An Elegant Solution(124)

“Ask him. He’ll come tomorrow night from Freiburg.”

“I’m sorry, then. Forgive me Leonhard. A base accusation and I apologize. But it’s two days until the Election and the Brute will do anything to keep me out of the Chair. Even to put you up against me, and that’s not your fault.”

“I forgive you, Daniel. Of course.”

“I’ll trust you. I always will. But if any other hand than yours had handed me this, I’d have known it was a plot from Brutus. And it’s he who should ask your forgiveness, to raise your hopes for nothing.”

I swallowed my first answer and said, “I’ll be better for the lesson of it.”

“It’s a good lesson, I’ve had it myself. And hey, there’s a gathering at the University, I hear. A minor Physics lecturer who’ll give a mediocre lecture. Shall we go to hear him?”

“I’ll go.”

“And dusty, too. A minor and dusty man. Why, he’d be perfect to replace Huldrych!”

We’d stood and I followed him out. But I made sure, before I was in the sunlight, to catch the eye of Gustavus, who’d heard the whole of our conversation from his shadow.



There was no trace of dust on Staehelin. The University hall was full and listless. The warm, dry air had come in with the audience, and everything inside was dreary as the streets outside. The lecture was just as the lecturer had said it would be, not excellent, not poor. The subject was buoyancy, the principle that an object will float or sink in a fluid based upon the relative densities of the two. He spoke specifically on wood and stone in water. He didn’t describe the Mathematics of buoyancy, that the force propelling the object up is equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces, while the force down is equal to the weight of the object itself. And my mind wandered, or floated. I considered that air was like water, gas instead of liquid but still a fluid, and that we sat on the surface of the earth because we sank through the air, while a cloud, or smoke, was buoyant and would float. Huldrych had always disagreed with my opinions on this, though we had good discussions, while Staehelin considered the idea useless. And I thought further, how the lesser could supersede the greater, how oil could make its way above water, and what strategies could be learned from Staehelin’s lesson.

Then the lecture ended and all the black robes floated up and out of the lecture hall.



“That was Physics?” Daniel said beside me as we came out to the street. “That was? A mutter, a splot, a twitch. And that makes a lecture?”

“It was adequate,” I said. “And more than.”

“Not an equation in it! Not even a number. Nothing that Huldrych himself wouldn’t have said.”

“Daniel, you’re like vitriol. You need more grace.”

“Oh, it’s all feathers. All floating and away with the breeze.”

We walked a while without speaking, both of us in thought. Then I felt a breeze, a chill draught. We’d reached the Barefoot Square. It was midafternoon and the sun was still high, but there were shadows. The place seemed full of them like cobwebs clinging to the buildings.

In the Common Room, where shadows were spun, Daniel finished his hoisting of Staehelin. “Can you defend him, Leonhard? What can you say?”

“I said it was adequate.”

“And that’s all. And that’s generous. You’ll hear my lecture tomorrow and call it adequate?”

“Yours will be magnificent, Daniel. It will be worth the Chair.”

“Oh, it will be.”

“It will even be worth the Tsar’s Chair.”

“That. Yes.” He took the letter from his pocket. “Would I take a Chair in Russia? If you didn’t get Basel’s, would you take the Tsar’s?”

“I would. It would be history,” I said. “The first man to hold the Mathematics Chair at the University of Saint Petersburg.”

He nodded in sympathy with me. “It would be. And I’d take it. I’d even take it gladly. But it wouldn’t be spite enough against Brutus, so I’ll keep Basel instead.”

“That’s the only reason?”

“It’s enough.”

“Then give me Russia!” I joked.

He held the paper out for me to take, then grabbed it away. “No. I’ll hold this. Maybe I’ll win Basel, then throw it off for the Tsar. How’s that? I might. Spite Brutus, spite them all.”

“You sound as if you don’t even want the Chair in Basel.”

“I want to win it. But keep it? That’s more a question, now.”

“You’d be obliged, wouldn’t you?”

He frowned at that. “Maybe. Maybe I would, maybe not. That’s to think about.”