that were always there.

  We took a seat in a corner. “Listen close to me,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you Daniel’s lecture.”

  “His lecture?”

  “I’ll tell you the whole thing, and if anyone asks where you were, you can tell them what Daniel said.”

  “But—”

  But not. He was like a horse tensed to run, and he started at a spurred gallop. All that I could do was listen. And as I did, my own runaway thoughts came to a canter, and a walk, and a halt. And how could I think on anything else? Little Johann’s account fascinated me too greatly, for Daniel had lectured on the problem of Hydraulics.

  As I listened I began to realize that Daniel must be the greatest authority in Europe on the subject. I hadn’t realized what thought and genius he’d brought to this study of water and its strange ways. The greatest part of the lecture, both in importance and in portion, was his reduction of flows and pressures to simple Mathematics. It was as elegant as it was convincing.

  As I listened, my own experience of the day merged with what I heard. I knew the force of water, its buoya
ncy that had held my head in the air and its flow that had carried me a mile and more. Daniel showed how gravity had become the river’s strong current, and how it could push me like a hand against my back, yet could also flow around a tree anchored in its bank. Somehow I’d felt an invisible grip that had carried me straight and true to my specific moment of appointment. Here was another invisible hand.

  And as I was watching and feeling these invisible forces, I was hearing Daniel’s words in Little Johann’s voice. He wasn’t merely repeating from memory. At times he used words and descriptions that weren’t usual in Daniel’s speech, but that Little Johann used commonly. It was plain that the boy in front of me understood completely the Mathematics and Physics his older brother had lectured on. I didn’t know whether it was Daniel or Master Johann who’d been tutoring him, but he was speaking as their equal.

  It wasn’t his goal, though, to show off his intellect. It didn’t seem that he knew he was. He only had one intent, to quickly and fully as possible give me the whole gist of Daniel’s lecture so I could recount it as proof that I’d heard it with my own ears, if that was ever necessary. He was being my protector, which also meant that he knew, or guessed, why I hadn’t attended the lecture myself.

  “Did he say that?” I asked. Little Johann had just finished an explanation of the law that governed the force that a fluid exerts on a wall while passing parallel to it.

  “No. But he should have,” Little Johann said.

  Daniel would have spoken for an hour, and Little Johann’s summary took only fifteen minutes. When it ended I’d lost my own thoughts completely. “You’ve got that all, now, haven’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes. It was well done, Johann. Very, very well done.”

  “Oh.” And then I saw, of course, that he was showing off some, and I was even more touched that my admiration was worthwhile to him. But he still had another purpose and wasn’t distracted from it. “And Daniel will get the last letter, won’t he?”

  “Yes. It’s certain now. Within a day.”

  “That’s good.” He was relieved, but still cautious. He wouldn’t be free of this concern until both letters were in Daniel’s hand. And meanwhile, I didn’t know that I’d need the details of Daniel’s lecture. But I had them, from Little Johann’s mouth, and I’d never forget. “And I told Poppa that you explained the lecture to me.”

  “But you explained it to me! Do you mean, to make him believe that I was there?”

  “He’ll think that. He won’t have noticed that you weren’t. Nor Daniel. Nicolaus might have.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “If anyone asks what Daniel said, I’ll know all of it.”

  I walked home. It was well dark. In the short distance from the Square to my grandmother’s house, I found myself glancing to my right, to my left, over my shoulder. The shadows seemed full of quiet murmurs, the rustle of swords, furtive footsteps. I reached the front door in a sweat.

  Grandmother was waiting in the sitting room, in her black dress and white apron, patient and still.

  I sat next to her and she stayed quiet. “I’m home from this long day,” I said.

  “Not home for the first time today.”

  “No.”

  “Are you afraid?” she asked.

  “I am afraid,” I said.

  “In this Parish of Saint Leonhard,” she said, of the church that her husband and her daughter’s husband, my father, had been pastor, and in which she, who was blameless and righteous, could say it, “you’ll be held safe.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  So I went up to my room. I quickly was in my night clothes, and in my bed and I hesitated to extinguish my candle, which was the last light between me and the darkness. But it was only the last light that I could see, not the true last. So I put it out.

  Through the night, as I slept, I faintly heard and saw battle outside my window, but none of it came in.

  17

  The Iron Casket

  On the day that I knew would bring great changes, the rise and fall of many, I rose so early that even my grandmother wasn’t out of her room yet. It may have been that I hadn’t even ended the evening and night before, but was just continuing them. I dressed quickly, in brown for the last time.

  I went out into the early morning night, through the short alleys, to Master Johann’s back gate and opened it. Only one obstacle, the locked cellar door, was between me and my first object. But I knew that door very well: I’d repaired it a half dozen times. I quickly had its hinges off.

