by Tim Symonds
‘And who is this?’ I asked, pointing to the child.
‘This is Hans Albert,’ Mileva replied, laughing at my polite interest. ‘He’s our first son.’
‘We all call him Steinli,’ Besso remarked. ‘It means ‘Little Stone’.’
The new arrival broke into a pleasing smile at the mention of her child’s nickname. I studied Mileva as closely as I dared without being impolite. She wore a soft white cotton shirtwaist with a high lace collar. The nose was small and turned up, her hair pinned up loosely in a chignon. The large black eyes portrayed an intense intelligence. With her came the sweet and pungent odour of Tamjan, produced by the sap of the Bosuellia plant. It was a scent I remembered from our visit to the Balkans five years earlier.
She glanced around eagerly to see if her husband was on the point of arriving. Failing to see him she remained standing, looking down at Besso, a hand on his shoulder. He remarked,
‘Mileva, you’re looking very satisfied with yourself.’
‘I am, Michele,’ came the reply.
‘Because?’ Besso prodded.
‘You’ll see. Soon Albert will publish a paper that will make him world famous.’
‘How soon?’ Besso asked.
‘Soon enough,’ came the reply. With one more glance around the café she prepared to leave.
‘Meine Herren, I can’t stay. Michele, can you give Albert a message? Tell him he’ll be happy to know Rózsika returns to Novi-Sad tonight.’
She indicated a young untidy-looking woman staring in our direction. Mileva’s voice dropped. ‘My sister Rózsika comes to stay with us once in a while. Albert doesn’t find her very -gemütlich.’
Mileva went on, ‘My sister’s not very sociable. She refuses to join in.’
The sibling rested on a leg which also ended in an orthopaedic shoe. I knew from our visit to Serbia’s neighbour Bulgaria that such deformation of the hip ran widely in the Balkans. Unkindly, it had affected both sisters.
Mileva bade us goodbye.
‘The younger sister, ’Besso said, with sympathy in his voice. ‘Albert will be cheered by the news of her departure. They say the fairies brought Rózsika an illegitimate daughter, but soon they took it away. Albert says she makes his skin crawl just by her presence but he can’t stop her visits. Mileva likes to catch up on all the news from home.’
‘Tell us about Mileva,’ I urged.
‘She adores Albert beyond measure,’ Besso responded. ‘Last week I observed her catching sight of his back in the distance. Her face lit up. Never has a single look demonstrated such a womanly love as I saw then. She puts Albert’s career success infinitely ahead of her own. It’s an irony that at one time she might have had a better chance than Albert in gaining employment at the University. Her grades in physics and mathematics at the Royal Classical High School in Zagreb were the highest ever awarded. Her teachers wrote the word ‘brilliant’ on her report.’
His brow wrinkled. ‘Which makes what happened later the odder.’
‘Odder?’ I queried, my sympathy and curiosity alerted in equal measures.
‘Seven years ago she was admitted to the Physics Department of the Zurich Polytechnikum. She was only the fifth woman admitted to the Department and without doubt the first Serb. She studied not only theoretical physics, applied physics, and experimental physics but differential and integral calculus, descriptive and projective geometry. Plus mechanics and astronomy.’
He glanced around to be sure Mileva was out of ear-shot.
‘She was working on her dissertation on the topic of thermo-conduction when suddenly, around October 1900, she drops out. Without offering even friends like me an explanation, she returns to her family in Novi-Sad. She remains there out of sight, doing nothing, for many many months until she comes back to Berne to marry Albert.’
Besso described how, when Mileva was away in Serbia, Einstein worked day after day on the metric field describing space and time for a rotating observer. ‘He encountered mathematical difficulties quite beyond his ability to conquer. Time and again he shouted at me he was going crazy. He is certain that gravity and acceleration are one and the same thing. One day he came rushing over to see me. He was sure he had solved the problem.’
Besso shrugged expressively. ‘You can’t come up with such an idea without good mathematical reasoning, but Albert is Albert. He was so convinced he had the answer he put his theory in an envelope to send to the Annalen der Physik. Luckily Mileva came back just in time. She found he’d made a trivial mistake. Both the energy of the point mass and the energy of the metric field must be taken into account.’
