The Sun Chemist

by Lionel Davidson

  ‘Obviously. It’s what he’s saying.’

  ‘Mmm. Well. Could be,’ Beylis said. ‘It’s a fact that problems ticked on in his mind for years. He kept returning to them, like a dog to a bone. He was a very dogged man.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘As well as being intuitive. Things often happened to him like that. Suddenly he would know something. He was very much of a piece – in his political work as well. But I’m afraid this doesn’t help you much.’

  I had an odd feeling – no doubt to do with his remarks on intuition – that it did. Something had happened to me today. Something had started to tick, and I couldn’t think what it was.

  It continued ticking after I’d left him, though.

  3

  I took a taxi to Connie’s at seven, and brooded all the way. It was a long way. Bat Yam was below Jaffa on the coast, a newish town. It was apartment land, the streets canyons of tall blocks. I thought of the ships disgorging their occupants a generation ago, and of the encampments of tents, and of the problems they’d had to deal with then; and of the kind that they could now apply their minds to. Not so long ago, a generation. Just time enough to change from being objects of the world’s sympathy into the villains of the piece. Well, hardly a novel transformation for the people hereabout.

  I alighted in Balfour Street, still brooding, and went upstairs to Connie’s apartment. Three people were there already, including Marta: one of Connie’s promised delights. Not a word from her during our inspection of the muscle machine that she would be a participant in the evening’s revels. She’d apparently gone home with Connie in the car. Some other people turned up while we were having a drink, and Marta said to me, ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘I need a weekend off.’

  ‘How is the car situation?’

  ‘Settled.’ I was borrowing Ham’s. ‘We could have lunch either at Jerusalem or Zohar.’ We were going to Zohar. There was a quite good hotel there. Friday was half-day, which gave one Friday night and Saturday night; drive back Sunday morning.

  ‘Have you booked?’

  ‘Two rooms,’ I said.

  ‘We can have lunch in one of them.’

  During the course of the evening, Connie said, ‘Is something the matter, Igor?’

  ‘Fatigue.’

  ‘We won’t make it late.’

  We didn’t. At twelve, it broke up, and I took a taxi back alone. Marta was sleeping at Connie’s.

  *

  I didn’t have a very good night, still brooding; I rose early, went below, and saw Dr Patel again. It was a very strange thing. At whatever time I descended, Dr Patel was there: going in to breakfast, or at it, or just leaving. This time it was absurdly early. The restaurant wasn’t even open. The girls were still laying out the trays of victuals. He was standing by Mr Deutsch’s desk with an envelope in his hands while Mr Deutsch, back turned, was placing mail into the slots.

  ‘Ah, here is Mr Druyanov. It is for-you, Mr Druyanov,’ Mr Deutsch said, turning.

  Dr Patel gave me the envelope somewhat hurriedly. ‘I was expecting an express from London myself,’ he said.

  I looked at it, and saw the express stamps, and turned it over and looked again. It was a Manila envelope and on the back it said. ‘From Dr O. Kutcholsky-Green, 32 Tancred Court, London, N.W.3.’ Dr Patel was looking at me as I opened it and drew out the contents. I didn’t draw them fully out. I just saw, in the sheaf of papers, the familiar signature ‘Ch. Weizmann,’ and stuffed everything back again, and went out of the swing doors, at the trot. It was a lovely morning. Dew was glistening on the grass as I panted across the drive, and across the main avenue, and into the courtyard. I heard my breath singing out as I pounded on the door.

  ‘Mr Weisgal, please,’ I said politely when it opened.

  ‘Mr Weisgal?’ was the hushed response. ‘He’s in bed.’

  ‘Well, get him out of it,’ I said, and to make sure I ran in and up the Chancellor’s stairs, crying, ‘Hello! Hello! Wake up, Meyer. Wakey-wakey, then. I am the sweet-potato man.’

  Chapter Six

  Friday turned out to be not a half-day but a completely whole one, and night, very confused. I had breakfast with Meyer, who, after a somewhat startled and disheveled wakening, spent some minutes in his bathroom to emerge suitably robed, spruce as ever. We gravely took our places at the card table and he put his glasses on.

