"The Housekeeper and the Professor"

[fiefoe]

Yoko Ogawa made a wise choice. Number theory lends itself well to this.

• He had a special feeling for what he called the "correct miscalculation," for he believed that mistakes were often as revealing as the right answers.
• He said, pointing at his chest. "It's in here. It's the most discreet sort of number, so it never comes out where it can be seen. But it's here."
• ...he was as humble in such cases as the square root of negative one itself.
• I realized that he talked about numbers whenever he was unsure of what to say or do. Numbers were also his way of reaching out to the world.
• He would ask my shoe size or telephone number,... or the number of brushstrokes in the characters of my name;
• Just as the thought of a caramel can cause your mouth to water, the mere mention of prime numbers made us anxious to know more about their secrets.
• I wondered why ordinary words seemed so exotic when they were used in relation to numbers. Amicable numbers or twin primes had a precise quality about them, and yet they sounded as though they'd been taken straight out of a poem.
• "..Try imagining one little bird sitting on a branch, singing in a clear, high voice. He has a pretty little beak and colorful feathers. You stare at him, enchanted; but as soon as you breathe, he flies away, leaving only the bare branch, and a few dried leaves fluttering in the breeze." The Professor pointed out at the dark garden, as if the bird had really just flown away. The shadows seemed deeper and longer in the rain. "Yes, 1 - 1= 0. A lovely equation, don't you think?"