One Hundred Twenty-One Days (7 page)

In mathematics, the important step taken by a Russian mathematician towards demonstrating Goldbach’s conjecture was worth several explanations. “Doctor Meyerbeer, you know what a prime number is, right?” he asked us. Of course, and the patient knows that his therapist knows what a prime number is.

MANICO-MELANCHOLICUS

The patient shifts easily, unexpectedly, and rapidly from a dejected mood to one of happy restlessness, often while speaking on the same topic. This disorder, which is rather mild, seems to particularly manifest during our conversations. The racist politics of the ruling Nazi Party in Germany seem to depress him profoundly.

“They’re going to exterminate us, Doctor Meyerbeer, you and me both. You won’t be able to escape,” he tells us regularly in a bleak voice. And sometimes, almost without taking another breath, he bursts into laughter while showing us a mathematics article in
which a Jewish German scholar calculates the probability (which is very high) of a Jewish German being better in physics than an “Aryan” German.

“But can’t you see it’s a joke, Doctor Meyerbeer? Don’t you know I can prove the same thing about psychiatrists for you?”

We must admit that we do not always understand what makes him laugh (especially in mathematics). We considered giving him a lithium treatment, but the mildness of his disorder does not seem to hinder him, especially as we are certain that mathematics, and the fact that he can either find the subject funny or work on it seriously, is enough to bring him back to the side of euphoria.

SAID AND UNSAID

As the list above shows, for twenty years already, the patient has addressed a wide variety of subjects with us. However, it must be noted that G. has never spoken about the triple murder or his time in the war, either spontaneously or at our request. Every question concerning one of these subjects causes a brilliant and slightly exalted discourse to emerge on quite unrelated subjects.

Apart from prime numbers, sardine fishing, the scientific dispositions of Jewish Germans, current politics, and, as always, succubi and other demons with blue eyes, here are a few examples of his assertions collected over the course of the years:

“Doctor Meyerbeer, I am your Robert le Diable. Did you know that the real Robert the Devil passed himself off as a madman?”

“My mother slept with the devil.”

“There is a butterfly with my name—no, not G., Robert-le-Diable.”

“My sister was the one born from my mother’s hideous adultery.”

“I hate dogs. Because I loved a woman who preferred cats.”

“I should write about you, Doctor. I would study the way you say ‘perfect’ every time I say something absurd.”

In a feature article, currently in progress, we reveal in this case specifically (but also in several others) the connection between the murder of one’s father and the phobia of dogs.

We will add that, since G. is an educated patient, he politely and carefully read our previous articles dedicated to his case. Although we thought we saw him hold back a smile, he did not make the slightest comment. Concerning an earlier version of the present article, which we had hoped would draw him out of his shell, he corrected a past participle and made this single comment: “Excuse me, but I have things to do. I have to try to answer an arithmetic problem that a mathematics student asked me about. A brilliant boy, that Silberberg! You’ll hear more from him!”

Thus ends the last of the articles saved by Pierre Meyer in the large manila envelope.

CHAPTER IV

Strasbourg, 1939

(
TRANSCRIPTION OF AN INTERVIEW WITH PIERRE MEYER, NOVEMBER
2006)

In the large manila envelope, I had arranged—well, you may not find it very well arranged… I had saved articles from before the war that one person or another had given to me. You’re handling the chronology, right? One day, if you’d like, I could relate some of the things my wife told me about that period.

But you wanted me to talk to you about Silberberg.

Yes, I knew him well. We were students at Strasbourg together, until 1939. Yes, both in mathematics. André had passed the exam for his teaching degree in 1938. Then he had started working on a dissertation. After a few months, he had already obtained his first result, which Henri Pariset, his professor, had called “very important.” Pariset sent it to Professor Motfraus, in Paris. And Motfraus presented it to the Academy of Sciences.

No, André didn’t know Motfraus personally, and for that matter, neither did I at the time. But if you don’t mind, I’ll speak about Motfraus at some other point.

