He imagined he was Faust: a creature of poetry and of destiny. He thought himself divine, when really he was damned. In his meaningless scribbles, whatever their source, was there perhaps a message and a warning to us all?
Note
* English translation by Celia Carter. Cromwell Press, British Democratic Republic, 1949
PREDESTINED
Sitting at his desk after the Vicious Cycloids talk, pondering its parade of coincidences masquerading as insight, John Ringer reminded himself that it isn’t only literature professors who sometimes spout nonsense. He thought of Wolfgang Pauli, a colleague of Schrödinger in Zürich. When Pauli’s first wife left him, he fell into an emotional crisis that took him to the door of a local shrink named Carl Jung. Together they hatched ‘synchronicity’: the idea that all coincidences are meaningful.
Pauli thought quantum theory implied a new kind of causality. Jung illustrated it by describing how he once dreamed about a kingfisher, then went for a walk and found a dead one. The future discovery, Jung argued, caused the prior dream.
Or else it was a random event, picked from a billion others merely because it proved what Jung wanted to believe: that everything has significance.
Ringer had fallen into the same seductive trap with the text message that had reappeared on his phone. Call me: H. Surely the only connection with Helen was the one in his head. Yet it was enough to make him think again about their first meeting in the university canteen, when she told him about Thomas Mann.
Their meal had ended; she had an appointment elsewhere. They exchanged phone numbers, and as soon as he watched her walk away with her book under her arm, Ringer decided to go to the library in search of a link between science and literature stronger than the respective role of TB clinics in the careers of Mann and Schrödinger. It would be an excuse for phoning her.
In the library, Ringer learned from Mann’s biography that his first novel Buddenbrooks initially sold poorly. Then, after several months, a famous critic hailed it as a classic, it came out in a cut-price edition, and sold nearly ten thousand copies. Thanks to this lucky break, Mann at the age of twenty-six was suddenly a critical and commercial hit.
Ringer then read about The Magic Mountain, in which a young tuberculosis victim pines for a fellow patient – Clavdia Chauchat, a name like an esoteric pun – who resembles his former love. And another novel, Lotte in Weimar, about one of Goethe’s lovers reminiscing in old age. After it came out, an unknown writer and certified lunatic claimed his own unpublished work had been plagiarized. These details had persisted in Ringer’s memory, and now came back to him while he sat at his desk, toying with his Q-phone, wondering if he should try and locate the ‘call trace’ feature.
In the library, he had soon found himself gravitating to the familiar comforts of the physics section, where a biography of Werner Heisenberg caught his eye. For him too, chance played its part. Heisenberg originally planned on becoming a concert pianist; it was Niels Bohr who convinced him otherwise. In May 1925 Heisenberg discovered the version of quantum theory that established his reputation, and which Schrödinger soon challenged with his own rival theory. Later he headed the Nazi atom bomb project; and if Heisenberg’s calculation of the required uranium had been as accurate as his performances of Bach, history might have taken a very different course.
It was while reading this that Ringer had found the connection he was looking for. As soon as he got back to his flat he rang Helen and told her about an idea that might be relevant to her thesis.
‘Have you ever heard of the uncertainty principle?’ he said.
‘Of course. Everybody knows that whenever you observe something you alter it.’
‘Yes, that’s what everybody knows, and it’s how Heisenberg originally interpreted his result. But it’s wrong. You can measure electron spin, for instance, without changing it in any way. So Heisenberg and Bohr quickly came up with a more radical interpretation. Measuring something cannot alter it, because there’s nothing there to alter. Measuring instead creates the thing being measured. An electron is everywhere or nowhere, until you look at it.’
‘How strange.’
‘And as a source for this idea, Heisenberg once cited the nineteenth-century philosopher Fichte. So perhaps you’d better explain Fichte to me.’
They arranged to meet the following afternoon for coffee. Thus their affair – like Doktor Faustus, fascism and quantum theory – was predicated on German philosophy.
