An Elegant Solution(98)

He wasn’t angry at my question, and that seemed to show he was accepting me. “If it comes, Leonhard, you’ll know. If it doesn’t, then you needn’t know.”

“Is it the plague?”

“I think it is not. It will be from outside, not within. Though plague might be part of it.”

“I have a few other questions,” I said, “though I doubt you would answer them.”

Gottlieb had put his hand back on the doorknob to close it, but he paused, with almost the same look for me that he’d had for Daniel at the inn during their questioning and jousting.

“What are they?”

“I wonder what Magistrate Caiaphas has to do with this danger. I wonder why he demanded the Inquiry, but then tried to prevent it. And I wonder what you meant to ask Caiaphas. I believe that you pressed the Inquiry because you had questions of him that you wanted answered, which had nothing to do with Knipper.”

“You are correct, Leonhard,” Gottlieb said. “I won’t answer those. And you are impertinent. I hope you find your hat.” The dismissal was polite. He pushed the door to close it.

“Thank you,” I said. And just before the door was shut, “Actually I did find it. I have it.”



My Friday began dark and full of storms. I didn’t need to go out for water; a great deal of water was coming directly to us. Our barrel beneath the eaves was flowing over. I knew it was without looking. As I lay in bed, dark before the sun, I listened to the rain and I could hear the pattering of the drops on the surface. It brought me to thinking also about Grandmother’s warning that a pot will overflow and I wondered how full any pots were, and what sounds would change when they were full. I also thought how a tricorne had more purpose than to make a gentleman, because its practical use was to shed rain.

The hat would be first manufactured round and very wide brimmed. Then the three curl folds would be done to make it an equilateral triangle, the two sides angled toward the front to make the high prow, and the back as a wide, low stern. When the storm would rage and the sea flood over it, the water would empty from the stern’s port and starboard corners. Thus, the gentleman’s back was spared the spouts, which spewed to the sides.

The hat of a student would begin with the same wide round shape, but would be rolled on just its two parallel sides, and the flood would then pour directly down his robe. This would certainly be an impetus to the young scholar to finish his studies and be graduated, so that his back would stay dry.

But it was a noteworthy point to consider that the two hats began the same. This might also have been a reminder to both the student and the professor that in the shaping, a man would be made one thing or another. We were only earthen vessels, and all made of the same dust.

As I prepared to leave my room for the morning, I took both hats in my hands: my secondhand tricorne and my torn and rumpled student widebrim. They were both as clean and brushed as I could make them. The one was from my father, precious to me but never again to be worn. The other was from Gottlieb, from the University, from the wide world, from Basel, and I would wear it until a new one came.

I would take neither though, for that day. I was in brown and neither the child nor the man.



When the sun had taken hold of the sky and cleared it, I went to the Barefoot Square, not to collect water from the fountain, but to watch it. I’d filled my buckets there so often; again, I wondered on the water’s source. I wondered again on the ancient-ness of Basel’s fountains. The Romans had had fountains in the city.

Beyond, the Birsig Flow’s deep path beneath the city was unknown; it came to the Rhine somewhere between the Munster and the Bridge. I walked to the Outer Wall. The Stone Gate was a high, narrow tower over the road from the Birsig’s valley, and the Birsig entered its tunnel in a culvert beside the gate. I walked out the gate and followed the stream.

Outside the city, before its cloacal length, it was a good, pure stream, ten or more miles long and as wide as three houses where it came to the Walls. I’d walked its length, before and it always reminded me of walking with my father beside the Rhine. I set out to walk it again.

It passed its first mile well ordered, with quiet banks by farms and pastures on the left and a nice hill on the right. After two miles and the villages of Therwil and Oberwil, it turned right through a wide valley with low peaks on either side. The hamlets came every mile: Benken, Leymen, Rodersdorf, Biederthal, Wolschwiller, each smaller and less changed from its far past. There was a road directly from church to church, but I followed the path beside the stream, under trees with new unfurled leaves and by wildflowers needing to be seen.