Finally I went back out to the Square. The church was many centuries old, and built on centuries more of foundations. But the Boot and Thorn was very old, also. These two have faced each other across the Square, contending over it. So far neither had prevailed.
Sunday morning was fine and clear as glass. I rose early; I couldn’t help it. I walked in thought through Sabbath empty streets to the Munster square. Master Johann’s house was blank and not my destination. I was going to the Cathedral itself. Erasmus was buried in the left aisle and Oecolampadius in the center, but I wanted a different grave and passed by to the cloisters.
I knew just where to go. The shaded red stone columns divided the dim walk from the bright grass square. On the white plaster walls, carved stone epitaphs divided the shaded lives of remembered men from those bright living who remember. Soon I stood at a black oval surrounded by a garland wreath of marble, and capped by a globe and two shields.
One shield was of three seven-leaved branches, which was the symbol for Master Johann’s family. The other shield was a lion. The engraving was in Latin. At the top of the oval it named Uncle Jacob. It said of him that he was Mathematicus Incomparabilis. It listed that he was Professor of Mathematics at Basel’s University for eighteen years; member of the royal academy of Paris; and had held many other honors. The Roman ranks of M’s, C’s, L’s, X’s, V’s, and I’s marched through the years of his life, from his Natus, through his Augusti Aetatis, to his Extinctus twenty years ago.
Beneath the large oval was a smaller medallion, a circle. In the circle was an Archimedean spiral of five revolutions. Around it was the inscription Resurgo Eadem Mutata, I Arise Again the Same Though Changed. It was a thoughtful statement, and I thought on it, as I had before. It had always bothered me that the spiral it circles, the Archimedean spira mundanus, did not match the thought. It was an obscure point, but Mathematicians held strong opinions on spirals and their meanings.
Finally I left the cloister, not back to the Square, but to the back of the Munster, to the river. This was where I would finish my walk through memories and meanings of lives, lives current, lives recent, and lives before.
In the age before Basel, if that age ever was, there was still the Rhine. The bank would have been a high grassy hill steep down to the water. In ancient, ancient times, one Basel was built of rough stone that Roman hands never put there. I’d seen these stones. They were found beneath and pulled from the crypt of the Munster when it was repaired many years ago.
Two thousand years ago the Romans built on the hillside and named their city Basileus, which meant Kingship. A thousand years ago, the Germans ended Rome and took her cities. The people who lived inside the walls today were those German conquerors of Roman conquerors. Of what I knew of conquest, the blood of the ancients and the Romans both still flowed in Basel’s veins.
Those stones of that first Basel were its only epitaph, but not the only memory of it. Basel’s people walked in their streets on the dust of earlier cities, and all the cities were only different ages of the one Basel, and the city had always been within its own walls and not part of the world around.
Now the Munster stood on the hill, and a paved court behind the cathedral was high above the water. The old bank was buried beneath its sheer walls.
I stood and looked out at the water. The river was high. It hadn’t rained more than other Aprils but the Rhine drained many lands; we saw it pass, but knew not whence it came or where it was going. Somewhere above Basel there’d been rain. The city had high walls and very little from outside ever passed them, but the river always had. I supposed that Uncle Jacob had died closer to his bed than the river.
Later, dressed proper, I took my grandmother’s hand and promenaded her solemnly to the Saint Leonhard’s Church. Every Sunday I’d sit and stand with her for the hymns and readings, and hear the sermon, which was always of great interest to me. I was reminded of watching my own father in his pulpit. A few times each year I would take my grandmother to Riehen, for her to visit my mother, her daughter, and we would sit under my father’s Sunday teaching. But those times were rare.
It had only been one day before that I’d been immersed in the ocean of Mathematics; now I floated in the air of Theology.
Both were unseen and undefinable. What were the rules of Mathematics? What were those of God? They both existed with or without our knowing, they were universal truths, and our lives were ruled by them absolutely. Could I say that two fish are three? Could I steal a fish and say it was right? Was it two different laws that I would be violating, or were they both one? All the princes and armies in Europe couldn’t change a point of either.
And both laws divided between right and wrong. Stealing was wrong, and a Mathematic error was wrong. The wages of sin were death, but the wages of incorrectly adding were less severe. But still, for each there was right and wrong, yes and no, good and . . . not good. And just as Mathematics was sure and a man could build a house firmly on it calculations, so he could also build his life’s house even more firmly on God’s law.
And I had a feeling now, something that had been with me since I last passed the Ash Gate, that the contention between right and wrong was nearer to the surface than it had been before. I’d never known for what king the Roman city was named. But the kingship of Basel, through all its ages, had always been contested.
Afterward, at two in the afternoon, we returned to the dining table and dined. It was the only meal of the week that could be described that way, where we were dressed well and sat with pewter plates and a platter with as much food as we wanted. Every other meal was eaten plainly, in thanks and humbleness. On Sunday, we accepted that God was bountiful.