In the shabby surroundings of the Dolphin Cafe, Ringer learned that Johann Fichte was a proponent of something called ‘transcendental idealism’. At the time this interested him less than the cut of Helen’s blouse, but the gist was that reality is a creation of mind. If there were no consciousness in the universe, there’d be no universe. Fichte believed in a world of infinite possibility, with every act of human perception, at each instant of time, selecting a particular reality. A century later, this became a doctrine of quantum mechanics.
‘Here’s what I wonder,’ Ringer told Helen, as he tried to stir some life into his grey-brown coffee while sunshine warmed the street beyond the cafe window, the two of them sitting intently opposite one another at a table whose cracked and faded plastic cover bore a crusty stain of dried ketchup. ‘Suppose Heisenberg and the others had never read any philosophy. Suppose Kant was run over by a stagecoach when he was a kid, or Schopenhauer decided to throw himself out of a window. What then? Would we have ended up with the same quantum theory?’
Helen shrugged. ‘Who knows?’ It was a tacit acknowledgement that Ringer’s scholarship was superfluous; their intellectual flirtation had gone far enough. They were circling the point in time and space where they were destined to make love, and the transcendental orbit was becoming frustrating to two mere humans in need of warmth.
Ringer persisted. ‘If Buddenbrooks had been a flop and Thomas Mann had never published another novel, there would only be a little hole in history that no one would ever notice. But if Schrödinger had failed to find his equation, can we be sure that someone else would eventually have discovered it?’
Helen wasn’t listening. Rubbing the plastic tablecloth with her fingertip, she said suddenly, ‘Are you a man without qualities?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s a book by Robert Musil,’ she said. ‘According to Musil, the perfect example of a man without qualities is a mathematician. Everyone can imagine what a poet or a soldier ought to look like. But not a mathematician. Nobody knows what he feels, how he behaves. He’s a kind of ghost, a tangent to reality. When he appears to be eating a meal, or watching an opera, or taking a walk, what he’s really doing is some other, secret activity inside his own head; one that’s purely abstract, without any sound, colour, shape, texture.’ She looked at him, and again it was with those eyes that during their first encounter the previous day had seemed to promise love. ‘Is everything an abstraction to you?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Do you suppose I spend every waking moment thinking about equations?’ In fact, the secret now in his head was abstract only to the extent that her body was still a matter of speculation beneath her lilac blouse.
‘I can’t imagine how your mind works,’ she said. ‘That fascinates me. What you do is so … romantic.’
‘Physics?’ Ringer wasn’t used to hearing it described this way.
‘Absolutely,’ she said, leaning towards him over the table, close enough that he could smell her perfume. A loose lock of hair on her bare neck invited the correcting stroke of a finger. ‘You physicists are always talking about beauty, harmony, elegance, symmetry. Artists gave up on those a long time ago. Nietzsche and Schopenhauer thought music was the ultimate truth; but by the 1920s, Musil could see how things were changing. Physicists, not composers, were the new heroes.’
‘No one’s ever called me a hero before.’
She blushed and looked down, shyly toying with her coffee cup. ‘It’s a figure of speech. I’m trying to state a cultural
idea. Not very well, perhaps.’
They could have debated whether Beethoven and Einstein really had anything in common beyond a shared aversion to hair combs, but it was time to try and move beyond ideas. Ringer reached across the table and gently held her hand. ‘I like you,’ he said. She reddened further, her face still lowered.
‘I’m not an easy person to be with,’ she said. ‘In a close way, I mean. If you’re thinking of getting involved, I have to warn you it might not be wise.’
‘Why?’ The cafe was almost deserted, but an old woman at a nearby table was watching them with the casual indifference of one who’s seen generations of lovers come and go.
‘Never mind,’ she said, looking up at him again. ‘I’m trouble, that’s all. Perhaps we should stick to philosophizing. It’s safer.’
‘Very well,’ he said, ‘if that’s what you want.’
