Some knots are nontrivial, which means they cannot be undone without cutting the material they are made from. The simplest example of a nontrivial knot is the trefoil knot. It is formed by joining together the two loose ends of the common overhand knot (the one often tied at the end of a line, a rope, a scarf, a thread, to prevent it from unravelling). The trefoil knot is thus a kind of knot of knots. More precisely, the trefoil knot is described by the graph produced by three simple mathematical equations made up of oscillating sine and cosine waves. It is also the only knot whose crossing number—the smallest number of crossings on any diagram of the knot—is three. Finally, a trefoil knot is chiral, which means that it has left-handedness and right-handedness, and that its mirror image is different from itself. There is a complicated proof in knot theory to demonstrate that the trefoil knot is indeed a knot and not an unknot. The proof is required because many practical knots are in fact technically unknots, such as the slipped knot. The slipped knot is a “quick release” knot, and can be quickly and easily untied in the event of an emergency. For example, if a tied-up horse, or dog, or child, or wife panics and pulls back on the rope, a single tug on the end of the lead will free them, because there was never a true knot there to begin with. The crossing number is zero. The most beautiful knot? Maybe the Spanish Rose knot, which is also one of the most complex. According to the Encyclopedia of Knots and Fancy Rope Work, published in 1939, the year of my father’s birth: The method of forming it is too difficult to illustrate or explain, and any attempt to explain it would only lead to confusion.
Many years ago I fell in love with a fisherman and never thought to ask him to teach me how to tie knots. He was seventeen years my senior and already enjoying a second career as a professor of Spanish literature. Then one day my father said, “What did I do wrong in my life that my daughter wants to marry an old man?” To my surprise, the very next day I broke up with the fisherman, even though I had already imagined our future together: sailboats and fresh fish and Borges and Cortázar. He was able to not panic and released himself. He accepted the breakup, that our relationship was an unknot. Perhaps because he had had too often the experience of having the best fish get away. And perhaps he knew that he had a lifetime of true knots, translating some lesser-known Argentine writers, still ahead of him.
I thought my father’s question was a Gordian knot, an entanglement of many smaller knots, impossible to untie. So, I sliced the knot in half with the only thing I was good at, metaphor. It was a metaphorical sword, hardly original, but it worked. I did not know there could have been another way. Some historians argue that in Gordium, in fourth-century B.C., Alexander the Great simply pulled out a linchpin in the yoke, loosening the infamous knot from the ox-cart. A much more elegant solution. But it was too late for me, and though the cut was clean, I was not praised by anyone. Meanwhile, Alexander, by solving the problem of the Gordian knot, whether with his sword or with the linchpin approach, became the ruler of Asia. It did not even occur to me, as it did to the fisherman, that true love was an unknot.
Once, while I was still single, some friends from my post-doctoral time in Israel, a couple, visited me in the remote northern Ontario town where I lived. One of them studied lizards and how environmental stress, developmental instability, and/or genetic problems during early development could cause their bodies to become asymmetric. In lizards, the asymmetry could develop randomly on either the right side or the left side, and thus it was called fluctuating asymmetry. This asymmetry becomes a measure of the “goodness” of genes, and is difficult or impossible to mask. The couple had just had their first child, who, like most children, could cut through culture shock with a sword. I offered him a tablespoon of maple syrup and he simply answered od, which I recognized, from the little Hebrew I knew, as “more.” Later, in the car, strapped into a car seat with his parents on either side of him, the boy started to cry uncontrollably. Nothing they could say could quiet the poor child and in fact he became more and more upset. I started to talk rubbish, fake Hebrew, at the child from the driver’s seat, and he immediately stopped. Parents think a child’s uncontrollable crying is a nontrivial knot and give up too quickly. But it is in fact a Gordian knot and there are magical ways to untie it, like an invented language.
When I finally married, there were many knots. The most significant one was in the Granthi Bandhanam, Sanskrit for “tying of the sacred knot.” My brother-in-law-to-be tied a white scarf to the end of my red sari in a simple overhand knot, and then draped the other end over my soon-to-be-husband’s shoulder. We took the seven steps around the fire, representing seven asymmetric vows. For example, Vow Number Three: Groom: Om rayas santu joradastayaha (May we grow wealthy and prosperous and strive for the education of our children and may our children live long). Bride: Tava bhakti as vadedvachacha (I will love you solely for the rest of my life, as you are my husband. Every other man in my life will be secondary. I vow to remain chaste). I walked behind the groom, bound to him in mind, body, and soul by the knot. Around each of our wrists were red threads tied into many knots, interspersed with betel nuts and small shells. After the wedding, the threads were removed and put into a pan of milk. The bride and groom must untie each other’s threads, and whoever is able to do it first dominates the marriage. It was the job of my several aunts, who had come from India for the wedding, to judge. My husband won. I am spending my life on a proof that none of the crossings in the knots in the threads are real. There is no overhand, no handedness. It is all imagined, which makes them unknots. And yet, there are three children. And the sacred knot? It was not a slipped knot, I discovered, when I tried once to release it.