Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

The thing was, Andret could talk to Tread about the Abendroth. There were probably no more than a dozen people in the world who were even capable of understanding the question that the problem necessitated solving; yet Tread, a nodding drunk who had to pay for his drinks before the bartender would pour them, turned out to be one of them. It was preposterous. A derelict in a workingman’s dive a half mile from Andret’s office. Yes, a mathematician; yes, a former member of the department; yes, a man reputed to have an Erdős number of 2—which, in a manner of speaking, gave Andret an Erdős number of 3—but still, a disheveled, nearly wordless man who’d sat down next to him by chance one day in a cocktail lounge.

At Clip’s, Andret would begin a summary of his day’s work, sometimes drawing shapes on the tiny napkins, and Tread would listen, noting any unwarranted assumptions that might have been made. All this over doubles, no ice. Andret’s tab. Tread could outdrink him 2:1, but Andret paid because he found his friend’s analysis so helpful. Sometimes acutely so. Reading a mathematical paper was difficult under any circumstances, but analyzing at speed another mathematician’s thoughts was next to impossible. Yet Tread could do it. He was, Andret sometimes thought, a genius.

He also appeared to have no instinct at all for his own advancement. Mathematicians were always celebrating their efforts as communal — and great collaborators like Erdős were beloved all over the world — but Andret himself had never wished to take part in any type of cooperation. He was going to vanquish Ulrich Abendroth entirely on his own. And when he did, he was going to share the credit with nobody.

As Andret talked about the problem, Tread would slump in the stool next to him, his lips parted to show one of the broken teeth, and stare at the rail of the bar. He appeared not to be listening at all. But if even the tiniest increment of mathematical rigor was evaded, he’d look up immediately, his veiny eyes brandishing a glitter. He didn’t even have to speak; his expression alone — combined with the fact that Andret, too, possessed an inborn sensor for even the most trivial lapse of logic — was enough to point out the error that, by the following meeting, Andret would have carefully readdressed.

Yet Tread never spoke of collaboration. He never spoke of working on a paper together.

The other thing about him was that by the time they next saw each other — usually a day or two later — Tread would have forgotten everything that had been discussed. This was another quality of his that Andret appreciated.

—

ONE SPRING DAY, Knudson Hay called him at home and asked him to come down to the office. It was late afternoon and Andret had no desire to return to campus, but in the end he agreed. When he arrived at Fine Hall, Hay went straight to the cabinet and poured out two scotches on the rocks. Andret had already spent a couple of hours at Clip’s. “How’s the work going?” Hay began.

“Another day, another dollar. Might we have discussed this on the phone?”

“I’ve found that some things are better addressed in person, Andret. Please sit down.” Hay’s face tightened and he cast his eyes to the door. “I’m sorry to have to say this, so please listen well. I’d prefer only having to say it once.” He appeared for several moments to be composing his next sentence. Then, in a level voice, he said, “I hope you’re not entertaining Professor Petrinova.”

Andret stared back, revealing nothing.

“You must understand,” Hay went on, “the State Department will have my head. Her husband is a colonel in the Soviet Air Force. Are you aware of that?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Are you entertaining her?”

“Am I what?”

“Are you entertaining her?”

Andret rattled his ice cubes. He liked his scotch neat. “What’s the matter?” he said. “You worried she’s KGB?”

“Olga Petrinova is a guest of the mathematics department, may I remind you — not to mention the Department of State. For the record, I’m warning you about her. Are you entertaining her?”

“I thought you were only going to ask me once.”

“For the record, Milo — I’m warning you.”

“Well, I’d prefer only having to answer you once,” Andret said. “So please listen well.” He was drunk, he realized, in a thick and irritated way. He plucked the ice cubes from his glass and dropped them into the trash. Then he downed the rest of the scotch. “Yes,” he said when he sat again. “I’m fucking her. Not the best I’ve ever had, but pretty damn good. Pretty entertaining, actually.”

“Jesus,” said Hay, working his jaw.

“Don’t tell me you’re surprised.”

“I am surprised. I’m not even sure what to say.”

In truth, though, Andret was the one who’d been surprised: she hadn’t told him she was married.

BY THE BEGINNING of his fifth year on the problem, his energy was clearly flagging. His morning drink generally tired him now rather than revitalized him, and on the days when he taught he’d begun napping at home after lunch. Now and then on such afternoons, he didn’t return to the office at all but went to find DeWitt Tread.

What remained to be discovered on the proof was still formidable — indeed, daunting. He considered himself flexible in his attack now — his approach had moved from pure visualization to a mix of visualization and figuring — but what he couldn’t deny was that a certain sameness had entered his work. The methodical approach itself, somehow, had become an end. The hours of thought. The incremental charting and drawing. As though by performing them both, even for brief periods, he could systematically check off the set of steps that would in time deliver a solution. Like a man moving a load of gravel with a wheelbarrow. He knew this was absurd. He knew that fortune of the kind he sought was chimerical and couldn’t be plundered by method alone. Brilliance. Luck. A moment of godly imagination. He would need all these things but like every mortal could do nothing to summon them. He could only hope, as he sat silently at his desk, that one of them might one day make a wary visit. He was aware that he’d set course for a shore that he might never reach.

Intuition — that’s what he needed. His intuition had always served him.

Occasionally, his mind went back to Tycho Brahe and that period of history in which every reasonable expedition in the sciences seemed to produce a discovery of note. How unfair it all seemed. He knew that Hans Borland would never have tolerated such brooding, but he couldn’t help indulging in a comfort: he’d been born in the wrong century.

At the same time, and almost without him noticing, his office had begun to grow dark. First in a curious way, then in a bothersome one. He realized that the hemlock outside his window had thickened. He raised the blinds one morning and saw that its branches reached higher now than the ceiling of his office. He bought a lamp. Then a second one. But the electric light failed to achieve the necessary feeling. The stacked boxes were obscuring the lower half of his view, and the room itself had taken on the smell of their contents, the thousands of pages of hand-drawn hypotheticals, lying dormant through the humid summers. In one corner, his notes had reached the ceiling.

—

HE WAS INTERRUPTED in his work one evening by another knock on his office door. When he opened it a crack, Hay was standing there with a purposeful look on his face. Andret was aware of having mistreated him the last time they’d spoken, but the details were hazy. “Ah,” he said, opening the door wider. “Chairman Hay — another personal visit.”