The Gift of Numbers (17 page)

Each time I reached into the box my hand stirred up a moldy
odor, mixed with the smell of the chocolate. But by the time we had
worked our way through half the box, I had begun to lose hope.

There were too many baseball players. Which was hardly surprising
as every team fielded nine players at a time, and there were
so many teams that they were divided into Central and Pacific
leagues, and the history of the game in Japan spanned more than
fifty years. I knew that Enatsu had been a great star, but there
were others—Sawamura, Kaneda, Egawa—each of whom had his
own fans. So, even with this big stack in front of us, it was unlikely
we'd find the one card we wanted. I found myself lowering my expectations,
hoping that the effort would at least satisfy Root. After
all, I had a perfectly good present hidden in the back of the closet.
They weren't particularly fancy shoes, but they were well designed
and comfortable-looking, and they had cost considerably more
than a baseball card. I was sure the Professor would be pleased
with them.

"Ah ... " Root let out a very grown-up sound, the kind you
might make if you'd just discovered the solution to a complex
word problem. The little cry was so quiet and restrained that it
took me a minute to realize that the card he was holding in his
hand was the one we had been looking for. He sat staring at the
card, keeping Enatsu to himself for a moment. Neither of us spoke
as he showed me the 1985 limited-edition card containing a fragment
of Enatsu's own glove.

It was a wonderful party, the most memorable one I've ever attended.
It was neither elegant nor extravagant—in that sense it
had much in common with Root's first birthday party at the home
for single mothers, or the Christmases we'd spent with my mother.
I'm not sure whether you would even call those other events parties,
but I am sure that Root's eleventh birthday was special. It was
special because we celebrated it with the Professor, and because it
turned out to be the last evening the three of us would ever spend
together in the cottage.

We waited for Root to get home from school, and then set
about preparing for the party. I worked on the food while Root
mopped the floor in the kitchen and did other little tasks I assigned
him. Meanwhile, the Professor ironed the tablecloth.

He had not forgotten his promise. That morning, once he had
confirmed that I was the housekeeper and the mother of the child
named Root, he had pointed to the circle on the calendar.

"Today is the eleventh," he said, fluttering the note on his chest
as if he hoped to be congratulated for having remembered.

I had not intended to ask him to do the ironing. He was so
clumsy that it would almost have been safer for Root to do it, and
I had been hoping that his only contribution would be to rest as
usual in his chair and to stay out of the way. But he had insisted on
helping.

"How can I just sit here watching when you've got a little boy
working so hard?"

I might have foreseen this objection, but I would never have
guessed that he would produce the iron and offer to press the tablecloth.
I was astonished that he knew there was an iron in the closet;
but when he pulled out the tablecloth, it was like watching a magician
performing a sleight of hand. In the six months I'd been
working in the cottage, I'd never seen a tablecloth.

"The first thing you need for a party is a clean, ironed cloth on
the table," he said. "And I'm quite good with an iron." There was
no telling how long the cloth had been stuffed in the back of the
closet, but it certainly was a wrinkled mess.

The heat of summer had finally lifted and the air was clear and
dry. The shadows in the garden seemed different as well. Although
the sky was still light, the moon and the evening star had
appeared and the clouds streamed by in ever-changing patterns.
Smudges of darkness were beginning to collect around the roots
of the trees, but they were still faint, as if the night had agreed to
hold off for a bit longer. Evening was our favorite time of the
day.

The Professor set up the ironing board on the arms of his easy
chair and went to work. From the way he managed the cord to the
way he set the temperature, you could tell that he knew what he
was doing. He spread out the cloth, and, like the good mathematician
he was, divided it into sixteen equal folds.

He sprayed each section with the water bottle, held his hand
near the iron to make sure it wasn't too hot, gripped the handle
tightly, and pressed down carefully to avoid damaging the fabric.
There was a certain rhythm to the way the iron slid across the
board. His brow furrowed and his nostrils flared as he forced the
wrinkles to submit to his will. He worked with precision and conviction,
and even a kind of affection. His ironing seemed highly
rational, with a constant speed that allowed him to get the best results
with the least effort; all the economy and elegance of his
mathematical proofs performed right there on the ironing board.

