An Elegant Solution(19)

Tuesday began with water: a steady rain falling and I fallen upon, fetching from the fountain rain that had fallen in the weeks before. A barrel beneath my bedroom window caught rainwater from the roof, but it wasn’t full yet.

Just as the people of Basel carried the blood of the ancients, the veins of the city were as ancient. In the inner city, the old city, the streets must have been laid sometime, some year. One evidence of this was the fountains. They were fed by pipes or tunnels beneath the streets. Every person in Basel used the fountains but no one knew when they were set, or how, or by whom.

There was a stream, the Birsig Flow, that entered the city from the southwest. Before it came into the city, it split in three parts. One fed the moat and another passed between houses inside the city, then disappeared. That was a foul course of water and no one would drink from it. But the third split dove beneath the wall into an ancient tunnel. It must once have been unfettered on its journey to the Rhine, but very long ago it was covered over by the streets and houses of Basel. Now even its path was unknown. I believed it fed the fountain in the Barefoot Square. That one always had a sharp taste.

I sheltered for a moment from the rain inside the door of the Boot and Thorn, and caught Old Gustavus as he passed, like the stream, toward some hidden place. “Master Daniel’s made himself well at home here,” I said. “He likes what he finds in the Common Room.”

“He finds what’s Common to all men.”

And with that wet answer, I took my buckets and carried home water through the rain.



The heavens were not yet emptied when I sailed forth to Master Johann’s house. I cleaned my boots and took them off inside the kitchen door. By the faintness of the sound waves, I calculated that Mistress Dorothea was about two floors away. I knew my jobs without being told, though. There was dry wood aplenty in the shed, but I still had to keep the fire high enough to swallow wet logs.

I wasn’t alone anyway. Little Johann was at the table with his dough, and I knew when he needed a listening ear. “What’s it like now?” I asked. “They’ve been here a few days and settled in.”

“Just as bad.”

“How are they with you?”

“Daniel’s either hot or cold, and Nicolaus is lukewarm.”

“How are you to them?”

“Not better. I don’t care.”

“I think you care, Johann,” I said. “You’re brothers.”

“I won’t do anything for them. They won’t for me.”

I took a guess on what he was wanting to be asked. “Have you told Daniel about the letters you saw on your father’s desk?”

“I can’t! I’d be hated by Poppa if I did.”

“I could tell him.”

“I don’t care if he ever gets them. Poppa’s burned them anyway.”

“Burned them? I doubt he has. And they’re from Paris and Russia. I think he’d want them. I’ll tell Daniel, and no one will know you saw them. He can ask for them himself.”

“Poppa doesn’t want him to have them. What if Daniel asks for them? There’ll be a fight.”

That was true. “I’ll think on it,” I said. “And I won’t let you be hated for it.”

“I know you won’t, Leonhard.”

So I’d made a promise and Johann’s dough was given rest. Mistress Dorothea arrived and was quickly praising her son, and worrying for him, and pressing him with questions, kneading him with her words.



On Tuesday I was lectured to on Greek, in Greek. I would go to Saint Alban’s street where Saint Alban’s church stands within Saint Alban’s cloister, and just beyond was Saint Alban’s Gate beside the Rhine. This was the city’s easternmost gate, the closest of the gates to Greece. Standing on the wall beside the gate, I sometimes watched the river flowing in from closer eastern lands: from Wurttemberg, and Zurich, and the Bodensee where the Rhine is born. I’d never seen those places. Beyond them were Austria and Russia and Greece. And farther beyond were the Indies and China, and finally Basel again. Disciples of Natural Philosophy knew that the planet was round, and that a straight path was finally a circle. A day circles the planet and returns as a different day. I wondered what Basel would be like to return to.

The gate wasn’t immediately beside the river. There was a space, with the gate and Saint Alban’s street on one side, and the river on the other. In the space was the paper factory. This far corner of the city was Switzerland’s greatest center for the manufacture of paper; it produced much of the country’s supply. I liked to watch the workers shred and pound the rags and feed them into the stamps. These powerful presses were the reason the factory was here at the river: they were driven by water wheels and had been for nearly three centuries. The canal for the wheels was even older, dug long earlier by monks for Saint Alban’s flour mills.