“I know, and you know, and Nicolaus knows. Perhaps Gottlieb knows. Perhaps everyone in the family knows. And one person certainly knows.”
“I don’t care,” Little Johann said. “Whoever hit him, I don’t care.” Which meant that he did, and was frightened.
I asked, “What came of the papers in the trunk?”
“I don’t care.” Which also meant he did.
“There was enough space in the trunk for Knipper and the papers?”
“I don’t know.” Which meant there was.
“Then it might be that the papers weren’t taken out. They may still be here, or they may be somewhere else in Basel, or they went to Strasbourg.”
I sat with my grandmother that night. I was always wanting to go to my books and papers. Sometimes, though, I reminded myself that she’d have companionship with me. So I’d sit in the kitchen, after we’d cleaned everything. Then we would talk and say slower and longer things.
“You say that Lithicus the stonemason seems anxious at every mention of Master Johann’s name,” she said after we’d talked about what I’d seen and heard that day.
“Always when I ask about the spiral on Master Jacob’s epitaph. And when I said that Master Johann would pay for Huldrych’s epitaph, he was very upset at that, also.”
“What became of Master Jacob’s papers?”
“They might still be in Master Johann’s house. They might have been in the trunk when it was taken from the house to the inn. Maybe it was Knipper and Willi who carried the trunk back, and Knipper was killed after he was at the inn. Willi will be back on the coach tomorrow, if he’s allowed out of Strasbourg. I’d care to know what he found in Mistress Dorothea’s kitchen. And I’d care to see those papers. All of Master Jacob’s papers, Grandmother.”
“Would there be great things in them?”
“I don’t know. Cousin Gottlieb used some of them for the Ars Conjectandi, and I’ve heard Master Johann’s teaching for all these years, too, and he’d have known what was in them. They were at his house for him to read. There must be letters Master Jacob received. But most of his letters have been published. I don’t know what else would be in his papers.” Something from the day put another thought in my mind. “Or they might even be burned. Lithicus said a man’s house should be swept clean when he dies. He said that of Master Huldrych. If only he’d seen Master Huldrych’s house! That would take a great deal of sweeping.”
“Or maybe he did see it,” Grandmother said. “If that was what he said of Huldrych.”
“There would be no reason for him ever to have,” I said. Unless he’d had reason. I remembered the gray dust mingled in Huldrych’s golden dust.
“Tell me about Master Johann’s room filled with papers,” she said.
“It looks like mine,” I said. “And it felt like mine. I think I could sit at his desk and know where every paper and book was. But it was much grander, fit for a Chair.”
“Did he have Master Jacob’s book?”
“No. Nor Daniel’s. Nor Mr. Newton’s, nor Monsieur L’Hopital’s. But many others. Some that I didn’t know. And ten times as many papers as I have.” But that seemed an exaggeration. “No, I don’t even have a tenth,” I admitted.
“More papers than you?”
“He’s a great Mathematician. Very great.”
“Is that what you aspire to, Leonhard?”
“Is it right to aspire? It seems prideful.”
“It can be done humbly.”
“Humbly, I do, Grandmother. Someday I want to be a great Mathematician.”
“For the pride of it?”
“No. I think I’d rather not be known at all. It would be for the Mathematics. I want to discover new Mathematics. Master Johann has already discovered so much, and all the other great men before him. I only hope there’ll be some left! I know there would be, though it might be beyond me to understand it. But I want to sit in my study and read and think and write.”
“And a wife, and children?”
“Yes,” I blushed. “Of course, that. And students, too.”
“You’re eighteen now. When will you finish your school?”
“I think next year.”
“What does a young man do who is a Mathematician?”
“Mathematics,” I said. She shook her head.
“What are you thinking and writing now?”
I was embarrassed to say it. “I’ve tried to solve the Reciprocal Squares.”
“Then tell me what you have discovered about the Reciprocal Squares.”