The Professor was definitely the best man for this job, we had
to admit, since the tablecloth was made of delicate lace. All three
of us worked together, and we took unexpected pleasure in preparing
for the party. The smell of the roast cooking in the oven, the
drip-drop of water from the mop, the steam rising from the iron—all
blended together and heightened our expectations.

"The Tigers are playing Yakult today," said Root. "If they win,
they'll be in first place."

"Do you think they'll win the pennant?" I had just tasted the
soup and was checking the oven.

"I'm sure they will," the Professor said, sounding unusually certain.
"Look up there," he pointed out the window. "They say it's
good luck when there's a little nick out of the bottom edge of the
evening star. That means they'll win today and take the pennant."

"What? That isn't true. You're just making it up."

"Up it ingmak just re'you."

No matter how much Root teased him, the Professor's iron
kept its rhythm.

Root got down on the floor to clean places that were normally
overlooked—the legs of the chairs and the underside of the table.
And I went to the dish cupboard in search of a platter for the roast
beef. When I looked out again, the garden was deep in shadow.

We were pleased with our work, and looking forward to the food,
the presents, and the fun. But at the very last moment, just as we
were about to take our places and begin the party, we discovered a
little problem. The girl at the bakery had forgotten to put the
candles in the box. The cake I'd ordered wasn't large enough to
hold eleven candles, so I had asked her to put in one large candle
and one small one; but when I pulled the box out of the refrigerator,
they were not there.

"We can't have a birthday cake without candles. You don't get
your wish if you don't blow them out!" The Professor seemed
more upset than the birthday boy himself.

"I'll run back to the bakery and get them," I said, taking off my
apron. But Root stopped me before I could get to the door.

"No, I'll go. I'm faster, anyway." And before the words were
out of his mouth, he was gone.

The bakery wasn't far away and there was still some daylight
left. I closed the cake box and put it back in the refrigerator; then
we sat down at the table and waited for Root to return.

The tablecloth looked beautiful. The wrinkles had vanished
completely, and its delicate lace pattern had transformed the
kitchen. The only decoration was a yogurt bottle with some wildflowers
I had plucked from the garden, but they brightened up
the cottage nicely. The knives and forks and spoons didn't match,
but they were neatly laid out on the table, and if you scrunched up
your eyes the general effect was magnificent.

By comparison, the food was rather plain. I had made shrimp
cocktail, roast beef and mashed potatoes, spinach and bacon salad,
pea soup, and fruit punch—all Root's favorites—and, for the Professor,
no carrots. There were no special sauces or elaborate preparations,
it was just simple food. But it did smell good.

I smiled at the Professor and he smiled at me; we were both a
bit lost with nothing to do. He coughed, tugged at the collar of his
jacket, and squirmed in his chair, anxious for the party to begin.

There was an empty place on the table, just in front of Root's
chair—the space I'd saved for the cake. Our eyes fell on it at the
same moment.

"Does it seem like he's taking a long time?" the Professor murmured,
a hint of hesitation in his voice.

"No, I don't think so," I said, surprised to hear him mention
the time and see him look at the clock. "It hasn't been ten minutes
yet."

"Is that right?"

I turned on the radio to distract him.

"How long has it been now?"

"Twelve minutes."

"Doesn't that seem long?"

"Don't worry. It's fine."

I wondered how many times I had said those words since I'd
come to work at the Professor's house. "Don't worry. It's fine." At
the barber, outside the X-ray room at the clinic, on the bus home
from the ball game. Sometimes as I was rubbing his back, at other
times stroking his hand. But I wondered whether I had ever been
able to comfort him. His real pain was somewhere else, and I
sensed that I was always missing the spot.

"He'll be back soon. Don't worry." This was all I could offer
him.

As it grew darker outside, the Professor's anxiety deepened.
Every thirty seconds or so he would pull at his collar and glance at
the clock. He was so agitated he didn't seem to notice the notes
falling from his chest with each tug.

There were cheers from the radio. Paciorek had a base hit in
the bottom of the first and the Tigers had scored.

"How long has it been now?" he asked again. "Something must
have happened to him. It's taking too long." The legs of his chair
scraped on the floor as he twisted this way and that.

"Okay. I'll go look for him. But you mustn't worry. I'm sure
he's fine." I got up and put my hand on his shoulder.

