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

There were numerous Enatsu cards, depicting him in various poses, but this was not the potbellied Enatsu I knew. In these cards he was trim and young and, of course, wearing the uniform of the Hanshin Tigers.

Born May 15, 1948, in Nara Prefecture. Throws left, bats left. h:179cm. w:90kg. Graduated Osaka Gakuin High School, 1967; drafted 1st by Hanshin. Following year, broke Sandy Koufax's record (382) for most strikeouts in a Major League season with 401. Struck out 9 consecutive batters in the 1971 All-Star Game (Nishinomiya), 8 failed to make contact. 1973 season, pitched no-hitter. "The Lofty Lefty." "Super Southpaw."

Enatsu's player profile and statistics appeared on the backs of the cards in tiny print. Here he was, glove on his knee, reading the signals. Or in full windup. Or again, at the end of the pitch, eyes boring into the catcher's mitt. Enatsu on the mound, his fierce stance like a Deva King guarding a temple. And always on his uniform, the perfect number 28.

I returned the cards to the box and pressed the lid down as carefully as I'd taken it off.

Hidden farther back behind the shelves, I found a stack of dusty notebooks. Judging from the discoloration of the paper and ink, they were nearly as old as the baseball cards. Long years of pressure from the tightly packed books had loosened the string holding the thirty or so folders together, and the covers were warped and bent.

I flipped through page after page, but I found no Japanese- just numbers, symbols, and letters of the alphabet. Mysterious geometric forms were followed by equally strange curves and graphs, all the Professor's work. The handwriting was younger and more vigorous, but the ribbonlike fours and the slanted fives were unmistakable.

There is nothing more shameful for a housekeeper than to rummage through her employer's personal property. But the exquisite beauty of the notebooks made me oblivious. The formulas snaked across the pages by some logic of their own, ignoring the lines on the paper; and just when they seemed to resolve into a kind of order, they would divide again into apparently random strands. They were punctuated with arrows and and ∑ and all sorts of other symbols, they covered the paper with dark blotches in some places, and traced faintly like delicate insect tracks in others.

Needless to say, I could not understand any of the mysteries concealed in the notebooks. Yet somehow, I wanted to stay there forever, just staring at the formulas. Was the proof of the Artin conjecture that the Professor had spoken of somewhere here? And certainly there must be some of his work on the beloved prime numbers… and perhaps the notes for the thesis that had won Prize No. 284 were here as well. In my own way, I could sense all kinds of things from the mysterious numbers and figures-the passion in a pencil smudge, the impatience of a crossed-out mistake, the certitude in a passage underscored with two thick lines. This glimpse into the Professor's world thrilled me deeply.

As I looked more closely, I began to notice scribbles here and there in the margins that even I could read: "Define terms of solution more carefully." "Invalid when only partially stable." "New approach, useless." "Will it be in time?" "14:00 with N, in front of the library."

Though these notes were simply scrawled in the spaces between the calculations, the handwriting here seemed much more purposeful than the scribbled notes attached to the Professor's suit. In these pages, the Professor had walked beyond beaten paths, looking for truth in a place no one knows.

What had happened in front of the library at two o'clock? And who was N? I found myself hoping that the meeting had been a happy one for the professor.

I ran my fingers over the lines of the formula, a long chain of numbers and symbols that flowed from one page to the next. As I followed the chain, link by link, the room faded and I found myself in a dark, silent place of numbers. But I felt no fear, certain in the knowledge that the Professor would guide me toward eternal, unchangeable truths.

As I turned the last page of the last notebook, the chain abruptly broke, and I was left in the shadows. If I could have read on just a little further, I might have found what I was looking for; but the chain simply slipped from my fingers and I would never grasp its end.

"Excuse me," the Professor called from the bathroom. "I'm sorry to bother you when you're busy…"

I quickly put everything back in its place. "Coming," I called, as brightly as I could.

In May, I bought three tickets for the Tigers game against Hiroshima on June 2. The Tigers played only twice a season in the town where we lived and, if you let the chance go by, it was a long wait until the next game.

Root had never been to a ball game. In fact, with the exception of a trip to the zoo with his grandmother, he had never been to a museum or a movie theater or anywhere at all. From the time he was born, I had been obsessed with making ends meet, and somehow I had forgotten to make time to have fun with my son.

When I'd found the baseball cards in the cookie tin, it had suddenly occurred to me that a baseball game might be just the thing for a disabled old man who passed his days wandering in the world of numbers and a boy who had spent nearly every day of his life waiting for his mother to come home from work.

The price of three reserved seats on the third baseline was a bit more than I could afford-especially since I'd just had the unexpected expense of our visit to the clinic. But there would be plenty of time to worry about money later; who knew when the old man and the boy would have a chance to enjoy a ball game together. Besides, the Professor had only known baseball through his cards; if I could show him the real thing-the sweat-soaked pinstripes, the home-run ball vanishing into a sea of cheers, the cleat-scarred pitcher's mound-that would be a privilege. Even if I wouldn't be able to produce Enatsu.

I thought it was a wonderful idea, but Root's reaction surprised me: "He probably won't want to go," he muttered. "The Professor hates crowds." He had a point. I'd had trouble convincing the Professor to go to the barbershop; and a baseball game was the antithesis of his beloved peace and quiet. "And how are you going to get him ready? He can't think about it ahead of time." Root always showed amazing insight when it came to the Professor. "Everything's a surprise for him. He can't plan ahead, and if you spring something big on him out of the blue like this, he could die of shock."

"Don't be ridiculous," I said. "What if we pin the ticket to his suit?"

"I don't think it'd work," Root said, shaking his head. "Have you ever seen him remember anything from all those notes?"

"Well, he checks my picture on his sleeve every morning when I arrive."

"But he couldn't even tell the difference between you and me from that terrible drawing."

"He's a math genius, not an artist."

"Every time I see the Professor writing a note with that little pencil, I feel like crying," Root said.

"Why?"

"Because it's sad!" he said. He was almost angry now. I just nodded, unwilling to argue further. "And there's one more problem," he added, in a resigned tone of voice. "None of the players he knew are still on the Tigers. They all retired."

He was right again. If the players on his cards did not appear in the game, he would be confused and disappointed. Even the team uniform had changed since his day. The baseball stadium itself was bound to upset the Professor as well-with the fans drinking and shouting and screaming, it was the very opposite of a tranquil mathematical theorem. Root's fears were all justified.

"I see what you mean, but I've already bought the tickets. Forget about the Professor for a moment; would you like to see the Tigers play?"