In the distance, at what appeared to be the base of the mountains, I glimpsed pale yellow buildings, constructed in a neoclassical style, set against the backdrop of church spires. The buildings looked remarkably like the sketches of the Polytechnic that I’d seen in my application papers but vaster and more imposing than I’d imagined. The Polytechnic was a new sort of college dedicated to producing teachers and professors for various math or scientific disciplines, and it was one of the few universities in Europe to grant women degrees. Although I’d dreamed of little else for years, it was hard to fathom that, in a few months’ time, I’d actually be in attendance there.
The clarence cab lurched to a halt. The hatch door opened, and the driver announced our destination, “50 Plattenstrasse.” Papa passed up some francs through the hatch, and the carriage door swung open.
As the driver unloaded our luggage, a servant from the Engelbrecht Pension hurried out the front door and down the entry steps to assist us with the smaller bags we were carrying by hand. From between the handsome columns framing the front door of the four-story brick town house, an attractive, well-dressed couple emerged.
“Mr. Marić?” the heavyset, older gentleman called out.
“Yes, you must be Mr. Engelbrecht,” my father answered with a short bow and an outstretched hand. As the men exchanged introductions, the spry Mrs. Engelbrecht scuttled down the stairs to usher me into the building.
Formalities dispensed with, the Engelbrechts invited Papa and me to share in the tea and cakes that had been laid out in our honor. As we followed the Engelbrechts from the entryway into the parlor, I saw Papa cast an approving glance over the crystal chandelier hanging in the front parlor and the matching wall sconces. I could almost hear him think, This place is respectable enough for my Mitza.
To me, the pension seemed antiseptic and overly formal compared to home; the smells of the woods and the dust and the spicy cooking of home had been scrubbed away. Although we Serbs aspired to the Germanic order adopted by the Swiss, I saw then that our attempts barely grazed the Swiss heights of cleaning perfection.
Over tea and cakes and pleasantries and under Papa’s persistent questioning, the Engelbrechts explained the workings of their boardinghouse: the fixed schedule for meals, visitors, laundry, and room cleaning. Papa, the former military man, inquired about the security of the lodgers, and his shoulders softened with every favorable response and each assessment of the tufted blue fabric on the walls and the ornately carved chairs gathered around the wide marble fireplace. Still, his shoulders never fully slackened; Papa wanted a university education for me almost as much as I wanted it for myself, but the reality of farewell seemed harder for him than I’d ever imagined.
As I sipped my tea, I heard laughter. The laughter of girls.
Mrs. Engelbrecht noticed my reaction. “Ah, you hear our young ladies at a game of whist. May I introduce you to our other young lady boarders?”
Other lady boarders? I nodded, although I desperately wanted to shake my head no. My experiences with other young ladies generally ended poorly. Commonalities between myself and them were few at best. At worst, I had suffered meanness and degradation at the hands of my classmates, male and female, especially when they realized the scope of my ambitions.
Still, politeness demanded that we rise, and Mrs. Engelbrecht led us through the parlor into a smaller room, different from the parlor in its decor: brass chandelier and sconces instead of crystal, oaken panels instead of blue silken fabric on the walls, and a gaming table at its center. As we entered, I thought I heard the word krpiti and glanced over at Papa, who looked similarly surprised. It was a Serbian phrase we used when disappointed or losing, and I wondered who on earth would be using the word. Surely, we had misheard.
Around the table sat three girls, all about my age, with dark hair and thick brows not unlike my own. They were even dressed much the same, with stiff, white blouses topped with high lace collars and dark, simple skirts. Serious attire, not the frilly, fancifully decorated gowns of lemon yellow and frothy pink favored by many young women, including those I’d seen on the fashionable streets near the train station.
Looking up from their game, the girls quickly set their cards down and stood for the introduction. “Misses Ružica Dražić, Milana Bota, and Helene Kaufler, I would like you to meet our new boarder. This is Miss Mileva Marić.”
As we curtsied to one another, Mrs. Engelbrecht continued, “Miss Marić is here to study mathematics and physics at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic. You will be in good company here, Miss Marić.”
Mrs. Engelbrecht gestured first to a girl with wide cheekbones, a ready smile, and bronze eyes. She said, “Miss Dražić is here from Šabac to study political science at the University of Zürich.”
Turning next to the girl with the darkest hair and heaviest brows, Mrs. Engelbrecht said, “This is Miss Bota. She left Kruševac behind to study psychology at the Polytechnic like yourself.”
Placing her hand on the shoulder of the last girl, one with a halo of soft brown hair and kindly, gray-blue eyes framed by sloping eyebrows, Mrs. Engelbrecht said, “And this is our Miss Kaufler, who traveled all the way from Vienna for her history degree, also at the Polytechnic.”
I didn’t know what to say. Fellow university students from eastern Austro-Hungarian provinces like my own? I had never dreamed that I wouldn’t be unique. In Zagreb, every other girl near the age of twenty was married or readying for marriage by meeting suitable young men and practicing to run a household in their parents’ home. Their educations stopped years before, if they ever went to formal schooling at all. I thought I’d always be the only eastern European female university student in a world of western men. Maybe the only girl at all.
