Uncle Petros and Goldbach by Apostolos Doxiadis

Author:Apostolos Doxiadis [Doxiadis, Apostolos]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: prose_contemporary

Three

My first reaction to this extensive autobiographical account was one of admiration. Uncle Petros had given me the facts of his life with remarkable honesty. It wasn't until a few days later, when the oppressive influence of his melancholy narrative diminished, that I realized everything he'd told me had been beside the point.

Remember that our meeting had been initially arranged so that he could try to justify himself. His life's story was only relevant to the extent that it explained his atrocious behaviour, assigning me in all my adolescent mathematical innocence the task of proving Goldbach's Conjecture. Yet, during his long narrative he had not even touched on his cruel prank. He'd ranted on and on about his own failure (or maybe I should do him the favour of calling it 'bad luck'), but about his decision to turn me away from studying mathematics and the method he had chosen to implement it, not a single word. Did he expect me automatically to draw the conclusion that his behaviour to me was determined by his own bitter life-experiences? It didn't follow: although his life story was indeed a valid cautionary tale, it taught a future mathematician what pitfalls to avoid so as to make the most of his career – not how to terminate it.

I let a few days go by before I went back to Ekali and asked him point-blank: could he now explain why he had attempted to dissuade me from following my inclination.

Uncle Petros shrugged. 'Do you want the truth?'

'Of course, Uncle.' I said. 'What eise?'

'All right then. I believed from the first moment – and still do, I'm sorry to say – that you have no special gift for great mathematics.'

I became, once again, furious. 'Oh? And how on earth could you have known that? Did you ask me a single mathematical question? Did you ever set me a problem to solve, other than the unprovable, as you termed it, Conjecture of Christian Goldbach? I certainly hope you don't have the nerve to tell me that you deduced my lack of mathematical ability from that!'

He smiled, sadly. 'You know the popular saying that the three conditions impossible to conceal are a cough, wealth and being in love? Well, to me there is a fourth: mathematical gift.'

I laughed contemptuously. 'Oh, and you can no doubt identify it at a glance, eh? Is it a look in the eye or a certain je ne sais quoi that betrays to your ultra-fine sensibility the presence of mathematical genius? Can you perhaps also determine one's IQ with a hand-shake?'

'Actually there is an element of that "look in the eye",’ he replied, ignoring my sarcasm. 'But in your case physiognomy was only a small part of it. The necessary – but not sufficient, mind you – precondition for supreme achievement is single-minded devotion. If you had the gift that you yourself would like to have had, dear boy, you wouldn't have come asking for my blessing to study mathematics; you would have gone ahead and done it.

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