More Ghost Stories

Galois' Last Theorem

I saw your sale online: an early Casimir Lafaucheux, 10 1/2" octagonal barrels, engraved locks, the fore ends with floral scrolls.

Surely, this is the very pistol that killed Galois.

Forgive me, Évariste Galois is my hero, he was a mathematician. Galois solved polynomial equations before he was twenty, the age I am now. He was a genius. He remains a genius.

No, I understand: you are selling an antique, not taking a class. To business then. Show me your pistol.

It’s beautiful. You see the rifling on the bore? That increases accuracy. The English pistols were smooth-bored, leaving God or Chance a role in the duel. Not so in France. Not for Galois. Everything is inevitable. You can work it out mathematically…

Quite so, enough algebra. May I? The black powder pours in, so. See how the ramroad packs down the ball? A simple operation transforms a paperweight into a weapon.

I have your pistol’s companion, bought in a house-sale – what a find! Let’s lay them beside one another, two duelists, reunited at last. They were made an identical pair so that choosing one at random confers no advantage. Not that anything is truly random.

It surprises you that a mathematician died in a duel? Galois was a revolutionary in politics as well as algebra. Progress is inevitable, he believed. Then the Academy rejected his paper and that scheming minx Stéphanie … excuse me. I am overwrought. It is the waste, you see? The waste of so much talent, so young.

Pick up one of them. Which is which, they are so alike? Perhaps I hold your pistol, or you mine?

Do you know what Galois said on his death bed? ‘I need all my courage to die at twenty.’

Raise your pistol, sir. Both are loaded.

No, this is not a robbery. Think of it as a solution. I have calculated to exactitude. I should not – he should not – have died that morning. It was mathematically impossible.

The calculation must be performed again. With the same variables.

Do not tremble, Monsieur. The outcome is determined by mathematics, not by nerves. Pull your trigger as I pull mine. Courage! What is a duel, but another equation?

The Desert Miles

I have brought the desert with me.

“Wait here,” you told me, redundantly, as if my broken ankle would let me do anything else. “I’ll be back,” you said, “with help.”

And you took one of the water bottles and left me with the two rucksacks and I waited.

I watched the night steal over the desert and the strange, bright southern constellations steal the sky. I listened to the moon-maddened cries of dingoes and watched the thorny lizards pursue ants across the ravine.

I waited as the sun sliced the shadows apart, striking off the stones and making the distance shimmer. I thirsted and I waited.

I dreamed of torchbeams lancing the darkness and my name carried on the wind in strange voices. I dreamed of men and dogs passing close by the ravine where I lay. I dreamed I called out to them with a tongue burned to numbness. “I’m here. I’m down here.”

The dream ended and the waiting became wearisome.

I said goodbye to the ravine, the two rucksacks and the empty canteen. I let the desert pass through me. I drank from its dry winds. I consumed its empty miles.

The sun rose in anger and passed over me in shadow. The moon gleamed like an old bone. The dust cloud blew in from the north and replaced the sand with tarmac and the canyons with neat suburbs. People passed me in the haze, dressed in unfamiliar new fashions, whispering to each other in the dust.

The desert brought me to your house. Children’s toys on the lawn. Dishes in the sink. A bottle of wine and two glasses. An evening with the woman who is now your wife and the children who are now your sons. The years have disappeared into the desert.

I leave sand on the stairs.

I stand at the foot of your bed, where your wife clings to you.

The dust swirls in the night air and settles on your lips.

I’m still waiting, but I have brought the desert with me.

The Last Sonata

You thought it would be over quickly? Be patient. Dying is a symphony. Savour it.

We begin with the allegro. Your heart beats an erratic rhythm and is silenced. You brain is a choir of cells that suffocate one by one, each a little voice that cries “I, me, myself” and expires on a shrill note.

The blood drains from your skin, a sinking diminuendo. You will bruise where you rest against the cold linoleum. You become pale where you face the kitchen ceiling, the magnets on the fridge, the calendar with dates fruitlessly circled.

Can you feel your muscles stiffening, the famous rigor mortis? This is the slow movement: adagio.

It’s cold, don’t you think? Your body surrenders the last of your warmth. This is the temperature of objects. Rigid and frigid, you say to yourself, At last, this is lonely death! But you are wrong.

You are not alone. Musicians have joined your tremulous choir. These are the insects you kept at bay so long with sprays and swats. Now they are in harmony with your loosening flesh. They bring their eggs. By the time your muscles unknot, their maggoty children have joined the orchestra. They burrow.

This is the scherzo, a jest: enjoy its playfulness. You are beautiful now. Your skin shines. You are home to a multitude, a busy citadel of consumption and hungry purpose. You are more alive than you have ever been, mother to a nation, multitudinous as the stars in the sky. And you feed your children. You are adoring and adored.

The air buzzes with their insect gratitude. The music hastens: vivace, then faster, vivacissimo.

Your body, sick of stillness, yearns to dance. It swells. Gases broil and churn. The blood foam spews from lips and nostrils. This is the rondo. Your beautiful paleness turns to fungal green and red, like the painted eyes of harlots. Your solid flesh melts at last. You are liquid.

Do not hasten away: the skeleton waits offstage, with its own grave melody in the slowest tempo, larghissimo, the stately unseaming of cartilage and bone. Paleness will return. But I see you are restless. Let the conductor take his bow. We must applaud his work and depart, you and I.

Listen! A new music is beginning.

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