The Servant-38
The memorial services for Mara Smit and Jakobus Van de Merwe had been sad and solemn. It had been held in the farm’s main residence. Knowing Jakobus and his love for the Zulu people, Charlize had agreed that he received a burial according to the Zulu tradition. His remains were removed from the main residence and placed in the central Krall in the workers’ quarters. It was then removed, feet symbolically pointing away from the former place of residence, through a hole in the wall of a house and not through the door. The reason for this seemed to be that this will make it difficult or even impossible for the dead person to remember the way back to the living, as the hole in the wall was immediately closed. Sixpence lead the procession through a zigzag path to the burial site with thorns strewn along the way and a barrier erected at the grave. Jakobus was buried along with his personal belongings under the shadow of his favorite limpopo baobab tree while Charlize played the Adagio Sostenuto of Beethoven’s piano sonata in C-sharp minor on an old upright piano transported there for the occasion. A cenotaph—an empty tomb—had been erected for Maggie’s mother, Mara Smit, next to Jakobus’s grave.
They then returned to the workers’ quarters where everyone followed the cleansing ritual by washing off the dust of the graveyard with water containing pieces of cut aloe.
Charlize looked at the more than 60 families that depended on the farm for their livelihood and promised herself that she would never abandoned them no matter what the adversities.
After the funeral, they had all driven back to Elizabethtown except for Clark who had remained on the farm to help out the farmworkers. Ma Gugu had taken Maggie to her room and remained there at her protégée’s side. Mbali was serving tea to Amina and Hennie while Kwanele and Stephen had gone back to the servants’ quarters to drown their sorrows.
Hennie and Amina came to sit by Charlize’s side on the Chesterfield.
– “Liz, the Beethoven’s sonata had really moved me, you know?” said Hennie, “I knew you play piano but I never knew you were this good.”
– “Yeah, I was really impressed.” said Amina.
– “Thank you, both.” said Charlize with a smile.
– “What about you Amina? Do you have a secret passion we don’t know about?” Hennie asked.
– “I—no.”
– “C’mon, tell us. We’re friends.” Hennie insisted.
Amina lowered her gaze then sighed loudly.
– “I’m Jane Smith.” she announced.
Hennie and Charlize looked at her, not understanding.
Amina turned to them. “Jane Smith. Of the Riemann Hypothesis.” she said slowly.
Hennie jumped out of the sofa. “What? No! It can’t be. You’re lying just to make fun of me. Tell me you’ve just made that up.”
Charlize took Amina’s hands. “You’re the Jane Smith?”
Amina nodded shyly.
– “No way, nooo way!” Hennie was still up and screaming.
Mbali who was standing behind the sofa couldn’t take it anymore. “Hennie, what’s wrong with you? Why are you insulting Amina?”
Hennie laughed. “Me? Insulting Amina? No, Mbali. You don’t understand. Come here, let me explain something to you.”
When Mbali did not move, Hennie walked up to her and led her around the sofa to face Amina.
“Mbali. Let me introduce you to the most mysterious mathematician of our time.”
Amina shook her head. “Mbali, don’t listen to him. He’s exaggerating way, wayyy too much.”
Hennie looked at Charlize, imploring. “Liz, can I tell Mbali the Jane Smith’s story? Please?”
Charlize smiled and looked at Amina who nodded.
– “Alright, Mbali.” said Hennie in an academic tone that made Charlize and Amina laughed out loud.
– Alright, Mbali. Listen and don’t interrupt me. In 2000, The Clay Mathematics Institute in Boston named seven great unsolved mathematical problems and promised a million dollars to anyone who could solve any of them. It is called the Millennium Prize Problems. As of today, six of the problems remain unsolved. Only the Poincaré conjecture has been solved by an eccentric Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman who, because he’s nuts, declined the award and the million dollar. He’s now staying with his mother on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, living off his meager government retirement checks.”
Mbali looked at Charlize and Amina who nodded.
– “In 2007, a woman named Jame Smith published a paper stating that she might have solved the Riemann Hypothesis and Mbali, believe me when I tell you that it is the most difficult problem. David Hilbert, a German mathematician recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians had this to say about the problem: ‘If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: has the Riemann hypothesis been proven?’ So, Mbali. You can imagine the storm that Jane Smith’s paper had created around the world. All the mathematicians in the world went through her paper and only after two years, had they declared that the proof was flawed. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that to arrive at that point in her paper, Jane Smith had to be a mathematical prodigy on the par with Grigori Perelman himself. But nobody knew who she was. There was not one single Jane Smith listed as a mathematician anywhere in the world. All calls and pleas from the mathematicians community for her to come out had been in vain. And she is sitting right here! Miss Amina Sheth. Wow!”
Amina dropped a mock curtsy.
– “Amina, why haven’t you continued in mathematics?” Charlize asked.
Amina lowered her head. “I was too embarrassed and I—I didn’t take it well when the error was found. I was so sure of myself. I’ve spent years carefully pouring over my works, telling myself each time, do not hurry, check everything before you publish the results and I couldn’t find any errors. So I sent my results to arXiv. After the disaster, I went into depression, quit my job and went back to help out with my parents’ business. I haven’t opened a single mathematical treatise in more than three years. It was only recently that I got the job at the library and that I have the courage to look at books that have mathematical symbols in it.”
– “Jeez, Amina. The institute can really use someone like you, you know?” Hennie said.
– “He’s right.” Charlize said, “Would you like me to—”
– “No, no. Thanks.” Amina cut her off and smiled timidly, “Maybe in a few years but not now. I don’t think I’m ready to face that kind of pressure again.”
– “Hey, could you look at something for me? Just a quick look. The Malena-Ritten conjecture as used in Greene’s theory.” Hennie said.
Amina laughed. “Hennie, even if I were at my best, I couldn’t still help you. It would me take me months, if not years, to pull myself up to Richard Greene’s level of mathematics.”
Then as if he remembered something. “Liz, what about Clark? When do we get to ask him questions that all of us are dying to ask?”
– “I don’t know,” Amina said, “we might be wrong. There might be some other explanations that do not require a—uh—supranatural explanations, don’t you think so?”
– “So how do you explain the flipping coin?” Hennie asked.
– “He might have given that to me as a talisman, you know? A good-luck charm, who knows?”
Hennie shook his head and turned to Charlize. “Okay, what about the gap in Greene’s theory? Liz, how do you explain that?”
Charlize looked at Amina. “He told me he read a lot of physics books for layman. Maybe in one those books, some authors jealous of Greene had made an accusation without any proofs and Clark had read it and it just happened that the author was right. Maybe.”
Hennie didn’t give up. “What about the people who attacked us? What happened to them?”
– “They’re gangsters,” Amina said, “who knows what they’d been sniffing or smoking or drinking for how long? They might have been victims of some kind of side effects.”
Hennie was beyond himself. “So none of you believe that Clark is from—”
– “From where, Hennie? Tell us. Where did Clark come from?” Amina asked, “You know, I would already have a hard time believing he’s from another planet or from the future, but from another universe? Please. That’s stretching human imagination to its limit.”
– “I have to agree with Amina on this, Hennie.” Charlize said.
Hennie looked defeated. “Alright, but I’m not letting this go, I’m telling you. I’ll find out the truth with or without your help.”
Charlize and Amina looked at each other and shook their heads.