“My own story is much the same,” Helene whispered. Reaching over to embrace me, she said, “Mitza, I wish I’d known you all my life.”
“Me too, Helene.”
“I apologize for being so hard on you today and for my obvious distrust of Mr. Einstein. I know I encouraged you to form an alliance with him initially, but I didn’t realize he’d be so, well, presumptuous and unorthodox. It’s taken me so long to find others like myself. I find it difficult—and I overreact—when it seems they are drifting away, particularly to someone I’m not certain deserves them.”
Squeezing her tight, I said, “I’m sorry, Helene. I wasn’t drifting away from you. By spending time with Mr. Einstein and his scientist friends, I actually thought I was moving closer to the professional goals we talk about so often. The men speak of nothing but the latest scientific developments at the café, advancements of which I would otherwise be unaware.”
She grew quiet. “I didn’t realize. I thought you were being lured by the ‘bohemian’ ways he’s always talking about. By him, not science.”
I rushed to correct her. “No, Helene. The time I spend with him is more in the manner of a colleague. I glean much from him professionally at school and at Café Metropole, no matter how frivolously he acts here.” But as I said these words to Helene, I realized they were not entirely true. My feelings were more complex; I felt alive in Mr. Einstein’s company, understood and accepted. The sensation was unique and unsettling.
Reassuring myself as much as her, I said, “But it is of no further consequence. Your good opinion means the world to me. Above all else.”
Chapter 7
July 30 and 31, 1897
Zürich, Switzerland, and the Sihl Valley
Even though Helene never really came to accept Mr. Einstein in those final weeks of the term, she did soften toward him after our conversation. Whether it was the reaffirming of our pact or our mischievous remarks about his grooming, her concerns about him seemed diffused. She no longer viewed him as a threat to our little rituals, even though he was persistently, abundantly, present.
This benefited me as well, as my assurances and mild mockery of Mr. Einstein helped keep him in perspective. It reminded me that he was merely a kindred lover of physics and a classmate—and a rather silly, certainly ridiculous-looking one. I believed that I could quell any feelings toward him. I felt well-armed to politely stamp out any inkling of an overture that he might spring upon me. Not that anything other than frivolous banter and hints had been forthcoming.
The evening after the last arduous day of the Section Six first-year finals—for which I’d studied harder than anything ever before—Mr. Einstein appeared on the Engelbrecht Pension doorstep, violin in hand, as had become his habit. This was no surprise. He had not been specifically invited, but then, he never was. His violin playing was so full of virtuosic feeling that the girls grew to welcome him, even though they never quite got accustomed to his lack of explicit invitation.
A night of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons had been planned, a nod to the changing of our own season. Mr. Einstein’s playing was especially heartfelt that evening. We paused in satisfaction after the last bars sounded, and in that moment of quiet contentment, he sprung.
“Miss Kaufler, you ladies have spoken of this magical Sihlwald forest for months now,” Mr. Einstein said.
“Yes, we have, Mr. Einstein,” Helene answered.
“I distinctly recall you mentioning the vista from the top of the Albis hills, Miss Kaufler.”
“I have indeed.” She nodded in our direction, continuing the pleasant exchange with a description of the Albishorn. She seemed to find it innocuous, although I could see where Mr. Einstein was headed.
“If I may be so bold, I should very much like to be included in the Sihlwald outing you ladies have planned for tomorrow morning.”
The four of us had decided upon a final outing to mark the end of term. We had taken longer and longer trips since our initial Sihlwald excursion, and after much discussion, we had agreed that we should end the term as we began—with a trip to the Sihlwald.
Even though Mr. Einstein’s intentions seemed plain to me, Helene seemed surprised. She stammered in reply, “Well, Mr. Einstein, you see… Um, this outing… I believe it was designed to be a farewell excursion for just the four of us.”