Then, through the afternoon, I read to Grandmother; that Sunday from Job. Who could wrestle with Leviathan? And who has beheld Behemoth, with limbs like bars of iron? The Lord warned Job of them both, and not only Job. I have thought that Leviathan and Behemoth walk Basel’s streets. They came sometime long ago, even when the streets were slight paths between straw and wood huts, and the streets only hardened since then.
The Sabbath was the day of rest. We both went to bed early. We had done no work on this one day of the week. That was hard for me, but it was proper.
The circle of the week returned me to Monday, to beneath Master Johann’s roof and Mistress Dorothea’s tongue. “Leonhard!” She was, as always, in her perpetual constant motion. As I entered the kitchen door she was seated but never still. A chicken waited on her table. “A dog’s put a hole in the fence and it needs mending.” The girl who helps her in the kitchen was somewhere else that morning. I didn’t know where, and I would certainly not ask. If I did, I’d be told where, and why, and why not the next day, and because of who, and on. But without the girl, I alone remained for the Mistress’s bombardment. “My sister-in-law’s fever is back. And don’t put the wood in the settle. She worked too hard before she could become well. She has too many feathers.” This was about the chicken she was plucking.
I stood for a moment with my load of wood. “A fever?”
“It wants washing first, get a brush. She’s always digging and chewing.” This was about the wood settle, and then the dog. “My brother says to let them run.” This was likely about the fever, but might also have been about the dog, or even the chicken. “I’ll have him warn the Council.” What Mistress Dorothea would have her brother warn the Town Council of, unmanaged dogs or contagious fevers, I didn’t yet know, but surely not chickens. The threat, though, like everything else concerning her, was not idle. Magistrate Faulkner’s warnings to the City Council of Basel carried great weight.
The wood I was carrying was also a great weight. I set it on the floor beside the fireplace and started on the settle, brushing the bark and splinters into the fire and then scrubbing harder. “Are there other fevers in the city?”
“I know of some,” she answered, and I knew that I would soon also know. I finished the settle and filled it with wood, and heard the list of my Mistre
ss’s acquaintances who had any complaint against their health. It was short enough but very detailed.
“Your own family’s been blessed with good health,” I said, remembering the story. “Your father lived long, didn’t he?”
“Seventy-two years, and hale but the last four.”
“And you returned to Basel from Holland to care for him.”
“I never wished for Holland,” she answered. “Flat as the sea, and nearly the sea. That was a hard move, with a baby and the armies.”
“You moved with armies?” I asked, taking bellows to the fire. It, and she, really needed little stoking.
“Move with armies? What would that be? We moved from them.”
And I moved from the armies, also. “And it took you long?”
“Two months. We were stopped in Strasbourg for half that, waiting for the road to be clear.”
“Clear of the armies,” I said. That would be what she was speaking of. Louis of France’s armies were fighting in that area at that time, as they had been in most areas at most times. And the baby would have been Nicolaus.
“Ten years in Groningen,” she said, “and then Master Johann accused of being a heretic Cartesian! It was scurrilously we were treated. But the Master didn’t want to leave his Chair. He was never Cartesian.” I knew Master Johann was the most orthodox of Reformed men, if not the most heartfelt. But I didn’t believe Cartesian ideas should be dismissed; that philosophy, and Monsieur Descartes himself, had been a study of mine.
“He was Chair of Mathematics there,” I said.
“A petty Chair next to Basel,” she said, “but still nothing to throw off like ashes, and the Master’s honorable above all and wouldn’t let gossip drive him from his work. Then the Dean here sent for him to come for a Chair. It was my father who wrote to us of the invitation, and also old Master Nicolaus.” This would have been Grandfather Nicolaus, Master Johann’s father. Both families were wealthy and both magisterial and none of the Deans of the four colleges of the University would have ignored their requests.
“Any University in Europe would have pleaded for Master Johann.”
“They did, they did. When we left Groningen, the Provost of Utrecht pursued us a hundred miles to lure the Master there! But Basel was grandest and kin was dearest and so he did come, even if it was for the Greek Language Chair. And so I could be here for Father’s declining years. It was the Lord’s mercy to us all, and I was at his bedside with him and his two precious grandchildren. They were his joy and his light, those two, and he was theirs.” We’d come back to the first question of her father’s health.
Thoughts of chance were still on my mind. “He would still have had to win the draw, though, to get the Chair. It would still have only been one out of three?”
Mistress Dorothea had already cocked her head and given me a shrewd glance. “The fence is waiting. Mend it, Leonhard, before the dogs make the hole worse, and I’ll be grateful to you.”
It would be time soon to dress black and white, but first while I was in brown I ran to the Barefoot Square, and the Boot and Thorn. Daniel had said he’d be collecting his horse.
Day in the Common Room was like day in heavy forest. Light found its way to the tables and walls like rain in the forest would, only after touching many distant surfaces first. The fire was low, just smolderers, because it hadn’t yet died from the night past and it must return to life for the night coming. Daytime was the fire’s purgatory and a half life for night dwellers. Charon the cat slept with one eye.
I sat for a while with two men I knew, a stonecutter and a bookprinter, eating noon lunch in the twilight. They were arguing over which had the greatest permanence.
