A Doubter's Almanac (19 page)

She was looking out at the view now. From this high up they could see the spires of both bridges.

“Yes, I do,” she finally said. His gaze went to where hers was turned, toward the clumped buildings of San Francisco and the twisting black stripe of the freeway. The gray clay water. The faint slashes of ships. This was the sight that had given him his first breakthrough on the Malosz, a thousand years ago. His dissertation defense. Borland’s nodding head—the approbation so rarely given. The job at Princeton. He closed his eyes.

“And what about you?” she said.

“What about me?”

“Do
you
want them?”

He looked at her. “Oh,” he said. “Kids—God no.” Then he added, “That would be cruel.”

—

A
T THE SERVICE
there seemed to be lines of bereavement on her face—as though she were the one who’d lost the great figure in her life. In the narrow pew next to him she dabbed steadily at her eyes.

An impressive crowd. Hundreds of mourners filling the long wooden benches. What looked like the entire mathematics department spread across a dozen roped rows before the pulpit. It was all puzzling—Borland was a major figure but also a damning and truculent man. Yet there seemed to be such genuine sorrow in the church. In Helena, too.

Andret was suspicious. Plenty of these people had to be feeling relief.

His own feelings shrank from him. He’d had a couple of drinks at the hotel, but by now their velvety wrap had withered to a scrim of irked melancholy. The pain that had been circling him had landed. A point in the center of his skull. He rubbed at it. For a moment, the mosaic floor wobbled. He closed his eyes. The thought occurred to him that the dean here must already be searching for Borland’s replacement; well, he wouldn’t take it. Princeton still owed him tenure, no matter how much it bruised the envious ones. And there was the possibility of the Hyun chair, too, if he hadn’t damaged it too badly.

Still.

The spectacle of the extended eulogies and the sea of bereaved faces continued to confound him. What were all these people truly feeling? Purposelessness sunk him into the pew. What was actually in the minds of all these scholarly-looking charlatans? Of all these meager men in their poorly knotted ties? Of these lugubrious women in their mournful dresses? He centered his wing tips in front of his knees and tapped them on the floor. The tiles bulged again. Then settled. The world teetered. Helena’s gloved hand entered his vision. A lacy black animal in repose across her lap. He reached to grasp it.

At that moment, his glance fell on what he’d been searching for.

—

A
T THE RECEPTION,
he excused himself and left Helena at the front bar. At the rear one, he ordered a pair of bourbons, then took a position behind the milling crowd. Yes, he was right: there she was, next to the grand piano, gazing out the windows at Vine Street. Someone who didn’t know her the way he did might not even have recognized her: hair expensively done, dark linen dress, pearls at her throat. But he saw that like the city itself she’d not actually changed at all.

He wondered if she’d come to see
him
.

When he reached her, he whispered from several feet away, “The kind of event where one
expects
to meet up with ghosts.”

She turned. “Milo?”

“Gottfried Leibniz
,
actually. Arriving with a gift.”

She took the glass and kissed him on the cheek. “No—Leibniz is with
me
. I told you that.” She laughed. “But I’m happy to see the gift.” Then she reached and kissed him on the mouth.

“Well,” he said.

A bit of puffiness around her eyes, but yes: otherwise still the same. She pointed at a man standing a long way off, near the door.

“Ah,” said Andret. “He lives.”

Biettermann looked older, too, and as superficially changed as Cle. Tanned skin. Dark tie pushed to the throat. But even from across the room the arrogance still glowed like a pilot light. Cle pulled Milo by the arm. When they neared, Earl turned, a quick gust of apprehension stiffening his features. He changed it into a smile.

Andret gave him the soul shake. Two men in similarly expensive suits, but Biettermann now with wisps of gray in his slickly combed hair. “Touché,” Andret said drily.

“Touché, brother,” answered Biettermann, equally drily.

Cle stood between them, smiling.

—

T
HAT EVENING IN
the hotel lobby, Andret coached Helena. She was to avoid saying anything about herself; he would provide the particulars. They were friends only. She was in the physics department, pursuing graduate work. No—Biettermann might question her: she was in the department of art history. Next to him on the plush couch of the atrium, she giggled. He’d brought her a glass of Chablis.

“Why would I be studying art history?” she said.

