The Gift of Numbers (14 page)

I still have the Professor's note, though the photograph of Root
has long since faded. Euler's formula comforts me—it is a memento
that I still treasure.

I've often asked myself why the Professor wrote this particular
formula at that moment. Simply by writing out this one equation
and placing it between us, he put an end to the argument between
myself and the widow. And as a result, I returned to work as his
housekeeper and the Professor renewed his friendship with Root.
Had he been calculating this outcome from the beginning? Or, in
his confusion, had he simply written a formula at random? There
was no way to tell.

What was certain was the Professor's affection for Root. Fearful
that Root would think he had caused the argument, the Professor
came to his rescue in the only way he knew how. After all these
years, I'm still at a loss for words to describe how purely the Professor
loved children—except to say that it was as unchangeable
and true as Euler's formula itself.

My son's needs always took precedence with the Professor, who
only sought to protect him. Watching over my son was the Professor's
greatest joy. And Root appreciated the Professor's attentions.
He never ignored or took these kindnesses for granted, and acknowledged
that they should be fully recognized and respected.
I could only marvel at Root's maturity. If I was setting out their
snack and gave the Professor a larger portion than Root, he would
invariably scold me. It was a matter of principle that the biggest
piece of fish or steak or watermelon should go to the youngest person
at the table. Even when he was at a critical point with a math
problem, he still seemed to have unlimited time for Root. He was
always delighted when Root asked a question, no matter what the
subject; and he seemed convinced that children's questions were
much more important than those of an adult. He preferred smart
questions to smart answers.

The Professor also showed concern for Root's physical wellbeing
and watched over him with care. He noticed ingrown hairs or
boils long before I did; he didn't stare or touch him in order to discover
these things, he simply knew and he would tell me discreetly,
so as not to worry Root. I can still recall him whispering in my ear as
I was working in the kitchen. "Do you think we ought to do something
about that boil?" he might murmur, as if the world were coming
to an end. "Children have quick metabolisms. It might suddenly
swell up and press on his lymph nodes or even block his windpipe."
He was especially anxious when it came to Root's health.

"Fine. I'll pop it with a needle," I'd say—casually enough to get
him truly angry.

"But what if it gets infected?!"

"I'll disinfect the needle first over the stove," I would say, teasing
him. His concern for Root delighted me, although I didn't
show it.

"Absolutely not! You can't kill all the germs like that!" He refused
to let up until I had agreed to take Root straight to the doctor.

He treated Root exactly as he treated prime numbers. For him,
primes were the base on which all other natural numbers relied;
and children were the foundation of everything worthwhile in the
adult world.

I still take out that note sometimes and study it. On sleepless
nights, or lonely evenings, when tears come to my eyes thinking
about friends who are no longer here. I bow my head in gratitude
for that one line.

It was on the day of the Star Festival that the Tigers lost their seventh
game in a row, 1-0 against Taiyo.

I'd had no trouble falling back into the rhythm of the job, despite
my month away. And because of the Professor's memory
problem, he immediately forgot my misunderstanding with his
sister-in-law. For him, no trace of the trouble remained.

I transferred the notes to his summer suit, taking care to fasten
them in the same positions, and I rewrote those that were torn or
faded.

"In an envelope in the desk, second drawer from the bottom."

"
Theory of Functions
, 2nd edition, pp. 315–372 and
Commentary
on Hyperbolic Functions
, volume IV, chapter 1, § 17."

"Medicine to take after meals in manila envelope, on the left in
the sideboard."

"Spare razor blades next to the mirror above the sink."

"Thank
for the cake."

Some of the notes were out of date—it had been a month since
Root had brought the Professor a little steamed bun he had baked
in his home economics class—but it seemed wrong to throw them
out. I treated them all with equal respect.

As I read through them, I realized how hard it was for the Profossor
to simply get through the day, and how carefully he hid the
enormous efforts he made. I tried to work as quickly as possible
and not to linger over the notes. When they were all reattached,
his summer suit was ready.

For a few weeks, the Professor had been working on an extremely
difficult problem, one that would pay the largest cash
prize in the history of the
Journal
of
Mathematics
to the reader
who solved it. Indifferent to money, the Professor took pleasure in
the difficulty of the problem itself. Checks from the journal were
left unopened on the hall table, and when I asked him if he wanted
me to cash his prize money at the post office, he shrugged. In the
end, I asked the agency to forward them to his sister-in-law.