I found Root near the row of shops by the station. The Professor
was right, there was a problem. The bakery had been closed. But
Root, resourceful as ever, had already come up with a solution. He
had found another bakery on the other side of the station, and
when he explained the situation they had given him some candles.
We turned around and ran straight home to the Professor's.

When we got there, we realized almost immediately that something
was wrong. The flowers were as fresh as ever, the Tigers
were still leading Yakult, and the food was still laid out for the
party, but there had been an accident. In the time it had taken to
find two candles, the table had been ruined. The birthday cake lay
in a lump in front of Root's place, the very spot where the Professor
and I had been staring just a moment ago.

The Professor stood next to the table, still holding the empty
cake box. The darkness at his back seemed about to engulf him.

"I thought I'd get it ready. So we could eat it right away," he
mumbled without looking up, as if apologizing to the empty box.
"I'm so sorry. I don't know what to say. It's ruined...."

We sat him down and did what we could to comfort him. Root
took the box from him and tossed it on a chair, as though it hadn't
held anything so very important. I turned down the radio and
turned on the lights.

"It's not really ruined," I told him. "It'll be fine. Nothing to get
upset about."

In a businesslike manner, I set about repairing the damage. The
trick was to get everything back to normal as quickly as possible,
without giving the Professor time to think.

The cake had fallen from the box, crushing one side. The other
half, however, was more or less intact, with most of the chocolate-frosting
message still legible: The Professor & Root, Congr— I cut
it in three pieces and used a knife to fix the whipped cream. Then
I gathered up the scattered strawberries, jelly bunnies, and sugar
angels and spread them around as evenly as I could. Finally, I put
the candles in Root's piece. "Look!" I announced at last. "Good
as new!"

Root peered into the Professor's eyes. "And it'll taste just as
good," he said.

"No harm done," I chimed in. But the Professor sat there in
silence.

To be honest, I was more worried about the tablecloth than the
cake. No matter how much I'd wiped, there were still crumbs and
smudges of whipped cream down in the eyelets of the lace. All my
scrubbing had only succeeded in filling the room with a sickly
sweet smell; but the intricate design of the material had been completely
spoiled.

I hid the stain under the platter of roast beef, warmed the soup,
and found a match to light the candles. The announcer on the radio
said that Yakult had come from behind in the third and was
leading the Tigers. Root had the Enatsu card, decorated with a
yellow ribbon, hidden in his pocket.

"There, look. Everything's set. Here, Professor, have a seat." As
I took him by the hand, he looked up at last and noticed Root
standing beside him.

"How old are you?" he murmured. "And what was your name
again ... your head, it's just like the square root sign.... We can
come to know an infinite range of numbers with this one little sign,
even those we can't see...." Then the Professor reached across the
table and rubbed Root's head.

On June 24, 1993, there was an article in the newspaper about Andrew
Wiles, an Englishman teaching at Princeton University. He
had proven Fermat's Last Theorem. There were two large pictures
stretching across the page, one a photograph of Wiles, a casually
dressed man with curly, receding hair, and the other an engraving of
Pierre de Fermat, in a flowing seventeenth-century academic gown.
In their own funny way, the two pictures told the story of how long
it had taken to solve Fermat's riddle. The article praised Wiles's solution
as a triumph of the human intellect and a quantum leap in
the field. It also noted that Wiles had built on an idea that had been
developed by two Japanese mathematicians, Yutaka Taniyama and
Goro Shimura, a proposition known as the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture.

When I reached the end of the article, I did what I always did
when I thought of the Professor. I took out the scrap of paper
folded in my wallet, the one on which he had written Euler's formula:
e
^πi
+ 1 = 0.

I was glad to know it was there, this unchanging testament to a
peaceful soul.

The Tigers didn't win the pennant in 1992. They might have had a
chance if they had won their last two games with Yakult, but they
lost 2–5 on October 10 and finished the season in second place,
trailing by two games.

Root was distraught at the time, but years later he came to appreciate
what a thrill it had been just to have them reach the playoffs.
After the 1993 season, they went into a long slump; and still,
well into the new millennium, they are perennial cellar-dwellers.
Sixth place, sixth place, fifth, sixth, sixth, sixth, sixth.... They
have changed managers many times; Shinjo went to play in America,
Minoru Murayama passed away.

