The Gift of Numbers (16 page)

Whether from excitement or because the cards were heavier
than he'd thought, Root dropped the tin. There was a loud crash,
but the cards were so tightly packed together that the damage was
minimal—only a few of the second basemen had scattered across
the floor.

We retrieved them quickly, and fortunately there were no bent
corners or cracked cases. The only difference was that we'd spoiled
the Professor's incredibly precise order.

I was worried that the Professor could wake up at any moment.
I knew he would have been happy to show Root his collection had
we simply asked, so I wasn't sure why I was sneaking around like
this, or why I was hesitant to raise the subject of the cookie tin.
For some reason, I had convinced myself that the Professor would
not want other people to see the cards.

"This is Shirasaka, so 'shi' should go right after Kamata Minoru."

"How do you read this one?"

"It's written next to the characters in the syllabary—Hondo Yasuji.
So it goes back here."

"Do you know who he is?"

"No, but he must have been important to have a card. We can't
worry about that now, we've got to hurry."

As we concentrated on putting the cards back in order, I suddenly
noticed something: the tin had a second layer underneath the
one holding the cards. I was about to file a Motoyashiki Kingo when
I realized that the tin was slightly deeper than the height of the card.

"Hang on a second." Stopping Root for a moment, I wiggled my
finger into the space where the second basemen had fallen out.
There was no doubt about it: the tin had a false bottom.

"What?" said Root, looking puzzled.

"Nothing," I said. "Just hold on a minute." I had Root fetch a
ruler from the desk and I very carefully slipped it under the row of
cards. "Look, there's something down there. If I hold them up like
this, can you pull it out?"

"Yep, I see it. I think I can get it." Root's small hand slipped into
the narrow opening, and in a few seconds he extracted the contents
of the hidden compartment.

It was a thesis of some sort. It had been typed in English and was
bound with a cover page bearing what looked to be a university
seal—a hundred-odd-page mathematical proof. The Professor's
name was printed in Gothic letters and the work was dated 1957.

"Is it a problem the Professor solved?"

"It seems to be."

"But why would he hide it here?" Root said, sounding thoroughly
mystified. I did a quick mental calculation: 1992–1957—the
Professor had been twenty-nine. Since the noises from the next
room had stopped, I began to flip through the thesis, the Motoyashiki
card still in my hand.

This paper had been handled with as much care as the baseball
cards. The paper stock and the type were showing signs of age, but
there was no trace of dirt or damage from human hands, no folds or
wrinkles or spots—mint condition. The high-quality paper was still
soft to the touch and the typist had made no mistakes. The binding,
too, was perfect, with the pages neatly gathered at the corners. An
edict left by a noble king could hardly have been more carefully
produced or preserved.

Taking my cue from those who had handled it so gingerly in the
past, and remembering Root's recent mishap, I held it with the
greatest care. The paper smelled faintly of cookies, but it still
looked impressive, in spite of being pressed down at the bottom of
a tin for years under rows of baseball cards.

As for the content, the only thing I could decipher on the first
page was the title: Chapter 1. But as I flipped through the pages
that followed, I came across the name Artin, and remembered the
Artin conjecture that the Professor had explained with a stick in
the dirt on the way home from the barber—and the formula he
had added when I'd brought up the perfect number 28, and how
the cherry blossoms had fluttered to the ground.

Just then, a black-and-white photograph fell from the pages.
Root picked it up. It showed the Professor seated on a clover-covered
riverbank. He was young and handsome, and he looked
completely relaxed with his legs stretched out in front of him. He
was squinting slightly in the bright sun. His suit was much like the
one he still wore, but, needless to say, there were no notes on his
jacket and he seemed to radiate intelligence.

A woman was seated next to the Professor. She leaned timidly
toward him, the toes of her shoes poking out from under her
flared skirt. Their bodies did not touch, but it was clear that they
shared a bond. And in spite of the years that had passed since the
picture was taken, I had no doubt that the woman was the Professor's
sister-in-law.

