What did he say?

He leaned and put his hand on my forehead. As if checking for fever.

Is that true?

Yes.

You were not amused.

No, I was amused.

He must have been concerned that you wouldnt get your doctorate.

Yes. He was.

Did you in fact submit it?

No. I hadnt even done all the course work. I think set theory made an outlaw of me. Poincaré said that it was a disease, Hilbert that it was paradise. At least if you include it in Cantor’s general body of work at the time. But it was Riemann who was down there doing the actual excavation. More than one mathematician who saw what he was about understood that it was his intention to drive a stake through Euclid’s heart.

Why would he want to do that?

Because he didnt like him. He didnt like his wife or his children or his dog.

I suppose this has to do with the axioms.

No. It has to do with reality. You begin with a point which has no dimension and therefore no reality and extend it into a line. Can an extension of nothing eventuate into something? You have to say so. You cant show so.

Did Riemann show so?

If you say so. It’s generally assumed that Riemann’s triangles’ exceeding a sum of one hundred and eighty degrees is an artifact of the curvature of the earth. But the figures are abstractions. They dont live on the earth. Well, they could live in space. And space bends. Yes it does. But Riemann didnt know that.

I’m not sure I see the point.

No pun intended, I’m sure. It’s all right. Neither does anyone else. We should sally on.

Where is it? The thesis.

In a landfill somewhere.

Really?

Really.

But you could reproduce it.

I could. I wont.

Was that all right with your brother?

No. He was upset.

Even though he’d said that it was nonsense.

He didnt say it was nonsense. The argument had segued from the formal to the structural and from there it called the discipline itself into question.

I’m not sure that I understand what it was that you were after.

I know. It ultimately descended into such questions as what it was that you were even talking about when you inquired into the nature of shape and form. The final section was called “The Prestige.” There was no QED at the end of it.

Is that a mathematical term? Prestige?

No. It’s a term for the third part of a magic act. It describes the moment when the woman you’ve just seen sawn in half steps out and bows to the crowd.

You were comparing your math to a magic act?

Yes.

But surely you dont think that mathematics is magic?

I think that it’s magic if you dont understand it. As you learn more about it it becomes less magical. Then as you realize that there is a clear sense in which you will never understand it it becomes magical again. Most people come to terms with their demons. Not all. Jung tells of a case that suggests that aberrant mental states may not be in themselves an illness but rather a protection against a greater one. We know that consciousness never goes to zero except in death. He had a comatose patient at the Burghölzli who came down with a serious illness while still in the coma. Until he finally sat up in bed and began to order the nurses about. This went on until he recovered. Whereupon he went back to sleep. Never to wake again. I dont even know if the story is true. Probably it is. If for no other reason than the story is smarter than Jung. Who after all had to hire someone to take the math exam for medical school. Anyway the answer is yes. I do think that he was sent. Nothing else really computes.