Looking back on it now, the turning point seemed to be that
game with Yakult on September 11, 1992. If they had won that
game, they might have taken the pennant and perhaps they could
have avoided drifting into the slump.

After we'd cleaned up the party at the Professor's and gone
home to our apartment, we immediately turned on the radio. The
game was in the final innings, tied 3-3. Root soon fell asleep, but I
listened to the end.

It was the bottom of the ninth with two outs and a man on first.
The count was full when Yagi hit what appeared to be a walk-off
home run into the left-field stands. But after the scoreboard had
already registered two runs for the Tigers, the third-base umpire
waved off the home run, signaling that the ball had hit the post
and should be scored as a double. The Tigers protested and the
game was stopped for thirty-seven minutes while the umpires deliberated.
It was after ten thirty when it resumed, with two out
and men on second and third. In the end, the Tigers failed to take
advantage of the opportunity and the game went to extra innings
with everyone in a sour mood.

As I listened, I thought about the Professor and our parting at
the end of the party. Then I took out Euler's formula and studied
it again.

I had left the door to Root's room ajar to be able to hear him.
From where I sat, I could see the glove that the Professor had
given him set carefully next to his pillow. It was a genuine, Little
League–certified, leather glove, and he had been thrilled with it.
After Root had blown out the candles and we had turned the
lights back on, the Professor noticed the notes that had fallen under
the table. The timing of the discovery was fortunate, since the
first note he saw reminded him where he had hidden Root's gift.

The Professor was not used to giving presents. He held out the
package as if he were unsure whether Root would accept it, and
when Root came running to hug him and kiss him on the cheek,
he squirmed uncomfortably. Root had been reluctant to take off
the glove the rest of the evening and would probably have kept it
on straight through dinner if I hadn't put my foot down. I found
out later from the widow that the Professor had sent her out in
search of a "beautiful glove."

At the table that evening, Root and I had done our best to behave
as though nothing had happened. After all, the fact that the
Professor had forgotten us in less than ten minutes wasn't necessarily
cause for concern. We started the party as planned. We had lots
of experience dealing with the Professor's memory problems. We
would simply adapt to the new situation and cope as best we could.

And yet, something had changed, and, like the cake, I couldn't
stop noticing the difference. The more I tried to convince myself
there was nothing to worry about, the more troubled I became.
But I couldn't let it spoil the party. We laughed and ate to our
hearts' content, and talked about prime numbers and Enatsu and
the Tigers winning the pennant.

The Professor was delighted to be celebrating an eleven-year-old's
birthday. He treated this simple party as though it were an
important rite, and I thought of how precious the day of Root's
birth was to me, too.

Late that night, as I thought back over our celebration, I traced
my finger over Euler's formula, careful not to smudge the soft
pencil lines. I could feel with my fingertip the elegant curl of the
legs on the π, the certainty and strength of the dot on the
i
, the decisive
way the 0 had been joined at the top.

The game dragged on, and the Tigers missed several chances to
end it. I listened through the twelfth, the thirteenth, and the fourteenth
innings, unable to shake the nagging feeling that it should
have been over a while ago. It was just one run, but they couldn't
get it across home plate. The moon rose full and midnight was approaching.

He didn't know much about presents, but the Professor had a
genius for receiving them. The expression on his face when Root
gave him the Enatsu card was something neither of us will ever
forget. He untied the ribbon and looked at the card for a moment.
Then he looked up and tried to say something, but his lips just
trembled as he held the card to his chest.

The Tigers never did manage to score that run. They stopped
the game after fifteen innings, ruling it a tie. They had been at it
for six hours and twenty-six minutes.

On Sunday, two days after the party, the Professor moved into a
long-term care facility. His sister-in-law called to tell us.

"This is very sudden, isn't it?" I said.

"Actually, we've been planning it for some time. We were just
waiting for a bed to open up at the hospital," she said.

"I realize we stayed past working hours the other night. This
wouldn't have anything to do with that, would it?"

"No," she said, quite calmly. "I'm not upset about that at all. I
knew it would be his last evening with you. But I'm sure you must
have noticed what was happening." I wasn't sure what to say. "His
eighty-minute tape has broken. His memory no longer goes beyond
1975, not even for a minute."