“What tears it?” the mason said. “What burns it?” He was an old man, and strong, with gray hair streaked dark and white, and the veins in his hands stood out. “Words written in stone, they never fade.”
“But what’s said with them?” the printer answered. “You cut one word while I press a thousand.” The printer was younger but his hair was white with thin black patches like marks, and his skin was brown and leathery.
“Which of those thousand last? Paper. Here, then gone.”
“I’ll print a thousand more when they are.”
“And my one still lasts. There’s a hundred men buried in the Munster yard, and all that’s remembered of them is what I chiseled.”
“There’s a thousand men whose graves are lost, but they’re remembered for their books that I’ve printed.
“If there was anything to remember about me,” I said, “I’d want it said with both.”
“There was a man,” the printer said, “dead more than a decade, but I printed his book and he was remembered again.”
“But I cut his epitaph and he was never forgotten.”
“I print the words he said.”
“I print the words said about him.”
“I publish his soul.”
“I chisel his life.”
“Lithicus,” I said to the stonecutter, “I know of that man. Was it my Master Johann’s brother Jacob?”
“That one, yes.”
“Did you know him?”
“I knew him.”
“And Lieber,” I said to the bookbinder, “I have that book, also. The Ars Conjectandi. Did you read any of it?”
“That Latin? I don’t know any of it.”
“You carve Latin,” I said to Lithicus. “Do you remember the words you cut?”
“I don’t know that Latin, either,” he said, and he and Lieber shook their heads together, that anyone would.
When Daniel did come in, I was still thinking of languages only spoken now by men in black robes. He sat and toyed with his cup of dice and I thought of the Latin his uncle had written about the arts of chance. And I told him what his mother had told me.
“Greek?” Daniel said. “He’d take the Greek Chair? He couldn’t crawl in that language.”
“I think he could crawl,” I said of Master Johann, “and walk and run.”
“But he wouldn’t sit. He’d never take a Chair of Greek. Leave Mathematics at Groningen for Greek at Basel? It’s not believable.”
“Your Grandfather Faulkner wanted his family close.”
“I remember that,” Daniel said warmly. “He was kind and a gentle old man. I’ll long remember that.”
“That’s what brought your father back to Basel.”
“Half a Chair, and half a family wouldn’t add to a whole.”
“His own father was here.”
“That’s a subtraction, not an addition.”
“Do you remember your Grandfather Nicolaus?”
“Not any. He died the year after we were back. Brutus had fled Basel to Holland to be away from him.”
“Why?”
“I was never told.”
“Will you tell your own children why you fled from your father in Basel?” I asked.
“No!” He laughed again. “Because they’ll have fled Basel themselves to be away from me.” As he said it, Gustavus came into the room and on his back was a log for the fire; a true log near the size of a man, four feet long and from low in the tree. “And Leonhard,” Daniel said, “I’ll tell you this from my own wisdom: When any of us flee from Basel, we only come back if we have a strong reason. I don’t believe Brutus only came back because Grandpoppa Faulkner wanted him to, and not for hope of a Chair in Greek, either.” With a thump that would have broken any other stone but not that hearth, Gustavus threw the wood onto the embers. “There was only one thing that would bring him to Basel, and that was the Chair of Mathematics.”
“But your Uncle Jacob had that Chair.”
“And he died.” The log ignited. That fireplace was a firewomb; a flame would spring from anything thrown in it.
“But before, or after, or when?” I asked.
“You tell me!” Daniel answered. “That’s the task I’ve given you!”
“I never liked the task, and I like it less as I see it more.”<
br />
“What have you seen of it?”
“There’s seeing other than by sight.”
“More of that?” he said. “Still seeing what’s unseen, are you, Leonhard? Then see what I want to know, and you’ll be done with it. Brutus came here for the Chair of Mathematics and nothing less.”
“And is that why you’ve come back?” I asked.
“I’ve come back to learn the truth about Uncle Jacob. Now, who has Greek today? Desiderius still?”
“He does.”
“And who was it before? I don’t remember.”
“I don’t know. Desiderius had just taken the Chair when I came five years ago,” I said.
“Ask him who was before, and how that man took the Chair. Or more, what was it that happened twenty years ago? Greek must have been empty at the time.”
“You could ask him,” I said.
“I’m watched every minute.”
Gustavus was watching. “Your horse is ready, Master.” I’d seen him approach and wait while we spoke, but Daniel hadn’t and he was startled.
“Have Willi bring it out front to the Square,” he answered, and then to me, “He was promised Greek. And the drawing, that wasn’t a hindrance. He’d have the one chance in three, but he knew he’d be chosen in that. Yet Greek. No, he knew Mathematics would come open.” He slapped my back, very pleased. “You’ve made a good start, Leonhard. How long was Jacob alive after we came, or was he at all? How’d he die? Get that for me, Leonhard. Get that! I’m pleased. This is coming even better than I’d thought!”
But Gustavus wasn’t pleased and hadn’t moved. “It will be Fritz. Willi is away with the coach.”
“Yes, yes,” Daniel said. “I remember. Fritz, then. Whoever you have. Mare or stallion?”
An Elegant Solution Page 4