Mrs. Engelbrecht looked at each of the girls and said, “We will leave you ladies to your whist while we finish our conversation. I hope that you will show Miss Marić around Zürich tomorrow?”
“Of course, Mrs. Engelbrecht,” Miss Kaufler answered for all three girls with a warm smile. “Maybe Miss Marić will even join us in whist tomorrow evening. We could certainly use a fourth.”
Miss Kaufler’s smile seemed genuine, and I felt drawn to the cozy scene. Instinctively, I grinned back, but then I stopped. Be careful, I warned myself. Remember the beastliness of other young ladies: the taunts, the name-calling, the kicks on the playground. The Polytechnic’s mathematics and physics program lured you here, so you could follow the dream of becoming one of a very few female physics professors in Europe. You did not travel all this distance just to make a few friends, even if these girls are indeed what they seem.
As we walked back to the front parlor, Papa linked his arm with mine and whispered, “They seem like remarkably nice girls, Mitza. They must be smart too, if they are here to study at the university. It might be the right time to find a female companion or two, since we’ve finally met a few that might be your intellectual equals. Some lucky girl should get to share in all the little jokes you usually save for me.”
His voice sounded oddly hopeful, as if he were actually eager for me to reach out to the girls we’d just met. What was Papa saying? I was confused. After so many years professing that friends did not matter, that a husband was not important, that our family and education alone counted, was he giving me some sort of test? I wanted to show him that the usual desires of a young woman—friends, husband, children—didn’t matter to me, as always. I wanted to pass this strange examination with the highest honors, just as I had all others.
“Papa, I promise you I’m here to learn, not to make friends,” I said with a definitive nod. I hoped this would reassure him that the fate he foretold for me—even wished for me—all those years ago had become my own embraced destiny.
But Papa wasn’t elated with my answer. In fact, his face darkened, with sadness or anger I couldn’t tell at first. Had I not been emphatic enough? Was his message truly changing because these g
irls were so different from all the others I’d known?
He was uncharacteristically quiet for a minute. Finally, with a despondent note in his voice, he said, “I had hoped you could have both.”
In the weeks that followed Papa’s departure, I avoided the girls, keeping to my books and my room. But the Engelbrechts’ schedule meant that I dined with them daily, and courtesy required that I politely converse over breakfast and dinner. They constantly entreated me to join them in walks, lectures, café-house visits, theater, and concerts. They good-naturedly chided me for being too serious and too quiet and too studious, and they continued to invite me no matter how often I declined. The girls had persistence I’d never witnessed anywhere but within myself.
One early evening that summer, I was studying in my room in preparation for the courses beginning in October, as had become my custom. My special shawl was wrapped around my shoulders to ward off the chill endemic to the pension’s bedrooms no matter how warm the weather. I was parsing through a text when I heard the girls downstairs begin to play a version of one of Bizet’s L’Arlésienne Suites, fairly badly but with feeling. I knew the piece well; I used to perform it with my family. The familiar music made me feel melancholy, lonely instead of alone. Glancing over at my dusty tamburitza in the corner, I grabbed the little mandolin and walked downstairs. Standing in the entrance to the front parlor, I watched as the girls struggled with the piece.
As I leaned against the wall, tamburitza in hand, I suddenly felt foolish. Why should I expect them to accept me after I’d declined their invitations so frequently? I wanted to run back upstairs, but Helene noticed me and stopped playing.
With her characteristic warmth, she asked, “Will you join us, Miss Marić?” She glanced at Ružica and Milana in mock exasperation. “You can see that we can use whatever musical assistance you can offer.”
I said yes. Within days, the girls catapulted me into a life I’d never experienced before. A life with like-minded friends. Papa had been wrong, and so had I. Friends did matter. Friends like these anyway, ones who were fiercely intelligent and similarly ambitious, who suffered through the same sort of ridicule and condemnation and survived, smiling.
These friends didn’t take away my resolve to succeed as I’d feared. They made me stronger.
• • •
Now, months later, I plopped down into the empty chair as Ružica poured me a cup of tea. The smell of lemon wafted toward me, and with a self-pleased grin, Milana slid over a plate of my favorite lemon-balm cake; the girls must have specially requested it for me from Mrs. Engelbrecht. A special gesture for a special day.
“Thank you.”
We sipped tea and nibbled on the cake. The girls were unusually quiet, although I could see from their faces and the glances they shot one another that it was a hard-won restraint. They were waiting for me to speak first, to offer up more than an appreciation for the treats.
But Ružica, the most high-spirited, couldn’t wait. She had the most abundant persistence and the least patience and simply burst with her question. “How was the infamous Professor Weber?” she asked, eyebrows knit in a comic interpretation of the instructor, well-known for his formidable classroom style and equally formidable brilliance.
“As billed,” I answered with a sigh and another bite of cake; it was a glorious mix of sweet and savory. I wiped away a crumb from the side of my mouth and explained, “He insisted on consulting his roster before he let me sit in the classroom. As if he didn’t know I was entering his program. He admitted me himself!”
The girls giggled knowingly.
“And then he made a dig about me coming from Serbia.”
