The excitement caused by this realization was such that I could no longer wait for the tactically correct moment. I launched my attack right away.

'I notice,’ I said, my tone accusing rather than observing, 'that you seem to think very highly of the "famous Papachristos bean method".'

I had interrupted his train of thought and it took a few moments for my comment to register.

' You have an amazing command of the obvious,’ he said rudely. 'Of course I think highly of it.'

'… in contrast to Hardy and Littlewood,’ I added, delivering my first seriousblow.

This brought the expected reaction – only to a much greater degree than I'd f oreseen.

'"Can't prove Goldbach with beans, old chap!"' he said in a gruff, boorish tone, obviously parodying Littlewood. Then, he took on the other member of the immortal mathematical pair in a cruel mimicry of effeminacy. "Too elementary for your own good, my dear fellow, infantile even!'"

He banged his fist on the mantelpiece, furious. "That ass Hardy,’ he shouted, 'calling my geometric method "infantile" – as if he understood the first thing about it!'

'Now, now, Uncle,’ I said scoldingly, 'you can't go calling G. H. Hardy an ass!'

He banged his fist again, with greater force.

'An ass he was, and a sodomite too! The "great G. H. Hardy" – the Queen of Number Theory!'

This was so untypical of him I gasped. 'My, my, we are getting nasty, Uncle Petros!'

'Not at all! I'll call a spade a spade and a bugger a bugger!'

If I was startled I was also exhilarated: a totally new man had magically appeared before my eyes. Could it be that, together with the 'famous bean method', his old (I mean his young) seif had at last resurfaced? Could I now be hearing, for the first time, Petros Papachristos' real voice? Eccentricity – even Obsession – was certainly more characteristic of the single-minded, overambitious, brilliant mathematician of his youth than the gentle, civilized manners I'd come to associate with my elderly Uncle Petros. Conceit and malice towards his peers could well be the necessary other side of his genius. After all, both were perfectly suited to his capital sin, as diagnosed by Sammy: Pride.

To push it to its limit I used a casual tone: 'G. H. Hardy's sexual inclinations do not concern me,' I said. 'All that is relevant, vis-ä-vis his opinion of your "bean method", is that he was a great mathematician!'

Uncle Petros' face went crimson. 'Bollocks,' he growled. 'Prove it!'

'I don't have to,' I said dismissively. 'His theorems speak for themselves.'

'Oh?Which one?'

I stated two or three of the results I remembered from his textbook.

'Ha!' Uncle Petros snarled. 'Mere calculations of the grocery-bill variety! But show me one great idea, one inspired insight… You can't? That's because there isn't one!' He was fuming now. 'Oh, and while you're at it, tell me of a theorem the old pansy proved on his own, without good old Littlewood or poor dear Ramanujan holding his hand – or whatever other part of his anatomy it was they were holding!'

The mounting nastiness signalled that we were approaching a breakthrough. A tiny extra bit of annoyance was probably all that was necessary to bring it about.

'Really, Uncle,’ I said, trying to sound as haughty as possible. This is beneath you. After all, whatever theorems Hardy proved, they were certainly more important than yours!'

'Oh yes?' he snapped back. 'More important than Goldbach's Conjecture?'

I burst into incredulous laughter, despite myself. 'But you didn't prove Goldbach's Conjecture, Uncle Petros!'

'I didn't prove it, but -'

He broke off in mid-sentence. His expression betrayed he'd said more than he wanted to.

'You didn't prove it but what?’ I pressed him. 'Come on, Uncle, complete what you were going to say! You didn't prove it but were very dose to it? I'm right – am I not?'

Suddenly, he stared at me as if he were Hamlet and I his father's ghost. It was now or never. I leapt up from my seat.

'Oh, for God's sake, Uncle,' I cried. ‘I’m not my father or Uncle Anargyros or grandfather Papachristos! I know some mathematics, remember? Don't give me that crap about Gödel and the Incompleteness Theorem! Do you think I swallowed for a single moment that fairy tale of your "intuition telling you the Conjecture was unprovable"! No – I knew it from the very start for what it was, a pathetic excuse for your failure. Sourgrapes!’

His mouth opened in wonder – from ghost I must have been transformed into a celestial vision.

'I know the whole truth, Uncle Petros,’ I continued fervently. 'You got to within a hair's breadth of the proof! You were almost there… Almost… All but the final step…' – my voice was coming out in a humming, deep chant -'… and then, you lost your nerve! You chickened out, Uncle dearest, didn't you? What happened! Did you run out of willpower or were you just too scared to follow the path to its ultimate conclusion? Whatever the case, you'd always known it deep inside: the fault is not with the Incompleteness of Mathematics!'

My last words had made him recoil and I thought I might as well play the part to the hilt: I grabbed him by the shoulders and shouted straight into his face.

'Face it, Uncle! You owe it to yourself, can't you see that? To your courage, to your brilliance, to all those long, fruitless, lonely years! The blame for not proving Goldbach's Conjecture is all your own – just as the triumph would have been totally yours if you'd succeeded! But you didn't succeed! Goldbach's Conjecture is provable and you knew that all along! It's just that you didn't manage to prove it! You failed -you failed, God damn it, and you've got to admit it, at last!'

I had run out of breath.

As for Uncle Petros, for a slight moment his eyes closed and he wavered. I thought that he was going to pass out, but no – he instantly came to, his inner turmoil now unexpectedly melting into a soft, mellow smile.

I smiled too: naively, I thought that my wild ranting had miraculously achieved its purpose. In fact, at that moment I would have made a bet that his next words would be something like: 'You are absolutely right. I failed. I admit it. Thank you for helping me do it, most favoured of nephews. Now, I can die happy'

Alas, what he actually said was: 'Will you be a good boy and go get me five more kilos of beans?'

I was stunned – all of a sudden he was the ghost and I Hamlet.

'We – we must finish our discussion first,' I faltered, too shocked for anything stronger.

But then he started pleading: 'Please! Please, please, please get me some more beans!'

His tone was so intolerably pathetic that my defences crumbled to dust. For better or for worse, I knew that my experiment in enforced self-confrontation had ended.

Buying uncooked beans in a country where people don't do their grocery shopping in the middle of the night was a worthy challenge to my developing entrepreneurial skills. I drove from taverna to taverna, beguiling the cooks into selling me from their pantry stock a kilo here, half a kilo there, until I accumulated the required quantity. (It was probably the most expensive five kilos of beans ever.)

When I got back to Ekali, it was past midnight. I found Uncle Petros waiting for me at the garden gate.

'You are late!' was his only greeting.

I could see that he was in a state of tremendous agitation.

'Everything all right, Uncle?'

'Are these the beans?'

'They are, but what's the matter? What are you so worked up about?'

Without answering he grabbed the bag. 'Thank you,' he said and began to close the gate.

'Shan't I come in?' I asked, surprised.

'It's too late,’ he said.

I was reluctant to leave him until I found out what was going on.

'We don't have to talk mathematics,’ I said. 'We can have a little game of chess or, even better, drink some herbal tea and gossip about the family.'