I returned to the parlor from the entryway and plopped back down at the piano. My fingers found the keyboard, and with Mr. Einstein staring at me, I pounded out the music I was meant to play before the girls’ loud interruption. All my anger poured into those notes, until slowly, the fury drained from me, and my fingers desultorily plonked out the last bars.
“The girls are too busy to play with us,” Mr. Einstein said. He had been listening. To the girls. To me.
“Yes,” I said distractedly. “So they say.”
Why had Ružica and Milana decided to exclude me from all but the necessary interactions? I couldn’t fathom what I might have done to cause their behavior. After all, my relationship with Helene remained strong despite the time she spent with Mr. Savić. Their affair had been a blow to me, but I could not object when I saw the happiness lighting up Helene’s face.
I stopped playing altogether. Perhaps the reason behind Ružica and Milana’s distance wasn’t me. Perhaps it was Mr. Einstein. With Helene gone so frequently, he had become more of a presence. Did Ružica and Milana object to him? His unkemptness, his familiarity, his jokes, his constant presence at the pension, his strangeness? These were some of the irreverent qualities I liked about him, the differences that drew us together. Was I paying for his perceived sins?
“What’s wrong?” he asked me.
“Nothing,” I answered distractedly.
“Miss Marić, you and I have been friends for too long for lies.”
He was wrong about that. In every interaction I had with him, every day, I lied to him with my words and my body. I fabricated the false persona of Mileva Marić, only classmate and friend. And I lied to myself, reassuring myself that, if I just pretended long enough not to care about him, it would become the truth.
I was sick of pretending.
I glanced over at him. Mr. Einstein sat on the settee by the fire, his usual spot, and was tuning his violin. I watched as he gently cradled the violin’s neck and turned the tuning pegs, puffing his pipe all the while. As the pipe smoke rose and he twanged the strings, I realized that my feelings about him had grown much deeper since Heidelberg. Why was I clinging to falsehoods? For Papa? For my promises to Helene that she herself had broken? Aside from Papa, Helene had been the most instrumental person in my decision to walk away from Mr. Einstein’s overtures, and I had lost her to Mr. Savić. Had I sacrificed Mr. Einstein—and the possibility of a love I never thought I’d have—for nothing in return? For a lonely life of work as my sole calling? Certainly, Ružica and Milana were not going to be my consolation prize for Helene or Mr. Einstein. I used to think of the solitary scientific life somewhat romantically, but not anymore.
This time would not be like the Sihlwald forest. I would not be caught unaware. I would not walk away. I would seize this chance with both my hands and fashion the life of my dreams.
Mr. Einstein stopped working on his violin and looked up at me. I walked over to him and sat on the chair next to his. I leaned toward him, bringing my face so close to his I could feel his breath on my cheeks and his mustache on my lips. He didn’t move. My stomach fluttered. Was it too late?
“Are you certain, Miss Marić?” he whispered. I could feel his breath on my skin.
“I think so,” I stammered. I was terrified.
He gripped my forearms with his hands. “Miss Marić, I am madly in love with you. I promise that my love will never impede your profession. In fact, my love will only propel you forward in your work. Together, we will become the ideal bohemian couple—equal in love and work.”
“Truly?” I asked, my voice quivering. Could Mr. Einstein and I have the life I hadn’t even dared to dream about? Perhaps even richer?
“Truly.”
“Then I am certain,” I said breathily.
He placed his lips on mine as gently as he had cradled his beloved violin. They were as soft and full as I remembered. I moved my lips against his, and we kissed.
Izgoobio sam sye. I was lost.
Chapter 12
February 12, 1900
Zürich, Switzerland
“I promise he will be in class tomorrow, Professor Weber.” I implored Weber to forgive Albert his absence, his third that week alone.
