Free Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann Page A

chance, said Bonpland hoarsely. Had he really not looked up?
    This place was now fixed forever in the maps of the world. There were only ever a few moments in which one could use the sky to correct clock time. Some people took their work more seriously than others!
    That could well be, but … Bonpland sighed.
    Yes? Humboldt leafed in the astronomical almanac, took up his pencil, and began to calculate. So what was it now?
    Did one always have to be so German?

N UMBERS
    On the day everything changed, one of his molars was hurting so much he thought he'd go insane. In the night he had lain on his back, listening to the landlady snoring next door. At about six thirty in the morning, as he blinked wearily into the dawn light, he discovered the solution to one of the oldest problems in the world.
    He went staggering through the room like a drunk. He must write it down immediately, he must not forget it. The drawer didn't want to open, suddenly the paper had hidden itself from him, his quill broke off and made blotches, and then the next thing to trip him up was the chamber pot. But after half an hour of scribbling there it all was on some crumpled piece of paper, the margins of a Greek textbook, and the tabletop. He laid his pen aside. He was breathing heavily. He realized that he was naked, and registered the dirt on the floor and the stink with surprise. He was freezing. His toothache was almost unbearable.
    He read. Worked his way through it, followed the proof line by line, looked for errors, and didn't find any. He roamed over the last page and looked at his distorted, smeared, seventeen-sided figure. For more than two thousand years, people had been constructing regular triangles and pentangles with ruler and compasses. To construct a square or to double the angles of a polygon was child's play. And if one combined a triangle and a pentangle, what one got was a fifteen-sided figure. More was impossible.
    And now: seventeen. And he had a hunch there was a method that would allow him to go further. But he would have to find it.
    He went to the barber, who tied his hands tight, promised it really wouldn't be bad, and with one quick movement pushed his pincers into his mouth. The very touch of them, a blinding flash of pain, almost made him faint. He tried to gather his thoughts, but then the pincers took hold, something went click in his head, and it was the taste of blood and the pounding in his ears that brought him back to the room and the man with the apron, who was saying it hadn't been so bad, had it?
    On his way home he had to lean against walls, his knees were weak, his feet weren't under control, and he felt dizzy. In another few years there would be doctors for teeth, then it would be possible to cure this kind of pain and you wouldn't have to have every inflamed tooth pulled. Soon the world would no longer be full of the toothless. And everybody wouldn't have pockmarks, and nobody would lose their hair. He was amazed that nobody else ever thought about these things. People thought everything was naturally the way it was. Eyes glazed, he made his way to Zimmerman's rooms.
    Entering without knocking, he laid the pieces of paper out in front of him on the dining table.
    Oh, said the professor sympathetically, teeth, bad? He himself had been lucky, he'd only lost five, Professor Lichtenberg was left with a mere two, and Kästner had been toothless for years. With the tips of his fingers, because of a bloodstain, he picked up the first sheet. His brow furrowed. His lips moved.It went on so long that Gauss could hardly believe it any more. Nobody could take that long to think!
    This is a great moment, said Zimmerman finally.
    Gauss asked for a glass of water.
    He felt like praying. This must be printed, and it would be best if it appeared under the name of a professor. It wasn't the done thing for students to be publishing on their own.
    Gauss tried to reply, but when Zimmerman brought him the glass of water, he could