Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

FROM THE BEACH IN SANTA MONICA, Nachman could look across the water toward LAX and watch airplanes take off and land. The sight reminded him that he hated to travel. Nevertheless, he’d decided to make the short flight to San Francisco, where he would attend this year’s meeting of the Pythagoras Society, an international organization dedicated to pure mathematics. Nachman wanted to hear the featured talk on the Penultimate Conjecture. It would be given by the Swedish mathematician Bjorn Lindquist.

Nachman packed a clean shirt, a razor, a toothbrush, and a change of underwear and socks, though he planned to return the same day. He didn’t expect to become involved in a discussion and could think of no friends he might meet in San Francisco who would cause him to prolong his stay, but any trip held unpredictable elements. Every time you walk out of your house, thought Nachman — and then let it go. He was aware of a compulsive strain in his thinking.

Razor, toothbrush, underwear, socks, and shirt went into his briefcase, along with a writing pad and some ballpoint pens. He added a bottle of aspirin, too, as if he expected to have a headache. At the airport, he bought a package of chewing gum to help relieve the anticipated pain in his ears on takeoff and landing. He particularly disliked flying, with its discomforts and terrors; also having to breathe unhealthy gases.

The flight was uneventful except for ten minutes of turbulence. However, shortly before landing, an argument erupted a few rows behind Nachman. A passenger and a flight attendant were yelling. It was about something serious. When the plane landed, police rushed into the cabin. Nachman heard shouts amid the commotion of a struggle as he shoved past the passengers in the aisle who were gaping toward the rear.

“What the hell happened?” asked a man at the front of the plane, his eyes wild and prurient, crazed with desire for information.

“How would I know?” said Nachman, pulling his arm free of the man’s grip and pushing by him. He didn’t know because he’d been thinking about the Penultimate Conjecture, and scribbling notes throughout the commotion. He continued thinking about it as he walked through the airport to the taxi stand. Television reporters, lugging a camera, went by, rushing in the direction Nachman had come from.

The problem of the Penultimate Conjecture was formulated during the Second World War by brilliant English cryptographers who broke the German code Enigma. Germans, also brilliant, broke English codes. Obscure men, and some women, who had a knack for solving puzzles, analyzed the coded messages of the enemy so that nameless soldiers, sailors, and airmen could be blown to bits, drowned, burned alive. A proof of the Penultimate Conjecture would have no such practical consequences — at least none yet known — but for mathematicians, it was a glamorous problem indirectly associated with horrendous violence. As a graduate student, Nachman had brooded over it. The problem was exceedingly difficult. He was afraid he might spend years on it and fail to prove anything. A mathematician had only so much time. Nachman then turned to other problems, and built a reputation for solid, indispensable work. Bjorn Lindquist would know the name Nachman.

As for Lindquist’s reputation, it rested on a number of dazzling publications, all co-authored. Mathematicians worked together more than they had in previous years. Lindquist’s name appeared first on the publications he co-authored. He was considered a genius for his ability to see the implications of the work of others, and also for his devastating questions. In San Francisco, Lindquist would be the one who was questioned. The sole author of his lecture on the Penultimate Conjecture, Lindquist had taken the risk Nachman cautiously declined, making a bid for greatness, something beyond mere reputation.

Nachman, who was unusually slow, was never asked to collaborate. It didn’t much matter. He preferred to work alone. He had sometimes wondered about returning to the Penultimate Conjecture, but he assumed that even if many mathematicians engaged it seriously, none would be successful. When he was ready, Nachman imagined, the problem would be waiting for him like Penelope watching for Odysseus. Suddenly it was too late.

According to gossip, Lindquist had an amazing proof. As if the problem had been stolen from him, Nachman was somewhat hurt and suffered a touch of jealousy, but he felt no ill will toward Lindquist. He wanted only to see Lindquist demonstrate his proof. Nachman was extremely curious. He didn’t want to wait for Lindquist to publish his proof on the computer or in a paper, but wanted to see him do it in person, in public. Nothing else would have made Nachman buy his own ticket to go to San Francisco in a terrifying airplane, breathing plague.

The taxi from the airport arrived at the hotel an hour before Lindquist’s scheduled talk. Nachman sat in the lobby, reviewing the notes on the Penultimate Conjecture that he’d made feverishly during the hourlong flight. He’d worked more quickly than ever before, as if fueled by drugs, and it almost seemed, now that it was too late, that Nachman was approaching a solution to the problem. It was rather like racing west, as the sun goes down, to make the day longer. If he only had a little more time — but why should he care? The problem had been solved by Lindquist. In a sense, there was no longer any problem. Immersed in the nonexistent problem, Nachman noticed a crowd of people heading toward the auditorium where Lindquist would talk. Thrusting his notes into his briefcase, he joined the crowd. He felt humble, like a member of a religious congregation. The room was large, and almost every chair was taken. A blackboard had been wheeled to the front. As in a theater before the curtain rises, the crowd was full of spirited chatter.

Nachman took a chair beside a skinny young man who wore a blue suit of cheap synthetic material. He noticed that the jacket was too big in the shoulders and the lapels seemed asymmetrical, but it was a new suit and the young man obviously felt good in it. He smiled at Nachman, revealing large, vigorously thrusting teeth. His eyes were greenish yellow, a feral hue, and slanted. They had a strange intelligence, and a fine hot savoring look.

The man said, “You’re Nachman.”

Nachman nodded.

“I’m Nikolai Chertoff. How do you do? I heard you lecture in Cracow.”

They shook hands, Nachman muttering for no reason, “I don’t like to travel.” Chertoff’s eyes were unnerving. To turn away or modify their attention, Nachman asked, “Where are you from, Chertoff?”

“Moscow Communication Labs. You know me?”

The eyes and their attention were unchanging.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be so sorry. Nobody knows me. I published one paper in a Russian journal of robotics. Who read it? Nobody.”

“What is the paper about?”

“Of no importance. Who cares? But everybody knows Nachman. It should be Nachman who solved the Penultimate Conjecture.”

“I walked away from it many years ago. Lindquist solved it.”

“If you say so.”

“What do you mean — if I say so?”

“Do you believe Lindquist solved it?”

“Of course.”

“If I were you, I would be inclined to kill, not believe.”

“Kill?”

“Look, here he is. Your worst enemy.”

There was a flurry of applause as Lindquist walked to the front. Nachman was startled, but with a surge of anxious pleasure, he joined the others, including Chertoff, in applause. Nachman whispered, “Why did you say that? My worst enemy.”

“If he’s a mathematician, what are you?”

Chertoff’s face assumed an expression of disdain, pretending to the attitude he expected in Nachman.