“It would be easier to overlook this, Miss Marić, if I believed he was ill. But if you will recall, he missed class last week due to an alleged bout of gout, and yet, I spotted him at a café on Rämistrasse when I walked home for the evening. He was well enough for cafés but not for classrooms.” The nostrils of Weber’s long nose flared, and I realized my begging had little chance of success.
“You have my word, Professor Weber. And you have no cause to doubt my word, do you?”
Weber exhaled, more the bray of an angry mule than a sigh. “Why do you persist on his behalf, Miss Marić? He is just your lab partner, not your ward. Mr. Einstein is clever, but he believes that no one can teach him anything. Professor Pernet is far more incensed at Mr. Einstein’s behavior than I am.”
Even if I wasn’t successful in my pleas, at least I’d learned that our ruse was working; Weber believed that Albert and I were only classmates. We had tried to keep our relationship quiet from our fellow students and friends as well, limiting our public affections to sideward glances or the odd brush of hands under a table at Café Metropole. I wanted none of the change in treatment from my classmates and Albert’s friends that so often happened when one morphed from colleague to loved one. As if one’s intellect disappeared in the transition. I suspected that Mr. Grossman knew—I’d accidentally brushed up against his hand once instead of Albert’s—but his attitude toward me remained unchanged.
By his question, I sensed an opening in Weber’s unusually impenetrable exterior. I decided to take a chance at angering him and pushed a little further. “Please, Professor Weber.”
“All right, Miss Marić. But this is purely on the strength of your solid reputation. You are the student with promise; your intellect and hard work will take you far. You even overcame the strange decision to spend a term at Heidelberg. I have hopes for your future.”
Feeling relief at Weber’s decision about Albert and some surprise at his rare compliment, especially given that, behind the scenes a year and a half later, I still struggled to overcome my Heidelberg decision, I started to thank him. But then I realized he wasn’t finished.
“You warn Mr. Einstein that, if he fails to attend class tomorrow, he risks not only his own standing but yours as well.”
• • •
“My little Dollie,” Albert drawled as I walked into the Engelbrecht Pension parlor; he adored calling me Dollie, the diminutive of Doxerl or little doll. He looked comfortable, sunk into the settee, a book on his knee and his pipe in the corner of his mouth. Waiting for me.
I didn’t answer him with his companion nickname of Johnnie, the diminutive of Jonzerl. In fact, I didn’t feel like responding to him at all.
I was frustrated that I’d had to endanger my own reputation because Albert had begun to skip Weber’s classes in order to study independently. Albert believed that together, he and I could solve major scientific riddles—but only if I went to class and took copious notes on Weber’s traditional topics while Albert stayed behind and caught up on newer physicists like Boltzmann and Helmholtz. Albert’s scheme involved our collaboration and sharing of old and new theories, and we were currently exploring the nature of light and electromagnetism. I’d been an enthusiastic participant in this experiment as a modern, bohemian couple, even though it meant I stayed up into the night undertaking this double duty when I already had the extra work stemming from my time away in Heidelberg. Until now.
Putting down our shared copy of the textbook by physicist Paul Drude, Albert reached for my hand. Pressing it to his cheek, he cooed, “So cold this little paw. I shall warm it for you.”
I still didn’t say anything. When he gently tri
ed to pull me down onto the cushion next to him, I stayed standing.
“How did it go with Weber, Dollie?”
Usually, I loved the way my nickname sounded with his accent. Today, the very word “Dollie” grated. I felt more like a puppet than a beloved doll.
“Not so well, Albert. Weber only agreed to admit you back into class tomorrow if I would stake my reputation on it. So I did.”
He released my hand and stood up to face me. “I’ve asked too much of you, Dollie. I’m sorry.”
“Really, Albert, one of us must receive a degree if your bohemian plans for us are to come true. How will we support ourselves otherwise? Neither one of us will be fit to teach physics if you fail because you’ve abandoned class and I fail because I’ve promised you would attend.” I admonished him, but it was hard to stay firm when he offered apologies and implored me with his eyes. I was weak. And he knew it.
