Notes from the Grey Tower

Not long after Edgar’s departure from Cambridge, the economic crisis began spreading throughout the whole of Europe. It was unclear whether the impending war had caused the crisis to happen, or if the crisis was what had lead to the war of the incoming year. 

The price of a loaf of bread rose to ten pence and the rent increased by a third of its price. I was forced to reduce my time working on Enigma and find a job as a private tutor to lessen the financial burden I bore on my uncle at Bedford.

In actuality, the reduction of time I spent on the Enigma didn’t make that much of a difference. Until now, all the breakthroughs made were attributed to the spies Andemund had under his command, and aside from suggesting formulae I had no other substantial contributions to the cause. Andemund first affirmed the validity of my suggestion of applying formulae to the problem, then shot down my way of calculating such formulae. In a rush of blood I proved his own way of calculation incorrect, and he in turn proved that wrong too. Up till now, there were still not enough conditions satisfied for application of the formula I’d proposed.

Lindon was devastated, and I was as devastated as he was. Andemund gently reassured Lindon that he was the only one he knew that could keep up with him out of all his colleagues over the past years, and told him not to take such small failures to heart. 

Thus, I travelled alone halfway across Cambridge, and searched for the Bradleigh mansion according to the address listed on the morning papers.

After walking for so long that I’d thought I would reach London did I overhear a couple of ladies discussing among themselves. “Thank God the Bradleighs are hiring a private tutor. Seems like someone’s finally going to handle the young master now.”

“Right. And he’s constantly leaving dead cats in the neighbouring girls’ homes, too.”

I subsequently went up to them and asked for where the Bradleigh mansion was. The two women eyed me from head to toe, and one of them covered her amused grin with her hand. “Sir, what do you think is behind you?”

I swiveled around and glanced at the white baroque-style building spanning half the street, showing my palms in defeat. “A government building?”

“That’s the residence of General Bradleigh you’re looking at.”

I knew that families who could afford to hire private tutors had to be rich, but I’d never expected them to be rich aristocrats from the military.

I wasn’t too interested in the military at the time, so I wasn’t aware of General Bradleigh’s apparent reputation, nor the fact that his residence was in the bookish city of Cambridge instead of London. 

It was hard to forget the grandiosity of the massive white baroque style building, the lofty platforms of it, the thick Persian carpets and the velvet curtains that were pulled ajar to let in the daylight. The most shocking thing about it was how I sat among seven people who had similarly applied for the job, all of us tested and interviewed personally by Mrs. Bradleigh. She was General Bradleigh’s wife, a amicable old woman who was approaching her seventies. After I handed in my curriculum vitae, I was asked to answer some simple mathematical questions, then had a conversation with her one-on-one. By the time I was brought to the young master Bradleigh, the sun had already set. 

General Bradleigh had a son and a daughter. His son and his daughter-in-law both passed away in a car accident in earlier years, leaving the young master at his general grandfather’s home. The brat went to school at a noble academy, and honourably managed a fat zero in his mathematics finals at the end of his first semester. A year later, his school report finally became exposed, and by chance at the same time the old general had returned from London to stay a short while at this estate. Thus, he’d thrown a stormy fit over his grandson’s results and made a listing on the Times to hire a private tutor for him. 

I was only required to come here twice every weekend in the morning to tutor the young master on multiplication and division. The job wasn’t tiring at all, and the pay was just enough to fill in the gaps left by rent. The prices of commodities rose alarmingly in autumn and unemployment remained high at the time. I counted myself lucky that I had landed this source of income. 

It wasn’t difficult to tutor him. The biggest problem was finding and catching the student and dragging him back from the back gardens to the study. The first time we met, Mrs. Bradleigh had kindly led me to the front of the study. Before I approached, I heard the sound of a small animal scratching at the door. The moment the door opened I was immediately hit in the gut by a red ball of yarn, and almost fell on my face from the impact.

The red ball of yarn hit me, bounced back into the room, picked up his mathematics textbook despairingly, and said grievingly. “I hate maths.” He pursed his lips as he looked at me. “And also, I don’t want a tutor who looks like a girl.”

I smiled politely as I let Mrs. Bradleigh out, closed the door firmly, and walked towards my student step by step, kneeling in front of him. “So. Come again?”

The ball of yarn shook his head, undefeated. “I’ll say it a hundred times. I hate maths!”

I said smilingly. “Not this. The last sentence.”

“I don’t want a tutor who looks like a girl.”

I stood up smilingly again, surveyed the room, and picked up the crayons and doodles on the desk. I turned my head. “Hmm. I see that you enjoy drawing?”

The brat pounced on me trying to snatch the crayons away. “Don’t touch them!”

I picked up the brat between two of my fingers, dropped him in front of the desk, found a chair to sit in beside him, crossed my legs and shook the box of crayons in my hand. “Be good. Finish a hundred of these multiplication questions and I’ll return one of them to you— you can even pick a colour you like, hm?”

At that moment I thought I’d become infinitely similar to Andemund. 

