The Sun Chemist

by Lionel Davidson

  She was looking calmly at me, flecked gray eyes, slightly turned-up nose, broad cheeks. There was no appearance here of one of the brains of the world, but it was there. I ran a finger over the somewhat Eskimo cheeks: a very ethnic and Northern person.

  ‘You won’t have been so celibate, I take it?’ she said as I did this.

  ‘Should I have been?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anybody much.’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Who is Caroline?’

  ‘A young historian. She works with me.’

  ‘How young?’

  ‘Twenty-three. She is going to be married. To an Honourable,’ I said.

  ‘What an Honourable?’

  ‘In this case he’s the younger son of an Earl.’

  ‘You’ve picked up a great deal of English lore and learning. Is she a Lady?’

  ‘Small “L.” Why these questions?’

  ‘Connie said she was in love with you.’

  ‘Connie said that?’ I tried to remember the occasions when they’d met. Connie had been in England the previous year. Caroline had been going with Willie then.

  ‘M’hmm. What is she like?’

  ‘Caroline? Well,’ I said, thinking over this piece of information. ‘She’s tallish and thin. Fair.’

  ‘Nice-looking?’

  ‘Not ill-looking. English-looking.’ I tried to think what she looked like. I could barely recall her.

  ‘Nothing like me?’

  I was abstractedly making a ring round her breast as I made this effort at recall, and now looked at it. It was a large, firm breast, moving up and down in a warm and attractive manner.

  ‘Nothing at all,’ I said.

  ‘That’s all right. I love you, anyway,’ she said.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes. I’d like you for weekends. And my husband and family. Now that would be an impossible thing, wouldn’t it? Have you finished that cigarette?’

  ‘Yes.’ I put it out.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘How do you feel?’ I said.

  ‘I feel six months is half a year, which is a lot in terrestrial terms. You can tell me more of that poem later. Just now you can think of other things.’

  2

  The joint lack of sleep took a somewhat unromantic toll and after a while we both had some. The kerosene stove was out when I woke up, and some time later she said, ‘You’ve got a cold bottom.’

  ‘It’s numb.’ I’d wondered when she’d notice.

  ‘Well, let’s get under.’

  ‘Are we going to stay here into the evening?’

  ‘What else do you want to do?’

  ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

  ‘Oh, you Russian.’

  ‘Well, the carbon cycle has to be kept going. You know all about that, don’t you?’

  ‘I thought you were eating here.’

  ‘I think I must have eaten it all. I don’t know what I’m going to tell them.’

  ‘We’ll go and find something.’

  We found the rest of the cold smoked turkey and bread, and some cheese, and coffee, and took it all back to bed.

  ‘Meat and milk products. Not a kosher mix,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve heard that, have you?’

  ‘You learn such things here. Do you feel Jewish?’

  ‘I don’t feel anything – not Russian, not English, not anything. My mother apparently now does. She’s got a rabbi.’

  ‘In an English village?’ she asked.

  ‘He comes. He’s terrified of my father.’…

  ‘Do you remember all that, when he defected?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I was at Stockholm at the time, postgraduate,’ she said. ‘It was a most tremendous story, naturally. How old were you?’

  ‘Thirteen.’

  ‘Mmm. I suppose I seem old to you, don’t I?’ For some reason we were now talking in Russian.

  ‘As the hills.’

  ‘I expect that’s true … What happened?’

  ‘There was a Christmas party, for the diplomatic children, in the British Ambassador’s place. There’d been something that year. Macmillan and a man called Selwyn Lloyd had gone to Moscow, and there was an Anglo-Soviet trade pact, so we were allowed to go, too, which of course normally we wouldn’t have been. I remember we were snowballing in the garden, and we were called in to get our presents from the Christmas tree. I’d seen my father just a bit earlier. He’d come along with his driver. But I never got my present, though the tree was there. I was just rushed through into another room. My mother had gone in to have tea some time before. And my father had gone to look at some pictures. The whole thing was fixed. Anyway, that was it. He’d sweated on it, to get us all together, you see, which was very difficult to do. And we all flew off the same evening.’