He smiled. ‘Without Mileva, Albert would have become a laughing stock. Anything he turned out afterwards would have been scorned. For the moment he has given up on these field equations but I know he and Mileva have been working on something else of the greatest importance.’
Holmes was silent, but little darting glances showed me the interest he took in our companion.
Besso leaned forward.
‘People say her mathematics is why Albert married Mileva. Why else? they say. They point to the club foot and the grating Novi-Sad accent. But she is a wonder on the tamburitzsa and when she plays Brahms on the piano, ah! It’s like an angel from Heaven has taken control of the keys.’
Besso paused. ‘Mileva has such a happy personality she inspires her friends with happiness too. At least that was so until about eighteen months ago.’
‘At which point?’ I prompted.
‘Her mood changed. Something must have happened at that time. In 1903. Yes. Around September. They’d been married about eight months. I can’t explain it any other way than that she stopped smiling. In some way she seems to be holding Albert responsible for whatever happened. One day she was so alive -the next, visibly distraught. For a while she even stopped coming to the Olympia Academy.’
He gave us an unhappy look.
‘She has stayed that way to this day. The only time she has warmth in her smile is when she speaks of Steinli, her little Hans. I am not the only person to notice it,’ he added. ‘We all have.’
He caught my quizzical look, and went on, ‘We tried. I asked Mileva more than once. She would say only it was “intensely personal”. Whatever it was, she has gone on brooding ever since.’
He squinted up at a clock-tower. ‘Albert won’t be coming now. I must return to my lectern. Albert calls it “our cobbler’s trade”:3,500 Swiss francs a month is not the highest salary in the world but it gets me by!’
Besso stood up and thanked us for the bicycles. He led them away as a man would lead two purebred Arab stallions into the enclosure.
‘Albert and I will make excellent use of these wonderful creatures,’ he called back.
Wes at for a while after Besso’s departure. With no sign of Albert Einstein we left the café and hailed a motorised taxicab to take us via a circuitous route to the Hotel Sternen Muri. In the cab Holmes pulled the note with the word Titel from his pocket and examined it, brow furrowed.
‘I deduce from the handwriting the author is female and young,’ he said. ‘I would not vouchsafe her equilibrium. See the extreme height differentials - and how strikingly the words slant to the left. Look at the strange ending of letters. The ‘ts’ - the capital ‘T’ and the middle ‘t’. They are vigorously crossed. It can only imply the highest possibility of impetuous violence.’
I looked across at Holmes affectionately. Only disciples of water-divining, spiritualism, socialism, fortune-telling, nudism and animal magnetism made as many claims as graphologists.
Holmes went on, ‘Before I forget, Watson, there is a little masquerade I wish you to undertake here in Berne. Let’s discuss it tomorrow.’
The next day, I entered the hotel breakfast room. Before I could greet him with a customary good morning Holmes met
me with my instructions.
‘I need you to look your most respectable and walk into the bank nearest Einstein’s address on the Tillierstrasse. It’s called the Spar Leihkasse. Demand to see your bank-statements - that is, Albert Einstein’s bank statements. A bank has a thousand customers a day. It’s hardly likely any teller would know the real Einstein from the ghost of Newton.’
‘Why would you wish to know how much this young man has in his bank-account? It can hardly be the equal of Baron de Rothschild,’ I demanded.
‘Not so much his financial standing but the manner of his outlays,’ came the explanation. ‘I can tell eighty percent of a man’s secrets from one glance at his accounts. What of regular payments of a precise amount over many months or years? Landlord? Mistress? Blackmailer?’
‘Holmes,’ I protested, ‘other than greatly inadequate French and a smattering of Urdu in which Swiss bank tellers may have little grounding, I speak only English!’
‘My dear fellow, look how the students around us at the Café Bollwerk converse - English is the lingua franca. Einstein is a Jew, born in Bavaria. His native tongue would be a colloquial German but it is quite likely he would use English at a bank.’