  There were eighteen sheets in the envelope, air-mail paper, written on both sides, except for a single sheet from Weizmann headed ‘Sanatorio Stefania, Merano, Italia,’ and dated September 6, 1933· The correspondence comprised seven long letters from Vava; Weizmann had written his replies in the margins and in any available spaces on the back. Weizmann had been holidaying in Italy, and Vava had been hounding him there. It occurred to me that this might have been why he hadn’t given the matter due attention. I suddenly remembered this holiday, and the reason for Weizmann’s remark in his last memorandum that ‘after much harassment I needed the rest.’

  Meyer was going very carefully over each sheet of the correspondence, his hands trembling slightly, looking very senatorial in his robe and every inch the Chancellor of a great Institute, except that he spoiled it at the end by saying, ‘Shit! Every word in Russian.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, we have to get – Hey! You read Russian, don’t you?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Nu, cluck. Read!’

  I didn’t read very far.

  I said, ‘It’s in Russian, Meyer, but it’s also in science.’ It certainly was. It was all solid carbon business, generously illuminated with little drawings of poly-sided figures representing atoms, and rows and rows of equations and formulas. After the briefest of salutations, the letters became immediately incomprehensible. The only intelligible contributions were Weizmann’s, quite spry and funny. In one of them he cracked the joke he had made to Haber; it was strange to see the original of it here, just as it had occurred to him, in his rather curly cursive Russian. I recognized his new fountain pen, and remembered where he’d got it, and wondered if Verochka had found out; and then realized that of course she had. Whatever I now knew, she had known before me, at about the time that I was seven.

  All this had put me in something of a tizzy, and I saw that my own hands were shaking.

  Meyer was on the phone. He said, ‘Nathan? I am terribly sorry to disturb you. Could you have breakfast with me?’

  Nathan apparently said he couldn’t. It was Professor Nathan Horowitz, Vice-President of the Institute.

  ‘Nathan, would I dream of disturbing you this time of the morning if it wasn’t something of the greatest urgency? I have Druyanov here. He has the papers of Vava, the original papers. He this minute ran into my bedroom with them … So good. Very good.’

  We sat and had coffee and oranges and toast. Shirley, alarmed by these movements, and hearing that Horowitz was coming, tried to get him to go to the breakfast room. He wouldn’t move from the card table. He pored hungrily over the letters.

  Horowitz also had a light breakfast at the card table when he arrived. I began reading the correspondence to him in English, pointing out the place as I went along, but after some minutes he said, ‘Meyer, this is too specialized. Who is doing the work at the moment? It’s Finster, isn’t it? Finster has to see it.’

  Meyer’s hands were already on the phone.

  ‘Wait. Think a moment,’ Horowitz said, smiling. ‘He doesn’t live in the Institute. He has an apartment in Rehovot.’

  But Meyer wasn’t calling Finster. He was calling his chauffeur. ‘You know Dr Finster? You know where Dr Finster lives?’ There was a tone almost of menace in his voice. ‘Go and get him. Go this second. Bring him safely to my house. I am waiting.’

  He put the phone down and stared at me rather superstitiously. ‘How come it arrives here just like this, today? You know, I had a feeling. Something told me today something will happen. Right there in bed, I had this feeling.’ He looked full into Horo
witz’s face with the same staring look.

  I was looking at the envelope. It was postmarked ‘Frognal, 0900, Dec. 18.’ That was the day I’d left. Hopcroft had been hit on the head the previous day. This was surely very peculiar. She hadn’t had the papers when Hopcroft saw her. By express post the following morning, they were in the mail. I laboriously worked this out. She had been going to stay with a friend at Frognal after Hopcroft had left. She had been going to Wimbledon two days later. Well, evidently she’d changed her mind. Perhaps she had prevailed on the friend to go down to Wimbledon with her that very day, perhaps in the evening. Perhaps she had discovered her husband would be out. Perhaps the friend had gone alone. Whatever it was, she must have got the letters the same day that Hopcroft had been bashed, and before he’d had time to yarn his story to half the world. This certainly was a stroke of luck.

