“Good evening, Herr Einstein,” she says, possibly the bravest act of her life. She has played Bach with him for months, and still she hasn’t spoken with him like this, eye to eye with the brilliant Einstein, whose 1905 paper still ricochets like revolutionary gunfire about the halls of physics. His line of inquiry lies as far apart from Violet’s as the infinite from the minute, but oh, the breathtaking audacity of his thought! The brash overturning of the static Newtonian universe!
“Frau Grant.” He sets aside his glass of schnapps and stands politely.
“Oh, don’t bother. I only wanted to thank you for your note this morning. You were very kind to answer me so quickly.”
His bristling black mustache lifts in a smile, and it transforms his face, which usually hangs below his large dark downturned eyes in an expression of natural dole. Violet knows he has a troubled marriage; his wife, rarely seen, is said to be quitting Berlin for Zurich with the children. Perhaps she’s already left. Walter says Einstein has a mistress, his own cousin: You see, my dear? Beasts, all of us. But Violet walks past Einstein’s handsome drooping face daily, and she thinks perhaps he has more in common with her than with Walter.
“You asked an excellent question, Frau Grant,” Einstein says. “I hope my answer was intelligible.”
“The handwriting or the equations?” Violet laughs, or rather the schnapps laughs for her, God bless it.
“Both!” He laughs with her.
“I’m only teasing. Your handwriting was no trouble. I transcribe all my husband’s work, and his writing is much worse, believe me.” Violet speaks without thinking, and gets her just deserts: a look of compassion.
“I’m sorry Dr. Grant couldn’t be with us tonight,” Herr Einstein says awkwardly.
“Oh, he doesn’t miss us a bit. He’s at a party in Leipzigerstrasse, very glamorous, loads of courtiers and officials.”
“And my mother.” Henry ranges up alongside. His bow dangles from his fingers. “No fashionable party would be complete without her.”
“At least you have each other, then.” Einstein looks between the two of them and smiles vaguely.
Violet feels a little pink. She opens her mouth to reply, but Herr Planck is already calling them to order for the Dvořák.
Afterward, as they’re gathering their music, Violet tries to think of some excuse to approach him again. The room is full of happy chatter, of the exuberant good feeling created from the chemical reaction between music and schnapps. Einstein is speaking to Lise, both of them smiling. Violet gathers herself and steps forward.
Herr Planck’s hand falls on her shoulder. “My dear, there’s a gentleman here for you and young Mr. Mortimer.”
She turns. “A gentleman?”
Planck steps aside.
Lionel Richardson. Dressed in formal blacks, a silk hat dangling from one hand, a cane dangling from the opposite elbow, silvery-gray eyes gazing quietly at them. His mighty soldier’s torso overflows the doorway.
“There you are,” he says.
“Yes, here we are.” Violet looks at him quizzically. Her hand moves unconsciously to her neck, to conceal the startled jump of her pulse. “Why are you here?”
The happy chatter dies away. Everyone turns to take in the sight of Lionel, brimming with outdoor energy, covered in night air and glamour. He leans against the door frame and crosses his arms. “To escort you home, of course. You and Henry.”
“Escort us home?”
“There’s a devil of a business in the streets tonight. The usual sort of Saturday revelry, I suppose, but hardly the sort of environment for a gently bred young lady and a chap of Mr. Mortimer’s tender years.” He tosses a smile at Henry.
Violet’s hands close around her leather satchel. “I am quite capable—”
“I’m sure you are, but I promised Madame de Saint-Honoré that I would see to her son’s safety personally.”
“I see.” Violet’s pulse calms. Behind her, the scientists have resumed talking, resolutely ignoring the two of them. She turns to Herr Planck and speaks in German. “Are we quite finished here, then?”
“Yes, yes! Go on, before it becomes late.”
“Well said, Herr Planck.” Lionel pushes himself away from the door frame and holds out his hand. “Have you a coat?”
“No.”
Henry draws next to her. “This is quite unnecessary, sir. We’d have been all right on our own.”
“No doubt, no doubt. But mothers will worry, won’t they?” Lionel winks at Henry, a soldier’s conspiratorial wink, man to man. Henry seems to read something in this wink. He straightens his shoulders and picks up his violin case.
