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Solving a problem for which you know there’s an answer is like climbing a mountain with a guide, along a trail someone else has laid. In mathematics, the truth is somewhere out there in a place no one knows, beyond all the beaten paths. And it’s not always at the top of the mountain. It might be in a crack on the smoothest cliff or somewhere deep in the valley.”
He was no longer a frail old man, nor a scholar lost in his thoughts, but the rightful protector of a child.
“Yes, that’s right. I uncovered propositions that existed out there long before we were born. It’s like copying truths from God’s notebook, though we aren’t always sure where to find this notebook or when it will be open.”
My son and the Professor shared a secret bond now that no one could break, just as the Professor and I were linked by 220 and 284.
Every morning, when the Professor woke up, a note in his own hand reminded him of his affliction, and that the dreams he’d dreamed were not last night’s but those of some night in the distant past back when his memory had ended—it was as though yesterday had never happened.
On the face of it, these numbers faithfully played their official roles, but in secret they were primes and I knew that was what gave them their true meaning.
“The mathematical order is beautiful precisely because it has no effect on the real world.
“Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won’t find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human emotions. Mathematics, however, can illuminate them, can give them expression—in fact, nothing can prevent it from doing so.”
He treated Root exactly as he treated prime numbers. For him, primes were the base on which all other natural numbers relied; and children were the foundation of everything worthwhile in the adult world.
“Don’t worry,” he said, reaching over to stroke my hand. “The square root sign is a sturdy one. It shelters all the numbers.”
The institution was a forty-minute bus ride from town, behind an abandoned airport. From the windows of the visitor’s lounge you could see the cracks in the runway and the weeds growing on the roof of the hangar—and beyond, a thin strip of sea. On clear days, the waves glittered in the sun like a band of light stretched across the horizon.
His joy had little to do with the difficulty of the problem. Simple or hard, the pleasure was in sharing it with us.
