Nachman had seen where Lindquist’s proof was going, and truly wanted to witness its evolution passively, like someone in a train, face pressed to a window, watching the countryside go by. But in the matter of numbers, Nachman was among those who see actively, even aggressively. There are things one knows — who knows how? — and Nachman felt in himself a shadow passing through his cells. He knew Lindquist had failed. In his bones and blood, in his teeth and the roots of his hair, Nachman sensed the conceptual error.
He might have raised his hand and stopped the demonstration, but it would have been disruptive, unmannerly, immodest. He’d be obliged to make a show of himself and indicate Lindquist’s mistake. Nachman’s sense of it was instinctive, not yet analyzed, but he’d have bet his life that, if he tried, he could specify it. He would say, “I think I could suggest …” Stammering, apologetic, even pretending not to have a good grasp of the problem, Nachman calculated that it would take him about five minutes to demolish the proof and Lindquist.
Nachman couldn’t do it. Not to Lindquist, not to anyone in public. But the feeling was there, a blood-ferocity. It shocked him. In his silence, doing nothing, he felt as if he’d struck a blow. It didn’t make Nachman feel good. The opposite was true. Nachman felt very bad. Lindquist was handsome. Heroic facial bones made him look like a courageous knight. Nachman, a lowly foot soldier, had knocked Lindquist off his horse. On his back, pinned to the earth by the weight of his armor, Lindquist was helpless. Nachman kneeled above him with a dagger. Lindquist said, “Spare me, Nachman. I’ll give you Chantal.”
“Who?”
“Chantal. My slave girl.”
Thus, Nachman drifted from mathematics. He no longer cared about the demonstration, though he sat like everyone else and watched as if the evolving proof were valid. Lindquist’s chalk continued striking and squiggling rapidly, trailing equations, shedding streams of fine white powder. Wrong, thought Nachman. The word beat tremendously in his heart, and the desire to speak raged in his bowels against an unrelenting force of polite repression. An unknown mathematician could gain a reputation in minutes if he had the courage to speak up and undo Lindquist. None spoke up. Lindquist talked and scribbled. Silence prevailed as if everyone were hypnotized, possessed by the Swede’s fame and extraordinary presence. The mouth was a curve of ancient solemnity. Gaunt, large-boned, his pallor belonged to a man of vision.
The talk ended. Nachman participated in the applause, showing respect for his colleagues and for Lindquist’s fine qualities. He even felt affection for Lindquist, and hoped somebody would give the Swede a prize. But the Penultimate Conjecture remained a conjecture. Nachman couldn’t deny that he wasn’t displeased. There were only a few questions from the audience, and then it was over. Chertoff stood up. Nachman noticed that his bow tie was fixed to his collar with metal clips. His neck was skinny, and his Adam’s apple slid up and down when he said, “If you visit Moscow, Nachman, please do ring me.” Reaching into the inside pocket of his hideous jacket, Chertoff withdrew a business card. Nachman took it.
“I must smoke a cigarette,” said Chertoff. He drew one from a pack and lit it, then sighed smoke. “What a proof.”
Nachman said, “Were you pleased?”
“Lindquist did good work. What did you think?”
“Same as you.”
Nachman had hoped that they might share a moment of mathematical brotherhood. Instead, like everyone else, Chertoff assented to the demonstration. Nachman felt himself closing within, shrinking from connection with Chertoff. It had always been like this. Nachman worked alone, lived alone, thought alone. He didn’t need solidarity with Chertoff, such a peculiar fellow.
“I see it in your eyes,” said Chertoff. “You think I let you down.”
“Nonsense.”
“Not nonsense. To me the proof is good. I’m not you, Nachman. How many numbers have chosen you as a friend? Fifty? Seventy-five? I have maybe five, and I’m not always too sure of their friendship. How many, Nachman? Ninety. Sure, you have ninety. Negatives, fractions, rational, complex — they come when you call. For you mathematics is a big party. But I am like most people — only five. Less is revealed to us, so we think the proof is good. You want to know something — it might as well be good. For six months, a year — good or no good — we’ll think it’s good. This is the common fate. But you, Nachman, you don’t think it’s good. You’re alone. Worse yet, you’re frightened.”
