Notes from the Grey Tower

Before the war, London used to be a prosperous place. People had trickled continuously from theaters and bars, the price of brandy and wine still having yet to rise to its preposterous prices in 1940. And Cambridge, which laid a mere 90 miles from the centre of London, was, by comparison, a faraway haven in my memory.

My uncle thought it was a joke when I told him that I’d been accepted into King’s College, Cambridge. He shook, furious, and almost threw the envelope stamped with the red wax seal of Cambridge into the burner. Still, two months later, I took the train from Bedford to London, dragged my luggage out from the station, went on the first long-distance vehicle I could find and hopped off halfway at Cambridge. The evening glow that I’d noticed the moment I’d gotten off, mixed with the warm orange brilliance that shone from behind the towers and cathedrals in the distance, was so dazzling that I nearly had to shield my eyes wth my fingers. Beneath the passing clouds, the world had seemed to me so pleasant and kind. 

With tremendous effort, I managed to find 72 Grey Pigeon Street with the help of my reference letter. The owner, a kindly single woman, was a friend of my uncle’s. The red brick house had two floors, with a small garden at the front planted full of common brooms that was fenced in by couple of white fences. A lopsided wooden box hung on the gates for deliveries from the local milkman. 

I lived here for five years, met Andemund at the second, was left by him at the fourth, and waited here for another in anticipation of his return.

I studied mathematics at King’s College, and had decent grades while studying so. My uncle once told me that I was an idiot who knew nothing aside from mathematics. Though when I met Andemund, I’d realized that, compared with him, I was an idiot on the aspect of mathematics as well. 

The first time I met Andemund was beneath the apple tree outside the library whose pink flowers had blossomed throughout its foliage, steeped in the grace of Cambridge’s spring. I ducked out from beneath the arching corridors of the library clutching two indecent novels to my chest, and debated on whether I should go take a look at the new professor that was teaching the second years. Rumour went that a new character had appeared in the academic world of higher mathematics, one who was not only well versed in the fields of mathematical logic and particle physics but also in the field of cryptology, whose awards achieved were so numerous they could have probably crushed a man under their weight. I was wholly uninterested in wheedling old men with beards stuck full of dust and dandruff, and had skipped out on four lectures. Edgar, caught for taking attendance in my stead, told me the professor said it was fine to skip out on class, but I had to bring him my thesis that was due by the end of the semester to him in person. (Right, Edgar was my friend that studied oil painting, and often sat in for me at lectures on mathematics that I didn’t want to attend.)

Andemund stood beneath the apple tree with back against the trunk, a hand in his pocket and a few stray petals scattered on his shoulder. He was tall and lean, the sunlight filtering from through the leaves and petals dappling onto his crisp white shirt, his figure gentle and warm like one of Edgar’s oil paintings. The students crowding around him seemed to be solving a mathematical problem, and I saw Edgar, too, within the crowd. I shouldered my way in.

I was admitted into Cambridge in 1936, when the political atmosphere was already tense and few were bold enough to discuss sensitive matters such as cryptology in public. As I neared, Edgar handed me a slip of paper with a string of numbers scrawled across it. Furrowing my brows, I stared at it for a long while, and drawled out the syllables one by one: “I love Professor Andemund Wilson.”

The crowd erupted into raucous laughter. Edgar paled. “Alan, don’t joke about that.”

I raised my hands innocently. “It was written on the paper. As if I’d be interested in an old codger like him.”

The man leaning on the tree suddenly spoke. “He’s correct. This is a caesar cipher shifted 6 digits across, ciphered once with a rail fence cipher. It was handed to Professor Wilson by a female student today. You are?”

“Alan. Alan Caster.” I replied swiftly, staring at his face.

Perhaps from a lack of exposure to sunlight while working in an office, his complexion was a shade paler than most. His cheekbones were high, lashes thin and curved, and the deep green colour of his eyes was as pretty as the cat’s-eyes sold at the antique store. When he smiled, the corners of his mouth and his lips formed a mild curve that was just about enough to distract me from my thoughts. 

And eventually, when I came to, we were already sitting in a coffee shop. 

He raised his coffee to his lips and took a small sip. “You often study cryptology on your own?”

His voice, soft, reminded me of the glass chimes at the coffee shop door, tinkling in the May breeze.

I shrugged. “Not particularly. My parents were once cryptologists. They’d left me books on the topic… which I read when I was young. And the ciphered message today wasn’t difficult either— I just had to shift the letters five times and read them split in two rows.”

“You’re right on the fact that it wasn’t difficult.” He suddenly became interested, green eyes narrowing in intrigue. “Forgive me for being rude, but may I ask for which organization do your parents work for?”

“I have no idea. They passed away when I was five.” I desperately wanted to change the topic. “Hm. What’s your name? To which college do you belong to?”