  Horowitz was looking at his watch and rising.

  ‘Nathan, what are you doing?’ Meyer said.

  ‘I don’t think I can be of use here, Meyer.’

  ‘Don’t think of leaving me!’ Meyer said. ‘Do you realize what we have here? The fate of the world, the fate of Israel could depend on it,’ he said, stressing the greater enormity.

  ‘I am aware of the importance, but –’

  ‘We have to decide where to keep this!’

  ‘Well, you’ll have it copied, and distributed to those concerned, and the originals can –’

  ‘You are joking! Nathan, do you know the heartaches we have had with these papers? He – this one – Igor – he doesn’t think we should even show them to Jerusalem! You don’t know what has been happening. Give Nathan another cup of coffee,’ he called to Shirley. ‘Nathan, sit down.’

  He started telling him some of my fears, and with such dramatic force that it didn’t occur to me for a little while that they were now groundless. No papers were missing from Jerusalem. Jerusalem had never had the papers. The economical duo had been writing to each other on the same bits of paper. There weren’t any copies; nothing for the files at all; there never had been. None of this put Meyer off. He’d had all night to think about it, and now had plenty of fears of his own. He was still cataloging them when Dr Finster appeared, looking very alarmed.

  ‘Sit down, have coffee, Finster,’ Meyer said.

  ‘Meyer, are you mad?’ Shirley said. ‘You can’t all sit and have breakfast at the card table.’

  ‘Give him coffee!’ Meyer said. ‘Finster, you don’t read Russian?’

  ‘Russian?’ Finster said, in astonishment. ‘No, I have never undertaken studies in –’

  ‘So it’s no time to learn,’ Meyer said. ‘Go over it with him, Igor. Take toast, Finster.’

  Dr Finster obediently took toast, pausing between crunches to catch what I was saying. His eyes roamed over the pages. He made no comment whatever.

  ‘Finster, you’re following?’ Meyer said, watching his rather immobile face in an agony of suspense.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It makes sense to you?’

  ‘Of course. Dr Kutcholsky is here preparing from his bacterium –’

  ‘That’s good, Finster. Don’t tell me. Keep going.’

  We kept going. Horowitz phoned his secretary a couple of times. Finster had two cups of coffee and two slices of toast and an orange. He checked me with a grave finger from time to time and slowly studied the formulas. I read him Weizmann’s comments, too. Something like a smile crossed his face at one of them.

  ‘Yes. Well. Not bad,’ he said at the end.

  ‘What do you mean not bad?’ Meyer almost snarled.

  ‘Logical. It corresponds with my results. Of course he achieved far better. When we get his bacterium–’

  ‘We can get his bacterium?’

  ‘Why not?’ Dr Finster said, taken aback by the vehemence.

  ‘He gives the name of that bacterium?’

  ‘He gives a number. The prefix I recognize to be one of the Pasteur Institute’s. This evidently is where he must have got it. He has applied some novel treatments –’

  ‘Where does he give the number?’ Meyer said.

  Finster searched around a little, and with my assistance found it. Meyer removed the sheet and put it in his pocket. He gave his nose a rather decisive wipe as he did this. ‘Good. So now his new potato. What about it?’

  ‘Which potato?’

  Meyer picked up an orange, and I thought was going to throw it at him, but he just held it in both hands, apparently for illustrative purposes. ‘The sweet potato. Vava’s sweet potato. The new potato,’ he said.

  ‘There is no new potato.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Finster?’ Meyer said.

  Finster looked from him to Horowitz, who was not looking very happy, and back again. ‘Unless it has been read out wrongly – as we have all just heard, what Dr Kutcholsky is proposing is the specifications for a potato.’

  ‘Specifications?’

  ‘It is a hypothetical potato.’

  ‘It is, eh?’ Meyer said. ‘Hypothetical. I see.’

