The housekeeper and the professor - By Yoko Ogawa Page 0,32

larger. And 5 and 6 are the smallest pair. But the proof to show that those pairs are infinite in number is quite difficult.... The important thing is that I'm sitting in 714 and you're in 715, instead of the opposite. It's the young who have to break the old records. That's the way the world works, don't you think?"

"That's great, Professor. But look, there's Tsuyoshi Shinjo!" Root always listened carefully to these speeches, but he showed little interest in the significance of his seat number.

The Professor talked about numbers throughout the game— just as he always did when he was nervous. His voice grew louder and louder with each inning; he would not be drowned out by the crowd.

The starting pitcher, Nakagomi, was greeted with a tremendous cheer as he was announced and headed out to the mound. At the same moment, the Professor said, "The height of the mound is 10 inches, or 25.4 centimeters. The infield slopes at a rate of one inch per foot for the first six feet toward the plate."

He noticed that the first seven men in the order for Hiroshima hit left-handed: "Left-handed hitters against left-handed pitchers have a cumulative batting average of .2568. Right-handed hitters hit .2649 against right-handed pitchers." Or, when Nishida, on the Hiroshima team, stole a base and the crowd booed: "It takes 0.8 seconds from the time the pitcher begins his windup to the time he releases the ball. In this case, the pitch was a curveball that took 0.6 seconds to reach the catcher's mitt, and then 2 full seconds for the catcher to throw it to second base, which means the runner had 3.4 seconds total to run the 24 meters from first to second base without being thrown out, running at more than 7 meters per second, or 25.2 kilometers per hour."

Fortunately, his commentary did not cause us any trouble, since the group to our left politely ignored him, while the man sitting to our right was amused. He helped us to keep the Professor calm.

"You seem to know a lot more about it than that lousy announcer," he said. "You'd make a great scorekeeper. Why don't you figure out how the Tigers can win the pennant?" When he wasn't cheering for the players on the field, he appeared to listen carefully to everything the Professor said, even though I doubt he could understand it. Thanks to this kind man, the Professor's mathematical commentary moved beyond the level of farce and, in some sense, revealed a kind of logic to the game. For that, the man shared his peanuts with us.

The Tigers held their lead through the fifth inning on hits from Wada and Kuji. The sun had gone down and the evening grew chilly, so I made Root put on his jacket and I handed the Professor his lap robe; then I was busy wiping everyone's hands before we ate, and by the time we were properly settled, I was amazed to see that two more runs had been scored. Root, beside himself with happiness, was screaming through his megaphone, while the Professor, resting his sandwich on his lap, applauded awkwardly.

He had become completely absorbed in the game. The angle of the ball flying off the bat would leave him marveling, squinting at the field and nodding. From time to time he would peek into the picnic basket of the people sitting in front of us, or glance up at the moon shining between the branches of the poplars just outside the stadium.

Hanshin fans seemed to dominate the stands behind third base. The area was blanketed in yellow jerseys, and the cheers for the Tigers were loud and long. Even if the Hiroshima supporters had wanted to answer, they had little to cheer about as Nakagomi struck out one batter after another.

The Tigers fans roared each time Nakagomi threw a strike; and when a run came in, the stadium erupted. I had never in my entire life seen so many people united in celebration. Even the Professor looked positively elated—and here was a man who only seemed to have two facial expressions, the one he wore when he was thinking and the one he gave me when I interrupted those thoughts. You might even say that he, too, had been transported by the cheers.

But the prize for the most original way of expressing enthusiasm went to the Kameyama fan clinging to the wire fence of the backstop. In his early twenties, he wore a