There was one more thing I could read. At the top of the cover
page, a single line in Japanese:

"For N, with my eternal love. Never forget."

An Enatsu card, we soon realized, was not an easy thing to find.
The main problem was that the Professor already owned all of the
Enatsu cards from his playing days with the Tigers—that is, before
1975. The later cards all mentioned that he'd been traded,
and we had no intention of giving the Professor a card with his
hero in a Nankai or Hiroshima uniform.

We started our research by combing through a baseball card
magazine (the mere existence of which was news to me), and reading
about the types of cards out there, the price range, and the
places you could find them. We also learned what we could about
the history of baseball cards, the culture of the collectors, and how
to protect them. Then, over the weekend, we made a tour of all the
nearby shops listed in the back of the magazine

The card shops tended to be in aging office blocks, next to
pawnshops, private detective agencies, or fortune-tellers. The
dingy elevators were enough to depress me but once we got in the
shops, Root was in heaven. The world inside the Professor's tin
opened up before him.

At first, his head was turned by each new discovery; but once
he had calmed down, we focused on looking for a Yutaka Enatsu
card. This section, as we might have guessed, was always among
the largest. The shops organized their cards much as the Professor
had his cookie tin, with a special place reserved for Enatsu next to
other stars such as Sadaharu Oh and Shigeo Nagashima, separated
out from the rest of the players who were filed by team or
era or position.

I started at the beginning and Root at the end, and we checked
every Enatsu card in each shop. It required stamina, like hunting
in a dark forest without a compass. But we refused to be discouraged,
and we gradually found ourselves perfecting our technique,
so that we were able to get through the trays of cards more and
more quickly. Lifting a card between thumb and forefinger, we
would check the front. If it was obviously one the Professor already
owned, we would drop it back. If it was one we hadn't seen,
we would check to see whether it met our requirements. We soon
found that every card was either already in his collection, or showed
Enatsu wearing the wrong uniform. It became clear that the
black-and-white cards from the early years that the Professor had
collected were extremely rare and quite expensive. Finding a card
worthy of his cookie tin was not going to be easy. We flipped
through hundreds of Enatsus in several shops. Our fingers would
meet in the middle of a bin of cards and we'd realize that we'd
come up empty once again.

The shopkeepers never made us feel uncomfortable, even
though we spent hours looking without buying anything. When we
showed up in search of Enatsu cards, they happily brought out
everything they had; and when we were disappointed, they encouraged
us to keep looking and not give up hope. At the very last shop
on our list, the owner listened to our story and then told us he
thought we should try looking for cards that had been used as
prizes by a certain candy company back in 1985. The company had
always included baseball cards with its candy, but in 1985 it had
been celebrating its fiftieth anniversary and had commissioned a
run of premium cards. That was the year the Tigers had won the
championship, so their players were especially well represented.

"What are 'premium' cards?" Root asked.

"They made all kinds—some had real signatures by the players
on them, others had holograms, and some had actual slivers from
game bats embedded in them. Since Enatsu was already retired,
they did a reissue of the glove card. I used to have one, but it sold
right away. They're incredibly popular."

"What's a 'glove card'?" Root wanted to know.

"They cut up a glove and attach scraps of the leather to the
card."

"A glove Enatsu actually used?"

"Sure. The Japan Sports Card Federation certified them, so
they're genuine. They didn't produce many, and they can be tough
to find, but don't give up; there's bound to be one floating around
somewhere. If I get one in, I'll give you a call. I have to admit, I'm
something of an Enatsu fan myself." He tipped back the brim of
Root's Tigers cap and rubbed him on the head—just like the Professor.

The day of the party was approaching. I saw nothing wrong with
looking for an alternative present, but Root wouldn't hear of it. He
was determined to find a card.

"We can't give up now!" he insisted.

I have no doubt that his primary concern was to make the Professor
happy, but it was also true that he had taken a fancy to the
whole idea of card collecting, and he had begun to think of himself
as a hunter in search of that one elusive card somewhere out there
in the great wide world.

