The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

True confession time ~~ I flunked Algebra II, still can’t do most multiplication tables, and freeze when confronted with compound interest rates.  So I’ve long avoided The Housekeeper and the Professor  – a book about math.  I knew of this Japanese novel, even gave a copy to my mathematician sister.  But I continued to avoid it like my old Algebra text book (and, yes the cover is imprinted in mind and still makes me slightly nauseous).

The other week, I stopped in my library branch during one of my walks and someone had abandoned this slim Japanese novel on a table, so I picked it up just to browse.  Bet you know where this is going…

From the inside cover:

He is a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem―ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory.
She is an astute young Housekeeper―with a ten-year-old son―who is hired to care for the Professor.
And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor’s mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son.

Before you knew it, I was two chapters in and had checked it out to bring home.

The Housekeeper and the Professor, set in Japan, is about a brilliant math professor who, because of an accident, has a memory span of only 80 minutes. He is difficult and his sister-in-law has tried many housekeepers.  Finally, our narrator winds up being placed with the Professor. She brings her young son with her the first day, and the Professor immediately calls him ‘Root’ because his flat head looks like the sign for square root.

The new housekeeper enjoys taking care of the Professor and his cottage, and Root comes every day after school.  But how do you create a relationship when a memory lasts only 80 minutes? The Professor manages, as best he can, by pinning notes and photos on his suit. But we soon see that it also takes the compassion of the new housekeeper:

Somehow, I had never quite understood what it meant for him to wake up alone each morning to this cruel revelation.

“I’m your housekeeper “, I said, when the sobs had subsided for a moment.  “I’m here to help you.”  He looked up at me through his tears.  “My son will come this evening.  We call him Root, because his head is flat.  You gave him that name.”  I pointed to the picture on his jacket.

The housekeeper, with him all day, starts to become fascinated with the Professor’s work.  He is still a renowned mathematician and wins prizes for solving intricate problems for various math journals.  She starts working on simple math problems with the professor as her guide.  The novel goes into discussions of factoids, prime numbers, abundant and deficient numbers, much of which made my eyes cross, but didn’t dissuade me from continuing with this unusual novel.

The bond between the Professor and Root grows deeper and each becomes important to the other.  The Professor helps with Root’s homework and Root urges the Professor to fix the radio so they can listen to the baseball games together.  Turns out they like the same team and start avidly following the games and compounding the all-important baseball statistics.  Again, with the math.

But I must say, even this arithmetically impaired reader enjoyed some of the math-ridden sections.  Who knew prime numbers could be interesting? Which, kudos to Ms. Ogawa (and the translation) is extremely hard for an author to pull off. 

Finally the three attend a baseball game which proves to be tricky given the Professor’s memory issues. This passage vividly brings to life the love of baseball:

We were mostly silent as we walked through the grounds to the stadium and stood in the crowded passageway leading to our seats.  The Professor was no doubt shocked to find himself in a place so utterly different from his usual surroundings, and Root was overcome with excitement at the prospect of seeing his beloved Tigers.  They both seemed to have lost the power of speech and merely stared around in awe.  “Is everything okay?”, I asked from time to time, and the Professor would nod and grip Root’s hand tightly.  As we reach the top of the stairs that lead to the seats above third base, all three of us let out a cry.  The diamond in all its grandeur was laid out before us — the soft dark earth of the infield,, the spotless bases, the straight white lines, and the manicured grass.  The evening sky seemed so close you could touch it and at that moment, as if they had been awaiting our arrival, the lights came on.  The stadium looked like a spaceship descended from the heavens.

The translation is beautifully done and allows English readers to see how Ms. Ogawa paints with words.  And, like a spare Japanese painting, there doesn’t seem to be much going on —  but there is much to interpret from The Housekeeper and the Professor. 

This is a lyrical, but quiet story.  There’s the interrelated connections between people, the world of numbers and ultimately the universe. The novel reminds us about the joy in the daily little things experienced with new eyes — over and over again — a cup of tea, the sound of the rain on the windows, a chat about baseball.

But, what has stayed with me — especially during the news these past few days — was the beauty and strength of the relationship between the Housekeeper, Root and the Professor —  a relationship built upon nothing but respect and consideration for other humans.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is one of those original books which reaffirms the delight found when reading something totally and wonderfully unique. 

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