This problem having been solved, of course a new one had to be set. When Liseiwicz wrote this third question up on the top right-hand corner of the blackboard, he turned round and rather than speaking to the class as a whole, he directed his comments to Jinzhen alone: ‘If you can answer this problem too, then I am going to set you your personal question.’ He was talking about the question that would be the basis of his graduation thesis.
Jinzhen went to three of Professor Liseiwicz’s classes in total, lasting just over a week.
In the case of this third question, Jinzhen was not able to solve it as quickly as the previous two, so when the next class came around, he did not yet have a solution to offer. When Professor Liseiwicz finished the fourth class of that term, he stepped down from the teacher’s podium and spoke to Jinzhen: ‘I have already thought of the question for your graduation thesis. You can come and pick it up whenever you finish the previous one.’ Having said that, he walked out.
After he married, Jan Liseiwicz rented a house in Sanyuan Lane, just near the university. That was officially where he lived, but in fact he still spent a lot of time in the rooms he had occupied when he was a bachelor, living in faculty accommodation. His set was up on the third floor, a suite of rooms with a bathroom attached. He would read there, or do research — it was his library-cum-office. That afternoon, having had his siesta, Professor Liseiwicz was listening to the radio. The clumping sound of feet coming upstairs interrupted his listening. The heavy footsteps stopped right by his door, but instead of being followed by the sound of a knock, there was a susurrating noise, like a snake moving through dry leaves, as something was pushed under the door. It was a couple of sheets of paper. Liseiwicz went over and picked them up, recognizing immediately a familiar handwriting: Jinzhen. He flipped through the pages until he got to the answer: it was correct. As if he had just been flicked by a whip, he wanted to throw open the door and shout for Jinzhen to come back. However, when he got as far as the door, he hesitated for a moment and then went back to sit on the sofa. He began looking at the first page of calculations. When he had read the whole thing through carefully, Liseiwicz felt the same impulse that had propelled him towards the door. This time he rushed to the window, from which he could see Jinzhen walking slowly away. Throwing open the window, Liseiwicz bellowed at the retreating back, far in the distance. Jinzhen turned round, to discover that the foreign professor was pointing at him and yelling to come upstairs.
Jinzhen sat down opposite the foreign professor.
‘Who are you?’
‘Jinzhen.’
‘No,’ Liseiwicz was smiling, ‘I mean what family are you from? Where do you come from? Where did you go to school? I can’t help feeling that I have met you somewhere before — who are your parents?’
Jinzhen hesitated. He hardly knew how to reply.
Suddenly Liseiwicz exclaimed: ‘Ah! I remember. You look just like the woman whose statue stands in front of the main building — Miss Lillie — yes, Rong ‘Abacus’ Lillie, that’s it! Tell me, are you related to her? A son. . no, a grandson?’
Jinzhen pointed to the papers lying on the sofa and asked as if Liseiwicz had not spoken: ‘Did I get it right?’
Liseiwicz said, ‘You still haven’t answered my question. Are you related to Miss Lillie?’
Jinzhen didn’t admit it, but he also didn’t deny it. He just said woodenly, ‘You will have to talk to Professor Rong — he’s my guardian. I don’t know anything about my parents.’
Jinzhen was simply trying to avoid discussing his relationship with Miss Lillie, which was a subject he found very difficult to deal with; but he was not expecting that this would start Liseiwicz down an even worse line of enquiry. Staring at Jinzhen suspiciously, he said: ‘Oh, really. . So tell me, did you come up with the answer to my equations all on your own, or did someone help you?’
Jinzhen drew himself up: ‘Of course I did it myself!’
That evening, Jan Liseiwicz went in person to visit Young Lillie. When Jinzhen saw him, he imagined that the foreign professor was still concerned that he might have received help with his work. In fact, although Liseiwicz had indeed expressed such a possibility earlier in the day, he had immediately dismissed it. His reasoning for this was that if either the professor or his daughter had suggested a solution, they would never have expressed it in those terms. After Jinzhen left, Liseiwicz had reviewed his papers and was impressed all over again by his method of working. He discovered that the method of proof used was most unusual and impressive: at once naïve and yet clearly demonstrating both the grasp of logic and the intelligence of the young student who had worked it out. Liseiwicz found it hard to put his feelings into words. It was only in talking to Young Lillie that he gradually found a way to express what he thought.
Liseiwicz said, ‘The way that I think about it is this: it is as if we were asking him to go somewhere and pick up something which is located inside a maze of tunnels so dark that you cannot see the five fingers right in front of your face, and furthermore, the maze is full of crossroads, forks, and traps. If you don’t have a source of light, you can’t move even one step from your starting position. If you want to find your way through this maze of tunnels, you first need to prepare a source of light. There are lots of possible sources. You might use a torch, or an oil lamp, or a brand, or even a heap of firewood. This kid is so ignorant that he does not know about these tools and even if he did, he could not find them. So he does not go near them — he uses a mirror instead, setting it at just the right angle so that it will bend the sunlight into the tunnel that he is digging. When he comes to a bend in the tunnel, he sets up another mirror to light his path. He carries on his way, thanks to that one feeble beam of light, past all the traps and dangers. The thing that I find most mysterious is that every time he reaches a fork in the road, some kind of sixth sense seems to be telling him which is the right path to take.’
In almost a decade as colleagues, Young Lillie had never heard Jan Liseiwicz say anything so complimentary about anyone. It was very difficult to get someone like Liseiwicz to admit anyone else’s mathematical abilities, but here he was praising Jinzhen to the skies without the slightest hesitation. It was a pleasant surprise for Young Lillie, but also made him feel very strange. He thought to himself: ‘I was the very first person to discover that the boy has remarkable mathematical abilities and Liseiwicz is the second, but all he is doing is confirming my initial discovery.’ On the other hand, what could be better than confirmation of his discovery from a man like Liseiwicz? The two men talked together more and more happily.
However, on the subject of Jinzhen’s future studies, the two men were diametrically opposed. In Liseiwicz’s opinion, the boy already knew quite enough and had shown signs of such remarkable ability that he did not need any further classes on the basics. He thought that he could skip all of that and move straight on to completing his graduation thesis.