An Elegant Solution(117)

“But he says, that it will be to your profit.”

“Then take this reply. I’ll account to myself what’s to my own profit and what isn’t.”

Nicolaus was silent, then, as he always was when he had more to hear. And Caiaphas finally said, “I will account which is to my profit. Make that the reply. And I’ll tell him if I account any difference.”

“I’ll tell him.” But Nicolaus stayed, and still waited. He would wait when he knew there was something else to be said, and he waited, and it became impossible for it not to be said.

“I know the choice he wants,” Caiaphas said, “and I have already begun that accounting.”

“Good day, then,” Nicolaus said, and stood.

I was gone out from the Square before anyone else came out into it.



I hurried through every chore my grandmother had for me, and then all that Mistress Dorothea had. But as I finished there, I was thinking all the more of the papers I’d read of Master Jacob, and I said to her, “Mistress.”

“Yes, Leonhard?”

“I want to tell you that I have seen repentance.”

She stopped to give me close attention. Then she said, “Thank you.”

Then I heard Daniel’s laugh in the hall as he was coming toward the kitchen. I didn’t want to talk with him. As I had already done once that morning, I left before I was seen.



That Friday ran long and hard. I had my lecture to write but I held myself away from it. I had my letter to Paris to write, but I restrained from that, also.

Instead I gave time to thought. I sat in the Barefoot Church from before noon to long after sunset.

At home, at night, no book on my shelf seemed fit for reading. I put myself in my bed and eventually slept.



The quality of early light was thin, clean, sinless, and Adam-like innocent. I’d seen many dawns. The gray and the quiet were one mixed thing and I walked the morning like an ash mote floating from a fire; we were only ashes. Or like a raindrop in the river, traveler on the road and part of it. I came in solitude through air like water to the Barefoot Square and filled my pails with water clear as air. Then I set them by the door and went in to the Boot and Thorn.

The Common Room was empty but for Charon the cat half sleeping on a shelf of tankards, who were all half sleeping, as well. I sat at a table to think and wait. A very thin pall from the near dormant hearth and even from the last night’s candles just turned the air from pure to impure, though the difference was so fine. I knew I wasn’t undetected though I’d been silent. A few of the tankards were alert enough to call their Master. And in only a minute there was a tread in the hall and shadow in the door. Old Gustavus looked in on me. The only light was from the windows, and it was absorbed in vacant space before it reached the far wall. Gustavus watched in silence. Then he came closer.

“How can I serve you, young Master?” I was in black and white, as fine as I could make them without my grandmother’s touch. And they were fine enough. The ambivalence I’d kept was lost and I would only wear brown a few more times. It was strange that it was with Gustavus that the change seemed most significant.

“May I ask about a day twenty years ago?”

“Twenty years. Yes.”

“The day that my Master Johann returned to Basel. Do you remember?”

“Yes. I remember.” His arms were folded and he waited for me. I’d never seen him impatient. I thought his servants were too afraid to have ever kept him waiting. And for all his strength and fearsomeness, he was always greatly respectful to his customers. But this was a different waiting, as if he were in a place he knew I would come to, and he had been waiting for me to arrive.

“Was it Knipper driving?”

“There was no driver but Knipper.”

“Do you remember,” I asked, “the day ten years before that, when Master Johann left Basel for Holland?”

“Yes. I remember.”

“Was that also Knipper?”

“There was no driver but Knipper.”

I didn’t doubt that he remembered, but I wanted assurance. “What time of year was it?”

“It was an April day. The coach left in a thunderstorm.”

“And the day they returned?”

“In August, and also in a storm.”

“It was near the day that Master Jacob died.”

“It was that day,” Gustavus said.

“The day itself?”

“It was that day.”

“Gustavus,” I said, “do you know how Master Jacob died?”

“I know all of how he died.”

“I guess that he was ill.”

“He was.”

“And he died of his illness.”