Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

When Tread disappeared around the back of the building, Andret got back into the car, rubbing his hands together for warmth. A few driveways down, a truck was being backed into a loading bay and a man in dark coveralls was passing boxes onto a conveyor. In the other direction, there was nothing but empty road. Before him, every one of the building’s windows was sealed with plywood.

On the way home, after they’d left the warehouse district, they turned up a side road into a neighborhood. On one of the smaller streets, they pulled over. Tread stayed in the driver’s seat, sipping from the flask, while Andret went around to the trunk.

The printer wasn’t what he cared about. It was a scratched-up old Centronics that they’d thrown in for nothing. He shoved it aside to get to the suitcase below it. With frigid fingers he clicked it open. In the center of the foam lining was a low-slung, futuristic-looking box made of gray plastic. The top cover was attached with mismatched screws. On the front, there was a rectangular hollow where the logo would eventually go. Andret figured he had maybe half a year, perhaps a little more. Then this thing would become available to the general public. Seth Kopter was probably only using a TRS-80 or a VIC-20. Maybe even a TI-99/4.

This was a prototype of the TI-120.

They drove the rest of the way home in silence. In front of Fine Hall, Tread kept the engine running, and Andret said halfheartedly, “You want to come in?”

“I look like I want to?”

At this hour, he might still bump into one of his colleagues in the elevator, so he took the stairs instead, running up as fast as he could with the printer and suitcase weighing down his arms. It was dark by now, and thankfully the hallway was empty. In his office, boxes covered the furniture, stacked three high. He threw the printer down on top of one. With the computer pressed against his side he elbowed clear the desk, the boxes breaking when they hit the floor. He kicked them away to make a path to the outlet.

HE DIDN’T EVEN want to take the time off. That was the irony. By the end of the week, everything in his life would be different; he knew this, but he couldn’t even bring himself to give a damn. Three days that he wouldn’t be able to work on the Abendroth conjecture — that’s all it was to him now. The TI-120 was sitting idle in his office, and instead of learning to program it he was on a plane to Europe.

Warsaw, Poland. A cloudless morning. Industrial smoke at the horizon. From the airport, a black Trabant picked him up and drove him straight to the ceremony. Outside the lecture hall, scholars from every outpost of the mathematical world milled about in the high-ceilinged atrium. In deference to Hay, he made an effort to greet a few of them. But he’d arrived with almost no time to spare, and soon they were all in their chairs.

The hall went silent.

His name was the first to be announced. The applause rose, and he climbed the rostrum to stand next to the president of the International Mathematical Union. It was only then, as the dignified man leaned aside from the lectern, that he fully appreciated what had come to him. His vision blurred. For a moment he had to turn his head to the curtain. The citation was read carefully into the microphone: “To Milo Andret, of Princeton University, for his topological proof of Malosz’s conjecture, for developing a broad theory of high-dimensional branching structures, and for establishing novel connections between topology, algebra, and harmonic analysis.”

He straightened and proceeded to the judging table, where the elegant box was placed into his hands. Once more, the applause rose, then soon became an ovation.

At last.

He’d spent the entire flight over the Atlantic parsing the structural merits of Pascal versus Fortran versus C versus Simula, and up until a few moments ago he’d been imagining logical block sequences in his mind for an efficient entry point to his own algorithm. But now his thoughts unshackled. The applause moved over him like a wave; and then, like a wave, it lifted him. When he was set back down, he paused for a moment, then gathered himself and moved away to the side of the stage. Hands reached out to shake his.

Afterward, he went to only a single lecture, a sparsely attended talk on object-oriented programming, then found an abandoned room where he fell so deeply asleep he didn’t wake till evening. Fortunately, the Trabant was still waiting outside to bring him back to the hotel. There he downed a couple of glasses of something called Krupnik — it had been placed on his nightstand — took a long shower, and emerged feeling better than he had in years. He had to give his own talk tomorrow, but that caused him no worry. He had another glass of Krupnik and headed out with the group for a night on the town.

The celebration started with a fine meal in an elegant, marble-floored establishment at the edge of Old Town, then proceeded to a nightclub. As the mathematicians rose to leave the restaurant, their beautiful young waitress leaned down to the table and handed him a wrapped gift. “For famous medal victory,” she said.

He opened it. It was an expensive-looking bottle of vodka with a buxom mermaid carved into the glass. Someone hooted.

“From people of Poland,” said the young woman gravely.

“Thank you,” he answered, raising it in the air. “Thank you to all my colleagues and to every one of my distinguished hosts in your very fine city of Warsaw.”

Later in the glittering night, a smaller crowd gathered around him in a pub along the Vistula. A worn, genteel spot with ancient windows that looked out upon a line of illuminated ferries angling through the dark. A perfect reformulation of his childhood. Inside the private salon behind the bar, he was at the center of the revelry and several times again found himself having to turn away his head.

On the long wood table before him lay the Fields.

It was examined by all in the room. No matter how prestigiously tenured, no matter how extraordinarily successful in mathematics they all were, every one of his colleagues was drawn to the deeply carved face of the medal. Its dull gold shine pulled their gazes like a flame. One by one, they leaned over the velvet-lined box, fingering the weighty disk, reading out his name where it was etched into the rim, turning it back over to the engraved figure of Archimedes, ringed by inscription. Everywhere around him, he could feel the density of admiration. This was the great elixir of his life. He’d missed it so badly.

He picked up the medal in his own hands. TRANSIRE SUUM PECTUS MUNDOQUE POTIRI: Rise Above Yourself and Grasp the World.

—

WHEN HE WOKE up back in Princeton his headache extended all the way out to the tips of his ears. On the flight home he’d read through all the manuals again and decided on the language he was going to use. Then he’d drunk himself to sleep.

He rose from bed now, shaved quickly, and dressed especially well. In the basement of the mathematics building he bought a can of orange soda and walked down the hall to Hay’s workroom. Through its frosted-glass window he spied his chairman’s rigid silhouette. The clatter of the pen plotter drifted out from under the door.

He made sure to wait a few moments after he’d knocked.

“Well, well, well — if it isn’t the distinguished Fields Medalist,” Hay said jovially.

“Good morning, Knudson.” Behind Hay’s head, there were no envelopes on the shelves.

“This was the news you wouldn’t tell me, wasn’t it?” Hay crossed the room and shook Andret’s hand, then kept it in his own. “That’s a pretty big secret to keep, my friend. Hearty congratulations to you, from everyone in this department.”