Professor's head. He
smoothed the mussed hair as if trying to undo the trouble he'd
caused.
Root and I were quiet on the way home that evening. When I
asked him whether the Tigers had a game, his answer was barely
audible.
"Who are they playing?"
"Taiyo."
"You think they'll win?"
"Who knows."
The lights were out in the barbershop and the park was empty.
The formulas the Professor had scratched in the dirt were hidden
in the shadows.
"I shouldn't have said those things," Root said. "But I didn't
know he liked Enatsu so much."
"I didn't know, either," I said. And then, though it was probably
wrong of me, I added, "Don't worry, it will all be back to normal
by tomorrow morning. In the Professor's mind, Enatsu will be
the Tigers' ace again and he won't remember anything about the
Carp."
The problem that the Professor had posed to Root proved to
be almost as difficult as the one that Enatsu had presented for all
of us.
As the Professor had predicted, the man at the repair shop said
that he had never seen such an old radio and that he wasn't sure he
could fix it. But if he could, he said, he would try to have it done in
a week's time. So every day, when I got home from work, I spent my
evening looking for another way to find the sum of the natural numbers
from 1 to 10. Root should have been working on the problem,
too, but perhaps because he was upset over the incident with
Enatsu, he gave up almost immediately and left me to find a solution.
For my part, I was anxious to please the Professor, and I certainly
didn't want to disappoint him any more than we already had.
But the only way to please him, I suspected, was through numbers.
I began by reading the problem aloud, just as the Professor had
insisted Root do with his homework: "1 + 2 + 3 + ... 9 + 10 is 55.
1 + 2 + 3 + ..." But this didn't seem to be much help—except to
show that a simple equation could conceal a terribly difficult
problem.
Next I tried writing out the numbers from 1 to 10 both
horizontally and vertically and grouping them by odds and evens,
primes and non-primes, and so on. I worked on the problem with
matches and marbles, and when I was at the Professor's house, I
jotted down numbers on the back of any piece of scrap paper, always
looking for a clue.
To find an amicable number, all you had to do was perform the
same sort of calculation again and again. If you had enough time,
you'd eventually succeed. But this was different. I was constantly
starting off in a new direction, looking for another way to approach
the problem, only to wind up at a dead end, confused. To
be honest, I wasn't always even sure of what I was trying to do. At
times I seemed to be going around in circles and at others almost
backward, away from a solution; and in the end, I was often simply
staring at the scrap paper.
I'm not sure why I became so absorbed in a child's math
problem with no practical value. At first, I was conscious of
wanting to please the Professor, but gradually that feeling faded
and I realized it had become a battle between the problem and
me. When I woke in the morning, the equation was waiting—1 +
2 + 3 + ... 9 + 10 = 55—and it followed me all through the
day, as though it had burned itself into my retina and could not
be ignored.
At first, it was just a small distraction, but it quickly became an
obsession. Only a few people know the mystery concealed in this
formula, and the rest of us go to our graves without even suspecting
there is a secret to be revealed. But by some whim of fate, I
had found it, and now knocked at the door, asking to be let in.
Though I had never suspected it, from the moment I'd been dispatched
by the Akebono Housekeeping Agency, I had been on a
mission toward that door ...
"Do I look like the Professor?" I asked Root, my hand pressed to
my temple and a pencil clenched in my fingers. That day, I had
covered the back of every flyer and handbill in the house, but I'd
made no progress.
"No, not a bit," Root said.
smoothed the mussed hair as if trying to undo the trouble he'd
caused.
Root and I were quiet on the way home that evening. When I
asked him whether the Tigers had a game, his answer was barely
audible.
"Who are they playing?"
"Taiyo."
"You think they'll win?"
"Who knows."
The lights were out in the barbershop and the park was empty.
The formulas the Professor had scratched in the dirt were hidden
in the shadows.
"I shouldn't have said those things," Root said. "But I didn't
know he liked Enatsu so much."
"I didn't know, either," I said. And then, though it was probably
wrong of me, I added, "Don't worry, it will all be back to normal
by tomorrow morning. In the Professor's mind, Enatsu will be
the Tigers' ace again and he won't remember anything about the
Carp."
The problem that the Professor had posed to Root proved to
be almost as difficult as the one that Enatsu had presented for all
of us.
As the Professor had predicted, the man at the repair shop said
that he had never seen such an old radio and that he wasn't sure he
could fix it. But if he could, he said, he would try to have it done in
a week's time. So every day, when I got home from work, I spent my
evening looking for another way to find the sum of the natural numbers
from 1 to 10. Root should have been working on the problem,
too, but perhaps because he was upset over the incident with
Enatsu, he gave up almost immediately and left me to find a solution.
For my part, I was anxious to please the Professor, and I certainly
didn't want to disappoint him any more than we already had.
But the only way to please him, I suspected, was through numbers.
I began by reading the problem aloud, just as the Professor had
insisted Root do with his homework: "1 + 2 + 3 + ... 9 + 10 is 55.
1 + 2 + 3 + ..." But this didn't seem to be much help—except to
show that a simple equation could conceal a terribly difficult
problem.
Next I tried writing out the numbers from 1 to 10 both
horizontally and vertically and grouping them by odds and evens,
primes and non-primes, and so on. I worked on the problem with
matches and marbles, and when I was at the Professor's house, I
jotted down numbers on the back of any piece of scrap paper, always
looking for a clue.
To find an amicable number, all you had to do was perform the
same sort of calculation again and again. If you had enough time,
you'd eventually succeed. But this was different. I was constantly
starting off in a new direction, looking for another way to approach
the problem, only to wind up at a dead end, confused. To
be honest, I wasn't always even sure of what I was trying to do. At
times I seemed to be going around in circles and at others almost
backward, away from a solution; and in the end, I was often simply
staring at the scrap paper.
I'm not sure why I became so absorbed in a child's math
problem with no practical value. At first, I was conscious of
wanting to please the Professor, but gradually that feeling faded
and I realized it had become a battle between the problem and
me. When I woke in the morning, the equation was waiting—1 +
2 + 3 + ... 9 + 10 = 55—and it followed me all through the
day, as though it had burned itself into my retina and could not
be ignored.
At first, it was just a small distraction, but it quickly became an
obsession. Only a few people know the mystery concealed in this
formula, and the rest of us go to our graves without even suspecting
there is a secret to be revealed. But by some whim of fate, I
had found it, and now knocked at the door, asking to be let in.
Though I had never suspected it, from the moment I'd been dispatched
by the Akebono Housekeeping Agency, I had been on a
mission toward that door ...
"Do I look like the Professor?" I asked Root, my hand pressed to
my temple and a pencil clenched in my fingers. That day, I had
covered the back of every flyer and handbill in the house, but I'd
made no progress.
"No, not a bit," Root said.
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