Just by looking at the Professor, I could tell that the new problem
was especially hard. The intensity of his thought seemed to be
near breaking point. He would vanish into the study as though he
were literally retreating into his mind, and I imagined that his
body might actually vaporize into pure contemplation and disappear.
But then the sound of his pencil scratching across the paper
would break the stillness and reassure me—the Professor was still
with us and was making some progress with the proof.

I tried to imagine how he could work through a problem like
this over such a long period of time—he basically had to start
again from the beginning every morning. To compensate for the
loss of his thoughts from the day before, he had only an ordinary
notebook and the scribbled notes that covered his body like a cocoon.
Since the accident, math was his life, so perhaps it was also
what led him to sit down at his desk each day and return to the
problem in front of him.

I was considering all of this while making dinner when the Professor
suddenly appeared. Usually, when he was wrestling with a
problem, I hardly saw him. I wasn't sure whether I would be interrupting
his thinking if I spoke to him, so I continued seeding
the peppers and peeling the onions. He walked over, leaned
against the counter, folded his arms, and stood there staring at my
hands. I felt awkward with him watching me, so I went to get
some eggs out of the refrigerator, and a frying pan.

"Did you need something?" I asked at last, no longer able to
stand the silence.

"No, go on," he said. His tone was reassuring. "I like to watch
you cook," he added.

I wondered if the problem had proven so difficult his brain had
blown a fuse—but I broke the eggs into a bowl and beat them
with my chopsticks. I went on stirring after the spices had dissolved
and the lumps were gone, only stopping when my hand had
grown numb.

"Now what are you going to do?" he asked quietly.

"Well ... ," I said, "next ... , uh, I have to fry the pork." The
Professor's sudden appearance had disrupted my usual routine.

"You're not going to cook the eggs now?"

"No, it's best to let them sit, so the spices blend in."

We were alone, Root was off playing in the park. The afternoon
sun divided the garden into patches of shadow and dappled light.
The air was still, and the curtains hung limply by the open window.
The Professor was watching me with the intense stare he
normally reserved for math. His pupils were so black they looked
transparent, and his eyelashes seemed to quiver with each breath.
He was gazing at my hands, which were only a few feet away, but
he might have been staring off into distant space. I dusted the
pork filets in flour and arranged them in the pan.

"Why do you have to move them around like that?"

"Because the temperature at the center of the pan is higher
than at the edges. You have to move them every so often to cook
them evenly."

"I see. No one gets the best spot all the time—they have to
compromise."

He nodded as if I had just revealed a great secret. The aroma of
cooking meat drifted up between us.

I sliced some peppers and onions for the salad and made an
olive oil dressing. Then I fried the eggs. I had planned to sneak
some grated carrot into the dressing, which now proved impossible
with the Professor watching me. He said nothing, but he
seemed to hold his breath while I cut the lemon peel in the shape
of a flower. He leaned in closer as I mixed the vinegar and oil, and
I thought I heard him sigh when I set the piping hot omelet on the
counter.

"Excuse me," I said at last, unable to control my curiosity. "But
I'm wondering what you find so interesting."

"I like to watch you cook," he said again. He unfolded his arms
and looked out the window for the spot where the evening star
would appear. Then he went back to his study without a sound.
The setting sun shone on his back as he walked away.

I looked at the food I had just finished preparing and then at
my hands. Sautéed pork garnished with lemon, a salad, and a soft,
yellow omelet. I studied the dishes, one by one. They were all perfectly
ordinary, but they looked delicious—satisfying food at the
end of a long day. I looked at my palms again, filled suddenly with
an absurd sense of satisfaction, as though I had just solved Fermat's
Last Theorem.

The rainy season came to an end, Root's summer vacation began,
and still the Professor struggled with his proof. I was eagerly looking
forward to the day he would ask me to mail it to the magazine.

The weather had turned hot. The cottage had neither airconditioning
nor a cross breeze. Root and I tried not to complain,
but we were no match for the Professor's stoicism. At noon, on the
hottest day, he would sit at his desk with the doors closed, never
removing his jacket—as if he were afraid that all the work he'd
done on the proof would crumble if he slipped out of his coat.
The notes on his suit had wilted, and he was covered in a painful-looking
heat rash, but when I came in with a fan, or suggested a
cold shower, or more barley tea, he would chase me out in exasperation.

Once his summer vacation started, Root would come with me to
the cottage in the morning. Given my recent run-in with the widow,
I thought it best not to increase the amount of time he spent with
me at work, but the Professor wouldn't hear of it. He was absolutely
convinced that a child on vacation had to be where his mother
could watch over him. Root, however, much preferred to be at the
park playing baseball with his friends or at the pool, so he was almost
never with us.

