An Elegant Solution(12)

One shield was of three seven-leaved branches, which was the symbol for Master Johann’s family. The other shield was a lion. The engraving was in Latin. At the top of the oval it named Uncle Jacob. It said of him that he was Mathematicus Incomparabilis. It listed that he was Professor of Mathematics at Basel’s University for eighteen years; member of the royal academy of Paris; and had held many other honors. The Roman ranks of M’s, C’s, L’s, X’s, V’s, and I’s marched through the years of his life, from his Natus, through his Augusti Aetatis, to his Extinctus twenty years ago.

Beneath the large oval was a smaller medallion, a circle. In the circle was an Archimedean spiral of five revolutions. Around it was the inscription Resurgo Eadem Mutata, I Arise Again the Same Though Changed. It was a thoughtful statement, and I thought on it, as I had before. It had always bothered me that the spiral it circles, the Archimedean spira mundanus, did not match the thought. It was an obscure point, but Mathematicians held strong opinions on spirals and their meanings.

Finally I left the cloister, not back to the Square, but to the back of the Munster, to the river. This was where I would finish my walk through memories and meanings of lives, lives current, lives recent, and lives before.

In the age before Basel, if that age ever was, there was still the Rhine. The bank would have been a high grassy hill steep down to the water. In ancient, ancient times, one Basel was built of rough stone that Roman hands never put there. I’d seen these stones. They were found beneath and pulled from the crypt of the Munster when it was repaired many years ago.

Two thousand years ago the Romans built on the hillside and named their city Basileus, which meant Kingship. A thousand years ago, the Germans ended Rome and took her cities. The people who lived inside the walls today were those German conquerors of Roman conquerors. Of what I knew of conquest, the blood of the ancients and the Romans both still flowed in Basel’s veins.

Those stones of that first Basel were its only epitaph, but not the only memory of it. Basel’s people walked in their streets on the dust of earlier cities, and all the cities were only different ages of the one Basel, and the city had always been within its own walls and not part of the world around.

Now the Munster stood on the hill, and a paved court behind the cathedral was high above the water. The old bank was buried beneath its sheer walls.

I stood and looked out at the water. The river was high. It hadn’t rained more than other Aprils but the Rhine drained many lands; we saw it pass, but knew not whence it came or where it was going. Somewhere above Basel there’d been rain. The city had high walls and very little from outside ever passed them, but the river always had. I supposed that Uncle Jacob had died closer to his bed than the river.



Later, dressed proper, I took my grandmother’s hand and promenaded her solemnly to the Saint Leonhard’s Church. Every Sunday I’d sit and stand with her for the hymns and readings, and hear the sermon, which was always of great interest to me. I was reminded of watching my own father in his pulpit. A few times each year I would take my grandmother to Riehen, for her to visit my mother, her daughter, and we would sit under my father’s Sunday teaching. But those times were rare.



It had only been one day before that I’d been immersed in the ocean of Mathematics; now I floated in the air of Theology.

Both were unseen and undefinable. What were the rules of Mathematics? What were those of God? They both existed with or without our knowing, they were universal truths, and our lives were ruled by them absolutely. Could I say that two fish are three? Could I steal a fish and say it was right? Was it two different laws that I would be violating, or were they both one? All the princes and armies in Europe couldn’t change a point of either.

And both laws divided between right and wrong. Stealing was wrong, and a Mathematic error was wrong. The wages of sin were death, but the wages of incorrectly adding were less severe. But still, for each there was right and wrong, yes and no, good and . . . not good. And just as Mathematics was sure and a man could build a house firmly on it calculations, so he could also build his life’s house even more firmly on God’s law.

And I had a feeling now, something that had been with me since I last passed the Ash Gate, that the contention between right and wrong was nearer to the surface than it had been before. I’d never known for what king the Roman city was named. But the kingship of Basel, through all its ages, had always been contested.



Afterward, at two in the afternoon, we returned to the dining table and dined. It was the only meal of the week that could be described that way, where we were dressed well and sat with pewter plates and a platter with as much food as we wanted. Every other meal was eaten plainly, in thanks and humbleness. On Sunday, we accepted that God was bountiful.