She noticed the old lady’s scrutiny. ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ she suggested. ‘It’s bright outside. I’d rather be in the park than here.’
They got up and left, and as they emerged into the sunlight, Ringer wondered if he should put his arm around her. The walk to the park, he noted, would take them in the direction of his flat.
Perhaps the entire universe is a mind: a commonplace notion nowadays; but in the early nineteenth century, a radical thought. For Fichte, the mind of God is in everyone. Similar notions led Schopenhauer to Eastern philosophy; Schrödinger and Bohr followed later. People highlight parallels between quantum theory and Buddhism, forgetting those similarities were built in from the outset.
In the park, the crocuses were out: purple, yellow and white beside the path to the boating lake. Helen and Ringer sat down on a wooden bench and watched the ducks. They held hands; they kissed.
What if it were all a dream in the mind of God? A simulation in a cosmic computer? Everyone has wondered things like this, in moments of euphoria, despair, or mere idleness. But suddenly Helen froze; she moved away and looked round towards the bushes behind the bench.
‘What’s wrong?’ Ringer asked her.
She was listening to something. ‘Can’t you hear it?’ He didn’t know what she meant; she looked shocked and fearful. Then she said, ‘There’s a baby crying in there!’
The two of them stood up and peered among the branches; Helen was sure there must be an abandoned infant. At last, on the ground, almost completely hidden from view, Ringer saw a cat crouching suspiciously. It gave a childlike howl.
‘There’s your baby,’ he said with a laugh. They sat down again.
‘That was so silly of me,’ she said apologetically. ‘For a moment … No, never mind.’
‘What?’
‘I thought it needed me,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’
He held her in his arms; they kissed again. This time, though, there was something false and automatic about the gesture. The two of them, Ringer sensed, were each thinking about completely different things; their embrace was a way of pretending otherwise, even though their orbits were still fixed by the same law that would bring them together in Ringer’s flat not long afterwards, undressing one another on the floor. There, almost with a sense of disappointment, he would find the breasts he had not quite imagined; a mole close to her navel; the taste of her skin.
This was the recollection from which he was abruptly stirred now in his office by the ringing of his phone. Might it be H? Putting the phone to his ear, he heard a male voice he didn’t recognize, asking to speak to Professor Ringer.
‘That’s me.’
The accent at the other end was Scottish, the tone high and fluty; and from the ensuing burst of words Ringer caught only one: Craigcarron. This was the nuclear facility Ringer was shortly due to visit, invited by one of his former students – Don Chambers – who led the small research centre that worked independently alongside the ailing and soon to be decommissioned power plant.
‘Is there a problem?’ Ringer asked.
‘Not at all, sir,’ the caller insisted, his voice evoking some wild and windswept place that McDonald’s and Starbucks had yet to reach. ‘But I do hope I’m not disturbing you.’
‘I didn’t catch your name,’ said Ringer.
‘I am Findlay McCrone, church minister at Ardnahanish. I hear you’ll be visiting Craigcarron, just down the road from us.’
Ringer’s forthcoming trip was no secret; nevertheless he was surprised to learn it was such public knowledge. ‘How did you get my number?’
‘I really don’t mean to bother you, but when Ena at the bakery heard from Moira that there was going to be a TV celebrity staying with Mrs Chambers, well, you can understand why the news was apt to circulate somewhat. Not that my parishioners are prone to gossip, mind …’
‘Hang on,’ said Ringer. ‘Who’s the TV celebrity?’
The minister gave a nervous laugh. ‘Such modesty!’ Then he continued his hurried explanation. ‘I gave Craigcarron a call and asked if they could help arrange a public talk in Ardnahanish. The lady on the switchboard didn’t quite get my drift but turned out to be a good friend of the McBrides, so next time I saw Jock I asked him to tell his son Dave to try and help, and now here I am, officially inviting you to give a lecture on black holes or particles, or whatever it is you talk about in that TV series of yours.’
