A Doubter's Almanac (18 page)

“Still the damned Abendroth conjecture.”

Hay leaned back, letting out a whistle. “Well, you certainly can’t be accused of giving up on anything.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Tell me, though, are you close?”

“Close to what, Knudson?”

“Don’t be coy. Dr. Hyun would like to see something solved with his name attached to it. Something big and famous.” He raised his glass. “Like Abendroth’s last conjecture.”

Andret gazed evenly at him. “I might be,” he said.

“A year?”

“Perhaps.”

Hay studied him. “I should tell you,” he continued, topping off the drinks. “There are those in the department who are against it.”

“Okay.”

“They find you—let’s see, how do I put it?” He looked down at the stack of papers on his desk. “Abrasive. Arrogant. I’ve heard both those words.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t want you to say anything, Andret. I’m just letting you know. These are the difficulties I face in making a decision. You could help me out, you know.”

“How could I do that?”

Hay set down his drink and neatened his pile of papers. “You could begin,” he said, “by behaving a little more civilly.”

—

L
ATER THAT WEEK,
a note in his mailbox. A pink office slip this time, folded over, with Helena Pierce’s initials on the front. The square alongside
PHONE MESSAGE
had been checked. The caller:
Professor Earl Biettermann.

So the son of a bitch was a professor now. It was strange that he hadn’t heard.

He unfolded the sheet and read the Selectric’s dark type:

Sad news. Hans Borland has passed away.

Asked that you be notified.

Jesus. Even now he heard the old man’s sour voice. He set his arm against the mailboxes and felt the same mean game of jousts between them, as though even in death his teacher had managed to deliver one last blow with the pike. He shook his head and turned to the wall.

Behind him, the office door creaked. He was still looking at the wall when a hand tapped his shoulder. “Professor Andret?”

She hadn’t addressed him kindly in years.

“I’m okay.”

“Professor Andret—”

“Really—I’m fine.”

The footsteps retreated. A moment later, a box of tissues. He accepted one.

“I know he must have been important to you.”

“He was, he was. He was—I can’t really figure it.” His own words surprised him. “Oh,” he said, turning. “Oh, Helena.”

“I’ve been looking for you all morning, Professor Andret, to be honest. Since the call came in.” There seemed to be tears in her eyes. “Professor Biettermann told me how upset it would make you. But I guess Professor Borland had asked him to give you the news, if it happened. I know he was sick for a while, but it still must have been such a shock to hear it like this. I’m so sorry, Milo.”

He looked more closely at her: yes, those were tears in her eyes. “He’s the reason I’m here,” he said softly.

She nodded at him, her hands on her mouth.

“His voice is the one that tells me to keep going.”

“Oh, Milo, I’m so sorry. I should never have just left a note. I should have come and found you. I’m really so sorry about all of it.” She laid her hand on his arm.

He touched it there and looked up again: yes, he could see it—she
was
sorry. He didn’t in any way deserve it; but there it was.

—

L
ATE THAT VERY
afternoon, his phone rang at home. This time Hay’s voice was curt. “We need you down here right now, Andret. It’s important.”

When he pushed open the frosted-glass door of the chairman’s office, a line of startled faces looked up at him. It was the nine most senior members of the department, arranged around the elegant oak meeting table.

Hay rose from the chair at the end. “I thought you’d have knocked. But thanks for coming on such short notice.”

At the news of Borland’s death, Andret had spent the day at Clip’s, where they’d somehow run out of bourbon and had served him rye instead. Now he felt darkened. Darkened and wrapped, like a man in a sack. Hay had spoken, but it took a moment for him to understand that the faces in the room were awaiting a response. The sheen on the windows broke into a row of angled prisms. “Well, I didn’t,” he said, turning away.

A silence. Some of the heads glanced around.

“Knock,” he clarified, directing his gaze to the carpet.

