I couldn't allow myself to jump to facile conclusions, as there were now new speculative possibilities. The main feature of the room we sat in – what made it so different from the living room in our house – was the overwhelming presence of books, countless books everywhere. Not only were all the visible walls of the room, corridor and entrance hall dressed from floor to ceiling with shelves crammed to overflowing, but books in tall piles covered most of the floor area as well. Most of them looked old and overused.

At first, I chose the most direct route to answering my question about their content: I asked, 'What are all these books, Uncle Petros?'

There was a frozen silence, exactly as if I had spoken of rope in the house of the hanged man.

“They are… old”, he mumbled hesitantly, after casting a quick glance in the direction of my father. He seemed so flustered in his search for an answer, however, and the accompanying smile was so wan that I couldn't bring myself to ask for further explanations.

Once again I resorted to the call of nature. This time Uncle Petros led me to a small toilet next to the kitchen. On my way back to the living room, alone and unobserved, I seized the opportunity I had created. I picked up the top book of the nearest pile in the corridor and flipped hurriedly through the pages. Unfortunately it was in German, a language I was (and still am) totally unfamiliar with. On top of it, most of the pages were adorned with mysterious symbols such as I'd never seen before: "'s and $'s and f’s and Ï's. Among them, I discerned some more intelligible signs, +'s, ='s and ÷'s interspersed with numerals and letters both Latin and Greek. My rational mind overcame cabbalistic fantasies: it was mathematics!