“Ready, then, Mrs. Grant?” says Lionel.
“Yes, quite ready.” Violet says good-bye to the others, an especially warm handshake with Einstein, a kiss on the cheek from Lise. Her friends, she tells herself, and the word friends is so alien and thrilling, it tingles her bones with possibility.
Outside, the early June air is still warm, the sky still retaining a faint purple glow from the departed twilight. Distant shouts carry around the buildings, distant laughter, distant tinkling of music. Berlin is enjoying itself this evening, in all the usual ways. A motor-taxi waits at the curb, rumbling with impatience, and Lionel opens the door for them.
“I am quite happy walking,” says Violet.
“But I am not.” Lionel holds up his cane. “My operation was only a week ago, and strictly speaking I’m not supposed to be up at all.”
Violet slides into the rear seat after Henry, and Lionel shuts the door behind them and swings into the front, next to the driver. “Französischestrasse, bitte,” he says quietly.
“Don’t you have crutches?” she asks.
“Yes, I do.”
The taxi jerks away from the curb, into the swarming melee of Berlin traffic. After the somnolence of Oxford, Violet can’t quite get used to the way the automobiles and carts and delivery wagons crowd the streets of the energetic German capital, even at ten o’clock at night on the first Saturday in June. She looks out the window at the sidewalk. A café swims past her eyes, wriggling with people, students in shabby brown suits and prostitutes in bright silks. They are all so happy, so full of purpose even while lounging about a café, smoking and drinking. Violet thinks of her dark laboratory, her green-white fireworks of atomic energy, the minute scale of her life’s work.
“How was the party?” she asks. “I hope we haven’t ruined your evening.”
“Not at all. The party was full of German officials in a frenzy of enjoyment, if you can picture it. They’re all about to head off for their summer amusements, the lucky ones, at any rate.”
“I’m sorry to have torn you away.”
“They can spare me, I assure you. Tell me, Mr. Mortimer, how you’re enjoying your summer this far.”
“Very much, sir. I assisted Mrs. Grant with her scintillations today. The most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen.”
Lionel laughs aloud. “Yes, I remember it well. I used to be Dr. Grant’s assistant, a few years ago, before Mrs. Grant swept in and stole his heart away.”
“Were you?”
“Hasn’t your mother told you anything? Yes, I was the first man to count those little flashes of light.” He pauses. He hasn’t replaced his hat, and his sleek black hair curves in a perfect arc against the blue darkness around them. He tilts his face back toward them. “Do you know what amazed me most? All that space.”
“Yes.” Henry leans forward eagerly.
Lionel holds up his hand. In the yellow-gray flash of a passing streetlamp, it seems unnaturally large, shadow-rugged, each finger thick with strength. “You see? That this apparently solid and immutable flesh, that everything around us, is only empty space. Empty space, with a few lonely bits of electrical energy spinning about inside. That only one particle from the radium in perhap
s ten thousand actually finds a nucleus to collide with. The rest simply stream along unseen, unknowing even, right through the damned gold foil.”
“Astonishing, isn’t it?” Violet stares at Lionel’s hand.
He lowers his hand and turns to gaze out his own window. They are hurtling down Unter den Linden, a lamplit blur of cafés and people and ambitious new hotels. “I found it rather terrifying, in fact. Knowing this solid world around us is as insubstantial as a dream. Realizing the vast emptiness surrounding every bloody speck of matter in the universe.”
Without warning, the taxicab staggers to a throaty halt before a woman in a floating red silk gown, who dances with abandon in the middle of the street. Her eyes are closed to the astonished traffic around her. The streetlamps gleam like oil on her writhing bare arms.
“Mein Gott,” mutters the driver. He steers the taxi cautiously around the dancer. As the automobile slides past, she opens her eyes and gazes into the rear window, directly at Violet. She taps the glass with a long lacquered finger, throws back her head and laughs, and then she’s gone, disappeared into the tangle of lights and traffic behind them.
“Ah, Berlin,” says Lionel.
“A friend of yours, perhaps?” Violet thinks of the woman’s low neckline, her heavy unbound breasts like pendula beneath clouds of red silk. The mockery of that laugh.
“Not that I can recall,” says Lionel blandly.