“Your last name is Caster.” He mulled it over. “The Caster family… the name seems familiar.”

He hurriedly got up, shook hands with me, and left. I silently called the waiter for the bill and found out that he’d already paid.

And, to my anguish, I still had no idea what he was called. 

I soon knew his name. I went to the first mathematics lecture of the semester and saw him walk into the lecture hall with a black leather notebook in hand. He was the new professor with the innumerable awards weighing on his name, named Andemund Wilson, the man whose name was so well heard of in the academic world of mathematics. He halted momentarily as he walked past me, and raised his left brow. “Alan, you owe me five assignments that you have yet to have handed in. Perhaps you’d like to stay after class for a chat?”

I sullenly asked Edgar. “You think he heard me call him an old codger that day?”

The following few months Andemund took it upon his personal duty to make my life hell. As professor, he called my name first in roll call at the start of every lecture, marked my assignments with utmost precision, and every time I spaced out I would be called upon to answer all sorts of questions. 

I helplessly said to Edgar. “I think I’ve lost all hope in going after him.”

Edgar’s face paled once more. “Don’t kid me.”

We’d skipped class for afternoon tea at a coffee shop beside the River Cam. “I think my darling Andemund hates me. Ever since I called him an old codger that time. Oh, my darling Edgar, you wouldn’t understand, falling in love at first sight. My broken heart aches for him.”

Edgar’s expression was grave. “Homosexuality is illegal!”

He was a serious man, uptight and conservative, though slightly taller than me, his Greek nose and curls the colour of corn making him somewhat popular among women. Since meeting along the River Cam, I had posed for him as a model for his painting, and he would in turn substitute for me in my classes.

While I flirted with the waitresses in skirts at the coffee shop, he painted; while I laid on the grass reading a book, he painted; while I spouted mindless gibberish about Andemund, he continued to paint— even now I still did not understand how a stern man such as him had managed to get on with me, much less became best of friends. 

At that time I thought my feelings towards Andemund were simply spontaneous and superficial, and Edgar had thought the same. On average, I chased after a woman once per week, though this time it was a man instead of a woman. 

I laid comfortably on the white recliner, a coat draped around my body. Lazily, I opened my eyes to squint at the sun, was promptly greeted by Andemund’s face hovering in front of me, and was so startled I nearly went to meet my maker. 

Despite the warm weather of spring, he continued to wear his grey overcoat, and carried his black leather notebook beneath his arm. He, having heard everything we’d just said word by word, leaned over, and smiled cryptically at me. “Alan, homosexuality is indeed forbidden by law in our country.”

He handed a piece of paper from his notebook to me and made me go along with him. Dejectedly following him from behind, I saw his bare neck shown from above his collar, the shape of it sloping and graceful. I jogged up to him. “Professor, I’m absolutely serious. I like you.”

He gave me a neutral smile, circled around me, and unlocked the door to his office with a copper key. I stayed outside as he called someone from within his office.

“…parents were the genius cryptologists… although simple, he’d deciphered it within seconds, so I’ve decided to let him try No. 13. I’ll be careful.”

He hung up the phone call and called me into the room. I thought he was going to punish me for skipping his lectures, but he only told me to take a look at the piece of paper that I was holding. Too busy admiring his features earlier, I realized that there was a plethora of indecipherable shapes and lines on the paper, stars and moons. The shapes that were drawn in blue ink filled the page. 

“Alan.” Andemund gestured for me to sit. “If you don’t want to write your essay about Gödel’s theorems, then you can try deciphering this code for me. This was sent to the press following a murder case in London. My friend at Scotland Yard who knows I dabble in cryptology sent it to me.”

He rung the bell for coffee, and smiled easily at me. “I was unable to decode it, but I thought perhaps you would like to give it a try.”

Translator’s notes: I literally just finished this novel 3 days ago but it stuck with me so hard I began translating it on a whim just for my own personal enjoyment. I know the first 3 chapters have already beem translated by another translator, but I can’t seem to find the translated chapters, so I’ve assumed that the translator’s dropped the translation. As I can’t reach out to them to ask for permission on whether I can retranslate the chapters, I’m just going to hope they don’t mind me picking up the tl for this novel…

Anyhow, updates for this novel will be infrequent because of my academic obligations. I apologize for that, but I think the second chapter will come relatively quickly just because of the fact that I have about a fourth of it translated by the time I’m typing this. If not, then expect to find my sad, sad corpse floating on the sea of academia. Thank you for reading!

[5/2/2021] Translator’s notes, revised: I’ve realized that “cryptology” and “cryptography”, while interchangeable in the present, wasn’t too interchangeable in the past. However, as I do not want to do another 30 minutes of research on the difference, they will be used interchangeably in the future and I will hope to the heavens that nobody notices.