  ‘Were you glad?’

  ‘Glad? I was infuriated. I wouldn’t talk to him for weeks.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wouldn’t talk to my mother, either. I knew she was in it with him. They were both traitors.’

  ‘Did you feel that?’

  ‘I was absolutely inflamed. They couldn’t do anything with me. I was a young builder of Socialism, you know.’

  ‘In the Komsomol?’

  ‘To my lasting regret, I wasn’t. I was a Young Octobrist. We were actually just going to start a group of Young Pioneers, but we hadn’t yet. I was to be the brigade leader. The Komsomol was the All-Union Leninist Communist League of Youth, and you couldn’t be that kind of youth till you were fourteen. I’d been writing away to Moscow to establish this cadre of Pioneers, and I’d got a most encouraging response. There were quite a lot of us there in Stockholm. It was important for some sort of intelligence reason. That’s why it wasn’t so awful my father having the job.’

  ‘Was it such an awful job?’

  ‘Well, damn it, he’d been a Deputy Prime Minister, with Molotov. He was a Molotov man. Then Molotov was disgraced and sent off on his rotten job to Mongolia, to get him out of the way. We’d had quite a tricky time in Moscow ourselves, though of course I didn’t know it. But my father had worked with Khrushchev, you see, quite an old hatchet man of his in the south, and he sort of weathered the storm, and they gave him this job in Stockholm. Of course, he was sold out then – but it never occurred to them he would run. Nobody had, in his position. I mean, they were quite a dedicated gang.’

  ‘Is he not?’

  ‘Well, he is, but rather old-style.’

  ‘Did he do the terrible things they say?’

  ‘I’m afraid he did. I think so.’

  ‘The collectivizations and so on.’

  ‘He’s writing a book – whether of explanation or expiation, I’m not sure.’

  ‘And were you very distressed?’

  ‘You see, in Moscow I’d actually been a Pioneer. You stopped being a Young Octobrist when you were about ten. That’s about what they were in Stockholm. Maybe they didn’t let them take the older children with them as a general rule, I don’t know. Anyway, all these terrible little Comrades were Young Octobrists, and there weren’t any Pioneers. Oh, yes, my ultimate dream was the Komsomol. I wanted to devote my whole life and go there.’

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘To Komsomolsk.’

  ‘It’s a place?’

  ‘Oh, my word, I can tell you everything about it. I can recite it. It stands on the left bank of the River Amur, well over a hundred miles from Khabarovsk. There was a tiny village called Permskoye, and the Komsomol took it over in 1932 and built a town there. I used to receive the most regular and up-to-date information, all pamphlets, all booklets, and I cut everything out of the children’s newspaper. Do you know, by the time my dream was shattered, it was the third largest town in the Soviet Far East. There were almost two hundred thousand Komsomolniks there, all connected to everywhere else by Trans-Siberian Railway, a section of which they’d laid themselves. What do you think of that? And fifty schools and a couple of polytechnic
s, and factories galore, heavy engineering, et cetera. All built by the young builders, you see.’

  ‘Well, this is a surprise, Igor.’

  ‘You don’t see me as a young builder.’

  ‘I don’t. I didn’t know any of this. So when did you learn it was not paradise?’

  ‘Oh, well. Gradually. A series of shocks. It was a question of what to believe. It sets you looking into things, you see. History and such.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘We could have a most enormous chat about mathematics now, if you like, and what they are. What are they?’

  ‘Oh, Igor, this is too hard. You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Don’t be offended. It’s just – look.’ She suddenly made an energetic reach over me and, still bending over, used my writing materials on the desk. ‘What’s this?’ she said.

  E = mc2

  ‘Einstein’s equation, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, well, thank goodness. Well, that’s a relief.’ She gave me a kiss.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It’s – music, that’s all. It’s like asking someone to explain music to a deaf person. It isn’t as explainable as your things, Igor. It’s appallingly difficult, it really is, but – well. You know what music and mathematics have in common?’

