Part 3 (1/2)

The same afternoon a young man knocked at the door of Gauss's parents' home. He was seventeen, his name was Martin Bartels, he was studying mathematics, and he was working as b.u.t.tner's a.s.sistant. Might he have a few words with the son of the house?

He only had one son, said Gauss's father, and he was eight years old.

That was the one, said Bartels. Might he have permission to do mathematics with the young gentleman three times a week? He didn't wish to speak of lessons, because the very concept was inappropriate, and here he smiled nervously, when this was an activity from which he might learn more than his pupil.

The father told him to stand up straight. The whole thing was absolute nonsense! He thought for a time. On the other hand, there was really nothing to say against it.

They worked together for a year. At the beginning Gauss enjoyed the afternoons, which broke up the monotony of the weeks, although he didn't have much time for mathematics; what he really would have wanted were Latin lessons. Then things got boring. Granted, Bartels didn't think as laboriously as the others, but he still made Gauss impatient.

Bartels announced that he'd talk to the rector at the high school. If his father would permit, Gauss would be given a free place.

Gauss sighed.

It wasn't right, said Bartels reproachfully, that a child should always be sad!

He thought about this, it was an interesting idea. Why was he sad? Maybe because he could see his mother was dying. Because the world seemed so disappointing as soon as you realized how thinly it was woven, how crudely the illusion was knitted together, how amateurish the st.i.tches were when you turned it over to the back. Because only secrets and forgetfulness could make it bearable. Because without sleep, which s.n.a.t.c.hed you out of reality, it was intolerable. Not being able to look away was sadness. Being awake was sadness. To know, poor Bartels, was to despair. Why, Bartels? Because time was always pa.s.sing.

Together, Bartels and b.u.t.tner persuaded his father that he shouldn't be going to work in the spinning mill, he should be going to high school. The father gave his unwilling consent, along with the advice that he should always stand up straight, no matter what happened. Gauss had already been watching gardeners at work for years, and understood that it wasn't lack of human moral fiber that upset his father, it was the chronic back pain that attended his profession. He got two new s.h.i.+rts and free room and board with the pastor.

High school was a disappointment. There really wasn't much to learn: some Latin, rhetoric, Greek, laughably primitive mathematics, and a little theology. His new cla.s.smates were not much smarter than the old ones; the teachers resorted to the stick just as often, but at least they didn't hit as hard. At their first midday meal, the pastor asked him how things were going at school.

Pa.s.sable, he replied.

The pastor asked him if he found learning hard.

He sniffed and shook his head.

Take care, said the pastor.

Gauss looked up, startled.

The pastor looked at him severely. Pride was a deadly sin!

Gauss nodded.

He should never forget it, said the pastor. Never in his whole life. No matter how clever one was, one must always remain humble.

Why?

The pastor apologized. He must have misunderstood.

Nothing, said Gauss, really-nothing.

On the contrary, said the pastor, he wanted to hear it.

He meant it strictly theologically, said Gauss. G.o.d created you the way you were, but then you were supposed to spend your life perpetually apologizing to Him. It wasn't logical.

The pastor theorized that he must be having trouble hearing properly.

Gauss pulled out a very dirty handkerchief and blew his nose. He was sure he must be misunderstanding something, but to him it seemed like a deliberate reversal of cause and effect.

Bartels found a new place for him to board free, with Privy Councilor Zimmerman, a professor at Gottingen University. Zimmerman was a lean, affable man, always looked at him with polite awe, and took him along to an audience with the Duke of Brunswick.

The duke, a friendly gentleman with a twitch in his eyelids, was awaiting them in a room all decorated in gold, with so many candles burning that there were no shadows, only reflections in the mirrored ceiling which created a second room that swayed above their heads, except inside out. Ah, so this was the little genius?

Gauss made a bow, as he had been taught. He knew that there would soon be no more dukes. Then absolute rulers would only exist in books, and the idea that one would stand before such a person, bow, and await his all-powerful word would seem so strange as to be a fairy tale.

