An Elegant Solution(7)

First, and crucial, I would take down a book.

Leibniz and Newton waited at opposite ends of my shelf, and Descartes in the center, and Fermat and Pascal, MacLaurin and Taylor, de Moivre and L’Hopital, Hooke and Boyle, and many others between. I would have planned this choice through the week and reached the decision in the last waking minutes of the Friday night before, in the dark of my bed.

Then, with that book on my desk, I would take out my folio of notes and thoughts from years of Saturdays past. I would set paper and ink and quill beside them all. And finally I would read.

I would pour myself into it and I would pour it in to me. I’d think on every word and every equation, of what it means, and what it means more, and what it finally means, and what it means past that, and why, and why, and why. I only read with a pen in my hand. I’d write to myself but I could never write enough. And always I would push on.

If there had been a shadow on all this, that this was devotion stolen from my devotion to God, it was always beyond me to stop. What else could I do? The hours passed and the book’s pages turned slowly while my own piles of paper grew. I lost my senses, and the world I sensed with them. I lived in an invisible world of logic and theorem more evident to me than ink and paper, more rigid and immutable than the desk and hard chair I’d been sitting on, purer than air, more part of me than my own hands, and unmatched in perfection among all other created things.

But then my cock would crow.

I’ve taught myself to hear the clock in Saint Leonhard toll three. When it did, I’d blink and firmly close my book: If I didn’t immediately I might not until the bell tolls that three again, which would be far into Sunday morning! But I was never dismayed, because even this pure time would have been only a preamble.

Then I’d dress myself in my student finery, buckles to wig, and on this day when no other student in Basel cared much how they look, I cared most. Grandmother would inspect and correct me, and I’d tuck my folio under my arm and set out. I have done this every Saturday for five years, and always with trepidation and anticipation together.



This Saturday, at the very instant of three thirty, I pulled the bell on the grand doorway in the Munster Square. It was opened by silent Mistress Dorothea, who saw me all other times in peasant brown at her back door with so many words. Now I was to receive the wages I’d earned by my labors of the week. She solemnly ushered me into the dark hall and escorted me up the stairs to a hallway that was smaller but the same dark, and knocked on a door, so firmly closed that it seemed a wall of stone.

I still remembered the first time, when I was thirteen and trembling in my shoes, that she knocked and how nearly I fled at the stony voice that in answer commanded, “Come in.” Now it thrilled me, though I still took stock one last time whether I was completely ready. The Mistress opened the door.

The room was as dark as the whole house, but a single bright candle burned on the table, which with its two chairs was the only furniture. In one chair was Master Johann, and the other chair was empty. It was for me. For two hours I would sit alone under his instruction, and he was the greatest Mathematician in the world.



My Master was a man of substance, not to be trifled with, celebrated across the continent, distinguished in every manner, Basel’s first citizen, impressive and remarkable. His eyes, reflected in his sons, were heavy and brooding and pierced like spears. He did not speak often and his mouth and jaw were hard in his wide face. He wore an old wig in our meetings and his forehead was very high. He was short and broad compared to others, especially his sons. His hands were somewhat thick with short fingers yet he had a beautiful script, the equal of any scribe. This physical skill was surprising for a man whose abilities and efforts were mostly centered inside his head. And in his opinion, the whole world was centered about his head. He has lacked any vestige of modesty, sympathy, generosity, leniency or, sadly, paternity.

Master Johann was the Professor of Mathematics at the University in Basel. He’d had his Chair for twenty years. He was the second man to hold that Chair. Before him was the Chair’s founder, his brother Jacob.



During the two hours that he taught me, I was like Little Johann’s ball of dough: pounded and stretched and rolled, and finally brought out thoroughly baked, in need of cooling. My head was full and my stomach empty and I then would stumble, top-heavy, home. I had so much to think about. The papers in my folio, to be read slowly and thoroughly, would give me hours more of thought. They were like a river to be poured down a rabbit hole.

I’d be ravenous when I arrived home, and I wouldn’t even change out of my black and white. My strict grandmother allowed herself one weekly moment of sympathy: she’d have a table full for me and I’d wolf it and tell her what I’d learned. For my sake she had made herself interested in Mathematics. My final challenge of the very challenging day was to distill two dense gold hours with Master Johann into twenty simple crystal minutes with Grandmother. If I could do that, then I had mastered my lesson.