The Tenth Muse

by Catherine Chung

  I pulled my hand away and said, “It’s not like anyone’s lining up to marry me.”

  For a moment the air had been alive and electric between us. Now it flattened as I spoke. Henry’s smile dimmed and gentled. “Oh, Kat,” she said.

  I knew then that I had lost some chance, that a door I hadn’t been aware existed had closed: Let’s never get married. Let’s be a pair unto ourselves.

  WE ARRIVED IN GÖTTINGEN just as the sun rose, rumpled but bright-eyed, to discover it was a beautiful town with red-roofed buildings and cobbled streets and large sprawling gardens. I was surprised: somehow I’d expected it to be in ruins. America had absorbed so many of the scientists who used to work in Göttingen—so much so that Courant, one such transplant and the founder of the Courant Institute at NYU, had said famously, upon reaching New York and reuniting with nearly all his old colleagues: “It is Göttingen. Göttingen is here.”

  In fact, the town was in much better shape than Bonn. The cobbled streets were busy with pedestrians and students spilling out of cafés. Henry and I spent the morning of the first day checking into our pension and then walking around, circling the city wall, poking our heads in and out of small stores filled with useful and prettily made things. In the afternoon, we went to the university library where the Grimm brothers had worked before being driven out by the townspeople for inciting political unrest. (A piece of trivia that Henry had recounted with glee.)

  That afternoon, Henry stayed to pore over her books, and I left to meet with Professor Behr’s former student turned administrator, Frank. Frank was jolly and ruddy cheeked and also clearly swamped with work: in the fifteen minutes I sat across from him at his desk, at least a dozen people needed his attention, coming in and out of the office, whispering in his ear, handing him papers to look at, asking for his signature on various things. In the midst of this hubbub, he gave me a list of people he’d arranged meetings with: the math librarian, the archivist at city hall, and an emeritus professor who’d retired five years ago.

  “Professor Behr says you’re here on a pilgrimage,” he said. “I’m assuming you’ll be wanting to visit Gauss’s residence, and Hilbert’s. I’ve taken the liberty of marking their addresses for you here on this map.” He showed me on a map the marked locations along with a separate list of addresses. “And of course I assume you’ll want to visit the house Emmy Noether lived in as well,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Absolutely.”

  “Now,” he said, “is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “I’m actually here searching for some people who might have been connected to the math community here in 1935,” I said. “I’m looking for information about someone with the initials S. M. and also for a Jewish woman and a Chinese man who might have been here—though it’s possible one of them might have been S. M.”

  Frank tilted his head and looked at me. “It sounds like there’s an interesting story behind your search.”

  “Sort of. It’s more like a personal connection I’m trying to track down.”

  “Understood.” Frank nodded. “Hold on,” he said. He called his secretary in and scribbled a note on a piece of paper. “Please make a copy of this and send it to the registrar’s office, the bursar’s office, the chair of the Mathematics Department, and the Office for Foreign Studies,” he said. He turned back to me. “I’ve sent for records, enrollment lists and such. Hopefully they’ll help you get to the bottom of your mystery. I’ll have everything sent to the pension you’re staying in. In the meantime, I recommend you see Professor Mueller, the chair of the Mathematics Department, yourself, and let him know that I sent you.”

  “Thank you so much. I don’t know what to say.”

  He waved off my thanks. “Any student of Professor Behr’s is a friend of mine,” he said. “In fact, you must forgive me. I’d like very much to take you to dinner, but my schedule for the next several days does not permit it. Perhaps you could drop by in two days or so to let me know how things are going, and we can arrange it then?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. And thanking him again for the amount of work he’d already done on my behalf, I took my leave.

  THE FIRST PLACE I VISITED was the math library to request access to Emmy Noether’s archived papers, as well as Einstein’s, Gauss’s, and Hilbert’s. I was so excited to be in Göttingen, the former mecca of mathematics. There were a few professors, I knew, who remained from the golden years, but the program had been gutted, even more so than Bonn’s. It had been one of the first universities to begin firing Jewish faculty when the Nazis rose to power, starting with Noether. The students had protested her “Jewess mathematics” and though Hilbert and her other colleagues had launched a spirited defense via a letter-writing campaign that the absolute best mathematicians had all signed off on, citing her excellence, they had not been able to prevail. It had been the first great shock: the first moment that the faculty realized that their world had changed—that they had lost an influence and power they had not realized could be taken away.

  The firings continued. The Jewish students were chased out. Some of the non-Jews began boycotting the classes of Jewish faculty—not just boycotting, but protesting in front of their classes, blocking students’ professors from entering their classrooms. Courant left next, then Landau and Weyl. This was when Hilbert famously declared, “There is no mathematics in Göttingen anymore.”

  And this turned out to be true. When Hilbert finally died, there was nothing to draw the kind of talent that had flocked there before. The program never recovered.

