An Elegant Solution(133)

It wasn’t his goal, though, to show off his intellect. It didn’t seem that he knew he was. He only had one intent, to quickly and fully as possible give me the whole gist of Daniel’s lecture so I could recount it as proof that I’d heard it with my own ears, if that was ever necessary. He was being my protector, which also meant that he knew, or guessed, why I hadn’t attended the lecture myself.

“Did he say that?” I asked. Little Johann had just finished an explanation of the law that governed the force that a fluid exerts on a wall while passing parallel to it.

“No. But he should have,” Little Johann said.

Daniel would have spoken for an hour, and Little Johann’s summary took only fifteen minutes. When it ended I’d lost my own thoughts completely. “You’ve got that all, now, haven’t you?” he asked.

“Yes. It was well done, Johann. Very, very well done.”

“Oh.” And then I saw, of course, that he was showing off some, and I was even more touched that my admiration was worthwhile to him. But he still had another purpose and wasn’t distracted from it. “And Daniel will get the last letter, won’t he?”

“Yes. It’s certain now. Within a day.”

“That’s good.” He was relieved, but still cautious. He wouldn’t be free of this concern until both letters were in Daniel’s hand. And meanwhile, I didn’t know that I’d need the details of Daniel’s lecture. But I had them, from Little Johann’s mouth, and I’d never forget. “And I told Poppa that you explained the lecture to me.”

“But you explained it to me! Do you mean, to make him believe that I was there?”

“He’ll think that. He won’t have noticed that you weren’t. Nor Daniel. Nicolaus might have.”

“Thank you,” I said. “If anyone asks what Daniel said, I’ll know all of it.”



I walked home. It was well dark. In the short distance from the Square to my grandmother’s house, I found myself glancing to my right, to my left, over my shoulder. The shadows seemed full of quiet murmurs, the rustle of swords, furtive footsteps. I reached the front door in a sweat.

Grandmother was waiting in the sitting room, in her black dress and white apron, patient and still.

I sat next to her and she stayed quiet. “I’m home from this long day,” I said.

“Not home for the first time today.”

“No.”

“Are you afraid?” she asked.

“I am afraid,” I said.

“In this Parish of Saint Leonhard,” she said, of the church that her husband and her daughter’s husband, my father, had been pastor, and in which she, who was blameless and righteous, could say it, “you’ll be held safe.”

“Thank you,” I said.

So I went up to my room. I quickly was in my night clothes, and in my bed and I hesitated to extinguish my candle, which was the last light between me and the darkness. But it was only the last light that I could see, not the true last. So I put it out.

Through the night, as I slept, I faintly heard and saw battle outside my window, but none of it came in.





17

THE IRON CASKET





On the day that I knew would bring great changes, the rise and fall of many, I rose so early that even my grandmother wasn’t out of her room yet. It may have been that I hadn’t even ended the evening and night before, but was just continuing them. I dressed quickly, in brown for the last time.

I went out into the early morning night, through the short alleys, to Master Johann’s back gate and opened it. Only one obstacle, the locked cellar door, was between me and my first object. But I knew that door very well: I’d repaired it a half dozen times. I quickly had its hinges off.

Then, in the cellar, I pulled the potato bin away from the wall, and the stone out from the wall. Behind it was a wooden box a foot long and six inches square at its ends. It was very heavy for its size. I took it, closed the space and repaired the door, and left.



There should have been a beginning of light by then, but Basel was dark. The shadows of houses and churches covered the streets like the Flood, and the air was so dry! There was dust in it. I paced the cobblestones to the white University. It glowed like lightning behind clouds. The door opened to my touch, and no one was there. I hadn’t seen anyone in any street.

The lecture hall was empty, not just of men but of time, of everything that made a place that place. But it had one black, iron casket on the lectern in its center. I went to it and set my wooden box, which was the same size, beside it. I put my hand on the cold black iron and felt the lid and sides, the corners, the keyhole. At that I drew back my hand to my pocket, and felt another iron, but this was warm from the heat of my own blood. I took that key and held it steady to the hole it was meant for, and inserted it, and turned it, and heard and felt, more than anything else I had that dark morning, the tumblers rise and fall, and the clasp give way. My hand left the key, still turned, in the lock, and lifted the casket lid. Inside were three stones.