“Excuse me. I must give my congratulations to Lindquist.”
“You must run away. See?”
“I see that you’re impertinent, Chertoff.”
“Go, run to him, give him a kiss. When you’re in Moscow, ring me. We’ll talk about real things.”
Chertoff’s feral eyes surrendered their interest in Nachman as he glanced toward the corners of the room. He half-smiled, then winked slyly at Nachman. “There are more women here than I expected.”
Nachman joined the group that had formed around Lindquist, and immediately forgot Chertoff while trying to think how to make a pleasant remark, with perhaps the slightest hint, giving Lindquist pause. Someone whispered to Lindquist, and he looked toward Nachman, spotting him at the edge of the group. Lindquist extended his hand, urging Nachman forward. “Thank you for coming to hear my talk, Nachman. I feel honored.”
Shaking Lindquist’s long, cool surgeon’s hand, Nachman decided not to give any hints. Lindquist was disarming in his friendliness, which made it harder, not easier, to suggest his failure. Besides, Lindquist was extremely quick. He might see everything instantly, regardless of how subtle the hint, and he’d be furious because Nachman hadn’t been forthright. Others would sympathize with Lindquist. Even when they saw that Nachman was right — no, especially when they saw he was right. Better to keep his mouth shut. Nachman knew what he knew. A difficult knowledge. Why bring himself into bad odor? People need to believe, which requires an irrationality, a suspension of critical faculties, an abnegation of will, a spreading of the thighs. Nachman’s colleagues, like Saint Teresa, had been ravished, penetrated with belief. Between a mistake and madness, there was a nourishing relationship. If they knew what Nachman thought, they’d despise and revile him. Chertoff was right. Nachman was frightened.
The Swede looked with blue incisiveness into Nachman’s brown eyes. “What do you say, Nachman? It was all right?”
As if speaking from a trance, Nachman said, “Wonderful.”
“Wonderful? Did I play the cello? I only did mathematics. I saw you in the audience and watched your face. It didn’t look full of wonder.”
Nachman shouldn’t have said “Wonderful.” A bleat of mindless enthusiasm. Helpless to undo the word, Nachman repeated it, “Wonderful.”
Lindquist nodded gravely. “All right, then, wonderful. Such praise coming from you is …” He made a noise, not an intelligible word. His tone was grim, as if he detected in the word “wonderful” a form of contempt. “Do you have time to talk, Nachman? If you want to say something, I want to listen.”
“Now?” Nachman had intended to say he had nothing to say. With the question—“Now?”—he surprised himself. Where did the word come from? It made him feel like a liar.
“Lunch tomorrow. Could you call my room in the morning?”
“You’re staying at this hotel?”
Another question. Of course Lindquist was staying at this hotel. The whole conference was here. Lindquist looked puzzled and mock-injured, pouting as if Nachman’s question were an oblique insult. “Are you being evasive, Nachman? Would you prefer not to meet for lunch?”
“I will,” said Nachman. “I’ll call.” His voice was eager, compensating for the imagined insult. The talk had been stressful, making Lindquist hypersensitive, but there had been no insult. Unless he’d been struck by a critical thought-ray from Nachman’s subconscious, a flow of searing deadly brainlight. Nachman remembered Chertoff’s question, “If he’s a mathematician, what are you?” He’d meant that Lindquist’s existence, merely that, threaten
ed Nachman’s, and vice versa. Confused and embarrassed, Nachman backed away, repeating, “I’ll call,” and turned, hurrying out of the lecture hall, then to a men’s room, where he shoved into an empty stall, dropped his briefcase, and — no time to spare — threw up. Weak and dizzy, he washed his face. He did it to clean himself and also not to let himself think. It came to him that he, too, was a believer. He believed there is good and bad. He’d been bad not to speak up when Lindquist asked for his reaction. Nachman saw again the solemn handsome face and heard the simple appeal: “It was all right?”
