“One what? A topologist? No.”
“Yes.”
“My question is, Mr. Fodor — may I ask you? I believe you may be one of the few, I believe you may be the only — perhaps in the world — the only one who might be able to answer this.” I leaned down and tried to capture his eyes, but they darted away. “Your paper isn’t exactly a refutation of my father’s proof. I understand that. But nonetheless it alludes to a mistake. A central mistake.”
“A problem in the maths.”
“Yes, exactly. My question, Mr. Fodor. My question is, do you think my father knew of this problem?”
“Ah.” The smile switched off like a lamp. He looked away. “You mean, at then moment?”
“Yes, did he know of it at the time it occurred?”
“You will not speak this, please.”
“Of course not.”
Then he thought. The way another man might have signaled for the bill, or turned his back to place a phone call, or stood to fetch the car, Benedek Fodor sat across the table from me and thought. He closed his eyes, brought his bearing straight, and sat. A pulse showed in his jaw.
After fifteen minutes — I was checking the clock — he made a little nod with his chin. “I will pose question,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Do you think he knew?”
I closed my own eyes. I pictured him. The boxed-up bottles. The useless drawings.
I opened them again. “Yes,” I said. “I believe he probably did.”
“Then, yes, Mr. Andret. I say that I agree. Great mathematician always knows.”
Contra Deum
DR. GANDAPUR LEANED to the window, half crossing himself. “Does the Lord not work in unexpected ways?”
“He’s been like this since they arrived.”
With his women around him now, Dad had mustered himself. In the garden, Cle was trickling water from a bucket, and my mother was drawing a rusted hoe through the clods. Dad made the rear, bending forward as he moved up the line, wrapping long weeds in his fist and trying to pull them up. Now and then he succeeded. Sitting alongside the plot was a wheelbarrow, where he’d toss them. When my mother bent to move it a few feet, he lifted his head to watch her.
“And your mother?” said Dr. Gandapur. “She doesn’t mind the arrangement?”
“My mother is a saint.”
“Ah.” He closed his bag and turned to the window. Dad was struggling with a stalk; when it came free, he staggered, then recovered and set it on top of the pile in the wheelbarrow. He pushed himself up the line, his eyes fixed on the back of Mom’s legs. After a moment, he turned and looked at Cle’s.
“I am afraid I cannot agree,” said Dr. Gandapur.
“With what?”
He reddened. “My apologies to the good fathers of Lahore,” he said, crossing himself, “but if there is one thing I have learned in this life, it is that there is no such thing as a saint.”
—
“BUT SHE IS,” said Paulie. “If she can still care about him”—she pointed out at the dock, where he was sitting between Mom and Cle—“anybody who could still care about him — oh, God, look at that — she’s more than a saint. She could be deified.”
We were in our old bedroom upstairs, watching from the window.
“You look good, by the way,” I said. Her outfit was divided by two sets of matched creases, as though the skirt and blouse had been pulled a few minutes ago from the same packet of dry cleaning. She was wearing heels, too, which was new for my sister, and her hair had been pinned back in a bun. “You look like the lord mayor of Zanzibar, Paulie.”
“Well, Hansie, you look like one of my savages.”
We hugged.
“I’m glad you decided to come.”
“Well,” she said, “we’ll see about that.” Her gaze dropped to my hand.
“Grapefruit juice.” I raised the glass. “Scurvy, you know.”
She laughed. Then she moved to the wall, where her bed was still made under the old yellow blanket. Next to it, under the old green one, was my own. She picked up the goldfish bowl from the table between them. “I used to keep my crayfish in here,” she said.
“I remember. Mom used to have to throw the water out whenever we got the call from the department of public health.”
She looked over at me. “What?”
“You knew that, Paulie. They stunk so bad, we had to hold our noses with clothespins when she brought them down to the lake.”
She set down the bowl. “I guess I had a dream once that they just climbed out. Maybe that’s why I forgot. I used to be afraid of stepping on them when I had to go to the bathroom.”
She leaned down and peeked under the bed.
“Any still under there?”
She rose, allowing herself a small smile. “It’s amazing what a child will believe, Hans. I remember thinking that maybe I hadn’t been a good-enough mother.”
“To raise crayfish?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“Paulie,” I said. “You’d be an excellent mother. You’d still be one.”
“Thank you.” She lowered herself to the mattress and closed her eyes. “Can I ask you something? Are you sleeping in here?”
“I’m in Mom and Dad’s room.”
She looked over. “Then where’s Dad?”
“On the porch. I don’t want him climbing stairs.”
“Oh. Then where—”
She stopped.
“She’s in the other room, Paulie. The downstairs bedroom. By herself.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Well, that’s good news, anyway. Count your blessings.” She stood up and went to the closet. “This whole place, though — don’t you smell it? It’s being taken over by some kind of fungus.”
“Well, I cleaned it as well as I could.”
“And all that furniture. Did you buy all that for him, too?”
“As a matter of fact, Paulie, I didn’t.”
She glanced over.
“Cle did,” I said.
“That’s what I thought.”
“I know. But he didn’t seem to mind.”
“And if there’s anything she won’t do for him, then Mom will? Is that the idea?”
“Oh, come on, now — look at him. You don’t expect him to have the energy to keep this up all by himself, do you?”
“Well, what about when we were young?”
“He had other things to think about.”
She smirked.
“Oh, come on, Paulie. You can’t fight him all your life.”
“I know that. But you can’t glorify him all of yours.” She turned and lifted the shade again. Outside, the three of them were still together on the dock, but they were laughing now. Cle’s shoulders shook. Even Mom was grinning. Dad bent sideways, reaching for a glass.
“God,” she said. “He got everything he wanted, didn’t he?”
She let the shade drop, then reached under her hair and placed one tiny earring, then the other, onto the dresser. When she sat again on the mattress, the springs creaked. She shimmied against the headboard and folded a pillow beneath her back. Then she closed her eyes and said, “How’s he doing, Hans—really?”
“He’s looking a lot better than when I got here.” I handed her the pillow from my bed. “But the truth is that he’s not in very good shape at all.”
“Is he in pain?”
“I’d say he’s in some. But I think what’s really bothering him is watching it all happen. I think he’s pretending to be fascinated by it.”