"I'd be happy to go to the hospital to look after him."

"That won't be necessary. They'll take good care of him....
Besides," she said, "I'll be there. You see, my brother-in-law can
never remember you, but he can never forget me."

The institution was a forty-minute bus ride from town, behind
an abandoned airport. From the windows of the visitor's lounge
you could see the cracks in the runway and the weeds growing on
the roof of the hangar—and beyond, a thin strip of sea. On clear
days, the waves glittered in the sun like a band of light stretched
across the horizon.

Root and I went out to see the Professor every month or so. On
Sunday mornings we would pack a basket of sandwiches and
catch the bus. We would talk awhile in the lounge and then go out
on the terrace for our picnic. On warm days, the Professor and Root
would play catch on the lawn in front of the hospital, and then
we'd have tea and talk some more. The bus home was just before
two o'clock.

Often the widow was there as well. She would usually leave us
alone with the Professor and go off to do some shopping for
him, but sometimes she joined in our conversation and even
brought out sweets to have with our tea. She had settled quietly
into her role as the one person on earth who shared the Professor's
memories.

These visits continued for some years, until the Professor's
death. Root played baseball—always second base—through
middle school and high school, and in college, until he injured his
knee and had to give it up. And I worked as a housekeeper for the
Akebono Housekeeping Agency. During all those years, even after
Root was old enough to grow a mustache, in the Professor's eyes
he remained a small boy in need of protection. And when the Professor
could no longer reach high enough, Root would bend over
so the Professor could rub his head.

The Professor's suit never changed. The notes, however, having
lost their usefulness, fell off one by one. The one I had
rewritten and replaced so many times, the one that read "My
memory lasts only eighty minutes," disappeared eventually; and
the portrait of me with the square root sign faded and crumbled
away.

In their place, the Professor wore a new decoration: the Enatsu
card we had given him. The widow had made a hole in the plastic
sleeve and run a cord through it, so the Professor could have it
hanging around his neck.

Root never came to visit without the glove the Professor had
given him. And if their games of catch were less than brisk, they
could not have enjoyed them more. Root tossed the ball gently for
the Professor, and no matter where the return went, Root did his
best to run it down. The widow and I would sit on the lawn
nearby. Even after Root's hands had grown and the glove no
longer fit, he continued to use it, claiming that a tight glove was
good for a second baseman since it allowed him to handle the ball
quickly and send it on its way to first. The leather faded and the
edges frayed, and the label had long since torn off. But you had
only to slip your hand inside it to feel the shape of Root's palm
worn into the glove.

Our last visit to the Professor was in the autumn of the year
Root turned twenty-two.

"Did you know that you can divide all the prime numbers
greater than 2 into two groups?" He was sitting in a sunny spot,
pencil in hand. There was no one else in the lounge and the people
who passed by the door from time to time seemed far away. We listened
carefully to the Professor. "If
n
is a natural number, then
any prime can be expressed as either 4n + 1 or 4n - 1. It's always
one or the other."

"All of those numbers, those infinite primes, can all be divided
into two groups?"

"Take 13, for example ..."

"That would be 4 × 3 + 1," Root said.

"That's right. And 19?"

"4 × 5 - 1."

"Exactly!" The Professor nodded. "And there's more to it: the
numbers in the first group can always be expressed as the sum of
two squares, but those in the second can never be."

"So, 13 = 2
²
+ 3
²
."

"Precisely!" said the Professor. His joy had little to do with the
difficulty of the problem. Simple or hard, the pleasure was in sharing
it with us.

"Root passed the qualifying exam to become a middle school
teacher. Next spring, he'll begin teaching mathematics." I could
hardly contain my pride as I made my announcement. The Professor
sat up to hug Root, but his arms were frail and trembling. Root
bent down to embrace him, the Enatsu card hanging between
them.

The sky is dark, the spectators and the scoreboard are in shadow.
Enatsu stands alone on the mound under the stadium lights. The
windup. The pitch. Beneath the visor of his cap, his eyes follow
the ball, willing it over the plate and into the catcher's mitt. It is the
fastest one he has ever thrown. And I can just see the number on
the back of his pin-striped uniform. The perfect number 28.