An Elegant Solution(128)

I returned my stare to the books. They were all the ones I knew, of course. Then, in a closed cabinet that I opened, I found, to no real surprise, Newton, Daniel’s Exercitations, and Jacob’s Ars Conjectandi. And also MacLaurin, and Taylor, and all the other Mathematicians that Master Johann of Basel had publicly reviled and fought, and whose books would never be found in any corner of his house; except that now they had been. I closed the cabinet.

Then I looked at the papers on the desk. A new set of scrawled pages covered it, but few people would see that they were any different from the others I’d seen at my last visit there. I saw that they had to do with the integration of Logarithms. I would have studied them closely but I would never have stopped.

But I did see papers looking out from beneath those others, and I saw that they were calculations of Reciprocal Squares. I saw his considerations on my proof, and a specific error he’d made. I resisted the desire to correct it. Then I saw there was a correction, from the notes I’d written for Daniel and Nicolaus at the inn.

But all of this had been without touching anything but the cabinet door. Now it was time to break that rule, and I was reluctant. I sat waiting another moment.

Master Johann’s black robe was hanging on the wall behind the door. I couldn’t handle these things in my simple brown clothes. I looked at the robe and imagined wearing it. It was a simple black, not the scarlet trimmed most formal robe he wore to gatherings such as today’s. This was the robe he would wear to reprimand an undergraduate or meet with a committee. I stood and put my hand on it. Then I removed it from its hook and held it, and then I slid my own arm into its arm, and then my other arm, and then I stood, enrobed, as if I was a true Chair. I felt the heavy hood hanging across my back. It was the first I’d ever worn such a robe. The folds didn’t come to the floor as they should have, and I thought of having the tailor cut me a new, longer one.

What the tricorne had begun, I now felt was finished. I sat again in the chair, necessarily bold.

I took down the letter for Daniel. It was not so grand as from the Court of the Russian Tsar in Saint Petersburg, but it seemed more refined, simpler, and more beautiful. I set it back in its place.

Then I sat still. Time was crucial, but I waited, and thought what I would do in this room, with these books and papers. What would I do? Where would I set any particular thing? I would have this room, one like it. I waited, letting myself know what I would do here. Where I would keep any particular thing.

I leaned back down to the cabinet and opened it again. At its end, which needed the farthest reach, I felt beyond Newton and MacLaurin. There was another book behind them that I hadn’t seen. I pulled it out. It had no marking on its cover so I turned to the title page and read, Magia Naturalis et Innaturalis, printed in Passau and dated over a hundred years ago. It was a Faustbook. It would have intrigued me that it would have a place in that room, but I knew immediately why it was there, and that I’d found the single place I’d wanted. I leaned even more and felt behind where it had been, and felt what I knew would be there. I closed my fingers on it.



In that moment, a voice from the Square screamed, “Thief! Thief! A thief in Master Johann’s house!” I knew the voice, rasping and shrill, like crows and like wolves. Then another voice took the cry, a voice like smoldering fire and red, hot iron.

In immediate answer, I heard a clatter on the stairs, and a screeching I recognized that was Mistress Dorothea’s servant girl. “Mistress!” she wailed, “there’s a thief in the house! Oh, Mistress Dorothea!” And beyond all the cries and racket, I heard the Mistress’s step on the floor above.

The robe had a hood. I pulled it over my head, pushed the Faustbook back into its place, closed the office door behind me, and ran.



I shoved my way to the hall and flew down the stairs, but with care, so the girl wouldn’t be hurt, and passed her before she knew. I landed in the hall. The girl was quick, too, snatching at the robe, and I had a hasty choice: through the passage, through the kitchen, and to the alley behind, or straight ahead to the front and the Munster Square. The alley would lead to winding paths and hidden places, but it was longer and the kitchen might have obstacles. Out the front I went. And there, in the broad Munster Square, was the Munster itself, and at the far end of the Square a troop of the Day Watch. There were already cries from a dozen voices now, of “Thief!” Everyone in the Square turned to me.

I loved to run.

The first cries from the Munster Square had raised a wild alarm, all confused and cross-countered like waves in a high storm. I flew from the door into the open and became a magnet, and every motion was suddenly centered toward me. It was only that I was quick that I was not taken in the first moment. I already knew the way to run, straight ahead to the Cathedral with my wake of flapping black robe. And just before I reached the Munster door I dodged right, into the cloister.