Count up something, said the duke.

Gauss coughed, and felt hot and faint. The candles were using up almost all the oxygen. He looked into the flames and suddenly understood that Professor Lichtenberg was wrong, and his phlogiston hypothesis was superfluous. It wasn't some light-producing matter that was burning, it was air itself.

If he might be permitted, said Zimmerman, there was a misapprehension here. The young man was no arithmetical artist. On the contrary, he wasn't even that good at reckoning. But mathematics, as His Highness naturally knew, had nothing to do with the gift of doing addition. Two weeks ago the boy had deduced Bode's law of planetary distances all on his own, followed by the rediscovery of two of Euler's theorems he hadn't met before. He had contributed astonis.h.i.+ng things to the setting of the calendar: his formula for working out the correct date for Easter had meantime become standard for the whole of Germany His achievements in geometry were exceptional. Some of them had already been made public, although naturally under the name of this or that teacher because no one wanted to expose the boy to the corrosive effects of early fame.

He was more interested in things to do with Latin, said Gauss huskily with a frog in his throat. And he knew dozens of ballads by heart.

The duke asked, Did someone just say something?

Zimmerman poked Gauss in the ribs. He begged pardon, the young man's origins were uncouth, his manners left something to be desired. But he would vouch for the fact that a stipendium from the Court was the only thing standing between him and the achievements that would redound to the glory of his country.

So was he saying n.o.body was going to do any counting right now, asked the duke.

Alas, no, said Zimmerman.

Ah well, said the duke, disappointed. But he should have his stipendium all the same. And come back when he had something to show. He was all for science. His favorite G.o.dson, little Alexander, had just left to look for flowers in South America. Maybe what they would be doing here was breeding another fellow just like him! He made a gesture of dismissal, and Gauss and Zimmerman bowed just the way they had practiced as they retreated backwards through the door.

Soon after that, Pilatre de Rozier came to town. He and the Marquis d'Arlandes had gone up in a basket which the Mont-golfiers had attached to a hot-air balloon, and flown five and a half miles over Paris. After they landed, it was said, two men had had to help the marquis walk away, as he was babbling nonsense, insisting that luminous creatures with bosoms and bird's beaks had flown around them. It had taken hours for him to calm down and blame it all on an attack of nerves.

Pilatre had his own flying machine and two a.s.sistants, and was on his way to Stockholm. He had spent the night in one of the cheaper hostelries and was about to set off again when the duke sent word that he would like him to do a demonstration.

Pilatre said it was a waste of time and inconvenient to boot.

The messenger indicated that the duke was unaccustomed to having his hospitality rejected so vulgarly.

What hospitality, said Pilatre. He had paid for lodging and just preparing the balloon would cost him two days of travel time.

Perhaps it was possible to talk that way to one's superiors in France, said the messenger, in France anything was possible. But in Brunswick he would do well to reflect before sending him back with any such message.

Pilatre gave in. He should have known, he said wearily, in Hannover it had been the same and in Bavaria too, for that matter. So in the name of Christ he would go up in his balloon tomorrow afternoon in front of the gates of this filthy town.

Next morning there was a knock at his door. A boy was standing outside, looking up at him intently, and asked if he could fly with him.

Travel with him, said Pilatre. In a balloon, it's travel. You don't say fly you say travel. That was what balloonists said.

What balloonists?

He was the first, said Pilatre, so it was his to decree. But no, of course n.o.body could travel with him. He tickled the boy's cheeks and tried to close the door.

This wasn't the way he usually behaved, said the boy wiping his nose on the back of his hand. But his name was Gauss, he wasn't some n.o.body, and before long he would be making discoveries that would equal Isaac Newton's. He wasn't saying this out of vanity, but because time was getting short and he had to be part of the flight. You could see the stars much better up there, couldn't you? Clearer, and not obscured by the haze?