Undeterred, Mr. Einstein pushed on in his humorous yet determined way. “Am I to be deprived of both the natural beauty of the Sihlwald forest and the pleasure of your companies this final Saturday before the holiday, Miss Kaufler? It will be months before we meet again.”
His boldness, brash even for him, unsettled her further. “You see, um, I cannot… The decision is not mine alone.”
He looked directly at me, his brown eyes pleading. My stomach fluttered a little as his eyes moved on to Ružica and Milana. “What say you, ladies?”
He was shameless. How could we, well-bred, sheltered girls reared to be polite, say anything but yes?
• • •
Packs on our backs—full of hiking gear, lunches foisted upon us by the eager Mrs. Engelbrecht, and maps of the forest—we stood on the platform for the train. I kept checking the station clock. Mr. Einstein was horribly late.
“Where is he?” Ružica tapped her foot impatiently. She’d asked this question no less than eight times.
“I say we get on board,” Milana suggested. “The train departs in two minutes.”
Glancing up at the station clock yet again, I felt conflicted. I wanted Mr. Einstein to join us but didn’t want my insistence on waiting to cause a delay in our trip. Not wanting to appear too eager, I said, “Milana is right. We can’t wait any longer. Anyway, Mr. Einstein is notoriously late. Who knows when he will show up?”
Helene nodded in agreement, and we got on board. Settling into an empty compartment—we had our choice as the train was sparsely populated at this early Saturday hour—we loaded our packs into the overhead racks. Just as we sat down on the worn upholstered benches, the train whistle blew, and we started to move.
A reprieve. I sighed. Perhaps it was best that I wouldn’t see Mr. Einstein until next term, in three months’ time. His constant presence lately had only heightened my bewilderment. Yes, I thought, this is precisely what I need. The beginning of the summer holiday without him was a good portend.
“Oh my,” Milana said as she looked out the compartment window.
“What is it?” Ružica asked.
Milana didn’t answer. She just pointed out the window, as if the sight could only be seen, not described.
Craning my neck to see over Helene’s head, I saw two men running through the station toward our train. Even through the thick glass, I could hear them yelling, “Hold the train!”
I strained my eyes to see if either was Mr. Einstein. Curly mop of hair. Untucked shirt. All his hallmarks certainly, not the usual careful ablutions of Swiss men. But he was meant to come alone, and there was another man in tow. Maybe it wasn’t him. My stomach churned with mixed emotions.
The chug of the train slowed a bit, and the two men leaped on board. A moment later, the compartment door burst open. There was Mr. Einstein, beaming. “I made it!” Bowing at us, he gestured behind him. “Ladies, may I introduce my friend, Michele Besso, whom Miss Marić and Miss Dražić already know from Café Metropole. He is an engineer and graduate of the Polytechnic.”
I nodded in acknowledgment; I had shared many conversations with Mr. Besso about Ernst Mach, a physicist he admired. At Café Metropole, I enjoyed talking with the soft-spoken Mr. Besso, but I wondered how the girls would perceive him. Certainly Ružica had not engaged much with him that first afternoon at the café.
“Welcome, gentlemen,” I said.
Without waiting for my leave, and without offering an excuse for having brought an extra guest, Mr. Einstein plopped down on the bench next to me. His leg bru
shed up against the folds of my skirt, and I realized that we had never sat side by side before. Wooden student chairs, spindly iron café seats, and the Engelbrechts’ ornate parlor chairs had been our perches. It felt too close, especially when I’d just decided the trip was better without him.
Mr. Besso was more circumspect. “May I?” he asked Ružica before sitting down.
As our unexpected guest exchanged pleasantries with Ružica, Milana, and Helene, I turned to Mr. Einstein. His face was very near mine, so close I could smell coffee and chocolate and tobacco on his breath.
“You made quite an entrance,” I said with a half laugh as I slid the tiniest bit away from him.
“A day so fine deserves a grand gesture,” he pronounced, sweeping his hand to the vivid blue skies visible from the window.