“Well,” said Hay. He cleared his throat. “This is an unusual circumstance, but some of the department wanted to speak to you in person. I’ll be frank—as you know, you’ve been nominated for the Man-Sik Hyun Chair in Experimental Mathematics. Which of course would be bestowed with tenure. And a subchairmanship. Did you have anything you wished to say?”

“Wished to say?”

“To the committee, Milo.”

He looked up. “I’ll do a top-notch job, gentlemen.” He nodded at the faces. Then, gravely: “I’m a damn good mathematician, and I appreciate the opportunity.”

Hay smiled. Andret folded his hands. When he glanced at the windows again they were just windows. He turned his gaze then to the familiar Eastern European features in the room. His colleagues at the table looked like the survivors of a sunken Lithuanian ferry, with the exception of Hay, who looked like the captain of the Nordic vessel that had rescued them. The Department of Broken Englishes—that’s how they were known around campus. A startlingly uniform wall of bulbous Semitic features, threadbare sport coats, and colorless ties. He was gripped with the abrupt, sour understanding that he hated them all.

Then, as he stood there trying to shake the feeling, he suddenly understood the obvious: that
they
hated
him,
too, just as savagely. Faces emerged from the book-cluttered background. Small-time tyrants and shameless throne coveters. Second-rate strivers: every single one of them. And all of them out to destroy him. The conviction gathered strength. Out of his mouth came “Vile looks won’t stop me.”

“Pardon?”

“You’re all nothing. A fancy fucking table of nothing.”

Someone laughed aloud. Then the room went silent. The windows shot another flicker of color.

“Let’s try to ignore that,” said Hay. “Please, everyone.”

“It’s exactly what I was talking about,” said a voice.

“Look, Andret,” Hay said, “I’ll keep it specific. What are you working on now? Can you tell the committee?”

Andret turned his eyes to the carpet again. The premonition receded. He blinked. “Abendroth’s last conjecture. You know what I’m working on, Knudson.”

“I’m asking for the sake of the committee. There was some question about it. And how far are you from a solution?”

“That’s an ignorant question.”

“He’s right,” someone said.

“I mean, in your rough estimation.” Hay chuckled as though he were enjoying the exchange. He opened his hands. “Milo—what we discussed right here, a couple of days ago. How far are you from a proof?”

Andret looked up again. The room remained the room. But now there were adjustments in the faces. Nods. Turnings. The details less decipherable. He began to think that perhaps he was standing before friend and not foe. It was possible that he’d misjudged. Enrico Petti, a geometer, appeared to be the one who’d laughed, then spoken up in his defense. Riney Burtsfield shot his gaze around angrily, but his malice was obviously directed at Hay. Raul Shortkopf, one of the department’s minor despots, tapped his nanoid fingers clumsily as he performed a compulsive computation. Hay himself continued to smile.

“Roughly,” Hay said again. “Tell us what you think
roughly,
Professor Andret.”

“A year,” he responded. Then, “Maybe two.”

Someone whistled.

“Thank you,” Hay said. “That’s the information we needed. We appreciate your time.”

A hand on his elbow. He was being guided out. At the threshold, it released him. In the hallway, hidden from the others, he covered his eyes. When he uncovered them, the world was again unremarkable. The dark floor. The overpinned corkboard. He took a step. The pearled window of the mail room. He realized that Hay was still there behind him. When he turned, his chairman leaned forward from the doorway and whispered, “I’ll let you know what happens, Milo.”

Words came from inside the room. Someone said, “The biggest pig eats the best apples.”

Andret looked Hay straight in the eye. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about any of you,” he said. “None of it matters to me one goddamn bit.”

Hay appeared startled. But then his expression changed. “That’s where we differ, Milo,” he said. “To
me,
it does matter. It matters quite a lot.” And he wearily pulled shut the door.

—

“I
DON’T KNOW,”
she replied, the line echoing. “It’s a long way.”

“It would mean a lot.”

A pause. Classical music playing in the background. He pictured the narrow bed.

“We’d get separate rooms, right?”

