3
Chapter 3. The Wisdom of Mencius’s Mother
A few days later, in the afternoon.
“Leo, the weather is lovely today. Why don’t you go outside and play in the yard? Take a look at the wheat fields swaying in the breeze, too. But don’t go too far, all right? Make sure you stay close to the house.”
“Yes!”
Leo answered briefly before heading out the front door with light, cheerful steps. As soon as the boy’s figure disappeared into the distance, Jonathan slumped into a chair at the dining table and rubbed his face wearily.
“Diana, I just can’t figure this out. If Michael is right, Leo isn’t an ordinary child. How am I supposed to educate a genius like him when I’m an uneducated man who’s spent his entire life handling dirt and fixing tractors? I’m terribly worried that I might ruin his future. I think I should head downtown tomorrow and seek professional educational advice.”
Jonathan’s voice was drained of energy.
Never before had his lack of education weighed so painfully on him.
Just then, something caught Diana’s eye as she stared absentmindedly out the window.
“Jonathan! We don’t have to go far. We have Mr. Martin right here in our village!”
“Mr. Martin? You mean that eccentric old man who lives alone?”
“He’s not just an old man. I heard he spent his entire career teaching mathematics at a prestigious private school in Boston. He retired and moved back to the countryside to live quietly, but apparently, many of his former students went on to become famous!”
Jonathan shook his head, looking troubled.
“Diana, he’s bound to turn us down. That man is famous for being stubborn and demanding. People around here say he’s so difficult that nobody can even get a word in with him. I’ve been too intimidated to have a proper conversation with him myself! He hates dealing with people, so why would he agree to help us?”
Diana gently took Jonathan’s hand and spoke softly.
“We should at least try. You never know what might happen.”
“Hmm, it won’t be easy... All right. I’ll go and see him.”
Unable to resist his wife’s confident gaze, Jonathan reluctantly stood up and grabbed his coat from the hanger.
He buttoned it up and headed toward the front door to call Leo inside.
But before he could even reach for the doorknob, the door opened from the outside.
“...!”
Standing at the entrance was an elderly man with a stern expression, wearing a worn tweed jacket and a pair of magnifying glasses perched on the tip of his nose.
It was Mr. Martin, the very man the couple had just been discussing.
But astonishingly, Leo, who was supposed to be playing outside, was standing right beside him.
Jonathan opened his mouth in surprise.
“Mr. Martin? What brings you here...?”
Mr. Martin gave Jonathan a quick once-over before asking bluntly, “Where are you going?”
“I was just on my way to see you, sir.”
Instead of answering Jonathan’s question, Martin stared intently at Leo and asked, “Is this your son? The boy you adopted from Korea?”
“Yes, that’s right. This is Leo.”
When Jonathan nodded, Martin continued to gaze at Leo in silence for a while. Then, as though he had made up his mind, he gently tugged at Jonathan’s arm.
“Come with me for a moment. There’s something I need to discuss with you.”
A short while later,
Martin moved to a corner of the living room, far enough away that Diana and Leo wouldn’t be able to hear them.
“What is it, sir? Did our boy do something wrong?”
Jonathan asked cautiously, glancing toward Leo in the living room.
“If making my heart race for the first time in years counts as wrongdoing, then I suppose he did.”
“What? What do you mean by that?”
“Hmm. It happened just a little while ago. I was out for a walk when I happened to see your boy crouching beside the wheat field, carefully observing something.”
“You saw Leo?”
“That’s right. He gently plucked a leaf and placed it on his palm.”
According to Mr. Martin, Leo’s eyes had been intently following the branching patterns of the leaf’s veins. He was studying the thick vein running down the center and the countless tiny veins branching out from it.
“And then?”
“I was curious, so I watched him closely. Then he started talking to himself. He said, ‘This leaf keeps dividing into smaller pieces that look exactly like the whole thing. It seems like it could keep getting smaller forever!’”
Jonathan tilted his head in confusion as he looked at Mr. Martin.
“Well... is that really a problem? Couldn’t it just be a child’s imagination?”
Martin shook his head in exasperation.
“No, this isn’t mere imagination. The boy instinctively understands fractal structures and the concept of self-similarity. A seven-year-old child was independently discovering the geometric principles of nature! That’s simply absurd!”
“Fract... what? Sir, is it really that remarkable? I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
Faced with Jonathan’s innocent question, Mr. Martin added an incredulous explanation.
“To understand those principles academically, one would need to study advanced mathematics and geometry at the university level. Yet this little seven-year-old is already discovering those principles on his own!”
“What?”
Jonathan’s heart sank.
Only when he heard the words “university level” did he finally grasp how serious the situation was.
“Tell me, what are your plans for educating this child? Have you thought about how you’ll teach him from now on?”
Jonathan lowered his head helplessly and explained what had happened at the preschool.
“Actually...”
After listening, Martin fell silent for a moment before speaking.
