Apostolos Doxiadis - Uncle Petros and Goldbach

I couldn't allow myself to jump to facile conclusions, as there were now new speculative possibilities. The main feature of the room we sat in – what made it so different from the living room in our house – was the overwhelming presence of books, countless books everywhere. Not only were all the visible walls of the room, corridor and entrance hall dressed from floor to ceiling with shelves crammed to overflowing, but books in tall piles covered most of the floor area as well. Most of them looked old and overused.

At first, I chose the most direct route to answering my question about their content: I asked, 'What are all these books, Uncle Petros?'

There was a frozen silence, exactly as if I had spoken of rope in the house of the hanged man.

“They are… old”, he mumbled hesitantly, after casting a quick glance in the direction of my father. He seemed so flustered in his search for an answer, however, and the accompanying smile was so wan that I couldn't bring myself to ask for further explanations.

Once again I resorted to the call of nature. This time Uncle Petros led me to a small toilet next to the kitchen. On my way back to the living room, alone and unobserved, I seized the opportunity I had created. I picked up the top book of the nearest pile in the corridor and flipped hurriedly through the pages. Unfortunately it was in German, a language I was (and still am) totally unfamiliar with. On top of it, most of the pages were adorned with mysterious symbols such as I'd never seen before: "'s and $'s and f ’s and Ï's. Among them, I discerned some more intelligible signs, +'s, ='s and ÷'s interspersed with numerals and letters both Latin and Greek. My rational mind overcame cabbalistic fantasies: it was mathematics!

I left Ekali that day totally preoccupied with my discovery, indifferent to the scolding I received from my father on the way back to Athens and to his hypocritical reprimands about my 'rudeness to my uncle' and 'my busybody, prying questions'. As if it was the breach in savoir-vivre that had bothered him!

My curiosity about Uncle Petros' dark, unknown side developed in the next few months into something approaching obsession. I remember compulsively drawing doodles combining mathematical and chess symbols in my notebooks during school classes. Maths and chess: in one of these most probably lay the solution to the mystery surrounding him, yet neither offered a totally satisfactory explanation, neither being reconcilable with his brothers' contemptuously dismissive attitude. Surely, these two fields of interest (or was it more than mere interest?) were not in themselves objectionable. Whichever way you looked at it, being a chess player at Grand Master level or a mathematician who had devoured hundreds of formidable tomes did not immediately classify you as 'one of life's failures'.

I needed to find out, and in order to do so I even contemplated for a while a venture in the style of the exploits of my favourite literary heroes, a project worthy of Enid Blyton's Secret Seven, the Hardy Boys, or their Greek soulmate, the 'heroic Phantom Boy'. I planned, down to the smallest detail, a break-in at my uncle's house during one of his expeditions to the philanthropic institution or the chess club, so I could lay my hands on palpable evidence of transgression.

As things turned out, I did not have to resort to crime to satisfy my curiosity. The answer I was seeking came and hit me, so to speak, over the head. Here's how it happened:

One afternoon, while I was alone at home doing my homework, the phone rang and I answered it.

“Good evening”, said an unfamiliar male voice. I’m calling from the Hellenic Mathematical Society. May I speak to the Professor please?'

Unthinking at first, I corrected the caller: 'You must have dialled the wrong number. There is no professor here.'

“Oh, I'm sorry”, he said. 'I should have inquired first. Isn't that the Papachristos residence?'

I had a sudden flash of inspiration. 'Do you, perhaps, mean Mr Petros Papachristos?' I asked.

'Yes’, said the caller, ' Professor Papachristos.'

'Professor'! The receiver nearly dropped from my hand. However, I suppressed my excitement, lest this windfall opportunity go to waste.

'Oh, I didn't realize you were referring to Professor Papachristos’, I said ingratiatingly. 'You see, this is his brother's home, but as the Professor does not have a telephone' – (fact) – 'we take his calls for him' (blatant lie).

'Could I then have his address?' the caller asked, but by now I had regained my composure and he was no match for me.

'The Professor likes to maintain his privacy’, I said haughtily. 'We also receive his mail.'

I had left the poor man no options. 'Then be so kind as to give me your address. On behalf of the Hellenic Mathematical Society, we would like to send him an invitation.'

The next few days I played sick so as to be at home at the usual time of mail delivery. I didn't have to wait long. On the third day after the phone call I had the precious envelope in my hand. I waited till after midnight for my parents to go to sleep and then tiptoed to the kitchen and steamed it open (another lesson culled from boys' fiction).

I unfolded the letter and read:

Mr Petros Papachristos

f. Professor of Analysis

University of Munich

Honourable Professor,

Our Society is planning a Special Session to commemorate Leonard Euler's two hundred and fiftieth birthday with a lecture on 'Formal Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics'.

We would be greatly honoured, dear Professor, if you would attend and address a short greeting to the Society…

So: the man routinely dismissed by my dear father as 'one of life's failures' was a Professor of Analysis at the University of Munich – the significance of the little 'f.' preceding his unexpectedly prestigious title still escaped me. As to the achievements of this Leonard Euler, still remembered and honoured two hundred and fifty years after his birth, I hadn't the slightest clue.

The next Sunday morning I left home wearing my Boy Scout uniform, but instead of going to the weekly meeting I boarded the bus for Ekali, the letter from the Hellenic Mathematical Society safely in my pocket. I found my uncle in an old hat and rolled-up sleeves, spade in hand, turning the soil in a vegetable plot. He was surprised to see me.

'What brings you here?' he asked.

I gave him the sealed envelope.

'You needn't have gone to the trouble’, he said, barely glancing at it. 'You could have put it in the mail.' Then he smiled kindly. "Thank you anyway, Boy Scout. Does your father know you've come?'

'Uh, no,' I muttered.

'Then I better drive you home; your parents will be worried.'

I protested that it wasn't necessary, but he insisted. He climbed into his ancient, beat-up VW beetle, muddy boots and all, and we set out for Athens. On the way I attempted more than once to start a conversation on the subject of the invitation, but he switched to irrelevant matters like the weather, the correct season for tree-pruning and scouting.

He dropped me off at the corner nearest our house. 'Should I come upstairs and provide excuses?'

'No thanks, Uncle, that won't be necessary.'

However, it turned out that excuses were necessary. As my ill luck would have it, Father had called the club to ask me to pick something up on the way home and been informed of my absence. Naively, I blurted out the whole truth. As it turned out, this was the worst possible choice. If I'd lied and told him that I played truant from the meeting in Order to indulge in forbidden cigarettes in the park, or even visit a house of ill-repute, he wouldn't have been quite so upset.

'Haven't I expressly forbidden you to have anything to do with that man?' he yelled at me, getting so red in the face that my mother started pleading with him to think of his blood pressure.