  Then, in the cellar, I pulled the potato bin away from the wall, and the stone out from the wall. Behind it was a wooden box a foot long and six inches square at its ends. It was very heavy for its size. I took it, closed the space and repaired the door, and left.

  There should have been a beginning of light by then, but Basel was dark. The shadows of houses and churches covered the streets like the Flood, and the air was so dry! There was dust in it. I paced the cobblestones to the white University. It glowed like lightning behind clouds. The door opened to my touch, and no one was there. I hadn’t seen anyone in any street.

  The lecture hall was empty, not just of men but of time, of everything that made a place that place. But it had one black, iron casket on the lectern in its center. I went to it and set my wooden box, which was the same size, beside it. I put my hand on the cold black iron and felt the lid and sides, the corners, the keyhole. At that I drew back my hand to my pocket, and felt another iron, but this was warm from the heat of my own blood. I took that key and held it steady to the hole it was meant for, and inserted it, and turned it, and heard and felt, more than anything else I had that dark morning, the tumblers rise and fall, and the clasp give way. My hand left the key, still turned, in the lock, and lifted the casket lid. Inside were three stones.

  I opened the wooden box. It seemed at first to hold a single carved square stone. But I ran my fingers over that, and the single stone was in truth many smaller stones all perfectly fit together. I set some of them out onto the lectern to see what they all were.

  In all, there were thirty-six pieces. Thirty were half cubes, fifteen in the bottom of the box, carved with symbols, and fifteen set blank on top of those. The other six were sealed cubes. The symbols were three each of raindrop, tree, sun, fish, and lamb. Three of the sealed cubes were at the left of the box, replacing the candles, and three were at the right, replacing the thrones. Those three I took and put back into the casket. The three I’d taken from the casket I put into the box.

  The transaction was made. I closed the iron lid and turned the key back.

  It had been easy in opening but was reluctant now, and required effort. I mastered it and withdrew the key. Then I set it in the wooden box and closed its lid, and turned to leave. Light escaped in around the edges of the closed door. When I opened it the street was in brilliant morning, though for a moment I was still in the shadow. When I was finally seen, by Simeon of the Day Watch, I was enough away that no proximity could be guessed. He greeted me, and I answered. He didn’t remark on the wooden box under my arm.

  It was only a few steps from the University to the bridge. I walked out to the middle, to the Yoke Chapel. I could still see, in the dust on the railing, the mark of my hands and shoe.

  The bridge was high above the water. I leaned out to see it below. And I hardly heard the splash as the wooden box broke the surface of the Rhine and sank below it.

  Then everyone I saw walking home gave me the cheery good morning a Chair would expect in Basel.

  But I was no Chair. Instead my first task was water, as always, and I went to a fountain in a street away from the Barefoot Square. When I came home my grandmother was in the kitchen, but I only set the buckets on the back step and went on. She heard me. I heard her open the door and take them in.

  The door I did open was to my Master’s kitchen. Mistress Dorothea, like my grandmother, was well started on her kitchen chores. But she acknowledged that a day of changes would begin with
changes. “I thought you might or might not come,” she said, and I told her that I would have said so if I would not have. I worked hard and very quick, as fast as I could, and also in this Mistress Dorothea accepted me. She and her servant girl talked all the time about the thief of the day before but I closed my ears to it.

  I carried and stoked and burnished, and I finished nearly in half the time. She didn’t load me with extra work.

  “Good morning and good day,” I said, and the Mistress stopped her own scrubbing.

  “Good to you, as well,” she said. “Leonhard.”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t know what will pass today.”

  “It will be in God’s hand and in his will.”

  “That is where it should be,” she answered. “May it be.”

  The sky was thorough blue without spot or blemish, and the sun already high and lifted up. It was hot, too. Heat like a close fire made the stones warm. The sun and heat and drought of this last week were reaching a pinnacle.

  I reached my own kitchen.

  “Leonhard!” Grandmother was very intent on me. “What have you been doing?”

  “What I’ve needed to be,” I answered. “I’ve done everything.”

  “What have you needed to be?” Her look wasn’t distress, or disquiet, or belief, or assurance. It was just intent.

  “I’ve needed to be obedient.”

  “You’ve always been. Your clothes are clean and ready.”

  “I’ll be done quick.” I left for my room and my blacks and whites. They were set out for me on the bed, washed, ironed, and perfect. The brass would have reflected starlight. I pulled them all on with the most deliberate hurry, or the most hurried deliberation. But then I paused. My wood block head, always patient, was waiting, perched on my dresser, for my attention. I gave it that. Without eyes or ears or mouth, it was watching and listening and ready to speak. I waited. I knew it must be important.

  The wooden block did nothing. That was its counsel and it was very wise. Now it was my time to just wait and allow. I studied the conch and its Logarithmic spiral and the meaning of it. I traced the curve of the brachistochrone bowl and the tautochrone bowl. I left my room and my house.