  ‘The initial?’ I said attentively.

  ‘They resolve things. They make order. They do it with economy and elegance. In this equation – look at the beautiful thing – he makes an equivalence of energy and mass.’

  ‘A mass of what?’

  ‘Mass as space-time.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You see. I did very little teaching; I’m terrible at it. Please don’t ask me to explain. But look at the sheer stark loveliness, and the grace and fun. Libraries, universes of thought in that delicious equation.’ She was looking very fondly at it herself. ‘You know what composer this reminds me of?’

  There was here a need to walk with extreme caution. As one who was totally tone deaf, I knew the indignation aroused by a careless attribution. It was almost an imputation against the other’s taste and personality. The fond look could easily portend thoughts of home.

  ‘Sibelius,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, my God.’ She threw the paper down and also herself, quite coldly, away from me.

  ‘I was teasing. Idiot,’ I said, and leaned over her.

  Who, for God’s sake? Not evidently the moody and melodious Finn. Beethoven? A bit noisy and obvious. Bach? Plenty of mathematics there, except I couldn’t actually recall anyone saying he was all that funny. There was only one name that seemed to give no offense.

  ‘Mozart,’ I said softly into her ear.

  ‘Darling.’

  Thank God for Mozart, whom we celebrated for a while, after which, with something apparently ticked off in her mind about me, she was disposed to enlarge in a less inhibited way about her own mysteries: Mozart, music, and mathematics.

  ‘The great equations have this air of profundity with wit, just like him. It’s a pity you can’t play them.’

  ‘Well, it is.’

  ‘It’s grace; there’s no other word. You know when I heard that gorgeous bit of sublime nonsense for the first time, I shivered.’

  ‘Mozart?’

  ‘Einstein.’

  ‘Why nonsense?’

  ‘Well not nonsense. The brevity says nonsense. Of course it isn’t. It makes everything else nonsense. Your father starving off those millions of peasants. All those insane little men running about in your book, fixing everything. Just to fix something true! To get down in a few symbols so much truth, with wit and urbanity, as he did.’

  ‘Einstein?’

  ‘Mozart.’

  This was very difficult. ‘Who first taught you that equation?’ I said.

  She’d been looking upward, but she turned so suddenly that our noses touched. She said with surprise, ‘Well, I should know that. Who was he? I’ll tell you in a minute.’ We’d been talking Russian, so he said this in Russian. ‘K’to onbil? Patom skarzhu.’

  We were so close I couldn’t see her. I raised myself and stared down.

  ‘Koivisto!’ she said up at me triumphantly.

  ‘Oh, my God!’

  ‘Professor Koivisto. Professor Nestor Koivisto.’

  ‘Well, of course! That’s it. It must be!’ I said.

  ‘You know him?’ she said, amazed. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’

  I had sprung out of bed. I was sitting in Chaimchik’s chair, racing through the pages of the memorandum.

  Of course. Here it was. It had bothered me for days; had started ticking in my brain since the young man from Kiev had first said it, after I’d seen the muscle machine.

  ‘K’to onbil? Patom skarzhu,’ he had said.

  She had just said it again. Here it was in the memo. That’s where it had first struck me, oddly placed.

  Not taken down correctly, of course. The secretary had misheard the muttered Russian exclamation, had tried to make sense of it as an English phrase.

  ‘Ketone Bill. Put on [SCARS?] scarves you.’

  ‘K’to onbil? Patom skarzhu.’

  ‘Who was he? I’ll tell you in a minute.’

  I read rapidly through the paragraph, heart racing.

  NEW PAGE:

  Yes, start again. It is cold in here. Which indeed we have found in the work with – who was he? I’ll tell you in a minute. We have produced a most elegant reaction.

  He’d forgotten the name of the man with whom he had produced the elegant reaction. I’d been right. It was another piece of work. It had nothing to do with Vava. He’d said he would tell her later. Had he? Where?

  NEW PAGE:

  Start. Where have you been?

