Silent Moretti and the Attic Parlour Where His Proofs Frayed

A muted gravity fills Moretti House, centered in the abandoned attic parlour, where Gianni Carlo Moretti, a provincial Italian mathematician and occasional tutor, once guided his private proofs into brittle nocturnal hours. Now the wavering vector on his slate remains the lone remnant of an argument he never brought to completion.

A Vector in the Scholar’s Patient Progress

Gianni, born 1879 in Parma, learned disciplined reasoning from his aunt Luciana Moretti, whose chipped compass rests on the escritoire’s rim.

His evenings followed deliberate routine: steeping chamomile, aligning folios by topic, and testing algebraic transitions along the slate’s edge. Order still lingers—pencils trimmed to identical lengths, proofs pressed beneath a cracked paperweight, marginal notes leaning into careful notations. Even the faint dent in the armchair cushion recalls the angle of his posture, leaning forward whenever a possibility stirred.

When His Reasoning Drifted Out of Line

Whispers claimed Gianni misapplied a boundary condition in a treatise he intended to publish for a modest academic circle, prompting doubts about his larger work. In the narrow corridor, Luciana’s compass case lies split at the hinge. A cluster of proofs slumps near the wainscoting, final steps crossed out. A chalk fragment has rolled beneath a cabinet, trailing faint dust. A sheet of inequalities droops from the stair rail, last columns overwritten in haste. These scattered signs intimate uncertainty rather than guilt, though none reveal the moment his faith in the argument faltered.

Only the wavering vector on his slate remains—an unfinished gesture suspended in quiet. Moretti House remains abandoned still.