Jonathan Levi - Septimania

“Yes,” Malory said. “Of course. But Louiza distinctly told me she passed her viva today. For her PhD.”

“Louiza?” Antonella put the biscuit tin behind her, on top of the TV, more in curiosity than in jealousy. “So, you are on the first-name basis with this PhD Louiza?”

“Only first name,” Malory said. “I was hoping you might supply me with a surname, if not an address.”

“Poor Malory,” Antonella said. “But I tell you, there is no Louiza with viva today or yesterday or tomorrow, with or without surnames.”

“No Louizas?”

“No girls. No women. Only Antonella.”

“Ah,” Malory said. “Perhaps,” he pondered, “it wasn’t the Maths Department. Perhaps I need to ask—”

“Perhaps Antonella could find out for you? Perhaps Antonella could help you?”

“Would you?” Malory didn’t realize he was holding Antonella’s hands until she squeezed them with a digestive warmth.

“For Malory?” Antonella said. And if Anna Ford hadn’t interrupted with a fresh bulletin on Aldo Moro, Malory would have been constrained to kiss a second woman in the same day.

“Thank you!” Malory slung his Kit Bag across his shoulder as Antonella drew a full, Roman lip between her teeth at the photo of Aldo Moro on the television. A nice-looking man, Malory thought, as he pressed open the door to the stairwell.

In response, a vibration stopped Malory at the top of the landing, a buzz that came from inside his Kit Bag. The Pip, in its 35-millimeter canister, was announcing something far more than was dreamt in Anna Ford’s philosophy.

OUIZA, DARLING …”

The words came from her father’s mouth. But they were so unexpected, and half of Louiza was still up in the organ loft of St. George’s Church, that it took two repetitions to make her see that indeed her father had spoken.

“Louiza, darling,” her father repeated, “there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

Louiza blinked again and noticed that there was a fourth person at the table in the Orchard and that she had completely missed her own celebratory lunch.

“Where were you, darling?” Her mother. The Shetland cardigan, soft gray. “I checked the loo. We were so worried.”

It was a man, the fourth at the table, a large man. A large man in a double-breasted suit with a thick head of red hair slicked back full of bear grease or motor oil or who knew what men put in their hair.

“Hello, Louiza.” Deep, the voice. American. Big teeth, especially the left one in the front. And radiating positivity. Supremely positive, with a red beard.

“Darling—” Her father again. “Mr. MacPhearson is an American — what would you call your profession?”

“Congratulations on your degree,” Mr. MacPhearson said. He looked at Louiza so positively that she had to turn away.

“Oh,” she said, which passed for modesty. She wondered what Malory was doing back in the church.

“I understand that you’re at loose ends,” MacPhearson added.

Loose ends? Louiza wondered what that meant, loose ends. She touched her hair. Her elastic band must have disappeared somewhere between the Orchard and the organ loft.

“Mr. MacPhearson has an interesting offer, darling,” her father smiled. He too was positive, had turned positive for the first time Louiza could remember, but in a way that only pushed her anxiety higher. “He’s from America.”

“You were gone over an hour,” her mother said.

“America.” Louiza didn’t want to acknowledge the red-bearded addition to the table, but wanted even less to tell her mother about her walk past the loo of the Orchard and across the road to St. George’s church and her climb up to the loft and the strange little man who equaled the deepest algebra of her identity.

MacPhearson and her father took her single “America” as encouragement and launched into a lengthy explanation. MacPhearson had tried to attract her attention at the Maths Faculty following the viva. But failing that — Louiza’s father in particular had been intent on reaching their car before time expired — he had followed the family out to the Orchard and waited at a discreet distance until they had finished their celebratory lunch.

MacPhearson’s explanation of why he had followed her out to the Orchard, what company he worked for, and how he wanted to hire her on “very generous terms” in the words of her father, filtered only vaguely into Louiza’s consciousness. What was vastly clearer — to her at least — was that MacPhearson had waited until she had left the table, perhaps until she had disappeared safely into the shadows of St. George’s Church, to approach the table and flatter Louiza’s parents with his offer.

She caught certain words — complex, negative, equation — that made her suspect that MacPhearson, far from being a mathematician, was merely an agent for someone or something else that wanted Louiza. But she also caught other phrases that made her think that perhaps mathematicians were only agents for the MacPhearsons of the world. She had told Malory that the applications of i = u were many and potentially dangerous. Lucrative, too.

“Mother,” she said. Perhaps it was in the middle of the explanation, but it didn’t really matter. “Do you want me to do this?”

“Darling,” her mother said.

And since Louiza would do anything for the mother who had introduced her to i , Louiza soon found herself living in a thatched cottage by the river, perhaps only a mile or so from the Orchard itself along the towpath towards Cambridge. Her mother had wanted to outfit her room — there were two others in the house, and Louiza had a small bedroom in the back of the second floor. But the “secrecy” phrase in MacPhearson’s explanation and the papers they all signed at the Orchard and the cash advance MacPhearson placed in care of Louiza’s father, meant that Louiza would be saying goodbye to her parents at the door of MacPhearson’s Morris Minor and would not be permitted to communicate with them, or anyone outside the company, whatever it was, for the first twelve months of her employ.

There was no way, clearly, that Louiza could know the effect of this prohibition on her mother. The problems that MacPhearson asked Louiza to solve the next morning — or rather the problems that appeared on the kitchen table every morning at breakfast, delivered by one or another of her Cottagemates — were fascinating enough to distract Louiza from memories of home and even that funny little Malory in the organ loft. Her life consisted of descending for meals and problems and ascending to the desk under the eaves for solutions. As the weather grew into summer, a lighter duvet appeared on her bed. Fresh clothing arrived, the washing up was done. Her curiosity about the ripening foliage, the music of the river, was satisfied by an open window. All other questions were satisfied by the mathematics of negativity.

And the growth.

The first morning at the cottage, Louiza knew she was pregnant. It had been the first time for her, and obviously the first time for Malory. Her basic knowledge of biology had prepared her for the possibility. Her belief in mathematics had acquainted her with certainty. Malory = Louiza. i = u. From identity came multiplication, and now exponential growth.

Louiza could have checked with a doctor. Her Cottagemates could have alerted MacPhearson, who could have alerted Malory, who could have — it was easier to avoid the dark woods of human behavior and retreat into the world of negative numbers. Young and thin as she was, the channel of her shoulders let the straps of her summer shifts hang loose enough that no one would have noticed a change, and in any case, no one was looking. Morning sickness never struck. Her nipples, although they darkened, never called attention to themselves.