An Elegant Solution

by Paul Robertson

  Daniel from his greater height answered, “I know it will. I have already sent my acceptance, yesterday.”

  “Then would you have taken the Chair here if you’d won it?” Gottlieb asked.

  “He wanted it in order to resign it,” Nicolaus answered.

  “Then that’s what he’s angry at? All his rants at the Inn?”

  “When will you leave?” This was Mistress Dorothea, and all her sons and nephew respected her with silence, and Daniel with a respectful answer.

  “In two weeks, Mother.”

  “I’ll be glad for two weeks, then,” she said.

  “And I’ll leave with him,” Nicolaus said.

  “You’ll what?” Daniel was surprised at this.

  “I’ll see Russia. Send them a letter, brother, that you’ll arrive doubled.”

  “I will! You’ll come? To stay?”

  “To stay as long I will.”

  “I’ll be glad for two weeks with you both,” Mistress Dorothea said. “And for you to have chosen a wise path.”

  “You’ll both be gone, then,” Gottlieb said, thoughtfully. “So that’s done.”

  “You’ll both be gone,” Little Johann said.

  “Come after us,” Daniel said to him. “In a few years we’ll be ready for you.”

  “I will be pleased,” the final voice said, which was Master Johann, “that you both have a position in Saint Petersburg. And now I wish to speak with Mistress Dorothea, so please leave us.”

  We all stood and moved to the door. I let the others ahead, and as I was about to follow them, Master Johann said, “Stay, Leonhard.”

  The door closed, and just the parents and I were in the room. The Mistress sat, beside her husband. “Leonhard,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “We wish to discuss what you’ve done.” She was as stern as her husband.

  “I’m not very sure what I’ve done.”

  “Magistrate Caiaphas,” Master Johann said, “has worked toward a purpose for many years and this is a setback to him.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  “I’ve worked with him.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, with a swallow. “I’ve known that, also.”

  “Then, was it your object to thwart his purpose? Our purpose?”

  “Yes. It was, sir.”

  His only reaction was a slight tightening of his mouth, and an even slighter rise of his brow.

  I waited as he stared at me, or through me to somewhere else. Then Mistress Dorothea said, “We considered that you might choose to do that.”

  “I felt it was my only choice.”

  “Describe your actions of the last two days,” Master Johann said.

  Now, the examination began. I knew the answers to the questions he’d ask, but I doubted they would be accepted.

  I frankly told them of entering their house and taking the key, and of then taking the stones from their cellar, and of choosing three stones to replace in the casket. I was brief. The chase through the city and river seemed irrelevant and I didn’t mention it, nor Little Johann’s help. But I did finish by telling of my last act on the bridge, and that the stones and key were lost to the Rhine.

  He accepted that. “Did you examine the stones before you chose the three?” he asked.

  “No, sir. I feared that if I did, it would be too difficult for me to not change the chances in my favor. And I was reluctant to break the seals. So I only chose those three, which I hoped were the original three. And they were the originals, or at least the same combination.”

  “Tell us,” Mistress Dorothea said, “about giving Daniel the letter from Russia.”

  I told them. I described handing it him, but also the conversation we then had, with Caiaphas as witness, and the result of that.

  “And tell us,” Master Johann said, “of your other conversations with Magistrate Caiaphas.”

  So I did that, as well. I gave the summary of my Saturday night meeting, and also the hints from my other conversations that he had an interest in me.

  “Now, tell us what you know of Magistrate Caiaphas’s designs.”

  “I believe that he was trying to accomplish the annexation by France of Basel.”

  “Yes, that has been his plan. He is a Magistrate of France and is among those who have that assignment. Do you believe that you’ve halted him?”

  “No, sir. But . . . that wasn’t my objective.”

  “You said before that it was.”

  I paused and took a breath to order my thoughts. “It was my objective to thwart Magistrate Caiaphas. And though I would dread annexation of Basel by an outside power, that was not why. I had a profound reason for my opposition to him.”