The car turns down Französischestrasse and pulls up before a splendid block of apartments, rising perhaps sixteen floors in an extravagant explosion of stonework. Lionel springs out of the taxi, pivots gracefully about his cane, and opens the door for Henry. “I’ll just be a moment,” he says to Violet.
Henry looks over his shoulder. “Good night, Mrs. Grant.”
“Good night, Mr. Mortimer. Thank you for your assistance.”
Violet stares ahead at the back of the driver’s head. Französischestrasse is much quieter than Unter den Linden, a residential street, no café in sight. The sultry smell of petrol exhaust curls around her nose; the seat rumbles gently beneath her dress.
The door opens. Lionel slides in next to her and leans forward to address the driver. “Kronenstrasse. Number sixteen, isn’t that right, Mrs. Grant?”
“Yes. But you don’t need to take me there.”
“Nonsense. It’s on my way.”
“Back to your party, I suppose.”
He lays his cane over his legs. “I suppose so.”
Kronenstrasse isn’t far away, but the minutes and seconds stretch out to occupy the viscous silence between them. Violet looks out her window to avoid the sight of Lionel, though she feels him anyway, a great edifice looming perhaps eighteen inches away, so close she can touch him, so close she can feel his heat like a hot coal glowing at her side, she can feel the pitch of his chest as he breathes, the angle of the cloth seat under his weight.
The traffic has come to an ominous full stop in Friedrichstrasse; Lionel swears softly and cranes his head to see what the matter is. The movement of his body causes his cane to brush Violet’s thigh. “It’s hopeless,” he says. “Do you mind walking?”
“Do you?” She nods at his leg.
He shrugs. “It’s only a block or two.”
Lionel gets out and pays the driver and holds out his hand for Violet. Neither of them are wearing gloves. Lionel’s palm is warm and dry and strong beneath hers, his thumb firm where it crosses her fingers. She climbs out of the taxi and draws her hand away. “Thank you.”
They walk without speaking. Violet listens to the cadence of his stride along the sidewalk, the delicate chuff of the cane alongside the sturdier clacks of his shoes. His limp is almost indistinguishable, as if the cane itself is only a gentlemanly pose.
They reach Violet’s apartment building. She stops and half turns toward him, wanting him to go, wanting him to stay a few more minutes, an hour, a night, a year. He stands just outside the circle of light from the entrance foyer, and she cannot see his expression properly. But there is something hesitant in the way he stands and gazes down at her: something expectant, or perhaps indecisive.
Say good night, Violet.
Lionel clears his throat. “Shall I see you up?”
“That’s not necessary.”
His face moves in the darkness, and she knows he’s smiling. “Doesn’t a chap deserve a drink for all his hard work? Besides, I’m curious to see the apartment of the eminent Dr. Grant and his wife. Radium lying about the bric-a-brac and all that.”
“Nothing like that. Walter’s very particular. What about your party?”
“Bother the party.” He’s still smiling. A pair of headlamps flashes along his face, his daring eyes, his strong jaw, the curve of one ear. His shirt-points are terribly white against his neck.
Violet succumbs.
“All right, then. Come along.”
Vivian
No one throws a party like Mums, I’ll give her that. I arrived long before the fashionable hour in order to have first pop at the champagne, and I was rewarded for my early-birdness with the usual worm.
“Christ, Vivian,” said Dad, reaching for his cigar. “Do you know what we used to do to women who dressed like that?”
I kissed both cheeks. “Married them?”
“And what have you done with your eyes? You look like a cat.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Now, now, Charles.” Mums took my shoulders and gave me a twirl. “I think she looks just adorable. Doesn’t she look adorable, Pepper?”
“Not nearly enough bosom,” said Pepper.
Mums stepped back with her critical eye, and by critical I mean slice ’em and dice ’em and serve ’em for elevenses. “Yes. Yes, I see what you mean,” she said, and without further ado took the edge of my neckline with both hands and yanked it down a good two inches. My father made a strangled noise and headed for the bar.
Pepper nodded. “That should do the trick.”
“Do what trick?”
“Never you mind,” said Mums. “Have some champagne.”
It didn’t take a truffle-pig nose to detect the presence of a few suspicious truffles lying about the old Schuyler aerie, but I wasn’t the girl to look a gift bubbly in the bubbles. I poured myself a heaping tablespoon and dragged Pepper out on the terrace for a smoke and a grilling.