Despite my evident discomfort at the task, I was dismissed with a ‘Good-bye and be brave, Watson- it’s hardly a case of performing the salto mortale, the most dangerous act in the circus. ’I entered the Bank with a show of confidence I didn’t feel. If the teller shouted out for my arrest my advancing years and stiffening limbs would make an escape to the outside world difficult. The teller greeted me politely with a‘Comment puis-je vous aider, Monsieur?’
In English I replied, ‘I wish to see my bank-statements for the last three months of 1904.’
‘Certainly, sir,’ came the reply in English. ‘Your name, please?’
‘Mr. Albert Einstein,’ I replied.
He began writing ‘Albert’ then stopped, looking up at me over his eyeglasses.
‘Albert -?’
‘Einstein,’ I responded firmly.
‘Did you say Albert Einstein?’
‘Yes,’ I repeated stoutly. ‘Mr. Albert Einstein of the Tillierstrasse.’
‘The Tillierstrasse?’ he parroted.
‘Yes, the Tillierstrasse,’ I returned, trying to look suitably bewildered and irritated by this interrogation.
The Bank teller leaned towards me.
‘I have a reason for asking you to repeat your name. You see, ever since the Great Council of Geneva in 1713 we are prohibited from revealing details about our customers to anyone else but the account holder.’
‘Such discretion is the hallmark of the Spar Leihkasse Bank and the principal reason I bank with you,’ I retorted. ‘I am a customer and my name is Albert Einstein.’
A smile crept across his face. He turned to a small notebook at his side. From it he wrote on a piece of scrap paper what appeared to be a telephone number and slipped it through the grill.
‘What’s this?’ I asked, bewildered.
‘Our famous University’s Medical Department,’ came the reply.
‘Why should I want - ?’
His smile broadened. ‘Mr. Albert Einstein, I must ask you to offer yourself as a guinea-pig in the University’s Gerontology department.’
‘Why in Heaven’s name would I do that?’ I protested.
‘Because in hardly three hours, you have aged more than thirty years. You were here this morning exactly where you stand before me, trying to get the bank to increase your overdraft. If indeed you’re the same Albert Einstein you really must avoid repeating whatever it was you ate for lunch.’
He sat back on his uncomfortable stool. ‘I realise you may be one of Mr. Einstein’s many creditors, Mein Herr, but I must wish you good-day before I call the police and have you questioned in some depth.’
I hurried out of the bank, relieved at avoiding a confrontation with the Berne police. Holmes waved at me from a horse cab across the busy street. I started to cross towards him. As I did so, my attention was caught by a large brass and mahogany Thornton Pickard half-plate bellows camera on a tripod. The operator was hidden beneath the black cloth, turning a handle which moved the lens back and forth. The camera was focusing on the upper floors of the Spar Leihkasse bank. A hand with a large Jerusalem cross tattooed across the fingers reached out to pull the tripod back a foot. I had last seen that tattoo on the hand of a bank-robber in the case of the Red-Headed League. Inspector Lestrade of the Yard described the robber, a John Clay, as ‘the fourth cleverest man in London - I’ve been on his track for years. Despite the tattoo I’ve never set eyes on him yet.’ Police agent Jones told me, ‘John Clay, bank-robber and forger. He’s a young man but he is at the head of his profession, and I would rather have my bracelets on him than on any criminal in London.’
I signalled to Holmes, making a covert gesture towards the photographer. Holmes understood at once. He descended from the cab and walked quietly up to the man crouching behind the camera. With a rapid snatch he pulled away the cloth. It revealed the astonished face of John Clay.
‘Mr. Clay,’ Holmes said, ‘we meet again.’
Chapter VII
We Plunge into Serbia
I pondered on what our next move would be. Holmes settled the matter. He announced we would take the morning train to Serbia.
‘Surely, Holmes,’ I protested, ‘we must first start our investigations here in Berne, or in Swabia?’
‘You would be mistaken to do so, Watson,’ my comrade replied. ‘If just the one note had been sent, we would have started in Switzerland or Germany. The second note told us that if anything was to be uncovered about Einstein it would be in Serbia. It pointed us to Titel but we shall need to start our search in Novi-Sad. Novi-Sad is the regional centre. That’s where all the records will be held. We may after all need my brother Mycroft’s involvement to find our way through officialdom.’