Where was I? Oh yes, André Silberberg’s note. We were both so happy! The Silberberg family even organized a little party when it
was published. André’s parents weren’t scientists or even academics. You see, they were business owners, but their two children were in college. Yes, André did have a sister, named Clara. She died not long after the war.

No one in the family, neither Clara nor her parents, understood mathematics, but you don’t need to know what a number field is to understand the honor of having an article published in a journal with your name printed underneath. I think André’s father had been rather disappointed that his son hadn’t tried to get into the École Polytechnique. At the party, he declared how relieved he was. And we all drank white wine on the balcony of the family apartment, overlooking the Ill River.

André was brilliant, good at everything. Very athletic. He was the goalie on our soccer team at the university. He also won the silver medal in the 800 meters at the university track championship. In 1938, I believe. He trained almost every morning at the Vauban stadium. At that time, you couldn’t just go running out on the street. And he was a musician. He played the piano. You know Mozart’s Fantasia? He really liked Mozart.

Yes, I was a student, too. Not as brilliant. And I had to work to pay for my schooling. Pariset suggested I work at the library of the Mathematics Institute. That way, I would earn a little money while being surrounded with books.

Here’s what I wanted to tell you about. André, a few other students, and I formed a defense group. Yes, against the anti-Semites. In those years, signs that said “Forbidden to dogs and Jews” were appearing in the windows of more and more cafés and restaurants in Strasbourg. In French or German. You’re a historian, you must
speak German. “Juden unerwünscht,” Jews are unwanted, it’s more elegant… They tried, a little more each day, to apply the bans that affected Jews on the other side of the Rhine to this side as well. Since Jews were the enemies of Hitler, they were called “warmongers.” A few months earlier, at the time of the Munich Agreement, there was even the start of a real pogrom against Jewish business owners. Fortunately, the shop André’s parents owned (and his parents themselves) had been spared. The atmosphere was terrible. We don’t have the right words to talk about that time. I’m not going to tell you the atmosphere was, I don’t know, “deleterious.” It seems to me that it’s up to people like you to invent words. Are you recording this?

But I wanted to tell you about our “actions.” We ripped down more than one of those nauseating signs. Of course, this generally led to fights. But we were well trained. André even tried to teach me French kickboxing. We took a few serious blows now and again. One evening, we attacked the headquarters of a party pretending to be “Alsatian separatists”… needless to say, their autonomy was simply an allegiance to Nazi Germany. A real brawl followed.

But we took the most serious beating during the attack on the bookstore. Does that surprise you? It was clearly a Nazi bookstore, the Volksbuchhandlung. We broke some glass, nothing major, but that time we had a little trouble getting away. The guards were pretty burly. André got a bit scratched up. Well, I say scratched up, but it was serious enough for him to need a doctor. We called Doctor Sonntag, who was the doctor for the Silberberg family, but
also a professor at the school of medicine and a personal friend of Pariset’s. Have you heard of Sonntag? Sonntag sewed up what needed to be, at the hospital, but in a discreet manner. André, with his right hand bandaged up, couldn’t write anything for two weeks. He was quite pleased to find piano études for the left hand.

Since I was telling you about that bookstore… I’m going to show you something. A book I snuck out with me, or rather confiscated, that day, and which by some miracle I still have. Since you read German, look at how they taught addition and subtraction in German primary schools in 1939.

You see: they added the areas of the territories “we” had confiscated in the “Versailler Diktat.” That’s what Hitler called the Treaty of Versailles. Yes, of course, you know that already. Alsace-Moselle was part of it, for 14,521.8 square kilometers. Note the “point 8.” There are other square kilometers, with decimal points, in Belgium, Denmark, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, without forgetting Danzig, and especially Poland. It’s very instructive: a big sum, with decimal points. And look at this one: subtraction, now. Before the war, the Reich’s territory was 542,622 square kilometers. You have to find the total area before 1938. Yes, they stop in 1938 because, by then, the conquest had already started, thanks to the Anschluss and the Sudetes. The book dates from 1939. Ah! The blue notebook. No, don’t take notes, it’s not worth it: if you want to look at the textbook in more detail, I’ll let you borrow it. There’s a whole series of exercises like this.