The housekeeper and the professor - By Yoko Ogawa Page 0,12

I brought my baby home from the hospital, it was to public housing that had been set up for single mothers, and the only person who welcomed us was the woman who served as matron for the institution. I folded up the one picture I had saved of the baby's father and stuffed it into the little wooden box they had given me at the hospital to hold the umbilical cord.

As soon as I'd managed to get the baby into a day care center, I went straight to the Akebono Housekeeping Agency and arranged for an interview. It was the only job I could think of that matched my limited skills.

Shortly before Root entered elementary school, my mother and I reconciled: a fancy backpack arrived in the mail for him. This happened at the same time that I had left the single mothers' home and set up house for ourselves. My mother was still managing the wedding hall. But just as our troubles seemed to be over and I'd begun to see how comforting it could be to have a grandmother for my child, my mother suddenly died of a brain hemorrhage—which may be why I was even happier than Root himself when I saw the Professor hug him.

The three of us soon fell into a pleasant routine. There was no change in my schedule or workload, other than making more food for dinner. Fridays were the busiest, as I had to prepare food for the weekend and store it away in the freezer. I would make meat loaf and mashed potatoes, or poached fish and vegetables, and explain repeatedly what went with what and how to defrost the food, although the Professor never quite figured out how to use the microwave. Nevertheless, when I arrived on Monday morning, all the food I'd prepared was gone. The meat loaf and fish had somehow been thawed and eaten, and the dirty dishes had been washed and put away in the cupboard. I was sure that the old woman took care of the Professor when I wasn't there, but as long as I was around, she never made an appearance. I had no idea why she had placed such a firm restriction on communication between her house and the Professor's, but I decided that my next challenge was to figure out how to get to know her.

The Professor's problems, on the other hand, were all mathematical. He never seemed particularly proud of his accomplishments, even when he had spent a long time solving an equation that had won both the prize money and my praise.

"It was just a little puzzle," he would say, "a game"; and his tone sounded more sad than modest. "The person who made the problem already knew the answer. 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."

In the afternoon, when he heard Root's voice at the door, the Professor came out of his study, no matter how absorbed he was in his work. Though he had always hated to have his "thinking" interrupted, he now seemed more than willing to give it up for my son.

Most days, however, Root simply delivered his backpack and went off to the park to play baseball with his friends, and the Professor would retreat dejectedly to his study.

So the Professor seemed particularly cheerful when the weather turned rainy and he was able to help Root with his math homework.

"I think I'm a little smarter when I'm in the Professor's office," Root told me. There were no bookshelves in the little apartment where we lived, so the Professor's study, with its stacks of volumes lining the walls, seemed magical to him. The Professor would sweep aside the notebooks and clips and eraser shavings on his desk to make space for Root, and then he would open the textbook.

How is it possible for a professor of advanced mathematics to teach a child in elementary school? The Professor was especially gifted, he had the most wonderful way of teaching fractions and ratios and volume, and it occurred to me that all parents should be giving this kind of help to their children.

Whether it