The housekeeper and the professor - By Yoko Ogawa Page 0,43

standing in the kitchen doorway. She had removed her apron and was holding her purse. "I'll be going now." She left as quietly as she'd come. We watched as she slipped out the door.

The Professor seemed lost in thought; Root's cap was crushed almost beyond recognition. I took a deep breath.

"It's because we're friends," I said. "Is it a crime to visit a friend?"

"And who is friends with whom exactly?"

"My son and I, with the Professor."

"I'm afraid you've been deceiving yourself," the widow said, shaking her head. "My brother-in-law has no property. He squandered everything on his studies, and he has nothing to show for it."

"And what does that have to do with me?"

"He has no friends, you understand? No one has ever come to visit him."

"Then Root and I are his first friends," I said.

At that moment, the Professor stood up.

"Leave the boy alone!"

He took a scrap of paper from his pocket and jotted something down. Setting it on the table, he walked out of the room. His manner had been utterly resolute, as if he'd decided from the beginning that this was the only course of action. There had been no anger or hesitation, he was calmly determined.

We stared at the note. No one moved. On the paper he had written a single line, one simple formula:

e?i +1 0

No one spoke. The widow's fingernails had ceased their tapping. Her eyes, so full of suspicion and disdain a moment earlier, now looked at me with a calm, understanding gaze, and I could tell then that she knew the beauty of math.

Not long after that, I received a message from the agency asking me to report for work again at the Professor's house. I could not say whether the widow had a change of heart, or had simply never liked the new housekeeper. I also had no way of determining whether the absurd misunderstanding had been settled or not. But the Professor had now earned his eleventh star.

No matter how many times I went over the strange scene in my mind, it remained a mystery. Why did the widow report me to the agency and have me fired? Why had she reacted so strongly to Root's visit? I was sure she had spied on us from the garden that night after the baseball game, and when I imagined her dragging her bad leg behind her and hiding in the bushes, I almost forgot my anger and felt sorry for her.

The mention of money was probably nothing more than a smoke screen. Maybe the widow was jealous. In her own way, she had been lavishing affection on the Professor for years, and to her I was an interloper. Forbidding me to communicate with the main house was her way of preventing me from disturbing their relationship.

I started work again on July 7, the day known as Tanabata, the Star Festival. The notes fluttering on the Professor's jacket as he met me at the door reminded me of the strips of colored paper on which children write their wishes for the festival. My portrait and the square root sign next to it were still clipped to his cuff.

"How much did you weigh at birth?" This question was new to me.

"I was 3,217 grams," I said. Having no idea what my own weight had been, I used Root's.

"Two to the 3,217th minus 1 is a Mersenne prime," he mumbled before disappearing into his study.

During the previous month, the Tigers had managed to climb back into the pennant race. After Yufune's no-hitter, the strength of the pitching staff had given a boost to the offense as well. But at the end of June things started to unravel. They had lost six straight, and the Giants had managed to pass them, bumping the Tigers down to third place.

The housekeeper who had pinch-hit for me had been methodical, and while I had been afraid to disturb the Professor's work and had barely touched the books in his study, she had picked them all up and stuffed them into the bookshelves, stacking any that didn't fit in the spaces above the armoire and under the sofa. Apparently she had a single organizing principle: size. In the wake of her efforts, there was no denying that the room looked neater, but the hidden order behind the years of chaos had been completely destroyed.

I suddenly remembered the cookie tin filled with baseball cards and went to look for it, fearing it had been lost. It was not far from