Jonathan Levi - Septimania

“Old news,” she told him. “No one in the Faculty is interested in complex numbers. They put their noses in the air and walk around talking about K-theory and Z-algebra. They snort and say only Americans and Russians are obsessed with imaginary numbers.”

“Americans and Russians?” Malory asked, diving without invitation into Antonella’s bottomless biscuit tin.

“It has something to do with silly secrets,” Antonella said. “Secrets the Americans want to keep, secrets the Russians want to keep.”

“Secrets?” Malory asked. “Secret codes? Encryption?” Louiza had suggested that the ramifications of her simple equation were astonishing, perhaps even dangerous.

“ Forse sì,” Antonella said. “None of my old men are interested in the Americans. C’era una volta , once upon a time my Mama, back in Garbatella. She too was interested. After the War, she had the voglia to wash and cook for Americans, twenty-four hours a day. Now—”

“Yes,” Malory said, wondering more about the Americans than Antonella’s mother. He had met Americans, of course, during colloquia at the Physics Faculty or when the Master insisted he sit next to one at High Table — most recently an animal behaviorist from Harvard talking of Africa and pygmies and spare parts for his Land Rover. “But which Americans in particular disinterest your old men?”

“I don’t know their names,” Antonella said. “They come in so full of smiles and laughing and cologne, and I am embarrassed to ask why they are here.”

“But they never have a young girl with them?” Malory asked. “A young, British girl?”

“Yes, yes,” Antonella said, making Malory blush at her annoyance. “A young, fair-haired British girl, who picks the skin from around her finger nails and has skinny, little shoulders and likes fuzzy organ tuners in corduroy jackets. I think,” she said, flicking a piece of lint from the lapel of Malory’s own corduroy, “that you have described Louiza well enough that I would recognize her in a crowd of a thousand fair-haired girls — even Americans.”

Malory had enlisted Rix as well, whose familiarity with the comings and goings of the students and fellows of Trinity — not to mention the porters and the porters’ families of the other twenty-odd colleges that made up the University of Cambridge — gave him unparalleled access to the secrets and practices of virtually the entire academic community. Malory attended colloquia and seminars and conferences with an eye out for wisps. He dined at High Table with the Master who, although an economist, dabbled enough in numbers and money that Malory could drop the phrase i = u into casual conversation and watch for a reaction. But after seven months of searching and questioning, he was no closer, no surer that he was even searching in the right corner of the right steeple.

Of course Malory haunted the environs of St. George’s Church, Whistler Abbey, the Pip in a plastic 35-millimeter container in his pocket, the sole companion and proof that something remarkable had happened, that the search for the lost Louiza that occupied the greater part of his waking thoughts and all of his nocturnal dreams was not complete lunacy. So, early and unexpected as the call from the vicar had been, Malory was not entirely displeased to be riding his bicycle along the towpath to Whistler Abbey to the rhythm of i (down with the left pedal) equals u (down with the right).

He was halfway along the towpath — whether on i or u he couldn’t remember — when suddenly something knocked over his bicycle. Malory fell to the ground, more confused than hurt. He hadn’t felt a gust of wind. There was no large dog or early morning jogger who might have plowed him over. But as he lay under his bicycle, he felt a vibration from inside his Kit Bag. He unstrapped the flap and looked inside. The Book of Organs, the Universal Tuner were in place. But from the secret pocket where he had squirreled away the 35-millimeter canister and the Pip came the unmistakable hum of a low C, the vibration, he was sure, of the Pip, the Pip Louiza had found in the steeple. Had he been knocked over a second time by the Pip? Could such a small thing have such a force?

BY THE TIME LOUIZA PULLED ON A PAIR OF WELLIES AND RAN OUT THE back door of the cottage, Malory had righted his bicycle and was disappearing around the curve of the towpath. It was the first time Louiza had been out of the cottage in, well, perhaps since MacPhearson had brought her there that March afternoon after lunch at the Orchard. She didn’t look back to see whether the Cottagemates were following her. She merely began to walk to the rhythm of the kicks in her cardigan-beshrouded belly.

She had no idea, really, where her cottage was in relation to the Orchard or Cambridge or for that matter the rest of the world. But in an animal way, she knew that Malory was cycling to St. George’s Church. The identity i = u , Louiza = Malory, included the world in which they had first met and conceived this new life that, in the mysterious way that numbers propagate numbers, was becoming an integral part of this equation.

MALORY PARKED HIS BICYCLE BY THE SOUTHERN WALL ON THE YEW SIDE of the church and entered through the chancel. He was pulling on a robe in the shadows of the narthex when the vicar approached.

“Much obliged, Malory. Sad occasion, what?”

Malory looked up towards the altar and noticed the blond pine of the coffin lying on a pair of sawhorses.

“Yes,” Malory said. Rix had said “service,” hadn’t he, not “funeral,” but no matter. Music wasn’t the problem. Malory only wondered why the rush? There were only half a dozen people in the church. Not a state occasion. Had another organist canceled? “Bach?” he asked the vicar. “Albinoni?”

“The deceased requested simply that you play what you wish,” the vicar said. “I’m certain you’ll do what is right. And Malory—”

“Yes?”

“Do stay for the graveside. I need to speak with you after.”

Malory flipped one switch, and the light over his keyboard illuminated the fine moondust of the windless organ loft. He flipped another, and the electric motor twenty feet away behind the pipes began to pump air into the lungs of the instrument. The hum of mechanical power vibrated confidence through the organ bench, up Malory’s body, and into his fingers. He knew this organ, knew its tranquility, its quirks. His Book of Organs memorialized the tunings of all the organs he had tended, all the services he had played, the weddings, the funerals, the christenings and communions, the hymns and psalms and Indian ragas and Procol Harums from the more esoteric ceremonies that the charismatic members and observant hippies had introduced in recent years. The record of the organ of St. George’s, Whistler Abbey, was no different from the rest — except for the Pip, the demon that bedeviled that sconeless March morning and continued to confuse and exhaust and rattle a lost harmony in the sleepless hearing of Malory’s ear. The Pip was mentioned briefly in the Book of Organs: “16 March 1978. 8 a.m.–2 p.m. tuning. Pip in steeple.” But encoded in the ink was the full meaning and direction of Malory’s life, a description and a story as full of promise and potential danger as Louiza’s equation.

Malory glanced in the rearview mirror that gave him a view of the coffin at the altar and the vicar at the pulpit. The vicar gave a nod. It was time for music. The deceased had left it up to him. It was time to play. It was time to play what he had played every time he had cycled out to St. George’s in the past seven months in the hope that Louiza would be waiting for him in the organ loft.

It was time to play i = u.