Bad not to answer. Bad not to tell the truth. But how could it matter if Nachman’s mere existence was potentially lethal. Nachman dried his face, and then, staring into the mirror above the sink, said to himself, “Let him have the solution. I’ll settle for the slave girl.”
Nachman left the men’s room and wandered into the hotel lobby, dazed and disoriented. He looked about for people he knew. Where was Chertoff? To see the hideous blue suit, the ferocious eyes and teeth, would be a blessing. Nachman badly needed someone to talk to. Moving through the crowd, he sensed people turning in his direction. He knew he was being recognized, but he recognized nobody. The crowd seemed too young. The conversations on every side — in Italian, French, German, Russian, Japanese — were estranging. Mathematicians had flown in from everywhere. Nachman had surely met many of them, but he’d never been a sociable fellow, never made sure to remember names. Groups of two and three clustered about the lobby, talking with frenzied energy, as if desperate for communion. Nachman wandered among the groups, feeling awkward and self-conscious, scrutinizing name tags, which he considered rude. Some faces were familiar, but no names. He couldn’t bring himself to approach a familiar face without knowing the name that went with it. With exasperation, he asked himself why he was in this hotel lobby. Nobody was talking to him. Nachman supposed he looked forbidding, unapproachable. He had no reason to stay.
Planes left for Los Angeles every half hour. Nachman could be in Santa Monica, in his own house, well before midnight. Tomorrow he’d phone the hotel and leave a message at the desk for Lindquist, apologizing. Not for missing their lunch, but for what Nachman couldn’t tell him, though he’d say it was for missing lunch. Nachman remembered saying, “I will.”
He felt like a criminal, as if he were fleeing, when he saw the taxis at the curb in front of the hotel, but he stepped quickly up to one of them and jumped inside. “The airport,” he said. The taxi nudged into traffic. Minutes later it was free of city streets, passing other cars along the highway. Nachman sat with his briefcase in his lap and looked across the gleaming blue of San Francisco Bay to the tawny hills in the east. He wasn’t sorry he’d made the trip, yet his heart was fraught with regret even as it swelled and beat against the bone cage, Nachman’s chest, with triumph.
Abruptly from this beating and swelling issued a strangled cry, “Turn around, please, I must go back.”
Nachman was more embarrassed than surprised by his outburst. Would the taxi driver think he was crazy? They drove now in loud silence. Nachman sat rigidly, as if braced to receive a blow. His eyes were fixed on the back of the taxi driver’s head, expecting him to question the order, or simply to ignore it and drive on to the airport. But the driver took the first exit off the highway, smoothly reversing direction, and headed back to San Francisco. Then he said, “You forgot something at the hotel?” The voice was a gentle tenor and seemed incongruous with the man. He was big, heavy, broad-shouldered, and black.
“Yes,” said Nachman.
“Happens.”
“I’m sorry. I feel very foolish.”
“No problem. Maybe you don’t really want to leave the city.”
“I don’t always know what I want.”
“That sounds like my wife. We go out for ice cream, it’s always a crisis. I say, ‘Pick any flavor. You don’t like it, we’ll throw it away and get another. Just pick.’ But she stands at the counter having a nervous breakdown over vanilla or pistachio.”
“That’s it. I’m having a crisis,” Nachman said to himself.
At the hotel, Nachman went to the desk. He intended to phone Lindquist’s room and ask if they could meet that evening, but before he could get the clerk’s attention, Chertoff appeared.
“Nachman, you’re still here. It was my impression that you were leaving.”
“What do you want?”
“Want? Nothing. Are you angry, Nachman?”
“What do you want?”
“I believe you are angry.”
“Are you going to tell me to kill Lindquist?”
“Did I upset you?”
“Yes, you upset me.”
“I meant no harm. My way of speaking is too strong on occasion. Forgive me. What I said is only because I am your great admirer. I would like to be your friend. Let me buy you a drink. Over there is a pleasant bar.”
“I have to phone Lindquist.”
“Of course, but later. Even next week the bad news will not be too late.”
“How do you know I have bad news?”
“As a mathematician, I don’t hope to know what you will say. As a man, I know everything. Please,” said Chertoff, taking Nachman’s arm, drawing him away toward the bar. Nachman didn’t resist.