  ‘For which he specifies certain qualities. From these qualities he makes calculations, based upon the performance of his bacterium, and projects a very superior octane number. It is a question of genetic manipulation. Starting with the particular family of batatas that he mentions, he is proposing –’

  ‘He mentions a particular family of batatas?’

  ‘Yes. What he proposes –’

  ‘Where is that goddam family?’

  The same performance took place with the papers. ‘And he says what you have to do with it?’ Meyer said.

  ‘Yes. However, as Weizmann points out, the difficulties raised by the increased quantities of methane to be expected with the carotene –’

  ‘Where does he point this out?’

  ‘On the same sheet that you have placed in your pocket,’ Dr Finster said.

  I was remembering the difficulties pointed out by Weizmann about the carotene and the methane. I was remembering them from the memorandum. Except that in the memorandum, they had not seemed difficulties. Had they?

  ‘Good. So how long will it take to get this potato?’

  ‘Which potato?’

  ‘The hypothetical potato,’ Meyer said, quite softly.

  ‘Ah. I cannot help you. This is for a plant geneticist. I am a research chemist,’ Dr Finster said.

  ‘Okay, Finster. Very good. Have a cup of coffee.’

  ‘No. I have now had my breakfast. But I will be greatly interested to duplicate his experiments with the bacterium. I would like at the earliest opportunity to obtain this bacterium.’

  ‘Which bacterium?’ Meyer said. He was smiling at him.

  ‘The one from the Pasteur Institute.’

  ‘It’s a good idea. Obtain it, Finster.’

  ‘You have the code number in your pocket.’

  ‘Are you telling me you can’t remember that number?’

  ‘I am afraid … numbers,’ Dr Finster said, somewhat embarrassed.

  ‘Well, that’s nice. That’s okay. Don’t you worry about it, Finster, we’ll get it. Thanks a lot. I’m really obliged. Nice of you to come and see me.’

  Horowitz tried to go out with Finster, but Meyer rose in his gown.

  ‘One moment, Nathan!’ he said.

  2

  A small program was arranged before Horowitz went. He had a word himself with the man in charge of plant genetics. He copied the Pasteur Institute number of the bacterium on a bit of paper and took it back to his office. Meyer rang for a small photocopier to be sent round from the Stone Administration Building, with somebody to work it. He had three copies made of the documents, and two of the copies, together with the originals, went in his safe. He got me to point out what was already being called the ‘security stuff’ and he cut these out of the third copy with a pair of nail scissors. Then he gave me this copy.

  ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘Translate it.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Meyer, you�
��ve got scientific translators. This is beyond me.’

  ‘Finster understood every word. Also this is now a small circle. For better or worse,’ he said solemnly, ‘you are a part of it. Also we need action. It’s a short day. People have to go.’

  ‘I have to go.’ I suddenly saw with astonishment and alarm that it was half past eleven. ‘I have to go in half an hour,’ I said. I’d totally forgotten the weekend of illicit bliss. At least, it wasn’t so very illicit for me: It was illicit for Marta. The well-adjusted person had a good six months of appetites that needed satisfying. Illicit or not, there was no doubt that she was now buzzing through her morning in high expectation of some very active bliss.

  ‘What, going in half an hour?’ Meyer said. The phone rang and he picked it up, still scowling at me. ‘Yes, Nathan. Wonderful. Very good.’ He spoke energetically for a minute or two, and put the phone down with satisfaction. ‘Well, things are moving. He talked with Paris. The bacterium will be on the first plane Sunday. He has organized a conference with the geniuses from the plant genetics for tomorrow – Shabbat! He needs the translation by then.’

  ‘But I’m going away for the weekend!’

  ‘Are you a madman, what? A whole world is waiting out there. They are waiting for us.’ He pointed out the window to where they all were.

  Ten minutes later, I phoned one of them from the House, and explained about the weekend.

  ‘Oh, it’s too bad. It really is,’ she said tightly. ‘At the last moment!’

  ‘I know. It’s awful.’

  ‘You mean you will be working the whole weekend?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. Well, no, I can’t. Well, God knows, it’s a terrible lot of work,’ I said with mild panic.