After a series of futile but furious snatching, biting, and rolling on the floor, the brat went teary-eyed to solve the questions on his assignment. I’ve always loved this snapshot in time in my memory: Me, sitting in the high backed chair within the Bradleigh mansion study, legs folded as I watched a brat whose dream was to become an artist solve math questions. The mahogany desk was very spacious, a stark contrast to the brat who was only eight at the time and whose frame was still tiny. His expression was wobbly with unhappiness as he held his pen. A pot of golden brooms was place on the windowsill, its stalks softly shaking in the breeze. 

I asked him. “What’s your name?”

“George Bradleigh.” The brat scoffed.

I flipped through the drawings I was holding and shook out a doodle. “What’s the two lines you drew beneath this triangle supposed to represent?”

“The dress of my friend Jenny. It’s been blown up because of the wind.” He was very disappointed. “But it didn’t get blown high enough. I couldn’t see anything underneath.”

“You would’ve been able to see it if you’d just squatted down.” I told him. I had often done this when I was young.

The brat was wonderfully surprised. “My older cousin told me the same thing too!”

I flipped through the surrealist art pieces, trying to find one worthy of praise. “Well, this glasses drawing isn’t half bad. Two circles connected by a short line…. you’re trying to draw a pair of glasses, right?”

The brat took a glance at the drawing and said derisively. “How are these glasses? This is my older cousin.”

A kid whose thinking was as abstract as this had failed his math exam. I thought it was a miracle that it had happened. 

I came here routinely twice every week to tutor the Bradleigh young master mathematics. The brat worked on his messy drawings all day, his small face scrunching up each time mathematics was brought up as he gnawed pitifully at his pencil. He was exceptionally talented and quick with numbers, as in fifty multiplication questions he had managed to get forty five of them wrong. The time I spent searching for him throughout the mansion much exceeded the time I spent tutoring him.

I didn’t have any choice but to use a sketching formula left behind by Edgar to swindle him. I told him if he wasn’t good at math he wouldn’t be able to become an artist.

“You have to trust me. My friend is a famous painter in Cambridgeshire.” I said assuredly.

The brat believed me and starting counting on his fingers. “So I gotta use algebra to calculate ratios while drawing, and solid geometry for perspective drawing… Alan, what’s ‘perspective’?”

I wrote a letter asking Edgar for the answer. His reply was quick: “Darling, it’s true that you have to know solid geometry for perspective drawing, but your student’s just eight years old… you best make him memorise the multiplication table first. 

The brat occasionally hesitated too. “But my older cousin has a friend who’s also studying math. He said the guy looked pretty alright, but he’d close himself up in dirty room all day solving math problems.”

George Bradleigh was deeply influenced by his whatever older cousin. The reason he said that I looked like a woman in the beginning was because his cousin had taught him, ‘those who look prettier than men are called women.’ His cousin worked for the government, had a filthy friend who did mathematics in college, and had initially been chased out of the estate by the general with a cane because of a girlfriend he was pursuing. 

I was extremely curious throughout the whole time what kind of person this man was, until one day I trudged through half of Cambridge to push open the study’s door once again and saw a pair of gold-rimmed glasses placed on the desk.

I finally understood why the brat drew his older cousin as a pair of glasses.

Arnold laid sprawled on the swivel chair in front of the desk, the brat docilely sitting by his feet. The psychologist squinted through half-lidded eyes at his brother’s surrealist doodles, complaining vexedly. “Analyse this report, analyse that report… finally a day off work. Andemund’s trying to work me until I meet my maker, isn’t he? Mathematicians are all crazy perverts.”

He lazily spun himself towards the doorway and paused.

At the time I had already been tutoring for three months. It was winter now, and snow fell hard outside. I took off my coat that was dusted head to toe with snowflakes, and walked to where the warm hearth was to warm my hands that had been frozen numb by the weather. It took half a day for me to speak without stuttering. “Long time no see, Arnold. I’m here as George’s private tutor.”

Arnold remained surprised for a long while, then joyously came over to hug me. “Alan, I thought we’d never see each other again.”

Edgar had gone to the army at the end of summer. At the time I had decided to just be like him, and bury my adoration for Andemund deep into my heart. Andemund was like the finest oil painting that I owned, but now I had to lock the door to the collector’s room it was in. I told myself that I had to reminisce about our time together as I would reminisce about a friend, and keep on trudging down the path that my life would take me. When I wasn’t at the mathematics activities room nor did I have tutorials, I would sometimes pass by the bar that Andemund used to often visit, order a cup of apple cider there and watch the waitresses with their checkered skirts. Until the waitresses no longer passed me by.

Because of this, Arnold never reached out to me again for a coffee date to talk about my psychology, and I, too, thought we would never meet each other again after when we parted. 

[13/2/2022] Translator’s notes: Lots of things happened such as graduating then utterly Not doing well in college, and after a year chapter 10 is finished. If you’re a reader from 2021, really, thank you for sticking along! I’ll be trying to update at least regularly from now on. This novel has continued to be held dear to my heart, despite my honeymoon period with it being over, and I still remember all its characters with relish. Hope I’ll be able to do chapter 11 in a bit!