The Professor also seemed to be planning for the party in his
own way. He had taken to checking the calendar whenever he was
in the kitchen. Occasionally, he would go over and trace the circle
I'd drawn to mark the eleventh, fingering the note on his chest the
whole time. He was remembering the party, but he had no doubt
long ago forgotten about the little matter of the
Janaruobu
.

The Professor never found out that we had looked in his cookie
tin. I had been momentarily mesmerized by the inscription on the
thesis—For N, with my eternal love. Never forget. The handwriting
definitely belonged to the Professor, for whom "eternal" meant
something more than it did to the rest of us, eternal in the way a
mathematical theorem was eternal....

It was Root who brought me back from my daydream.

"Mama, slide the ruler under so I can put it back in." He took
the thesis out of my hand and returned it to the bottom of the tin,
careful not to disturb or dishonor the Professor's secret.

A moment later, all the cards were back in place, and there was
no sign that the collection had ever been touched. The tin itself
was undamaged, and the edges of the cards were neatly aligned.
Still, something was different. Now that I knew about the thesis
and its dedication, the tin was no longer a simple container for
baseball cards. It had become a tomb for the Professor's memories.
I set it carefully back on the bookshelf.

I hadn't really thought anything would come of the last shopkeeper's
suggestion, but somehow I was disappointed when he
failed to call. Root made some final efforts, sending off a postcard
to the readers' exchange in the magazine and asking around among
his friends and their older brothers. Not wanting to be caught
without a present, I had quietly arranged a backup. It hadn't been
easy to figure out what to buy. I'd thought of pencils and notebooks,
clips and note cards, even a new shirt. There were very few
things the Professor really needed. The fact that I couldn't discuss
the choice with Root made it all the more difficult.

I decided on shoes. He needed a new pair, ones that he could
wear anytime, anywhere—mold-free. I bought them and hid them
away in the back of the closet, just as I had with Root's presents
when he was little. If we did find the card in time, I would slip
them into the Professor's shoe cupboard without saying anything.

In the end, a ray of hope came from an unexpected place. I had
gone to pick up my paycheck at the Akebono Housekeeping
Agency and was talking with some of the other housekeepers. As
the Director was listening, I had avoided mentioning the Professor,
and just said that my son had been wanting baseball cards and
I'd had no luck finding good ones. Then, out of the blue, one of
them mentioned that her mother used to run a little store, and she
remembered seeing some leftover cards that had been included
with candy in a shed where her mother stored old stock.

The first thing that caught my attention was the fact that her
mother had retired and closed up the shop in 1985. She had ordered
some candy to take on a trip her seniors group was planning,
and the chocolates with the cards had been included in the
shipment. Thinking the old folks would have no use for them, her
mother had peeled off the little black prize envelopes stuck to the
back of each box. She'd been planning to give them to a children's
club, but had gone into the hospital later in the year and then closed
the shop for good. This was how nearly a hundred mint-condition
baseball cards had been stored in a shed all this time.

We went straight from the agency to her house, and I headed
home with a dusty cardboard box. I told her I wanted to pay her
for them, but she flatly refused. In the end, I took them gratefully,
not daring to tell her that these discarded prizes were worth far
more than the chocolate they had come with.

As soon as I got home, we set to work. I cut the envelopes open
while Root removed the cards and checked them. It was a simple
process, and we fell into a rhythm. We were now rather experienced
with baseball cards, and Root could distinguish between
the various types just by touch.

Oshita; Hiramatsu; Nakanishi; Kinugasa; Boomer; Oishi; Kakefu;
Harimoto; Nagaike; Horiuchi; Arito; Bass; Akiyama; Kadota;
Inao; Kobayashi; Fukumoto.... The players appeared one after
the other; just as the man at the shop had said, some of the cards
had embossed pictures, some had original autographs, and some
were actually gilded. Root no longer allowed himself the editorial
comments on each card. He seemed to feel that we would achieve
our goal more quickly if he concentrated harder. A drift of little
black envelopes had begun to collect around me, while the stack of
cards Root had collected toppled and scattered between us.