Fatal Lies

67

Gerold Sommer sat at his table next to a pile of exercise books. He had already finished marking most of them, but there were a few that he hadn't yet looked at. Given his predicament, he had been surprised to find that his thoughts had kept returning to this unfinished task. The sense of incompletion had been so persistent, so troubling, that in due course he had dragged himself from his reading chair where he had sat brooding, and repositioned himself at the table where he was now working.

The work he had set concerned triangles. In his most recent class, he had shown the boys how to calculate the area of a triangle using the method attributed to Heron of Alexandria. Sommer remembered standing by the blackboard, chalk in hand, looking at their bored faces, and saying in a conversational manner: This attribution is probably incorrect, as Archimedes almost certainly knew the formula, and it may have been employed by many anonymous mathematicians before him…

This nugget of information had not made the subject any more interesting for the boys. Indeed, one of them-a scrawny fellow with greasy hair-had covered his mouth to disguise a yawn.

It was extraordinary, Sommer pondered, how so many people- boys and men alike-found mathematics tedious. It was such an elegant subject. In any right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Where else could you find such universal certainty, such indisputable truth, such perfection?

Sommer opened the first exercise book, which belonged to Stojakovic. He was gratified to find that the Serbian boy was deserving of a good mark. He liked Stojakovic. The other exercise books contained work of varying quality, but Sommer was a conscientious teacher. He made an effort to write something helpful or encouraging whenever he could-even if he knew the boy concerned to be innumerate and uninterested.

Triangles…

Herr Lang, Frau Becker, Zelenka…

Dr. Becker, Zelenka, Frau Becker…

Frau Becker, Zelenka… myself.

Sommer dismissed these intrusive triangulations from his mind. He did not want to think about such things.

When he had finished marking the exercise books, the mathematics master unwrapped some bread and cheese (which he had collected from the kitchen earlier) and opened a bottle of Cote de Brouilly The wine had been a gift from his uncle Alfred, and Sommer had been saving it for a special occasion. It was dark, full-bodied, and left a fruity aftertaste. After drinking only two glasses, the mathematics master collected his personal papers together and examined them to make sure that his affairs were in order. He then wrote a brief note addressed to his mother, apologizing for his conduct, and another addressed to a friend in Salzburg, which made reference to an outstanding financial debt that he wished to be settled. He then pressed the muzzle of a pistol firmly against his temple and pulled the trigger.

His eyes remained open.