  I WENT TO PROFESSOR MUELLER’S OFFICE after the library. He was occupied, but I was told he would be available in an hour. To fill the time during my wait, I climbed the stairs to the math museum, which was on the top floor of the building and was simply an informal collection of objects that various faculty members had collected over the years: telescopes, models of polyhedra and Möbius strips, various optical and electrical devices. I studied the photographs lining the walls. There were pictures of Hilbert, Minkowski, Landau, and Gauss. And among them three photographs of Emmy Noether: in each of them she wore her trademark round glasses, long skirt, and button-down white shirt. Her face was serious but warm, her hands relaxed, her hair askew in its bun.

  I stood for a long time, looking at the faces of the students in all the photographs. After a while, I became aware that someone was watching me.

  When I turned to face him, he approached with a smile. He was a handsome older gentleman, who looked to be in his early fifties, about my father’s age. “I see you’re looking at the pictures of Herr Noether,” he said, in German.

  “Herr Noether?” I said. “I was looking at the pictures of Frau Emmy Noether.”

  He smiled. “We called her Herr, not Frau, as a mark of respect,” he said. “You are looking at the picture of the last generation of Noether’s boys. See? That’s me, right there.” And he pointed to a slender youth.

  “You’re one of Noether’s boys?”

  “Obviously I’m not a boy any longer,” he said. “But, yes, I was one of the last. I’m surprised you’ve heard of us. Usually only other mathematicians know of Noether and her collection of algebraists.”

  “But I am a mathematician,” I said. “Aspiring, at least. I’m a student.”

  “Ah, what a coincidence! I am a professor.” The man twinkled his eyes at me. I noticed they were a deep green, flecked with gold. “Well, then, you should know that Herr Noether’s lectures were nearly impossible to follow; she’d just get started and go wherever she wanted to, hardly pausing to answer questions, getting chalk all over her clothes. We’d have to dust her off before we let her leave the room.”

  “Sounds charming,” I said. I laughed. “I’m Katherine.” I held out my hand.

  He took it and raised it to his lips, half gallantly, half ironically.

  “And I’m Karl. What brings you here to this neglected museum of mathematics?” he asked with a flourish of his arm.

&
nbsp; “I’m looking for someone,” I said.

  “Just what I was hoping you’d say,” he said. He leaned forward and took my hand back in his—a surprising, intimate gesture. “So tell me,” he said, clasping it warmly, “who are you looking for, and where do you come from, and what is your connection to the person you’re seeking?”

  “Those are unfortunately all questions I seem to lack answers to at the moment.”

  “Ah, so you’re mysterious,” he said.

  I laughed and blushed and felt—not shy, exactly, but emboldened somehow.

  “Let’s start smaller then,” he said. “What do you do at the university?”

  “I don’t do anything here,” I said. “I’m on break from the University of Bonn, where I’m a visiting scholar in the mathematics department. I’m from America, originally.”

  “America!” he exclaimed. And then switching to perfect English, “Shall we get some tea, perhaps, some coffee? And you can tell me what I can do to help you with your search?”

  “I’m afraid I have an appointment with Professor Mueller very soon.”

  “Ah. How about dinner?”

  Normally I would be wary at the attention of a stranger. But for some reason, coming from Karl, it didn’t feel threatening, or even particularly pushy, just friendly and flirtatious, and I found him charming, and attractive.

  “I’m having dinner with my friend Henry. I could meet you tomorrow, though.”

  “Tomorrow, then,” he said. “Shall we meet here, in front of the photos of Noether and her boys, at half past five tomorrow?”

  “Yes. I’ll be here.”

  “And now you must let me escort you to Professor Mueller’s office and give you a small tour along the way,” Karl said, offering me his arm. Though I was pressed for time he insisted on taking me on the scenic route to Professor Mueller’s office, telling me not to worry, and stopping at various landmarks to tell me the personal histories of how and when famous mathematical and scientific discoveries were made in that exact place, and of proofs written from the trenches of war, and unfinished theorems scribbled down on deathbeds. And finally, we were back at Professor Mueller’s office.

  “My own office is just down the hall,” he said, gesturing in that direction. “Drop by any time.” And then, “Ah!” as a man emerged. “Professor Mueller. I’ve delivered your next appointment. Enjoy!” And with a wave and a flourish, he was off.

  Professor Mueller was entirely business, possessing none of Karl’s charm. “Ah, yes, the Provost told me you’d be coming,” he said, briskly. “My secretary is looking for the information he requested for you, and we can have enrollment lists to you in the next few days. Professor Hektor and Professor Meisenbach may be worth asking as well—Hektor was here then, and Meisenbach was a student at the time. Did he have anything to tell you when you met with him?”

  “Professor Hektor is on my list,” I said. “But not Meisenbach. Is he the Meisenbach of the Schieling-Meisenbach theorem?”

  “Yes,” said Professor Mueller. “And as for Karl Meisenbach, I just saw you talking with him outside my door!”

  “Karl is . . . Karl Meisenbach?”

  “Indeed he is.” Professor Mueller gave me a sharp look. “You may want to ask him if he knew the people you’re looking for.”

  “I didn’t realize who he was,” I said. “I didn’t know he was still here.” The truth was I’d never heard that Meisenbach had produced anything after his one famous theorem and I had just assumed he was dead.

  “If anyone would know, it’d be him.”

