Nachman nodded yes, though he would have preferred a Coke. The bartender sneered, “Vodka martini?” as if Norbert had asked him to dance naked on a table. Norbert stared with no expression and said nothing, waiting for the bartender’s next remark. There was none. The bartender made the drinks. Norbert carried them to a booth.
“Here’s to life,” he said, his tone sour.
“Are you troubled about something?” Nachman blurted out the question.
“That’s how I seem to you?”
“Is there a problem?”
“Not my problem.”
“Whose, then?”
“A guy in my department. You wouldn’t understand.”
“So it’s an academic problem?”
“The most academic problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“You heard of Plato? The ancient Greeks talked about this problem in their philosophy departments. It’s about epistemology and fucking.”
“Come on, Norbert, spare me the lecture. What about this guy in your department?”
Norbert shook his head, evidently overwhelmed by the prospect of telling Nachman about the guy. Muscles began working in Norbert’s jaw, as if balls of feeling were being chewed. He had too much to say.
Nachman urged gently, “Tell me. What is the guy’s problem?”
“I already told you too much. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“You said almost nothing.”
“All right, a student came on to him. That’s the problem. O.K.?”
“Could you say a little more?”
“Forgive me for saying this, but you live a small life. Somebody gives you a pencil and a piece of paper and you are a happy Nachman. Like a kid on a beach. Give him a pail and he is king of the sand, ten billion tons of sand. You follow? The sand is like life, but all you need is a pail.”
“Is this about me?”
“Of course not.”
“But you sound angry. Are you angry?” Nachman asked, risking the worst possible. He couldn’t go on with so much bad feeling suppressed.
“I’m angry at the guy with the problem. What a jerk. Imagine you are in your office, and a beautiful girl in a miniskirt is standing two inches from your nose. She is looking into your eyes and she smells good.”
“Why is she standing two inches from your nose?”
“It isn’t because she is nearsighted. She has no idea that anything she does has consequences. She is a girl.”
“All right, go on.”
“This girl is asking for advice about her major. Naturally, given such a provocative question, blood begins bulging in your manly part.”
“So what did this guy do?”
“He told her to get the hell out of his office and phone in her question.”
“I’m beginning to see the picture.”
“You disapprove? This is a story about nature. To you, maybe, nature is a foreign language.”
“Finish the story. What happened with the girl?”
“This guy kissed her and he put his hand between her legs.”
“Just like that? What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Ohhhhhh.’”
“I see the picture.”
“The guy can’t eat. Can’t sleep. He is crazy with jealousy because she sleeps with other guys. Look, it’s late. Do you want to get out of this dump and go home? You must want to go home. Say the word. Whatever you want.”
“If it helps you to talk, Norbert, I’ll listen all night. But there is something I must tell you.”
“You needn’t bother. I know you feel compromised. Adele told me about the mustache. She told me everything. It’s not your fault that you saw her on Fairfax Avenue.”
“So you’re angry at Adele?”
“I love Adele. Who wouldn’t love her? I asked her why is the mustache so important? Why do you need him? She says she doesn’t know why. Nachman, you live with numbers. One plus one is two. It was always two, and it will always be two. For you there are problems, but no mysteries. The solutions exist, so take a vacation.”
“Don’t say another word. A vision is coming. I see a man who looks like me walking on an empty beach. He is on vacation. I know this because he is barefoot, collecting seashells. Now he is holding a shell to his ear, listening to the ocean, the chaos in which this shell was born. He knows that it was shaped according to a law which is expressed in the ratio of the rings on the shell. My God, he realizes the shell can be described mathematically. The shell is a resolution of chaos, a mathematical entity. Do you understand?”
“Yes. You are constitutionally incapable of taking a vacation.”
“What’s real is numbers. When I solve a problem, I collect a piece of the real. Other men collect paintings, cars, Hawaiian shirts. They even collect women. So I’m a little different. You’re angry at Adele, but why at me?”
“You need to believe I’m angry at you?”
Norbert was clearly angry at Nachman. The feeling was mixed, but anger was there. He was angry because he had felt obliged, as a matter of pride, to confess the affair with the student. His confession sounded like boasting. It was forced, somehow unconvincing. Nachman understood that Norbert was embarrassed as well as angry, and he was concerned to protect his wife.
“Does Adele know about the guy who kissed the girl?” asked Nachman.
“A man is a man.”
“He doesn’t have to account for himself?”
“There is always something for which there is no accounting. Take, for example, the whole world.”
“This is between you and me, not you and the whole world. If you’re angry at me, you should tell me why.”
“Let’s go. I’ll drive you home.”
Norbert got up and strode to the bar. He reached into his pants pockets, fingers scrabbling along his thighs, searching for money to tip the bartender. There had been ugly tension between them when he ordered. The gesture meant Norbert was leaving with no hard feelings. It also meant that Norbert had forgiven Nachman.
They drove in silence to Nachman’s house. As Nachman got out of the car, Norbert said, “Come to dinner this Friday. Adele told me to invite you.” Norbert’s expression, in the glow of the dashboard, was unreadable. His big head and the wide slope of his shoulders resembled a pit bull’s. The shape was very familiar to Nachman. Even if he saw only Norbert’s head, at a distance, in a crowded street among a hundred moving heads, it would be enough to recognize his old friend. Nachman said, “I’ll look forward to dinner.”
Later that night, as always before going to sleep, he sat in bed reading. The book was called Die Innenwelt der Mathematiker. Nachman read German slowly and with difficulty, struggling with the sentences, consulting a dictionary every few minutes. Five pages took him nearly an hour, but he persisted. The book examined the question of whether mathematics is a social creation or a mysterious gift offered to certain individuals. Nachman didn’t see how it could be a social creation. Mathematicians collaborated sometimes, but he had never heard anyone say, “We solved the problem.” Nachman had never even met a mathematician who could tell you how a solution came to him or her. It just came or it didn’t. The great genius Ramanujan said the goddess of Namakkal came to him in his dreams bearing formulas. Well, no goddess had ever come to Nachman. But he did occasionally awake at night and stumble from his bed to a nearby table where he kept a pencil and paper. In the morning, when he discovered that he had scribbled the solution to a problem, he didn’t always remember having done so. What could be less social? It couldn’t even be said Nachman socialized with himself. In truth, he didn’t really know what “social” meant. He and Norbert were the closest of friends, but were they social? Norbert was Norbert. In his pit-bull head, he dreamed of cars. Nachman was Nachman. He dreamed of numbers.