“Ah, so that was the reason for the sprint through the station and the calls to the stationmaster?” I asked with a sly grin. I guessed at the reason for his lateness—he had overslept, as the gentlemen often teased him about at Café Metropole—and it had nothing to do with the day’s grandness. It wasn’t exactly a ladylike comment, but then, I didn’t want him to think of me as simply a lady. I wanted him to think of me as a scholar and an equal, and the comment was the sort one of his café friends might make.
He laughed and then lowered his voice to a whisper, “How I love to see that smile.”
With a show of politeness, Mr. Besso interrupted us with a question, and soon, we were all discussing our excursion. Neither Mr. Einstein nor Mr. Besso had ever ventured into the Sihlwald before, and each of us ladies had a favorite aspect to share. In this companionable fashion, the ride passed quickly.
The first hours of the hike passed similarly, the thick canopy of the forest keeping us delightfully cool as we climbed. Enormous deciduous trees (of which only Helene knew the proper name) towered over us, and vast fallen trunks sometimes blocked our passage. Verdant foliage and mountain flowers abounded, and from their exclamations over the zealous forest growth, Mr. Einstein and Mr. Besso were suitably impressed with the sights. The girls were pleased by their reaction and grew even more animated in pointing out the silvery beech trees and the occasional purple bloom of alpine rock jasmine. We wanted everyone to love the Sihlwald as much as we did.
I kept pace with the girls as well as with Mr. Einstein and Mr. Besso as we trudged up ever-steeper hills. No one paid my limp any heed, and I didn’t need to either. The epithets of my younger days in Serbia felt like an ancient bad dream, one that the bright Sihlwald light washed away.
It seemed we all felt freer. I heard Ružica tell Mr. Besso one of her silly jokes, the sort she usually reserved for our games of whist and that made us groan and then begrudgingly giggle. Helene actually laughed at one of Mr. Einstein’s quips. And when Milana pestered me for one of my imitations of Mrs. Engelbrecht, I complied. By the time we reached the Albishorn, we were all in good humor.
But then the majesty of the view took hold. The vaulting peaks of surrounding mountains capped by clouds and azure skies competed with the wide, navy swath of the lake and river. We were small against the vastness of nature. Even Mr. Einstein, ever garrulous, grew quiet.
Breaking the silence, Mr. Besso pulled a bottle of wine from his pack. “By way of thanks for your hospitality today, ladies.”
Mr. Einstein good-naturedly chuffed him on the shoulder. “Good show, Michele.”
We sat down to enjoy Mr. Besso’s generosity. One after the other, we took swigs from the bottle; glasses had been impossible to bring in his pack, he explained with an apology. No one minded.
“I hate to say it, but if we’re going to make the last train back to Zürich, we should head back now,” Helene said.
“It’s hard to leave, isn’t it?” Milana asked, linking her arm with Helene’s. I understood that she was speaking about much more than the Albishorn. This moment in time, shimmering and blissful, was hard to relinquish. Would another so perfect come again?
As I began to rise with the rest of the group, I felt a hand on my arm. Looking over, I saw it was Mr. Einstein. “Please stay a minute,” he whispered.
I paused. What exactly did Mr. Einstein want? He certainly wouldn’t seek out a quiet moment to discuss our physics exam. Deep within, in the secrecy of my thoughts, I sensed that—with all his hints and banter and encouragement—he had been building to this moment, but I still couldn’t believe that he harbored romantic thoughts about me. I knew I should decline, insist that we follow the group. Hadn’t I been steeling myself against this precise event? But I had to know what he was going to say.
Mr. Einstein waited. Only once I nodded did he announce to the others, “I would like a moment more. Why don’t you go on, and we will catch up?”
The others headed toward the dirt path down the mountain, but Helene hesitated. Her eyebrows knitted into a familiar expression of wariness. “Are you certain, Mitza?”
I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak.
“All right then. But don’t take more than a minute, Mr. Einstein. We have a train to catch.”
“Of course, Miss Kaufler.”