  “All right,” I said. “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Check in with my secretary in the next couple days for that list from the registrar’s office,” Mueller continued. “And if you need anything else, please feel free to stop by.”

  AT DINNER, Henry and I were both glowing with happiness. We’d each accomplished more in that day than we’d hoped. Henry had seen the Grimm archives, had seen their notes and hand drawings. “At this rate I may finish my book sooner than I’d hoped.” She rubbed her hands together. “Oh, I’m so glad we came,” she said. “I have a good feeling about what you’ll find out while you’re here.”

  Chapter 19

  THE NEXT MORNING I WENT FOR A WALK IN TOWN. When I returned to the pension, a note was waiting for me from Frank’s office. Inside the envelope were two names: Simon Mannheim and Stefan Mintz. There was a note from Frank. These were the names of the two mathematics students with the initials S. M. for the year I was searching for. If either of these was promising, Frank wrote he’d be happy to search correspondence and records for known whereabouts.

  At dinner, I showed Karl the list, and he said, “I knew both of them to varying degrees. What would you like to know?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly,” I said. I laughed. “When we first met, you thought I was trying to be mysterious, but the truth is I am actually just confused.”

  “Well,” Karl said. “Perhaps I can help un-confuse you. It is, as a professor, part of my job description after all.”

  I smiled. “I haven’t told a lot of people this story,” I said, “but I inherited a notebook that has the initials S. M. and the words Universität Göttingen, 1935, etched on the inside cover. And I’m looking for the person who wrote it.”

  “Fascinating,” Karl said. “And the link to the math department?”

  “The notebook is filled almost entirely with math,” I said.

  Karl took a deep breath in. “Well, Simon Mannheim left the university sometime in the 1930s to become a novelist,” he said. “He still lives near Göttingen, in a town forty minutes away by train. And Stefan Mintz is a professor somewhere in London, last I heard. I can put you in touch with either of them somewhat easily, though I haven’t been in contact myself for quite a long time.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’d appreciate it.”

  “What kind of math was in this notebook of yours? Perhaps I can help you decipher the riddle.”

  “A lot of equations I couldn’t place,” I said.

  “And why are you looking for the author? Why do you suspect it’s significant?”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I’m trying to track the owner down for personal reasons, not professional ones.”

  Karl nodded. “Have you shown the notebook to anyone else?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “I’d be happy to take a look.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Karl said. “Perhaps after dinner I could walk you home and have a peek?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, feeling suddenly skittish. Henry was always laughing at how hesitant I was with strangers, how old-fashioned, but I’d learned from experience that a man can switch from harmless to aggressive in the blink of an eye. I hadn’t yet learned how to block or turn away that kind of attention effectively and with grace, in the way that Henry seemed to manage. To be honest, I never did.

  But I sometimes felt—as I did now, with Karl, that my caution made me look foolish, as if I expected every man to be attracted to me. As if I thought so highly of myself, as if I thought I deserved the attention. I was embarrassed by this, and I regretted also the opportunities I missed out on because of it. Conversations I’d never had. Friendships I’d never developed. Potential mentors I had spurned.

  “Actually, come over,” I said. “It will be all right.”

  “Are you sure?” Karl asked.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “To see the notebook, right?”

  It seemed to me that Karl was nervous for the rest of dinner, and I wondered if I’d made a mistake in inviting him over after my initial hesitation: if he’d noticed, if I’d sent the wrong message. But after we’d agreed that he’d come over, he was very quiet, and I grew more and more embarrassed.

  When we arrived at the pension, Henry was home. She flew out to the stair landing in her nightgown crying out, “Kat, Kat, you’ll never guess what I discovered today!” And then, upon seeing Karl
, she stopped short, and said—“Oh!”

  We all stood, frozen in the stairwell. Karl and I looking up, Henry with her long black hair coiled up in a loose mass atop her head.

  “Henry, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I was telling Karl about my notebook, and he thought maybe it would be useful to take a look.”

  “Oh, of course!” cried Henry, while Karl said at the same moment, “Would it be better if I came another time?”

  Henry burst out laughing and said, “Not at all, but I will go back in and get dressed, and then Kat—you ruffian—will have to introduce us properly.”

  INSIDE, I MADE KARL some tea and brought out raspberry cookies from the pantry that Henry always kept well stocked. Karl still looked a little nervous, but he brightened a bit when Henry came out in silk pajama pants, a cropped blouse, and a bright scarf tied around her head. That was Henry. Decades later, and I still remember what she wore.

  I went into my bedroom and pulled my notebook out of the satchel I kept it in. I shook out the bits of loose paper I’d tucked in over the years—various notes to myself, my translation of the list of commands I’d found after the incident with Blake—exhorting courage, and reminding me to be kind.

  “Do you know I’ve never seen the mysterious notebook?” Henry said to Karl when I brought it out.

  “Did you want to?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “But you never said anything!”

  “It always seemed so private,” she said. “I didn’t want to impose.”

  But Karl wasn’t paying attention. He was staring at the notebook I held, and when I gave it to him, it seemed to me that he took it with trembling hands.