The housekeeper and the professor - By Yoko Ogawa Page 0,35

have to manage for myself, I crushed some ice into a plastic bag, wrapped it in a towel, and set about trying to cool the Professor's neck and back. Then I covered him in a heavy winter blanket and made tea to hydrate him. This was my usual routine when Root had a fever.

I put Root to bed on the sofa in the corner of the study. It had been covered with books, but when I cleared them away it proved to be comfortable enough. Root was still worried about the Professor, but he fell asleep almost immediately, his Tigers cap perched on a stack of math books.

"How are you feeling?" I asked the Professor. "Are you in pain? Are you thirsty?" He did not reply, and as he was sleeping soundly I assumed the fever would pass. His breathing was a little irregular, but there was no sign that he was in any pain. He looked almost peaceful. Even when I changed the ice packs or wiped down his damp arms and legs, he remained limp and did not open his eyes.

Out of his note-covered suit, his body was surprisingly thin and frail. His skin was pale and soft, the flesh on his arms and thighs and belly was wrinkled and slack. His fingernails seemed old and tired. I remembered something the Professor had told me, something a mathematician with a difficult name once said: "Math has proven the existence of God, because it is absolute and without contradiction; but the devil must exist as well, because we cannot prove it." The Professor's body had been consumed by the devil of mathematics.

As the night wore on, his fever seemed to worsen. His breath was hot, sweat poured off him, and the ice packs melted quickly. I began to worry—should I run out to the drugstore? Was it wrong to have forced him to go to the game? Would the fever do more damage to his brain? Eventually I consoled myself with the thought that he was sleeping peacefully, and I decided everything would be all right.

I wrapped myself in the lap robe that we'd taken along to the stadium and lay down by the bed. Moonlight shone in through a crack in the curtains. The game seemed a distant memory. The Professor was asleep to my left, Root to my right. When I closed my eyes, the world was filled with sound. The Professor's soft snoring, the drip of melting ice, Root muttering in his sleep, the creak of the sofa. The sounds comforted me, allowing me to forget about the Professor's crisis, as I drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, before the Professor woke up, Root left for school. He took the Tigers megaphone to return to his friend and promised to stop at the apartment to collect his books. When I went to check on the Professor, he was still in a deep sleep, but he seemed less flushed and his breathing was steady and calm. I began to worry that he had been asleep for too long. I gently touched his forehead and rolled back the blanket. I tried tickling him on the neck and chest and under his arms. I even tried blowing in his ear. But there was no response, other than a slight twitching of his eyes under their heavy lids.

Around noon, as I was working in the kitchen, I heard a noise from the study, and when I went to see, he was sitting on the edge of the bed dressed in his usual suit, his chin drooping down on his chest.

"You shouldn't be up," I told him. "You have a fever and you need to rest." He looked at me for a moment without saying anything and then looked down again. His eyes were full of sleep, his hair was wild, and his tie was badly askew. "Let's get you out of that suit and into some clean underwear. You were all sweaty last night. I'll go and buy you some pajamas later. You'll feel better when we get you fixed up and change the sheets. You were exhausted—from the long ball game. I'm sorry we tired you out, but I think you'll be fine now. If we keep you warm in bed and properly fed, you'll be as good as new in no time. That always works when Root has a fever.... So, let's start by getting something in your stomach. Would you like some apple juice?"

Before I'd finished, he