“Yes, of course. Separate rooms.”

“I mean,
if
I agreed to come.”

“Yes,
if
you did. I’m being considered for a promotion, you know.”

“Yes, I heard. That’s wonderful. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“Well—” she said, “—I still don’t know.”

“Separate rows on the plane.”

A small laugh.

“Helena.”

“I’ll consider it.”

“Will you? I’ll agree to whatever you want.
Really
. And it goes without saying that I’ll pay for everything.”

“I’ll be back in time for work on Monday?”

“You can stay as long as you like. I’ll pay for a couple of more days out there if you want. I mean for you, alone. You could make it a vacation. I’ll talk to Knudson. All I ask is for you to come to the service, that’s it. Do you have people in California?”

“I don’t know. I might.”

“Please, Helena,” he said. “
Please
. There’s nobody else I can ask.”

Regression to the Mean

B
ERKELEY.
T
HE VERY
same place as on the day he’d left. Nearly six entire years, disappeared into a perfect, metaphysical maw. The same shouting street huckster in the same red bandanna. The same black-lipped dog leaping for a Frisbee. On Telegraph, a line of hippies against a storefront, their tire-tread sandals stretched across the concrete. Helena took his elbow, and they stepped around the legs. She was wearing a pleated skirt. “Is this where we’re planning to spend our time?” she said.

He led her up Bancroft. A few hours remained before the service. On College, a cab. At his old corner he paid the driver to wait, and they walked up the ramshackle block. At last he stopped and looked down into the familiar windows. Behind the two dark panes, he could make out the edge of a thinly tassled rug. Suddenly he saw Cle Wells step from the shower in his T-shirt.

“What?” said Helena.

“Oh, God.”

“Is this it? Is this where you lived?” She leaned sideways to look up at the building.

“It’s all different.”

He led her back to the cab. This time they got out in Rockridge. The coffee shops, the sandwich places, all of it entirely the same. The same chai tea special taped to the window of the Lime Rose. The same pale-skinned counter boy who used to serve them their Turkish coffee.

Why was he still thinking about her?

He needed a drink.

At a corner market, while Helena used the bathroom, he downed a mini. Then he took her arm and they headed up Claremont toward the hills. The houses were larger here, blue gums and eucalyptuses arching the roofs. Lemon trees in the well-kept yards, the lemons hanging like earrings. And towering above them all were the stately sycamores, holding out their marble boughs. “Hans Borland used to live up here,” he said. “In one of these mansions with a view of the bay.”

“What was he like?”

“I don’t actually know. I could never really figure. I couldn’t decide whether he was my friend or my enemy.”

“He was your friend,” she said. “He championed you.”

“Did he?”

“Yes.”

Her step quickened. She might have been blushing. Andret caught up. The street rose more steeply now, and they ascended in silence, her heels picking a path. The pleated skirt swishing. She wasn’t as pretty as Olga or as welcoming as Annabelle, but there was something else about her. Her arms swung steadily.

Near the summit, a stone terrace opened onto a view. They sat across from each other on a crumbling wall. “Tell me about
you,
” he said.

She blushed again. “Oh, I don’t know.”

“Come on, tell me. What do you like to do?”

“The usual things.”

“Like what?”

“Like garden. I take care of the roses behind my building. I guess I paint a little, too.”

“What kind of painting?”

“Landscapes, mostly. Not very good ones. Really, most of what I do is help my middle sister with her kids. I work hard in the department, though. I enjoy working hard at everything. The garden, too.” She seemed to be more comfortable with him now and even smiled. “I take care of twenty-five roses and a rare kind of peony.”

“Do you like it?”

She looked up at him. “I like working hard, if that’s what you mean. I love being an ant.”

He was startled.

“Interesting,” he said. “It’s an appealing thought, though, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“Being an ant. Giving up on all the rest.” He leaned down to tie his shoe. As he sat up again, he recognized his mistake. “And what about you?” he said. “Do you want your own children?”