The early-morning express came roaring into the station. We boarded it, our first stop Zurich, then beyond to Vienna and onward into the Balkans. Thirty-six hours later we arrived in Novi-Sad, a medium-sized town set among acacia trees at the foot of the Fruška Gora hills. The upper slopes were covered with dense deciduous forests providing shelter for deer, jackals, boar and lynx. Our Baedeker told us Novi-Sad itself was home to Hungarians, Germans, Croats, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Greeks, Cincars, Jews, Romanians and Roma. Above, on the right bank of the Danube River, loomed the great Petrovaradin Fortress constructed three hundred years earlier at the 1244th kilometre of the River Danube’s course. Our carriage dropped us at the Hotel Tvrdjava Leopold I, a Renaissance building near the Varadin Bridge.
Holmes was clearly impatient at breakfast. The expected communication from his brother Mycroft had not arrived. Without it we were powerless to start our enquiries. No government employee in this vast and bureaucratic Austro-Hungarian Empire would allow us access to municipal records without proper permissions, in triplicate probably, and stamped with many seals. I suggested we start by purchasing a map of Novi-Sad.
Before Holmes could reply, a crowd of hotel guests flocked into the breakfast room. The tables around us buzzed with life. Teutonic voices filled the air. I questioned the waiter. He explained it was a fishing competition. More than thirty German anglers came down every year at this time to fish on the Franz Joseph Canal, a waterway famed for its variety and quantity of fish - bream, roach, rudd, Prussian carp, bighead carp, perch, pike, cat-fish.
One of the anglers at the next table heard my question. In excellent English he called over, ‘Gentlemen, we have rented thirty-two fishing spots but one of our members couldn’t come. One of you is welcome to join us.’
I looked eagerly at Holmes. He waved a hand graciously.
‘My dear Watson, who am I to stand in your way when it comes to fishing?’
My new host intr
oduced himself as Dr. Herdlitzschke, a specialist in contagious diseases. He himself was resident in Novi-Sad. He would supply the spare seat, fish keeping net and fish bait.
‘Dr. Watson,’ I returned. ‘I too am a medical man. In London.’
It was 8am. The charabanc would leave in an hour.
***
My fishing companion settled me at a neighbouring peg on the canal bank. Dr. Herdlitzschke informed me he came from southern Germany.
‘From Bavarian Swabia. We have a joke about ourselves. We say “Wir können alles. Außer Hochdeutsch”. In English it means “We can do everything - except speak Standard German”.’
At this very spot, he told me, he had once caught 129 fishes with a float and one hook in a single day, mostly roach and rudd. He had heard of extraordinary catches on the Tisza - cat-fish weighing 90 kilogrammes, river char at more than 30 kilogrammes. In the lakes there were brown trout above 25 kilogrammes. He asked why I was in Novi-Sad. Was it in a professional capacity? His own hospital was staffed more by foreign doctors than Serbians. With the advent of summer he always had room for one more.
‘No,’ I replied, ‘something quite different. My colleague Sherlock Holmes and I are searching for someone. A woman.’
‘Sherlock Holmes!’ he exclaimed. ‘So you are the Dr. Watson!’
I nodded, flattered.
‘The name of the woman you seek?’
‘Lieserl,’ I replied, uncertain of the pronunciation. ‘L-i-e-s-e-r-l.’
‘Lieserl?’ he repeated. ‘Where I come from we have lots of Lieserls but none of them is a woman.’
I stared at him in astonishment.
‘Not a woman?’ I exclaimed.
‘Not exactly,’ he affirmed. ‘In Swabian, the ‘er’ in “Lieserl” describes definitely an infant. Like Büberl or Mäderl. Something very small. We would never use such a name for an adult woman.’
***
Holmes and I were settling into breakfast at the hotel when a boy in uniform brought an envelope to our table marked SECRET, PERSONAL, ADDRESSEES EYES ONLY. It was from Holmes’s brother Mycroft.