  Master Johann frowned, and I saw that for the first time in our conversation he’d received a truly unexpected answer. “What reason?”

  I knew the next few words I would speak would the hardest of all I ever had with him. I hesitated and drew all my strength together.

  “Master Johann,” I said. “And Mistress Dorothea. Magistrate Caiaphas’s purpose was for France, but his method was to have control of the University, and his tool was to use divisions and jealousies to force ambitious men to seek his own help to achieve their positions.”

  “Speak more plainly,” Mistress Dorothea said.

  “Master Daniel turned to Magistrate Caiaphas for the Chair when he knew he could not ask your help.” I said this to Master Johann. “The Magistrate has worked to increase the hostility in your family so that he could exploit it. That seemed to me the greater danger. That was why I was opposed to him, more than any other reason.”

  Master Johann only frowned, and Mistress Dorothea said nothing. I waited for them and couldn’t imagine what either would say. So, perhaps, there was nothing to say.

  Then he said, “I understand what you mean, Leonhard, and it will be seen what comes of it. But Caiaphas will still accomplish his purpose. And if he is thwarted in using the University, he will use other means to weaken the city. You may have released a calamity on Basel.”

  “I hope I have not,” I said.

  “Leonhard,” Mistress Dorothea said, “what part of this was Knipper?”

  “He was charged by Master Jacob to take the trunk of papers to Master Huldrych for safekeeping. When Master Johann hired him to take the trunk from this house to the coach to be sent to Magistrate Caiaphas, Knipper recognized it. I went to the Inn to fetch Willi to help him, but I told Gustavus, also. And Gustavus came here to your kitchen. I don’t know what was said. I think Knipper tried to stay true to Master Jacob’s charge to return the trunk to Huldrych, and Gustavus killed him for it. I knew and believed that it was no person in your family, Mistress, who did that crime. Only Gustavus knew he was here.”

  “I wanted the trunk away from Basel,” Master Johann said. “I sent it to Magistrate Caiaphas because he would not have understood the papers’ meanings.”

  “What part was Huldrych?” Mistress Dorothea asked.

  “He’d been keeper of the papers. But I think he was killed only because his open Chair was necessary for Caiaphas. I don’t know how. I know that plague rags have an enduring potency and Gustavus kept them. I don’t know why the plague didn’t spread from Master Huldrych, but that he was very old and couldn’t withstand the illness and the others close to him could.”

  “And what part was Lithicus?”

  “He had made the counterfeit stones. Gustavus weakened the arch to kill Lithicus when he seemed close to confessing. But Lithicus made the stones at Master Johann’s command, and for his payment and he was afraid for twenty years since, of what would come of it.”

  “Yes.” Master Johann spoke. “I had him make the stones.” He, and Mistress Dorothea, had listened to my statements with quiet reserve, though I couldn’t guess what grief they each felt. And there may have been much more that I didn’t know, but what I did know was laid out plain between us and was hard and stark and scorched. I stood and walked close to him, and kn
elt, even as I had with Huldrych in his last moment.

  “Master Johann,” I said. “All of this is ending now.”

  “It is not ending.” His grief was deep, but had not overcome him. “What you have done is no end.”

  “Master, I believe that there are laws of Mathematics that prescribe the actions of the planets and the river and every object. And I believe there are greater laws that govern the Creation in deeper ways.”

  “And what do you believe these laws will prescribe?”

  “That sacrifice will be stronger than Magistrate Caiaphas. Thank you for nominating me as a candidate, sir. I believe it was necessary to accomplish this solution.”

  Mistress Dorothea said, “Then, that is why you were nominated, Leonhard.”

  Master Johann said, “But this is not what I had expected. I am not sure your solution is valid.”

  “I’ll test the proof of it now.”