“As a matter of fact, you might actually consider it. It’d be good for you. You told me you like to paint, didn’t you?” He downed his drink. “And Earl won’t know the first thing about it.”

A moment later, his old friends were at the curb. An elegant European car. Deep leather seats. Shaded windows. As always, Biettermann drove pugnaciously. Switched lanes and pulled up close to the traffic on the crowded streets. All of it beneath a steady winter rain.

At the restaurant, a doorman guided them through the entranceway under an ivory-handled umbrella. In the palely flickering foyer, the maître d’ took their coats. “Professor Milo Andret,” he said, bowing. “An honor for us.”

This was Biettermann’s doing. The sarcasm was evident.

At the table, his old nemesis lost no time in launching into the details of his career. He was dressed in a different suit now, this one even more elegantly cut. Cle’s wrists sparkled with rows of bangles. They might have been diamonds. Andret made a point not to look. Next to him, Helena had on the same dress she’d worn to the memorial, but at least she’d done something with her hair. It was up in a bun. Biettermann droned on. At Berkeley he’d finished in mathematics and been accepted into all the top programs—Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Princeton—before undergoing a change of heart.

The waiter arrived with wine, a Vega Sicilia. Biettermann tasted it and sent it back. A different bottle appeared. Then the appetizers—clams Casino, bruschetta, a layered arrangement of sugared dates. Biettermann looked like he’d been taken apart by a machine and reassembled. Tan hands. Glowing teeth. Andret didn’t mind staring. Beside him he could hear Helena whispering over the tiny plates that steamed with garlic and pepper. Biettermann grabbed the new wine from the waiter and poured it around the table, looking pleased. A ’71 Château Latour. Cle took over the story. They’d been married at the Cape, four years earlier—“a small wedding,” she added, when Andret glanced. Then they’d moved to Manhattan, where Earl’s father had set him up at Dean Witter.

Andret spit his wine. “The
brokerage
firm?”

“Not even a year there,” said Cle. “Now he steers the whole ship at Piper Jaffray Hopwood.”

“What’s that?”

“Investment specialists. Sophisticated ones. Earl runs arbitrage. They
bribed
him away from Dean Witter, Milo.” She opened her purse and handed him a card with a Park Avenue address. “Made him top animal in five months.”

“Arbitrage?” Andret said. He set down his glass. “Is that an entheogen?”

Cle laughed aloud.

“Actually,” said Earl, “it might be.”

“No more poetry, then?”

To Andret’s satisfaction, Cle guffawed.

Andret turned to her. “And what about
you
?” he said.

“Me?” she answered. “Me what?”

“What have you been doing with yourself all this time?”

“Oh, well, I haven’t done anything since Berkeley.”

“That’s not true, dear.”

“Of course it is.”

“You went to grad school, for one. Now you’re on the board of the foundation. And don’t forget—”

“Oh, Lord,” she said. “Grad school was dreadful. I never finished my dissertation.” She looked around, stopping at Helena. “In fact, I never started it.”

Helena smiled meekly.

In the silence that followed, Biettermann said, “Actually, it
is
a kind of poetry.”

“What is?” asked Helena.

“My work. The arbitrage. It really is a kind of poetry, as long as my friend here was asking. Futurist, if I had to label it. Although also formalist. With definite rules of prosody.” He smiled at his own wit. “What we do is game the risk of other entities. Companies. Organizations. Nations. Without assuming proportionate risk ourselves. That’s essentially the rhyme and meter. One takes as one’s subject what one finds in the world.” He turned. “And I run just one division of arbitrage,” he said to his wife. “Not the whole ship, dear. But yes, in fact”—here he raised his glass—“finance is indeed an entheogen. A modern-day entheogen, carried home from the jungle.”

“Fascinating,” said Helena.

“The fattest pig eats the best apples,” said Andret.

“Indeed,” said Cle.

“Wait just a moment,” Andret said to Earl. “I thought you were supposed to be a professor.”

Biettermann stared.

Cle burst out laughing. A short, rising aria that ended in a swallowed cough.

“That’s what your phone message said anyway—Professor Earl Biettermann. The message you left with my secretary.”

Helena flinched.

“I was joking, Andret.” He refilled their glasses. “I guess you didn’t get it. You never were quick with a joke.” Then he raised his wine. “Anyway, here’s to Hans Borland. A great mathematician. A great teacher. A great man.”