On Friday, July 31, the proof was finished. The Professor didn't
seem very excited, nor did he seem especially exhausted. He calmly
handed me the pages, and I ran to the post office to be sure to
catch the mail before the weekend. I watched as they stamped the
envelope and put it in the bin; then, feeling both excited and relieved,
I wandered home slowly, shopping along the way. I bought
the Professor new underwear, some sweet-smelling soap, ice cream,
jelly, and sweet bean paste.

When I reached home, the Professor no longer knew who I
was. I checked my watch—it had only been an hour and ten minutes
since I'd left. The Professor's eighty-minute timer had never
failed before. His head had always been more accurate than any
clock. I took off my watch and held it up to my ear.

"How much did you weigh when you were born?" the Professor
said.

At the beginning of August, Root went camping for four nights.
The trip was only for children over ten, and Root had been looking
forward to it for a long time. It would be his first time away
from me, but he showed no signs of fear. When I dropped him off
at the bus, clusters of mothers and children were saying their
good-byes. The mothers were all issuing last-minute instructions
and warnings, and I had a few of my own for Root, telling him to
wear his jacket and to hang on to his insurance card—but he
never gave me a chance to finish. He was the first one on the bus,
and he barely waved good-bye as they pulled away.

The first evening, I lingered at the Professor's, reluctant to go
home to my empty apartment after I'd finished washing the dinner
dishes.

"Would you like some fruit?"

"That would be nice," the Professor replied, turning to look at
me from his easy chair. Though the sun would not be setting for
some time yet, thick clouds had gathered, and the light in the garden
was mottled, as though the world had been wrapped in lavender
cellophane. A gentle breeze blew through the kitchen window.
I cut up some melon and took it to the Professor. Then I sat down
beside him.

"You should have some, too," he said.

"No, thanks. You go ahead."

He crushed the flesh of the melon with the back of his fork and
began to eat, spraying juice on the table.

With Root at camp, there was no one to turn on the radio, the
house was quiet. There was no sign of life from the widow's house,
either. A single cicada cried for a moment and then fell silent.

"Have a little," he said, holding out the last slice.

"No, thanks. You eat it," I said, wiping his mouth with my
handkerchief. "It was hot again today."

"Scorching," he said.

"Don't forget to use the medicine for your heat rash. It's in the
bathroom."

"I'll try to remember," he said.

"They say it'll be even hotter tomorrow."

"That's how we spend the summer," he said, "complaining
about the heat."

The trees suddenly began to tremble and the sky grew dark.
The line of hills on the horizon, faintly visible just a moment
before, disappeared in the gloom. There was a rumbling in the
distance.

"Thunder!" we said together, as the rain began to fall in enormous
drops. The pounding on the roof echoed through the room.
I stood up to close the windows, but the Professor stopped me.

"Leave them," he said. "It feels good to have them open."

The curtains billowed in the breeze, letting the rain pour in on
our bare feet. It was cool and refreshing, just as the Professor had
said. The sun had vanished and the only light in the garden was
the faint glow from the lamp above the kitchen sink. Small birds
flitted among the drooping, tangled branches of the trees, and
then the rain obscured everything. The smell of fresh garden soil
filled the air as the thunder drew closer.

I was thinking about Root. Would he find the raincoat I'd
packed? And should I have made him take an extra pair of sneakers?
I hoped he was eating properly, and that he wouldn't go to
bed with wet hair and catch a cold.

"Do you suppose it's raining in the mountains?" I said.

"It's too dark to see," said the Professor, squinting off at the horizon.
"I suppose I'll need to get my prescription changed soon."

"Is the lightning over the mountains?" I said.

"Why are you so concerned about the mountains?"

"My son's camping there."

"Your son?"

"Yes. He's ten. He likes baseball and he's a bit of a handful. You
nicknamed him Root, because his head is flat on top."

"Is that so, you have a son? That's fine," he said. As soon as
Root was mentioned, the Professor cheered up, as usual. "It's a
grand thing for a child to go camping in the summer. What could
be better for him?"

The Professor leaned back and stretched. His breath smelled
faintly of melon. A streak of lightning flashed across the sky, and
the thunder rumbled louder than ever. The darkness and heavy
rain could not obscure the lightning, and even after a burst had
faded, it remained etched on my retina.

"I'm sure that one hit the ground," I said. The Professor grunted
but did not answer. The rain splashed over the floor. As I rolled up
his cuffs so they wouldn't get wet, his legs twitched as though I
were tickling him.