Chertoff asked what Nachman would have, then ordered. Shoulder to shoulder at the bar, with drinks before them, Nachman felt an intimacy he needed very much, and yet it seemed he was being subjected to it, somewhat like a child, as if for his own good. Neither of them spoke for a minute. Then Nachman said, “I should tell him. Do you agree?”
He turned to look directly at Chertoff’s face. Chertoff, looking with equal directness at Nachman, produced a ferocious smile, as if he’d been given permission to be fully himself. His eyes, in the smiling pressure, narrowed with catlike satisfaction. His lips swept wide over the large, thrusting teeth. He said, “Nachman, I don’t give a shit.”
“You’re some friend, Chertoff.”
“A good friend. I think only what you think — which is that you should solve the problem.”
“When I was young … maybe.”
“Do you have a better reason to live?”
“What a question! It reminds me, I dreamed during Lindquist’s lecture. Only a few seconds, but I dreamed that I was about to kill him. He begged me to spare his life. He promised me his slave girl.”
“I am touched that you are — how do you say it? — sharing this dream with me.”
Nacham shrugged. “You know what it means?”
“The spoils of war, Nachman. It is about the spoils of war. Remember the Iliad? Since childhood I have loved and yearned for Briseis. You know the poem is even more wonderful in Russian than in Homeric Greek.” Chertoff boomed the opening lines in Russian. Heads turned along the bar to stare at him. Then he whispered, “Nachman, you must take the slave girl.”
“I must?”
“And you must kill Lindquist, too.”
“It’s not in my nature.”
“You have no choice, my friend,” said Chertoff as he put an arm around Nachman’s shoulders, and drew him close, and kissed him on the cheek in the Russian manner.
Nachman Burning
NACHMAN HAD THE BLUES. Maybe it was the weather, cold and gray, unusual for Santa Monica; or maybe it was a change in Nachman’s bodily chemistry, or maybe it was a psychological problem below consciousness. Maybe it was just being over fifty, or the fact that he needed a haircut. Two months since the last one. Nachman telephoned Felicity Trang.
She said, “Felicity Hair Salon.”
Nachman said, “I want to make an appointment.”
“We have free time at noon. O.K.?”
“O.K.”
“Which girl you want?”
“I want Felicity.”
“O.K. What name?”
“Nachman.”
“How you spell?”
Nachman spelled his name.
“Oh, Dr. Nachman. How nice.”
&
nbsp; “Not doctor. Nachman is good enough. I’ll see you at noon, Felicity.”
“Yes. Thank you, Not doctor, ha, ha, ha …”
Felicity’s laughter, excessive yet pleasing, continued to stir Nachman after he put down the phone. He already felt better. A degree of anxiety mixed with his pleasure, but there was no doubt that he felt better; hopeful. He imagined himself tipped back in the chair, surrendering his head, a hairy bundle of complexities, to Felicity’s ministrations.
There were other ways of dealing with low spirits, but Nachman wouldn’t take drugs and rarely exercised. He’d told himself more than once that Felicity cost less, for the same amount of time, than a psychiatrist. She compared well with any doctor. A haircut was a visible, tangible result, and Nachman would feel reborn. Hair grew back, but psychological problems also returned. In essence, nobody changed. Don’t think that way, he told himself, teetering at the edge of a mental hole. Walk briskly. He was almost there, and looked forward to the shampoo. He loved the shampoo. To Nachman, it was worth the price of the whole haircut. Then would come the skull massage. Before the haircut itself, before she picked up her comb and scissors, Felicity always stood beside his chair, her shoulder pressed gently to his. Together they looked at Nachman’s face in the mirror and Felicity asked how Nachman would like her to cut his hair. Her voice was sweetly deferential, her expression rapt with concern to please. She was more than a barber. Like a sister, a confidant, or even a lover, she was involved. Nachman always said the same thing, slightly choked by self-consciousness:
“Not too short.”
“This long you like?” she responded, always touching the top of his ear, and ever so lightly fingering it.
“Yes, about right there.”
The Collected Stories Page 41