Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

“There’s a janitor who goes into my office?”

“He’s been here for twenty years, Milo. Do you think your wastebaskets empty themselves ?”

“What was he doing in there?”

“Look, Milo.”

“What?”

Hay took a drink, then placed his hand on Milo’s arm. “I want to tell you something,” he said. “Listen to me. You’re a great mathematician, Milo. A truly great one. This computer, that computer — none of it has anything to do with what you are. You’re a world-class mathematician — a theoretician of the highest order.” He raised his glass. “And the world has now acknowledged it.” He signaled to the waitress for another round. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

“Well, thank you, Knudson.”

“You know who got you the Hyun Chair, right?”

“Yes, I’m well aware.”

“It wasn’t entirely easy.”

“You already told me that. And I already said thank you.”

“And because I believe in you, Milo, I want you to keep the floppies.”

“What?”

Hay set down his glass. “It’s fine, Milo. You can keep the C++ disks.”

“I was planning to return them.”

“I know you were. It’s fine. I managed to get another set for myself anyway. Just keep the ones you have. I actually want you to have them.”

“I was in a hurry, Knudson. I’m sorry.”

“Well, to be fair, you could have just asked me to borrow them.”

“And what if you’d said no?”

“Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know, Knudson. You tell me .”

“What, Milo? Okay, look — never mind. It’s all fine. I know you’ll do something much greater than I could with them. They’re yours now. I have every confidence that they’ll be well used.”

More drinks arrived. Milo downed his.

Hay looked at the table. “I know what I’m not,” he said.

Milo glanced across.

“I’m well aware of my own limitations,” Hay continued.

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m not a great mathematician, Milo. I know that perfectly well.”

Milo turned his head to the street. “You can never say that, Knudson.”

“Yes, I can. I can say it with complete assurance. I’m no great mathematician. I’ve made my peace with it. But what I am good at is understanding other mathematicians. At taking care of them. At motivating them and bringing them along.”

“I work hard, Knudson.”

“That’s not what I mean. I know you do.”

“All right. Okay.” Milo took a drink. Outside, an ambulance came into hearing. As it passed by, snaking through the traffic, its strobe detonated against the bottles on the back wall of the bar. He closed his eyes.

—

BY MIDWINTER, HE’D prepared four papers. The four pillars of logic that would form the contributory proofs for his coup de grâce. Annabelle begged him to read the finished manuscripts for errors before she sent them off to the journals. But he could smell the final assault now and had already buried himself in the next round of derivations. So she hired an assistant professor to proofread what she typed up herself. She’d helped her own husband in the same way, years before. “And he never even thanked me,” she said. “Do you know that?”

Andret looked up. “Well,” he said. “Thank you.”

As it happened, all four papers appeared in the same month. Two in a single issue of Inventiones Mathematicae, one in Acta Mathematica, and one in the Annals.

—

“NOT A BAD couple of weeks,” said Hay. “Even for Milo Andret.” They were in Hay’s office this time, and he motioned for Milo to sit, then touched the line of reprints at the edge of his desk. “Without doubt the three best journals in the field. But that goes without saying, doesn’t it? Drink?”

“Please.”

“I can’t imagine what this kid Kopter is feeling right now.”

“I can do nothing but imagine it, Knudson. What’s to stop him from still getting the jump on me?”

“No review would publish if he used your work without credit — that’s what.” He ran his hand along the reprints. “And you’ve got all the good ones covered.”

“It’s a new world.”

“Not so new as you think.” Hay raised his glass. “Truly, it’s magnificent work you’ve done, my friend. It brings honor to this department. I called Manny Hyun last week, just to make sure he’d heard. Tell me, how close do you think you are now ?”

“To what?”

“Why must you always test me, Milo?”

Andret’s bourbon had been poured neat again. He downed the remainder. “I can see the whites of their eyes,” he answered.

—

OLGA BECAME HIS only relief. She didn’t talk, as Annabelle did, about his achievements. She didn’t ask about his progress. She didn’t congratulate him and she didn’t goad him on. In her tiny bathroom one afternoon he spotted his issue of Inventiones Mathematicae, but it had been obscured beneath a scatter of last week’s newspapers.

It was as though the exhaustion itself had charged him with hunger. Every few days, he came to see her. He found he wanted her two and three times a visit.

“My,” she said one evening, after he’d outstayed his usual departure, “I think you must be eating steak this day.”

“You’re my steak.”

“Is that so?”

She was atop him, her dark eyes burrowing into him like the lenses of a radiographic machine. He took her nipple between his lips.

“Answer me,” she said.

“Answer you what?”

“Am I all you wish to eat?”

“Of course you are.”

“Who is Annabelle then?”

“What?”

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know.”

In his ear: “You don’t know?”

“Nobody. Where’d you get that name?”

“Where do I get it? That is not the question. The question is who is she.”

She surprised him now by kissing him deeply. Then she was lifting his hips.

“Who is the mysterious Annabelle?”

“I don’t know.”

Again in his ear: “Do you think I care, Milo?”

“I don’t know if you do.”

“I do not.”

“Then you don’t.”

“Yes, you are right.” She quickened her pace now, her hands pressing down his shoulders. Her breath heaved as she pulled herself into his chest and then released, pulled herself in and released, shimmying up his body as though he were a tree she was determined to climb. When she drew forward he felt her hot breath on his face, and when she drew back he smelled her sweat, spiked with a smoky current of bourbon that weakened him like nerve gas. She was murmuring in Russian. At last she stiffened, closing her eyes.

Afterward, she lay next to him. He was looking out the window at the moon, but all he could feel was her gaze against the side of his skull.

“You are right that I do not care,” she said. She lit a cigarette. “But I do think that she might.”

—

ANOTHER KNOCK ON the door. Early morning this time. He’d been up all night working.

The knock came again.

“What is it!”

“It’s me, Milo.”

Knudson Hay.

“Milo, we need to speak.”

“I’m busy. Not now.”

“Then I guess you haven’t seen this.”

When Milo yanked open the door, it bounced off one of the boxes and smacked back against his shoulder. “Goddamn it, Knudson! I’m so fucking close! What now!”

Hay had an envelope in his hand. “I’m sorry, my friend,” he said. “I still have every faith in you.” Then he pointed back to the chair. “But you might want to be sitting down for this.”

Andret kicked at the door. “What the hell is going on, Knudson?”