Staring at me pointedly, she said, “You will keep him on course, won’t you, Mitza?”
I nodded again.
Once the others passed out of sight, Mr. Einstein pulled me down gently to sit next to him on a fallen tree trunk. The vista spread out at our feet, and while I knew I should be enjoying the view, glazed with the soft pink of the setting sun, I was uncomfortably nervous instead.
“It is breathtaking, isn’t it?” he asked.
“It is.” My voice sounded shaky. I hoped he didn’t notice.
He turned to face me. “Miss Marić, for some time now, I’ve been having feelings for you. The sort of feelings one doesn’t have toward a classmate—”
I heard him speaking as if in a dream. While I had suspected this—even longed for it, if I was honest with myself, despite everything I professed to the girls—now that he was actually uttering the words, I was overwhelmed.
Pushing off the log, I tried to stand. “Mr. Einstein, I think we should return to the path—”
He touched my arm and gently pulled me back down onto the log.
He took my hands in his. Leaning toward me, he placed his lips upon mine. They were unexpectedly soft and full. Before I had the space or time to think, he kissed me. For a minute, I surrendered to the softness of his lips on mine and allowed myself to kiss him back. Heat rose to my cheeks as I felt the touch of his fingers on my back.
Izgoobio sam sye. These were the only words I could think of to describe how I felt at that moment. Roughly translated from the Serbian, they meant lost. Lost as in directions, lost from myself, lost to him.
Parting briefly, he looked into my eyes. I found it hard to catch my breath. “You astonish me once again, Miss Marić.”
As he touched my cheek, I hungered for another kiss. The intensity of my longing startled me. I calmed myself, took a deep breath, and said, “Mr. Einstein, I can’t pretend your feelings are unreciprocated. However, I can’t allow them to derail me from my course. Sacrifices have been made, and I’ve worked hard to proceed down this path. Romance and professions don’t mix. For women, anyway.”
His bushy eyebrows raised, and his mouth—those soft lips—formed a surprised circle. Obviously, he had expected compliance, not this resistance.
“No, Miss Marić. Surely bohemians such as ourselves—separate and apart from others with our vision and all our cultural and personal differences—can have both.” His words pulled at me. How I wished his bohemian vision was indeed possible.
Forcing myself to be strong, I said, “Please do not take offense, Mr. Einstein, but I can’t proceed with this any further. I may share your bohemian beliefs and your sense that we’re different, but I have to push my own feelings aside for the sake of my professional goals.”
Brush
ing off the bark and crushed leaves from my skirts, I started toward the path. “Are you coming?”
He stood and walked toward me. Clasping my hands in his, he said, “Never before have I been so certain of someone or something as I am of you. I will wait, Miss Marić. Until you are ready.”
Chapter 8
August 29, 1897, and October 21, 1897
Kać, Serbia, and Heidelberg, Germany
The paper, curled and worn, fluttered down to the floor. I watched as it spiraled languidly in the tepid breeze that had drifted in through the bell tower’s slat windows. The book by Professor Philipp Lenard had been open to the same page for over an hour, and I had not read a single word.
I reached down to pick the paper up from the scuffed wooden floor. I sat in the vaulted bell tower of the Spire, our summer house in Kać, where we decamped for the warm months. This place, nicknamed for the two towers that adorned each end of the Tyrolian-style villa and the central tower at its center, had been my family’s summer respite since I was a child. No matter where we moved for Papa’s governmental jobs or my schooling—in turn, the eastern Austro-Hungarian towns of Ruma, Novi Sad, Sremska Mitrovica, and then Zagreb—the Spire was the one location I could always call home.
I’d spent my childhood summers in the bell tower of the Spire, watching from its windows the shifting rural landscape of sunflower and corn fields and reading piles of books. It was my hideout, my dreamscape, the place where I read fairy tales as a child and began fantasizing about a life as a scientist. Currently, it was the place where I hid from everyone.
The Other Einstein Page 7