  Through the streets, now dim beneath huge clouds and setting sun, I returned to the Stone Gate, from where I’d watched the afternoon. I did think, as I walked, what it would have been to walk as a Chair and a man of position. But I found it was difficult to intrigue my imagination with thoughts of prestige. I was at peace. I climbed the stairs onto the Wall and looked to the west. And there, the storm was approaching.

  Basel was still calm, but beyond, the valley was gone behind a gray sheet of rain. The disquiet Birsig, usually so placid, churned and the sky piled cloud on cloud, all writhing with wind and water but still held away, for a little while, by Basel’s Walls. The city was dry and the air mostly still, and all heavy. Only the Birsig pierced the boundary and I stood by the Stone Gate and watched it break into the moat, and fall into its cave beneath the Wall. The water rose, objecting to its path; I watched it rise fast. All the storm beyond the city was pouring into it. The stream reached the top of the tunnel and exceeded it. I retreated from the pool that began to grow; I turned away, came down from the Wall, and ran again, as fast as I could, as I possibly could, like the wind, to the Barefoot Square.

  The windows of the Boot and Thorn were their most fiery red against the shadows of the Sqaure. The Barefoot Church was luminous white, receiving the light that reached all Basel just to itself. I stood in the Square between them, where somewhere beneath the Birsig flowed. I felt the paving stones groan beneath me.

  What was to come next, I feared. But it was necessary. Whatever the sacrifice was to be, it must be complete. I wanted to be obedient to the laws that were ruling the night, though they were mostly invisible to me.

  I went into the inn. Charon, ten feet long, and my own height as he reclined, bared his merciless teeth and swept the hall with his tail. Gustavus was beside him waiting for me.

  We followed the same path, inward and down, though it was longer this time, by innumerable closed doors, past niches filled with dust and jars, beneath an ever lowering ceiling, between narrowing walls hung with ancient pictures so smoke-blackened that all their first meanings were irrecoverable, and their present meanings were drawn by the smoke itself. Every length was singly lantern lit, and each turning was dark with just a glimmer of the next flame beyond. We went always down, sometimes by one step, sometimes by two or three, gradually but only descending.

  We came finally to the same rough door. He pushed it open and followed me in. There’d been a lantern before but that now was a half dozen bare flame torches bracketed on the stone wall that still gave no light at all. Everything was black except those flames. I could hear and feel the rushing water in the cave near, but I couldn’t see it. I felt for the barrel I’d sat on before. It had a different feel and I stayed standing. The roof touched my hat.

  The light expanded, on its own, and by it I saw Magistrate Caiaphas. He was seated. First I saw his face. Then I saw his whole form just in outline, as if it had its own source of light behind. Gustavus glowed red like ember.

  “Then what shall I do now?” Caiaphas said, speaking to himself. We seemed to have interrupted his musing. But, I was the object of this thoughts. “What shall I do with you?”

  “Leave Basel,” I said.

  “Not that. Not yet.” His voice was cutting as a saw but quiet. “But you will.”

  “This city will never be part of France. There is nothing for you to do here.”

  “You say that?” His anger broke, like water that had been rising and building behind a dam. “What are you to say anything?”

  “You’ve lost the Chair.”

  “One Chair is nothing! I own enough Chairs in Basel. And what I don’t own I will wipe away. I have rags enough from plague deathbeds for that. But what shall I do now with you?”

  “You can’t do anything. I don’t you owe you for anything. I don’t have the Physics Chair.”

  “That was your own madness.” In the dark, I could still see him perfectly by his voice. “You have accomplished nothing, and yet you will pay heavily.”

  “You won’t be allowed,” I said.

  “France will take Basel. I will twist this University between my fingers, and I will put an end to you.”

  “You won’t be allowed. Not any of those.”

  “Not allowed?” He screeched it, between hatred and fury and laughter. “Nothing disallows me.”

  “There are laws,” I said. “Laws stronger than we can oppose.”

  “I am every law here. Whose laws are stronger?”

  I told him. “You meant to gain to Basel for France, which is your right to attempt. But you’ve sown division and hatred within the families here. You’ve torn down men who were intended to be noble. And you’ve murdered.”