“Come here, Dollie.”
I took one small, stingy step in his direction, refusing to look into his persuasive eyes again.
“Closer, please,” he said.
I craned my neck to see if anyone was in the entryway. It would be the end of my standing at the pension if anyone spotted us in such close proximity. Physical contact was the worst violation of Mrs. Engelbrecht’s house rules.
I took another step, and he drew me tightly to him. Whispering in my ear, he said, “You are so good to your Johnnie. I promise never to ask so much of you again.”
Shivers traveled up and down my spine. I leaned toward him. Just as our lips brushed together for a kiss, the front door slammed, and we jumped apart. Ružica and Milana poked their heads into the parlor, checking to see if it was free. Once they saw that we occupied it, they very politely but coldly took their leave and headed into the gaming room. Only Helene brought us together these days, and she was in Serbia meeting Mr. Savić’s family. They had just gotten engaged.
Albert knew how Ružica and Milana’s treatment upset me. He grabbed my hand. “Don’t you worry, Dollie. They are just jealous. Helene has Mr. Savić, and you have me. They have only each other.”
I squeezed his hand back. “I’m sure that’s all it is, Johnnie.” I didn’t dare tell him that I’d long suspected that he was the problem.
“More time for our studies, Dollie. Think on the bright side.”
We sat down side by side on the settee, legs near but not touching, and exchanged notes. He clucked over Weber’s lectures, and I marveled over Drude’s descriptions of the various theories of light. Drude explained that embedded in the debate about the nature of light was a debate about the nature of the invisible void of the universe; this played to my privately held view that the secrets of God lurked in the corners of science, a belief at which Albert would certainly scoff but which I felt certain. Was light made up of tiny particles, or ether, as Newton suggested, or was light a kind of shifting in the plenum, an invisible fluid surrounding us, as René Descartes believed? Or, in an idea by James Clerk Maxwell that transfixed us, was light really a dance of electric and magnetic fields intertwined? And could this notion—that light rays were electromagnetic oscillations—be proven by mathematical equations? We turned this theory of electromagnetism round and round and, on my recommendation, decided to drill down into it with doubt and mathematical analysis. Our credo was to trust simplicity above all else and eschew archaic complicated ideas when necessary. Something of which I had to remind Albert, with his tendency toward tangents, constantly.
The dinner bell rang. I heard it but wanted one more moment with Drude. I flipped to the last page of the textbook, wanting to check on a reference, when a single piece of paper floated to the floor. As I reached down to pick it up, I noticed a distinct floral scent. Looking more closely, I saw not Albert’s messy scrawl but unfamiliar handwriting.
Who wrote this sweet-scented letter that Albert carefully folded and kept in the back of Drude? My stomach lurching, I flipped it over. I saw a distinctly feminine script. I prayed that it was from his teenage sister Maja, the only one of his immediate family who still championed our relationship. Not his mother.
Last fall, Albert’s parents, Pauline and Hermann, had visited Zürich as part of their roundabout trip to deliver Maja to Aarau, Switzerland, where she’d be studying and living with the Winterlers, longtime family friends. Immediately, I connected with the sweet, bright Maja. She reminded me of my own sister Zorka, and we found many commonalities of which to speak.
The same ease of manner did not apply to Albert’s quiet, imposing father or his firm, opinionated, and perfectly bourgeois mother. When Albert presented me to them over afternoon tea at a local café with a sweeping gesture and a slightly naughty smile that made me blush, his mother assessed me head to toe with flinty gray eyes that matched her demeanor, not to mention her striped gray dress. Under her unflinching gaze, I felt small and dark and ugly.
At first she was silent, and I glanced over at Albert’s father, assuming she was waiting for him to address me as protocol usually required. But I soon realized that, while he appeared formidable with his carefully waxed mustache and pince-nez, Mrs. Einstein was in control. Perhaps Mr. Einstein’s string of failed businesses lessened his standing with his wife, or perhaps it was simply the natural order of their relationship.