‘I don’t have a TV series,’ said Ringer.
There was a pause at the other end. ‘No. I mean, you appear regularly on science programmes. Or so I’m told, though I don’t actually look at the television much.’
‘I’m not in any programmes,’ Ringer said flatly. ‘There’s been a mistake.’
‘Oh dear,’ said the minister. ‘How awkward.’ Then his voice brightened. ‘You are a physicist, though, aren’t you? And if you should happen to be giving a talk at Craigcarron, perhaps I could arrange a coach trip for my parishioners. There’s a very nice visitor centre, apparently.’
Ringer said, ‘I’m giving a technical seminar, and it’s not for the general public. I doubt your coach party would even understand the title: Non-collapsible wave functions and hadron-hadron collisions.’ Ringer was simply showing off in the hope of making him go away.
‘Hadron-hadron,’ the minister began murmuring thoughtfully. ‘Would that be a place up by Loch Connachie?’
‘No,’ said Ringer, ‘it’s something that happens in exploding stars. If any of your parishioners are interested in quantum field theory I can send them a copy of the relevant paper.’
By now it seemed he had succeeded in swatting Mr McCrone into submission. Then the minister said, ‘Tell me, professor, do you believe in predestination?’
It was a strange question. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I’m told that you physicists think everything is random. I even heard on the radio that there might be lots of parallel universes, and we’re in this one completely by accident. Which is somewhat at odds with the revealed truth of scripture, would you not agree?’
Ringer, sensing the delicacy of the issue, thought it best to hide behind further technicality. ‘Quantum theory is deterministic,’ he said, ‘to the extent that probabilities are fixed by boundary conditions, either in the past, or else perhaps in the future.’
‘I see. Deterministic,’ Mr McCrone echoed, ruminatively. ‘Boundary conditions.’ Ringer wondered if these might also happen to be places up by Loch Connachie. He said, ‘You’re a Presbyterian, then?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘No, I suppose not. But you evidently have a lot of ideas about where we all come from and where we’re going. So you can see why my parishioners would find a lecture extremely interesting.’
Ringer reminded the minister that his talk was to be about elementary particles, not God.
‘Of course,’ said Mr McCrone. ‘But I do still wonder if perhaps you could be tempted to pay us a visit in Ardnahanish to speak about science in general. I can promise you a warm welcome.’
Ringer couldn’t understand why the minister remained so keen on booking him, bu
t the proposal began to sound tempting. He was due to spend four days at Craigcarron. If the weather proved bad he wouldn’t even have hill walking as an excuse to get away now and again from the research station. So he accepted the minister’s invitation as a way of punctuating his trip.
‘Splendid!’ said Mr McCrone. ‘In fact, if the fifteenth is suitable for you, then it extricates me from an awkward situation. We were due to have a slideshow about ospreys, but unfortunately Archie has to take his wife to Inverness that day.’
So there was the deal. He was substitute for a bird-watcher.
‘Just one thing,’ said Ringer. ‘Did you try texting me before you called?’
‘No, but if you give me your address I can post details of how to find us.’ Ringer gave what was asked, then said goodbye and hung up, wondering what he might have let himself in for.
Call me: H. It hadn’t come from the minister; but was it connected with Ringer’s trip? He could think of a dozen stories that might fit. Perhaps the true story was one he could not even imagine.
HARRY’S TALE
‘How do you feel?’
It was a white-coated woman with jet-black hair who asked him this, standing beside the hospital bed with a clipboard in her hand.
‘Who are you?’ he said.
‘My name is Dr Blake and I’m a consultant meta-neurologist.’ She instructed him to gaze at the far wall and shone a tiny torchbeam into his helpless, flickering eye. ‘Try to hold still please, Mr Dick.’
The name was unfamiliar. ‘Is that who I am?’ She began to inspect his other eye, wafting her clinically scented atmosphere across his face. ‘What’s my other name?’
Mobius Dick Page 4