“To Hans Borland,” said Helena weakly.

“I see,” said Andret. “You were joking. Funny.”

“Oh, please, Milo,” said Cle.

“Look,” said Biettermann, “as a matter of fact, I employ professors now on a regular basis. Have several of them working for me at this very moment. They couldn’t pull the ejection cord fast enough from the
academy
.” He drew out the word. “Physics and mathematics and philosophy. Any field that employs sound logic—that’s my rule. To be honest, Andret, you might consider it. We do groundbreaking work.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“Geared derivatives. An unplayed field.”

“Sounds brilliantly interesting.”

“It is,” said Cle. “That’s why it has a French name.” She finished off her wine and poured herself another. “Château Latour. Lazard Frères.
Arbitrage
. Anything interesting involves a French word, haven’t you noticed? Here’s to everything that Hans Borland taught the two of you.
Tout de quel.
”

“Enough now,” said Biettermann.

Helena dropped her eyes. Cle snickered.

“No negative cash flow at any probabilistic state,” Biettermann whispered now, leaning forward and tilting his head toward Andret, “and a positive cash flow in at least one.”

Andret turned the stem of his wineglass in his fingers. “In other words,” he said, “risk-free profit.”

“You’ve got to put into the bowl what the dog wants to eat, my friend.”

“Yes, I guess you do, my friend, don’t you?”

“You could do it, too, Milo,” said Cle. “You could mint money at what Earl does.”

“No thanks.”

“Honey,” said Biettermann, “remember that even in my branch of arbitrage, you have to enjoy risk. You have to
thrive
on it. Finance is
based
on it, for God’s sake. Milo here dislikes risk. We all know that.”

“And I don’t get jokes, either. You’ve said that before, Biettermann. It gets old.”

“Like the two of us, my friend?”

“Are we friends?”

“My, my,” said Cle. But she twisted her glass slowly in the candlelight, the way Andret had done a moment earlier. “Can we talk about something else now?” She picked up the expensive-looking cigarette case that her husband had set on the table. “Look at this,” she said, turning to Helena. “Isn’t the carving exquisite?”

“Oh, yes, it is, Mrs. Biettermann. It’s really lovely.”

“You recognize the artist, perhaps?” Cle held it up to the light. “It looks like a Fra Angelico, maybe? Or a Giotto? Or maybe it’s a Dürer?”

“Give me that,” said Andret.

“It’s a Maitani, in fact,” said Cle, turning a flirtatious smile to him. She held it out as Milo stared at her. Then she turned to Helena. “The frieze from the grand Duomo di Orvieto. In Umbria. A brutish vision, don’t you think?” She lowered her voice. “But it’s hard to take your eyes off it, isn’t it?”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Andret. When he took it from her hand, he saw that it had been made from a single slab of silver. Tiny, intricately carved figures writhed in violent copulation, their flesh torn by wounds. “It’s just hell,” he said. He dropped it back onto the table as though it hadn’t fascinated him in the least. “That’s all they painted in those days.”

“This is carved, Milo,” said Biettermann.

Cle set down her wine now and focused her eyes on Helena. “Do you enjoy risk, too?” she said. “Is there much risk in the history of art?”

Helena blinked. A clam steamed on her fork. Andret saw the humiliation confounding her. “This whole evening is ridiculous,” he said.

“Look, Milo,” said Biettermann. “Let’s change the subject then. How about it?” He shot his cuffs and ceremoniously refilled the glasses. “I’ve read your proof of the Malosz theorem,” he said. “It’s very,
very
good.”

“Okay, then, well—thank you, Earl.”

“I still keep up with research mathematics, you know. Yours is a spectacular piece of work. An unexpected approach to a famously evasive problem.” He raised his glass. “It’s brilliant, in fact. The most brilliant mathematical leap in a decade. No, not just in a decade—in our entire lives, perhaps.”

“I’m honored.”

“Well, don’t be,” said Cle, picking up the case again and tapping out a cigarette. “Earl’s trying to disprove it.”

“What?” said Andret.

“He works on your proof every night, Milo. It’s an obsession of his.”

“Cle, dear—please.”

“Well, you
do,
sweetheart. Might as well stand up to the facts. Even though there’s not a chance in hell you’ll find anything wrong with it.”