It has been days since the Professor broke out of his thoughts. He was confronted with an extremely difficult problem — the most expensive one in the history of the Journal of Mathematics, too — and he has been wrestling with it ever since. Money was not the Professor’s motivation, however, he was simply enjoying the difficulty of the problem. The piled checks in the mailbox from the Journal of Mathematics proved so.
I imagined the Professor, immersed in the indefinite yet truthful language of mathematics, etching his wondrous thoughts onto the common brown notebook. I sketched the study mentally: the scattered papers on his desk, the worn-out chair, and the faded book spines— the byproducts of his ingenuity, the touch of time, and the loving sun. Once, I had feared that the Professor would dissipate into his thoughts forever. That he might drown in his contemplations because he peered into them for too long. That the thick layers of silence would fold onto each other like cotton blankets, secluding him from the outside world forever. His occasional grunts and nearly inaudible pencil sounds were the only reminders of his existence.
I wondered what it was like for the Professor. Every time sunlight broke through the twilight he awoke in 1975. It seemed nearly impossible for him to progress through the problem when he had to start over again every day. In fact, it felt nearly impossible for him to remember to work on the question every morning. He hadn’t clipped a note on his suit as far as I knew. Then again, math conquers impossibility, doesn’t it?
My contemplations for the Professor folded and unfolded continuously while I cooked dinner. He must use his notebook diligently, I concluded after unfolding my thoughts for the fifth time. Perhaps it was his profound love for math that attracted him to his table — the kind of ancient love that keeps the moon dancing around the Earth.
I had just folded away my musings when the Professor emerged from his study. The onion I was peeling escaped my hand when I noticed the Professor’s sudden presence. Usually, he isolates himself in his study until he reveals the solution. Afraid to disturb his thinking, I fumbled to peel the onion again. The silence continued even as I started to seed the peppers hastily. In the prolonged quiet, he observed my hands with a certain firm gaze he only gave to his numbers. Leaning on the counter, he seemed to morph into a statue with folded arms.
Although I have never visited an art museum, the Professor seemed like one of those delicate marble statues looming over the visitors. Except, his skin was warm flesh instead of marble, and blood pumped through it. The evening sunlight warmed the back of his suit, illuminating the notes attached to it. In a futile attempt to ease the awkwardness, I stepped around the Professor and retrieved some eggs from the refrigerator.
I broke the eggs into a bowl with spices and started to beat them with chopsticks.
“Did you need something?” I finally asked.
“No, I simply enjoy watching you cook.” He responded nonchalantly.
Perhaps he had harassed the problem till it erased itself from his notebook. I continued to prepare dinner, this time readying a frying pan. Suddenly, I was a rusted machine gritting through a simple task. The way the Professor scrutinized my cooking made me conscious of every move I took. I kept slipping on the path I otherwise skipped down.
“What are you going to do now?” The Professor, eyes brimming with curiosity and respect, asked me quietly as if trying not to disturb a rite.
“Well … I—” an inhale, “—I need to fry the pork now.” The Professor’s presence suppressed my habits, my polished routine dismantled in front of his eyes.
“Not the eggs?”
“No,” I blinked, “you have to let it blend with the spices.”
The room yellowed as the sun peeked through the wisps of white. Even the atmosphere held its breath— the curtains limply hung by the open window and the clouds stopped their travels. Dust drifted around the room, alight with the summer sun. My thoughts raced to Root: I hoped that he had used sunscreen when he left to play in the park. I dusted the pork filets before placing them onto the heated pan. My chopsticks flipped the pork, slid them around, then flipped them again incessantly.
“Why do you have to move them around like that?”
“The center of the pan receives more heat than the outer parts,” I explained while resting my hands. “So you need to move them around to cook them evenly.” A small smile lined my mouth — I sounded like a TV show.
“Oh, so no one gets the best spot all the time.” The corners of the Professor’s ebony, translucent eyes creased in a slight smile. “They must compromise, I see.”
I continued after nodding. The onions and peppers became salads and the spiced egg was carefully shaped into soft omelets. The Professor’s eyes traced my fingertips, watching every step with a child-like wonder. His body may be touched with old age, but his inquisitive mind was still one of a child-like Root. Perhaps, I thought, that is why they get along. His quivering breath stopped when I cut a lemon peel into a flower, as though his gentle breath might create a violent storm.
He lingered even when I had finished, so I asked: “What is so interesting about cooking?”
“I just enjoy watching you cook,” he said again. A sense of revelation had settled in his features as if the magic arts of cooking had revealed a glimpse of God’s notebook. My mouth curled into a crescent moon as I realized his intentions.
The evening star would soon appear, just where the Professor points, and Root will return for dinner. The simplistic yet picturesque dinner set out in front of me left me content. The Professor had been orbiting around the problem, seeking for an answer concealed in the vast darkness of the universe. At the tip of his orbit, he pulled himself away in a new direction, stepping onto constellations hidden in envelopes of darkness. His contentment must mean that he had found star-studded guidance he had seeked in the mundane routine of cooking. The sun waned away, and I was left with half-hearted pride just as if I had solved Fermat’s Last Theorem.