“I see. Send him to me for now. I’d like to observe the boy myself.”
Jonathan could hardly believe his ears. His face lit up with relief.
“Really? You mean you’re willing to teach Leo yourself?”
“Don’t read too much into it. I simply want to find out whether I was mistaken. If I teach him for a few days, I’ll soon know whether I was right or wrong. In any case, send him to my house starting tomorrow.”
“Y-Yes, of course. We’ll do that.”
“Then I’ll be going.”
With that, Mr. Martin left the house.
“Good heavens... How could something like this happen?”
By then, Leo had turned toward the window and was gazing at the sky.
It wasn’t just the patterns in the corn leaves that caught his attention. He could clearly perceive the repeating patterns in the unfamiliar plants growing beside the barn and even the endlessly recurring shapes within the lightning-shaped clouds in the distance.
And so, Mr. Martin took it upon himself to become Leo’s private tutor. From that point onward, instead of attending preschool, Leo studied at Mr. Martin’s house.
Every morning, Leo set off for Mr. Martin’s home with a spring in his step.
Contrary to the Jefferson couple’s worries, Leo’s lessons with Mr. Martin felt less like studying and more like playing.
The complicated equations Martin wrote on the blackboard seemed to come alive inside Leo’s mind, and he absorbed the knowledge at a frightening pace.
During the day, Leo explored the world of calculus and geometry in Martin’s study. By afternoon, he would return home as an ordinary seven-year-old boy.
With dirt covering him from head to toe, Leo would use his tiny hands to clean Jonathan’s farm equipment or help Diana tend the garden. He looked every bit like the eldest son of the Jefferson family.
By then, Leo’s English had become indistinguishable from that of a native speaker, right down to the local accent.
The couple smiled whenever they watched Leo helping Jonathan with his work.
Although he wasn’t related to them by a single drop of blood, Leo’s extraordinary intelligence and warmhearted nature had carved the word “family” deep into their hearts.
Before they knew it, a year had passed.
One peaceful afternoon, Mr. Martin came to visit the Jefferson couple with a grim expression.
“Sir, what brings you here? Has something happened to Leo?”
Diana asked.
Martin gave a hollow laugh and shook his head.
In his hands were university-level mathematics textbooks that Leo had already worked through and solved.
“Jonathan, Diana! I’m afraid this won’t work anymore. There’s nothing left for me to teach this boy.”
His voice was tinged with helplessness.
“Sir, what do you mean?”
“In just one year, this child has absorbed every last bit of knowledge I’ve spent my entire life studying. I mean that I have nothing left to teach him. No... perhaps there was never anything I could teach him in the first place.”
“Good heavens! Then what are we supposed to do with our Leo?”
Confusion spread across the Jefferson couple’s faces.
Martin looked directly at Jonathan, his expression serious.
“You need to send Leo somewhere with a much bigger pond. This boy needs to grow up in a wider world, competing fiercely with more talented people. There’s a school in Boston called Buckingham Browne & Nichols, where I once worked. I’ll write him a letter of recommendation, so send him there. Of course, a recommendation alone won’t guarantee admission, but with Leo’s abilities, he should have no trouble passing the entrance exam.”
“What? You’re telling us to send Leo to Boston to study? He’s still so young!”
Jonathan looked troubled by Martin’s suggestion.
“There’s no need to make it complicated. He can live in the school’s dormitory. Or you could go with him.”
“M-Me? Go with him?”
“That’s right. In any case, leaving this child here would be an enormous loss to humanity. The sooner you make your decision, the better.”
“Phew\... I understand. We’ll think it over.”
“Then I’ll wait to hear from you.”
“Yes. Please take care on your way home.”
After Martin left, the Jefferson couple spent several sleepless nights.
They had lived their entire lives in the rural town of Echo, Oregon. Boston, on the opposite side of the country, felt like a distant and unfamiliar world.
For days, the Jeffersons agonized over the decision, weighing every possibility again and again.
Finally, Diana spoke.
“Jonathan, what should we do? We can’t send Leo there all by himself. But if we move to Boston... that means giving up this farm.”
Her voice trembled.
Jonathan gazed out the window at the wheat fields bathed in moonlight.
This was the land his family had cultivated for generations, the place where he had poured his entire life. Leaving it behind was not a decision he could make lightly.
After several more nights of agonizing over it, Jonathan finally seemed to reach a decision. He clasped Diana’s hand tightly in his rough, calloused one.
“Diana, remember the promise we made when we brought Leo home? We promised we’d raise him right. That boy is a precious gift sent to us from heaven. I think the time has come for us to answer the blessing heaven has bestowed upon us.”
Jonathan’s gaze grew resolute.
“...Then?”
“Let’s go to Boston with Leo!”
Knowing how serious Jonathan was and how difficult this decision must have been for him, Diana nodded without hesitation.
“All right! Let’s do it!”
And so, the Jefferson couple finally resolved to leave for the unfamiliar metropolis of Boston.