The girls stopped laughing. Ružica and Milana had experienced similar humiliations, having come from far reaches of the Austro-Hungarian Empire themselves. Even Helene, who hailed from the more acceptable region of Austria, had suffered her own degradations from her Polytechnic professors because she was Jewish.
“Sounds like my first day in Professor Herzog’s class,” Helene said, and we nodded. We had heard Helene’s tale of mortification in excruciating detail. After noting aloud that Helene’s surname sounded Jewish, Professor Herzog spent a substantial part of his first Italian history lecture focusing on the Venetian ghettos where Jews were forced to live from the sixteenth to eighteenth century. We didn’t think the professor’s emphasis was a coincidence.
“It isn’t enough we are but a few women in an ocean of men. The professors have to manufacture other flaws and highlight other differences,” Ružica said.
“How are the other students?” Milana asked in a clear attempt to change the subject.
“The usual,” I answered. The girls groaned in solidarity.
“Self-important?” Milana asked.
“Check,” I said.
“Heavily mustached?” Ružica suggested with a giggle.
“Check.”
“Overly confident?” Helene proposed.
“Double check.”
“Any overt hostility?” Helene ventured, her voice more solemn and cautious. She was very protective, a sort of mother hen for the group. Especially for me. Ever since I told them about what had happened to me on my first day at the upper school in Zagreb, the Royal Classical High School, a story I’d shared with no one else, Helene was extra wary on my behalf. While none of the others had experienced such overt violence, they’d all felt the menace seething beneath the surface at one time or another.
“No, not yet anyway.”
“That’s good news,” Ružica announced, ever optimistic. We accused her of fabricating silver linings in the blackest storms. She maintained that it was a necessary outlook for us and briskly recommended that we do the same.
“Sense any allies?” Milana tiptoed into more strategic territory. The physics curriculum required collaboration among the students on certain projects, and we had discussed strategies about this. What if no one was willing to partner with me?
“No,” I answered automatically. But I paused, trying to follow Ružica’s advice to think more optimistically. “Well, maybe. There was one student who smiled at me, maybe a little too long, but still, a genuine smile. No mockery. Einstein, I think is his name.”
Helene’s heavy eyebrows raised in concern. She was always on high alert for unwelcome romantic overtures. She believed them to be almost as much cause for concern as outright violence. Reaching for my hand, she warned, “Be careful.”
I squeezed her hand back. “Don’t worry, Helene. I’m always careful.” When her expression failed to lighten, I teased, “Come on. You girls always accuse me of being too cautious, too private. Of only showing you three my true personality. Do you really think I wouldn’t be careful with Mr. Einstein?”
Helene’s worried look lifted, replaced by a smile.
I constantly astonished myself with these girls. Astonished that I had the words to express my long-buried stories. Astonished that I allowed them to see who I really was. And astonished that I was accepted regardless.
Chapter 3
April 22, 1897
Zürich, Switzerland
I nestled into my library carrel. The airy, wood-paneled library at the Polytechnic was full almost to capacity, but still, the room was hushed. The students were quietly worshipping at the altar of one discipline or another, some studying biology or chemistry, others math, and still others physics like myself. Here, buffeted from the world by the carrel, barricaded in by my books, fortified by my own musings and theories, I could almost pretend that I was like every other student at the Polytechnic library.
Spread before me were my class notes, several required texts, and one article from my own collection. They all clamored for my attention, and as if I were selecting among beloved pets, I found it hard to choose to which I would devote my time. Newton or Descartes? Or perhaps one of the newer theorists? The air at the Polytechnic, indeed
throughout Zürich itself, felt charged with talk of the latest developments in physics, and I felt like it was speaking directly to me. The world of physics was where I belonged. Embedded in its secretive rules about the workings of the world—hidden forces and unseen causal relationships so complex that I believed only God could have created them—were answers to the greatest questions about our existence. If only I could uncover them.
Occasionally, if I relaxed into my reading and calculations—instead of studying and working so earnestly—I could see the divine patterns I desperately sought. But only in the periphery of my sight. As soon as I turned my gaze directly upon the patterns, they shimmered away into nothingness. Perhaps I wasn’t yet ready to view God’s masterwork head-on. Perhaps in time, he would allow it.
I credited Papa for bringing me to this scintillating threshold of education and curiosity. My only regret was that he still worried about me here in Zürich, both in terms of my future prospects and the safety of my daily living. While I worked hard in my letters to convince him of the abundance of teaching positions for me when I finished, if research should not be my career, and the inviolability of my structured life at school and the pension, I sensed his anxiety through his endless questioning.
Interesting that Mama seemed more comfortable with my current path. After a lifetime bristling against her disapproval of my unorthodox need for education, once I settled into my life in Zürich, she seemed to surrender to my choice, particularly when I started to fill my letters to her with tales of my outings with Ružica, Milana, and Helene. In her responses, I saw that Mama delighted in these new friendships. My first friendships.
Mama’s approval wasn’t always so freely given. Until this recent rapprochement, my relationship with her was darkened by her worries over me, her lame, lonely, and unconventional child. And by the impact my thirst for education had on her own life.
The Other Einstein Page 2