“So this is the famous Miss Marić,” Mrs. Einstein finally said. To Albert, not me. It was as if I weren’t even in the room.
“It is indeed,” Albert said.
I could hear the smile in Albert’s voice, and it relaxed me enough to say, “It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Mrs. Einstein. Your son speaks of you fondly and often.”
Acknowledging the compliment with a nod in Albert’s general direction, she then turned her steely eyes back upon me and addressed me for the first time. “Your people come from”—she paused dramatically as if it pained her to even mention the name of my hometown—“Novi Sad, is it?”
“Yes, that is where I grew up—for part of the time, at least. And where my parents still live for part of the year,” I answered, forcing a smile upon my face.
A long pause ensued before she spoke next. “I understand you are as intellectual as my Albert.”
This was no compliment, and I didn’t know how to respond. Albert had led me to believe that his mother, though irritatingly bourgeois in her concerns and ideals, was otherwise perfectly innocuous. By her last remark, I saw immediately that this was untrue. She exerted an insidious power over her family, and she planned on utilizing it with Albert about me. This would not bode well, as her dissatisfaction with me was unconcealed.
What had I done to make her dislike me? Was it that I wasn’t Jewish? Albert had described his upbringing as largely secular, so I doubted that was the sole reason. Was it that I was a university student and not a more traditional young woman, readying herself for marriage? That couldn’t be the case; Albert’s parents planned for Maja to receive a university education as well. Perhaps she simply loathed me for being eastern European.
I played with a few responses to her comments, but it occurred to me that nothing I could say would appease her. She was predetermined to dislike me. So I settled on the truth. “If you mean that I am serious about my studies, Mrs. Einstein, that is indeed true.”
Albert, finally realizing that our exchange was bordering on disastrous, intervened. He offered, “Miss Marić keeps me on track, Mama.”
When his mother failed to take his pretty bait, Albert changed the subject altogether to Aarau and the Winterlers. While Albert, his mother, and sister gossiped, Mr. Einstein gestured for me to sit down and offered to pour me tea. As we sipped from our steaming cups and pretended to listen to the others, his natural cheerfulness slipped through his wife’s barricade, and we shared a few pleasant words. But Mrs. Einstein was quick to exact a penance upon him for his kindness with a scathing look.
I tried not to think about this unpleasant excha
nge with Albert’s mother as I flipped over the letter to search for its author’s name. At first, I felt relief. The author wasn’t his mother. But then I realized that it wasn’t Maja either. It was someone named Julia Niggli.
Your invitation to help you idle away the hours is most enticing. I should like to visit you in Mettmenstetten if you plan on being there with your family in late August. Please send word if you do.
Affectionate greetings,
Julia Niggli
As I turned the page over to read the front, Albert asked, “What brilliant theory of Drude’s has you so captivated?”
“It isn’t Drude that has me captivated, Albert.”
“No?”
“No. It’s Julia Niggli.”
He said nothing, but his cheeks flamed.
I shoved the letter into his hand. “I’m quite familiar with how you idle away the hours, and I shudder to think of you sharing them with Julia Niggli, whoever she is. How do you explain this?”
Glancing over the front of the page, he handed me back the letter. “Look on the front, Dollie. What date do you see there?”
“August 3, 1899.” I shook my head, sickened at the date. “Around the same time that you were writing me notes from Aarau, while I was at the Spire in Kać.” I remembered well those notes from Albert. In fact, I had even memorized some of them. Last summer, I’d been trapped in the Spire while scarlet fever plagued the countryside, and Albert’s love letters had been my solace.
“Exactly. I was in Aarau and Mettmenstetten last summer with my family who, you know well, were very aware of my relationship with you. My mother and my sister, Maja, even wrote notes to you in the postscript of my letters, for heaven’s sake. Miss Niggli was a family friend with whom I played violin a few times. Nothing more.”
The Other Einstein Page 10