  Vivat [?] We have had

  Nurse, I am busy. What do I want with it? Of course I don’t want it. Idiots. So write.

  Certainly a very large conversion to methyl. He has the lab books himself. You will get the book for me.

  I will rest a little and tell you.

  NEW PAGE:

  There can be no doubt that with the methyl already present together with the carotene that it is the answer to the problem. There is no doubt. Later I will tell you. You will get me it. I have told you.

  CROMER-LE-POYTH? LE-ROY-PARMA? COONE FIRTH?

  Tell Nurse the teeth.

  ‘Igor, what on earth is the matter?’

  She had got up and was standing behind me, shivering and rubbing herself in the chilly room.

  ‘It’s difficult to – Just a minute, Marta,’ I said, frantically going from one page to another.

  ‘We’ll freeze here. Isn’t there another heater?’

  ‘There’s an electric one next door, in Nellie’s room.’

  The heater materialized presently. A couple of dressing gowns did, too. I’d switched on the desk lamp, so she drew the curtains. I was hardly aware of any of this.

  ‘“Later I will tell you … I have told you.”’

  He’d told her or he hadn’t told her? Which? I turned pages.

  NEW PAGE:

  I have been thinking. Of course, idiot. Write down.

  Perhaps the Bradford people will be able to let us know.

  I will think again later.

  NEW PAGE:

  Write.

  What? What is it with these lunatics? How many times? That German would make a cat laugh. Never mind, he will prove the best internationalist of us all.

  NEW PAGE:

  It’s a funny world.

  We will celebrate the holiness of the day.

  What the devil?

  He’d said he would tell her. Then he’d said he had told her. Was something missing, something she hadn’t heard, or had misheard? She had evidently taken down every word uttered, whether she had understood it or not. Here it was, immaculately transcribed by my Miss Knowall. He had certainly told her something. And it was here somewhere. Where?

  ‘Igor, can I help in some way? What is
it?’

  I looked at her dazedly. She was in one of Chaimuhik’s dressing gowns. So was I. This didn’t seem quite right. A rather enormous number of things at the moment didn’t seem right.

  ‘Do you know anything about chemistry, Marta?’

  ‘Not very much.’

  ‘Look at this.’

  She read it, frowning.

  ‘There doesn’t seem to be much chemistry.’

  ‘Does any of it make sense to you?’

  ‘Not more than it says. I don’t understand it.’

  I stared at it again, trying to will the meaning out of it.

  ‘What’s Cromer-le-Poyth?’ Marta said.

  ‘He apparently didn’t have his teeth in.’

  Oh. What? Poys? Cromer-le-Poys? Is it a place?’

  ‘He seems to think he is telling her a name.’

  ‘Le-Roy-Parma. Coone Firth – Firs?’

  All the phones began to ring. We ran into Nellie’s room. The mathematician applied herself to the buttons. Unbelievably, a voice said, ‘Have you been working there all day?’ The voice was Ham’s.

  ‘Hello, Ham. Yes.’

  ‘Well, come and have a drink.’

  I looked at my watch. In some way it had become 7 p.m.

  ‘Did we have a day!’ he said. ‘We have gotten tickets for the Midnight Mass, in Bethlehem. For you, too. For Monday.’

  ‘Monday?’

  ‘Christmas Eve. What in God’s name are you still doing there? Do you have the bike?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve got it.’

  ‘Well, come on over. Drinks waiting.’

  This sounded like a good idea. It sounded like an excellent idea. I wondered what Ham could add to this.

  ‘I will call Marta,’ he said while I thought this.

  ‘I will call Marta.’

  ‘She’ll need picking up, if she’s in.’

  ‘I’ll pick her up. I’ll give her a ride on the bike,’ I said; which I did, and presently Saturday passed, the Sabbath. By Jewish tradition it had started the night before, dusk to dusk. Before then, the grand design had been laid out, and rest and contemplation were decreed for one day to follow.

  Something very like that seemed to have been happening here. A design of some sort had evidently been laid out. One way or another, throughout the long Sabbath, I had been contemplating it.