  “And I will more,” he answered. “Much more.”

  “That, you will not be allowed. That was not your right. There are laws stronger than you can oppose.”

  “There are no laws!”

  “There are only laws,” I said.

  “What do your laws command now? When Gustavus strangles you, what will they command?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I only know they will be obeyed. God will be obeyed.” I sighed, “That is why I’m here.”

  Gustavus put out his hand toward me. Then I saw, what I’d known to be, that behind him and about him was an even stronger and greater giant, in black but plain and visible.

  “Even you,” I said to him, “are under God’s law.”

  He, as Gustavus, loomed above me and the torches dimmed to sparks.

  “Those who are with me,” I said, “are more than those who are with you.”

  He set his hand on my shoulder.

  At that, the Birsig Flow burst.

  The water filled the room in an instant.

  I was thrown against a wall. There was no time to think, no time to respond, no time to even try to move my arms or legs. Barrels and everything else heavy were lifted and caught in the sudden havoc.

  But I was pushed out of the room, and for me that turmoil was over.

  I was on the floor of the hall. Yet water was pouring up from the door, flooding the hallway. I staggered up in it and looked for an escape.

  The passage was different than it had been before. It was well-lit and short with a flight of steps at its end close by. It must have been that I was seeing the visible inn. Floating beside me was my tricorne! I grabbed it and slogged through the water, now at my knees, and up the steps.

  At the top, I saw the front door and the Common Room thirty feet away. I stopped. The water was still rising below me. I ran to the door, and outside.

  19

  The Deluge

  I stepped into pouring rain. My tricorne spewed like a house gutter. My soaked shoes and stockings were soaked now more. It was a long way across the Square and took me a long time to cross.

  The downpour in the Barefoot Square seemed so heavy! The church floated in the falling sheets, and Noah steered it. Jonah hung to the upper window, to throw himself out. Peter stood ready at the corner to walk out on the waves. Still the waters came, and the Spirit moved on the fa
ce of them, to divide them. But as I came closer to the church’s warmth and glow, I felt the rain less.

  I reached its porch. I looked in the door and saw the quiet, unmovable place, with its column-mounted candles making more light than candles could anywhere else. The stone floor was dry and cool and smooth, and the air was warm. I felt the soak lifting off of me. I stood for minutes, then turned to watch the river falling from the sky.

  Back from where I’d come, I saw the embrous windows of the Boot and Thorn, flame within flood, fire in the waters, all the rain flying futile off the steep roofs. I had the feeling of standing on a river bank watching unmoored boats moving. The whole roof of the inn seemed to be pitching like a ship. I and the church were Daniel’s hourglass in a heaving world.

  Through the pounding rain and wind I heard something else, too, the roaring of moving water. I knelt down at the edge of the dry church floor and put my ear to the stones. I heard it more: a river flowing beneath, somewhere. I even recognized the specific stream sound: it was the Birsig Flow, in its hidden channel beneath the city. I stood and looked out again.

  What I’d seen before of the inn’s roof might have been my own sight of invisible motion, but now it wasn’t invisible. The center of the roof, four stories above the Square, had moved. It had settled lower and inward.

  But the fires inside were furious. The Common Room windows were red and bright as a setting sun. Through the rain, through the whole width of the Barefoot Square, I could feel them. The hearth must have been like a smelter.

  Then the roof settled in again, and I could hear it. I was in wonder at it. At first I thought the fires had finally broken loose from their stone places and were consuming the pillars, but the place was in essence earth; it couldn’t have burned. And I still felt the rumbling beneath.

  All the servants of the place, the cooks and maids and laborers, and the patrons of the Common Room, all emptied the building into the Square, scattering to cover under eaves of houses, and off to their own houses.

  The front of the inn split. Its plaster suddenly had a hundred cracks, and it was the wall cracking behind. Smoke poured out of the windows, denser and blacker. Then it was smoke and steam.