Yôko Ogawa - The Gift of Numbers aka The Housekeeper and the Professor

The Professor carefully avoided asking us questions about things that had happened more than eighty minutes ago. We would have happily explained the meaning of the homework and the radio if he had asked, but he preferred to examine the facts before him and draw his own conclusions. Because he had been-and in many ways still was-such a brilliant man, he no doubt understood the nature of his memory problem. It wasn't pride that prevented him from asking for help but a deep aversion to causing more trouble than necessary for those of us who lived in the normal world. When I realized why he was so reluctant to bring up the subject of his memory, I decided I would say as little as possible about it, too.

"You've added up the numbers from 1 to 10," he said at last.

"I got it right, didn't I? I checked it over and over, I'm sure it's right."

"Indeed it is!"

"Good! Then let's go get the radio fixed."

"Now just a minute," said the Professor, coughing quietly as if to give himself time to think. "I wonder if you could explain to me how you got the answer?"

"That's easy! You just add them up."

"That's a straightforward way to do it; perfectly reliable, and no one can argue with that." Root nodded proudly. "But think for a minute: what would you do if a teacher, say, a mean teacher, asked you to add the numbers from 1 to 100?"

"I'd add them up, of course."

"Naturally you would. You're a good boy, and a hard worker. So I'm sure you'd come up with the right answer for 1 to 100, too. But what if that teacher was really cruel and made you find the sum for 1 to 1,000? Or 1 to 10,000? You'd be adding, adding, and adding forever while that teacher laughed at you. What would you do then?" Root shook his head. "But you can't let that evil teacher get to you," the Professor continued. "You've got to show him you're the better man."

"But how do you do that?"

"You need to find a simpler way to get the answer that works no matter how big the numbers get. If you can find it, then I'll get the radio fixed."

"That's not fair!" Root objected, kicking his chair leg. "That wasn't part of the deal."

"Root!" I interrupted. "Is that any way to act?" But the Professor didn't seem to notice his outburst.

"A problem isn't finished just because you've found the right answer. There's another way to get to 55; wouldn't you like to find it?"

"Not really…," said Root, sulking.

"All right, here's what we'll do. The radio is old, and it may take them a while to get it working again. So how about a contest to see whether you can find another way to get the sum before the radio is fixed?"

"Okay," said Root. "But I don't see how I'm going to do it. What other way is there besides just adding them up?"

"Who'd have guessed you're such a quitter," the Professor scolded. "Giving up before you've even tried."

"Fine. I'll try. But I can't promise I'll figure it out before the radio's done. I've got a lot of other stuff to do."

"We'll see," said the Professor, and he rubbed Root's head as he always did. "Oh!" he said suddenly. "I've got to make a note." He took a sheet of paper, wrote out their agreement, then clipped it to his lapel. There was something smooth and controlled in the way he held the pen and wrote the note, so different from his usual clumsy manner.

"But you have to promise to finish your homework before the game comes on; and to turn it off during dinner; and not to disturb the Professor while he's working." Root nodded grumpily as I listed each condition.

"I know," he said, "but it'll be worth it. The Tigers are good this year, not like last year and the year before when they were in last place. They even won their first game against the Giants."

"Is that right? Hanshin's having a good year?" the Professor said. "What's Enatsu's ERA?" The Professor looked back and forth between us. "How many strikeouts does he have?" Root waited for a moment before answering.

"They traded Enatsu," he said at last. "That was before I was born, and he's retired now." A jolt shot through the Professor and then he was still.

I had never seen him so distressed. He had always calmly accepted the way his memory failed him, but this time was different. This time he couldn't ignore the facts. Seeing him this way, I even forgot to worry about Root, who had received a shock of his own at causing the Professor such pain.

"But even after they traded him to the Carp, he was the best in the league." I hoped this would reassure him, but this new information distressed him even more.

"The Carp? What do you mean? How could Enatsu wear anything but the Hanshin pinstripes?"

He sat down and rested his elbows on the desk, running his hands through his freshly cut hair. Tiny clippings fell on his notebook. This time it was Root who rubbed the Professor's head. He smoothed the mussed hair as if trying to undo the trouble he'd caused.

Root and I were quiet on the way home that evening. When I asked him whether the Tigers had a game, his answer was barely audible.

"Who are they playing?"

"Taiyo."

"You think they'll win?"

"Who knows."

The lights were out in the barbershop and the park was empty. The formulas the Professor had scratched in the dirt were hidden in the shadows.

"I shouldn't have said those things," Root said. "But I didn't know he liked Enatsu so much."

"I didn't know, either," I said. And then, though it was probably wrong of me, I added, "Don't worry, it will all be back to normal by tomorrow morning. In the Professor's mind, Enatsu will be the Tigers' ace again and he won't remember anything about the Carp."

The problem that the Professor had posed to Root proved to be almost as difficult as the one that Enatsu had presented for all of us.

As the Professor had predicted, the man at the repair shop said that he had never seen such an old radio and that he wasn't sure he could fix it. But if he could, he said, he would try to have it done in a week's time. So every day, when I got home from work, I spent my evening looking for another way to find the sum of the natural numbers from 1 to 10. Root should have been working on the problem, too, but perhaps because he was upset over the incident with Enatsu, he gave up almost immediately and left me to find a solution. For my part, I was anxious to please the Professor, and I certainly didn't want to disappoint him any more than we already had. But the only way to please him, I suspected, was through numbers.

I began by reading the problem aloud, just as the Professor had insisted Root do with his homework: "1 + 2 + 3 +… 9 + 10 is 55. 1 + 2 + 3 +…" But this didn't seem to be much help-except to show that a simple equation could conceal a terribly difficult problem.

Next I tried writing out the numbers from 1 to 10 both horizontally and vertically and grouping them by odds and evens, primes and non-primes, and so on. I worked on the problem with matches and marbles, and when I was at the Professor's house, I jotted down numbers on the back of any piece of scrap paper, always looking for a clue.

To find an amicable number, all you had to do was perform the same sort of calculation again and again. If you had enough time, you'd eventually succeed. But this was different. I was constantly starting off in a new direction, looking for another way to approach the problem, only to wind up at a dead end, confused. To be honest, I wasn't always even sure of what I was trying to do. At times I seemed to be going around in circles and at others almost backward, away from a solution; and in the end, I was often simply staring at the scrap paper.

I'm not sure why I became so absorbed in a child's math problem with no practical value. At first, I was conscious of wanting to please the Professor, but gradually that feeling faded and I realized it had become a battle between the problem and me. When I woke in the morning, the equation was waiting-1 + 2 + 3 +… 9 + 10 = 55-and it followed me all through the day, as though it had burned itself into my retina and could not be ignored.