An Elegant Solution(61)

The room behind the door was as different and more. The Saturday room upstairs was sparse and dark hollow. Now I stood on the threshold of a chamber dense and bright. I’d never seen so bright a room in Basel. There was the usual curtained window, but the true light was from a dozen candles. And what they lit! A desk, a chair, a cabinet, a case of shelves; and papers. Thousands of pages. It was surely thousands! And all of them crossed like a market square with lines of text and diagrams and equations.

“Leonhard.” He looked up and perceived me.

“Yes, Master Johann,” I said. “I apologize for how I look . . . I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

He continued his stare. I stood in silence as the rain was still dripping from my hair, to my forehead, and one great drop splashed off my nose. Then he rubbed his hands and glanced back at his desk, and my apology had been accepted. “You said that you have been upset by Master Huldrych’s death?”

“Yes. I have.”

“As I said, I also. It was grievous and unfortunate. He wasn’t always obsolete in his lectures. He was once advanced in his field. The University will choose a Chair who is more modern, but he is still a loss. Were you attending his lectures?”

“Yes, sir. His advanced class.”

I was first fooled that the papers were in disorder, but I knew they couldn’t have been. In an instant, I saw that there was an order, an order that I knew perfectly. To compare my own books and papers with this room would have been to match an acorn to an oak, but I was bold enough to call my desk an acorn at least. “I have a task for you.”

“Yes, Master Johann.”

He lifted a single sheet from all the papers. “It may help you in your grief. Do you know the stonecutter on the White street?”

“Lithicus? Yes, sir, I know him.”

“Good. Go to him. I want a memorial made for Master Huldrych. Take this.” He held out the paper, and I took it. “That is what it’s to say.” I looked at the page and read the words.

“How should the stone be made?” I asked.

“A wall piece. I want it a modest size and it will be placed in the Preacher’s Church, which was his parish. Modest but well made. He was a modest man. Make it whatever shape is the current style. Let the stonecutter decide, or you. But bring me a drawing before he starts, and his price. Tell him I’ll pay. He’ll know what that means.”

“Yes, sir.”

“A new Chair of Physics will be chosen. And Leonhard, as for the coach driver. The Inquiry is closed.”

I dared to ask. “Was any answer found?”

He looked at me, considering his answer. “Perhaps if I had completed my interview with Magistrate Caiaphas, there would have been an answer.”

“Yes, sir.”

That was all. I left the room both dimmed and dazzled. I was nearly desperate to see it again, to see in detail the books and papers I’d had only a few seconds to study.

But as my feet descended the stairs, another pair were ascending. As I passed Little Johann on his way up, I said, “The letters are still on his desk. Both from Paris and from Russia.”



By a narrow passage between two houses I came to the stone yard. It was bare of grass or any green, part dirt and part stone flags, and dizzy of worked, unworked and part-worked stone. There were keystones, cornices and corners, and other architecture, but really the yard looked most like a churchyard for the monuments and figures and angels. And everywhere, there was dust. It was very fine and gray.

The man was there, too, his hammer hanging in his hand, staring very thoughtfully at a gray veined square. “Lithicus,” I said. “who’s that for?”

“Oh, is it you? It’s not for you.” In his yard he was a gray man. His hair was, his dust covered skin was, and his loose smudged shirt. But the veins in his arms were as stark as the veins in his marble, and I wondered what flowed in either.

“I hope not!”

“No, a fish merchant. He choked on a fishbone.”

“It’s a pretty piece. What will you put on it?”

“A long life and much to say about it. It won’t fit on this. So this one’s not for him. I’ll want a bigger slab.”

“Oh, I think I know who it was,” I said. “Reinkarper?”

“That’s him.”

“He wasn’t rich. It would be a big stone for a middle merchant.”

“There’s three kinds that take a big stone,” Lithicus said. “The rich, the pious, and the sinful.”

“The sinful? For atonement?”

“For their side of the argument.”

“I have a job for you,” I said. “It’s a memorial, too, and not for any of your three kinds.”