Why did you become a mathematician rather than a physicist?

Because it was harder. Maybe. Mostly because whatever else physical reality may be it is finite.

This may be the most animated I’ve seen you.

Well. Take a good look.

The violin.

Yes.

You couldnt find time to practice you said.

Probably I didnt really think that I was good enough. To be honest. At one point I was interested in the mathematics of the violin. I corresponded with a woman in New Jersey named Carleen Hutchins who was trying to map the harmonics of the instrument. She’d taken any number of rare Cremonas apart with a soldering iron. She worked with some physicists setting up some rather elaborate equipment to establish the Chladni patterns of the plates. But the vibrations and frequencies were so complex that they resisted any complete analysis. I thought that I could do mathematical models of these frequency patterns.

Did you?

Yes.

What did you find out?

Carleen kept good records. The oldest known violin is an Amati believed to be from 1564 that’s in the Ashmolean at Oxford. The oldest instrument we studied was from 1580 and the latest was probably a German violin from the 1960s. Aside from the angle of the neck they were the same. Nothing had changed. Nothing.

That seems rather remarkable.

Yes. What’s even more remarkable is that there is no prototype to the violin. It simply appears out of nowhere in all its perfection.

And what do you make of that? You’ve told me this for a reason.

It’s just another mystery to add to the roster. Leonardo cant be explained. Or Newton, or Shakespeare. Or endless others. Well. Probably not endless. But at least we know their names. But unless you’re willing to concede that God invented the violin there is a figure who will never be known. A small man who went with his son into the stunted forests of the little iceage of fifteenth century Italy and sawed and split the maple trees and put the flitches to dry for seven years and then stood in the slant light of his shop one morning and said a brief prayer of thanks to his creator and then—knowing this perfect thing—took up his tools and turned to its construction. Saying now we begin.

I’m sorry. This gentleman is very close to your heart.

Sorry. Yes. Very close. Time’s up.

V

I thought perhaps you werent coming.

It took my keepers longer than we thought to get me out of my restraints.

Have you ever been in restraints?

No. Discounting electroshock therapy.

You’ve never been late before.

No. Just absent.

You seem to rather make a point of it.

Punctuality.

Yes.

I do.

Are you all right with everything?

Yeah. Sure.

You’re not upset.

No. I sleep with the lights on anyway. For the most part.

What dictates that? About the lights.

I suppose it’s just what’s on the road.

In the sense of something coming?

In the sense.