The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(88)
It was a striking object on its own, and not just because of its content but because of its presentation. Sybil had suspended the drawing carefully between two layers of glass in such a way that ambient light reflected off the surface and made the diagram seem to glow. She had deftly manipulated the very light particles he had been illustrating for her. He saw at once that the entire thing was beautiful. Had all Sybil’s pieces been similarly beautiful? Had he simply failed to realize as much?
Philip fell back in his chair, dropped his head into his hands, and wept. He wished Jane could be there with him now, because he’d tell her what he had realized too late: that their dear daughter, after all, had been remarkable.
–?32?–
The Sphinx
Arrangements were made. In turning away from her life of the past ten years—her store, her boyfriend, the tug of her brother and Los Angeles—Hazel was shedding the old, the nostalgic, the past. She was now sprinting toward the uncertain, the shining, the present tense. At least, this is what she told herself one day in mid-December, as an Alitalia Airbus carried her into another hemisphere.
In a day’s time, she would meet Giancarlo Raspanti in Milan. Once they were in a secure location, she would complete Isaac’s final request in handing over his most treasured work to a trusted colleague—work that now lay close to her skin, tucked inside a money belt. Every so often, she would slip her hand over her belly and feel the paper crinkle, just to make sure it was still there. She had asked for it eight days ago, and it had been given to her by a sphinx. Just like that. Sphinxes, of course, have their riddles.
After stealing into the boat’s cabin that day, she had found the children sitting on the pine-planked floor: Lewis smacking at a noisy, bright-buttoned game, and Drew cross-legged, an artist’s pad open in front of her. Hazel had poured herself a glass of fizzy water to subdue her growing seasickness before turning to the children.
She sat down on the bench directly above the little girl and watched her rip a drawing of a beach scene out of her notepad. Beneath it was a second drawing, of a woman with a giant head, long, flowing hair, and what appeared to be wings sprouting out of her neck. Drew may have been a bright child, but her artistic skills sat squarely within her age group.
“Is that your mommy?” Hazel asked.
“Yeah. Daddy says she’s an angel now. But I don’t know.”
Drew set aside the drawing and began sorting a giant box of crayons by color.
Knowing there would be few opportunities to be left alone with her, Hazel acted quickly. She pulled the Polaroid from Tender Is the Night and set it on the floor next to the crayon box. Drew stopped sorting and frowned at the image of her great-grandfather writing on a mirror.
“Do you remember when that picture was taken?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you remember about it?”
Turning away from the photo, Drew began reciting, “Two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-one—”
She would have kept going had Hazel not gently stopped her. “Wow, how many prime numbers do you know?”
“A hundred. Up to five hundred and forty-one.”
“That’s impressive. Did Pa-Pop teach you that?”
Drew nodded.
“What else did he teach you?”
Drew turned and looked Hazel hard in the face. She said quietly, “I don’t know.” After a moment, she added, “Unless you know the magic word.”
“Magic word?” Hazel laughed. “Please?”
Drew snorted. “No.”
Hazel’s gaze fell on the girl’s other drawing: a flock of M-shaped birds floated in a white sky above a shallow carpet of sea. In one corner, a mangled stick person was suntanning on a sliver of beach, soaking up rays from a tremendous sun.
A definition that had been scrawled in the book came back to Hazel, “of or pertaining to the seashore.”
“Littoral,” she said aloud, but Drew kept drawing, as if she had heard nothing.
Hazel opened the novel again to the string of numbers written on the inside cover: 137.13.9.
“Is it a magic word or magic number?” Hazel asked.
“A magic word is a magic word,” Drew answered.
Hazel looked back at the numbers, running a finger over them. Wouldn’t it be strange if the key to this thing that everyone wanted—the code that could unlock the most coveted mathematical technology—was scribbled in graphite in the corner of a paper book? And for the first time, she saw the digits as something other than an obscure mathematical series: she saw them as a game, not unlike her book oracle. She turned to page 137 and ran her finger down the text until she hit line 13: and she was absorbed in playing around with chaos; as if her destiny were a picture puzzle . . . She counted out the ninth word. Of course.
“Chaos,” she said.
Drew looked up. “What?”
“Chaos.”
Drew nodded at her with shy approval. The little girl then carefully withdrew a brick-red crayon from its box and pulled the pad of paper close. She located a fresh page, and after positioning herself on her stomach, worked at the pad for the next fifteen minutes. She scribbled numbers and symbols with rounded proportions, some of which Hazel recognized, and many—Greek in origin—that she didn’t. When Drew finished the first page, she turned it over to write on the back. When she had exhausted the first sheet, she started on a second. Halfway down the back of the second sheet, she sat up and casually handed the pages to Hazel, as if she were merely a court reporter who had taken dictation.