“His aesthetic is inconsistent. But, then, perhaps he was unable to express this; the genius temporis, perhaps, did not allow it. In the 1950’s I once had occasion to witness an atomic test. Did you know, Mr. Hogarth” — that was what he always called me — “that there is nothing more beautiful than the colors of a mushroom cloud? No description, no color photograph can do justice to that wonder, which lasts ten, twenty seconds. The dirt rises, pulled up by the suction when the fireball expands. Then the sphere of flame, like a runaway balloon, disappears in the clouds, and the whole world, for a moment, is a sculpture in pink — Eos Pterodaktylos. . . The nineteenth century firmly believed that what was murderous must be hideous. Today we know that it may be more beautiful than cherry orchards. Afterward, all flowers seem faded, dull — and this happens in a place where radiation kills in a fraction of a second!”
I listened, ensconced in an armchair, and now and then, I confess, I lost the thread of what he was saying. My brain, like an old horse pulling a milk truck, stubbornly returned to the same route, the code; I had to force myself not to go back to that ground, because it seemed to me that if I left it fallow, something might germinate there by itself. Such things happen sometimes.
I also had talks with Tihamer Dill — that is, with Dill Junior, the physicist. I knew his father, but that is a story in itself. Dill Senior taught mathematics at Berkeley. He was, in those days, a fairly well known mathematician of the older generation and had a reputation as an excellent teacher — even-tempered, patient, though demanding. Why I did not find favor in his eyes, I do not know. It is true that we differed in our style of thinking; I was fascinated by ergodic processes, a field that Dill made light of. Still, I always had the feeling that the problem had to do with more than mathematics. I went to him with my ideas — to whom else was I to go? — and he snuffed me out like a candle, brushing aside what I wished to present, distinguishing in the meantime my colleague Myers. He hovered over Myers as over a new rosebud.
Myers followed in his footsteps, and I have to admit that he was not bad at combinatorial analysis — a branch, however, that even then I considered to be dried up. The student developed the idea of the mentor, so the mentor placed his faith in the student — and yet it was not that simple. Could it have been that Dill felt an instinctive, animal antipathy toward me? Was I too forward, too sure of myself and of my future? Obtuse I most certainly was; I understood nothing. On the other hand, I bore absolutely no grudge against him. Myers, it is true, I detested. I can still remember the silent delight I experienced when, many years later, I happened to run into him. He was working as a statistician in some automobile company — General Motors, I think.
But the fact that Dill had failed so completely in his choice of protégé was not enough for me. It was not that I wanted him vanquished; I wanted him converted to a belief in me. I do not think I ever finished any larger paper in all my younger work without imagining Dill’s eyes on the manuscript. What effort it cost me to prove that the Dill variable combinatorics was only a rough approximation of an ergodic theorem! Not before or since, I daresay, did I polish a thing so carefully; and it is even possible that the whole concept of groups later called Hogarth groups came out of that quiet, constant passion with which I plowed Dill’s axioms under. And then, as if wanting to do something in addition, though now there was nothing really left to do, I played the metamathematician — in order to survey that entire anachronistic idea from above, as it were, in a kind of Olympian footnote. More than one of those who had already predicted a soaring flight for me were surprised at this marginal interest of mine.
Of course I did not reveal to anyone the real motive, the hidden reason behind that work. What did I actually expect? Not, certainly, that Dill would come to appreciate my worth, would apologize about Myers, would admit how greatly he had been mistaken. The thought of that hawklike, hale, seemingly ageless old man going to Canossa was too absurd for me to entertain it even for a moment. So I had nothing specific in mind as a dream to come true: the thing was too embarrassing and petty for that. Sometimes a person who is valued, respected, even loved by all, cares most, in the innermost recess of his soul, about the opinion of someone who stands uninterested outside the circle of admirers, and who may be, in the eyes of the world, of no particular importance, a mediocrity.
What was Dill Senior, in the final analysis? A rank-and-file professor of mathematics. There were dozens like him in the States. But such rational arguments would not have helped me, especially since at that time I had not acknowledged even to myself the meaning and aim of the idiosyncrasies in my ambition. And yet, when I received from the publisher the fresh, stiff copies of my articles, bright as if bathed in new glory, I would have lucid moments; before me would appear Dill, dry, thin as a beanpole, inflexible, his face like a portrait of Hegel — and I hated Hegel, I could not read him, because he was so sure of himself, as if the Absolute Itself spoke through his lips for the greater glory of the Prussian state. Hegel, I realize now, had nothing to do with it; I had put him in the place of another person.
A few times I saw Dill at conferences, from a distance; I steered clear, pretending not to recognize him. Once he himself began talking to me, politely, vaguely, but I excused myself, said that I was just leaving. There was really nothing I wanted from him now; it was as if he were necessary to me only in the world of the imagination. The publication of my major opus was followed by a shower of praise, by a first biography; I felt close to an unexpressed goal, and that was when our paths crossed. Rumors of his illness had reached me, yes, but I had not thought that it could alter the man so much. I saw him in a supermarket. He was pushing a cart filled with cans, directly in front of me. I followed. There was a crowd all around us. In a quick, furtive glance I noticed his pouchlike, swollen cheeks, and with the diagnosis came a feeling akin to despair. Here was a shrunken, pot-bellied old man with dull eyes and a slack jaw, dragging his feet in large galoshes. Snow melting on his collar. He pushed his cart, was pushed by the crowd, and I hurriedly stepped back and away, as though in fear; I wanted only to leave as quickly as possible — to flee. In an instant I had lost an enemy, who probably had no idea, ever, that he was an enemy. For some time afterward, I felt an emptiness, as if after the loss of someone very close. That kind of stimulating challenge, demanding the concentration of all one’s mental power, was suddenly gone. Probably the Dill that followed me constantly and looked over my shoulder at the marked-up manuscripts never existed. When I read, years later, of his death, I felt nothing. But there long remained in me the wound of that vacated place.
I knew that he had a son, but I first met Dill Junior only in the Project. The mother, it seems, was Hungarian; hence that peculiar name, which brought to my mind Tamerlane. Though a junior, he was no longer young. He was one of those aging youths. There are people who are as if destined to be one age only. Baloyne, for example, is headed for a great patriarch; that appears to be his proper form, and he hastens to achieve it, knowing that not only will he not lose his vigor then, but in addition will wax Biblical and thus stand outside any suspicion of weakness. Then there are those who preserve the features of irresponsible adolescence. Dill Junior was that way. From his father he inherited an aspect of solemnity, a laboriousness of gesture: he certainly did not belong to the category of people who do not worry what their hands or face are doing at a given moment. He was what is called a “restless physicist,” in somewhat the same way as I was a restless mathematician, because he repeatedly shifted from field to field. For a while he worked in Anderson’s biophysics group. We struck up a friendship at Rappaport’s place; this cost me a little effort, because I did not really like Dill, but I overcame my feelings for the sake of his father’s memory. If this does not quite make sense to the reader, I can only say that it does not quite make sense to me, either, but that is the way it was.