“What was that about?” Once the preliminaries had been performed.
Pepper made busy with her cigarette. “What was what about?”
“The Marilyn makeover just now. You want I should dye my little old hair and speak all Babykins, too?” I did a fair impression.
“Not bad. Not bad at all.”
“Pepper.”
She zipped her lips.
“You cannot be plotting with Mums, Pepper. You can’t do that to me. I need someone on my side.”
“Try Dadums. Your bosom gives him the vapors. He’ll be happy to help.”
“He’ll be passed out by nine o’clock.”
“Oh, right. Well, who needs the big lug, anyway?” Champagne, smoke. “Is it cold out here, or is it just my dress?”
“Speaking of bosom.”
“I wasn’t going to let you steal the show, was I?” She linked arms and dragged me to the edge of the terrace. “You see? This is what I mean by sisterly solidarity. The Schuyler girls, on top of the world. Look at that park, Vivian. Do you ever get tired of a view like that?”
I gazed down at the bumpy dark rectangle of Central Park, the sharp and twinkling edges of the towers around it. No, you could not ever get tired of a view like this. You could never ever get tired of Manhattan.
Pepper squeezed my arm. “How’s Violet these days?”
“Playing violin with Einstein. I can’t figure her out.”
Pepper turned around and propped herself against a planter filled with p
urpling cabbage. “How so?”
“How she could live with him. Her husband, I mean. She had to have known what he was like. Why did she put up with it?”
Pepper laughed. “Oh, listen to you. Why did she put up with it? Why do any of them put up with it? Mums, Dadums. I think the secret to marriage is just old-fashioned tolerance.”
“Tolerance of lovers?”
“Tolerance of whatever your husband’s sins. Or vice versa. Obviously Mr. Pepper Schuyler would have to put up with a few.”
“You make it sound so tempting.”
She nodded to the glowing terrace doors. “Everyone makes their own bed, Vivian. Everyone makes their own bargain. Anyway, Violet didn’t put up with it in the end, did she?”
“No, something set her off at last. I just wish I could find out what it was.”
Pepper leaned her head back and let the Manhattan moon bathe her face. Her beauty was so sudden and sharp, it stunned me. She crossed her long legs at the glittery ankle straps. “You’ll let me know when you do.”
“Girls! What are you doing, shivering out here like this?”
We turned in tandem.
“Cousin Lily!” I ran up to her as fast as my skittering heels would allow and pressed kisses to both her sweet little cheeks. She beamed back at me, the old darling, just before Pepper grabbed her for equal treatment.
“I don’t know how you can stand it,” she said. “Look at you in your little dresses.”
“Look at you in yours.”
“You like it? Your aunt Julie took me shopping this week.”
“Say no more,” said Pepper.
I took Lily’s right arm and Pepper took her left, and together we jiggled champagne, cigarettes, and cousin back into the living room, where Lily’s husband, Nick Greenwald, was locked in stiff conversation with Dad. He cast her a look as we entered, a look containing an entire quarter century of shared spousal amusement, and my toes ached.
Confession. I’d had an itty-bitty girlhood crush on Nick Greenwald when I was just beginning to have such thoughts. Well, goodness, he was a war hero! And handsome and exceptionally tall, and with that irresistible air of the forbidden about him, being half Jewish and therefore Not Quite One of Us, as Mums put it. Not quite one of us, is he, she would say, making her eyebrow do that thing of hers, that insolent right angle, while she stubbed her cigarette viciously into the tray. I would think, Thank Jehovah and all the prophets for that. He and Lily were like a bulwark, knit together at every stitch against the pick pick pick of implicit Schuyler disapproval. I marveled at them. Lily was my aunt Christina’s daughter. After Christina died, she and Nick had raised her younger sister, Kiki, along with five children of their own, two of them born after the war. Maybe that was where the crush started. I’d been twelve years old, and there was tall Nick cradling Baby Number Five against his shoulder with the delicate reverence he might lavish on a Fabergé egg (I still remembered Mums’s disapproval, her sneering Forty-three years old and she lets herself get pregnant again) and who couldn’t fall a little in love with that?
The Secret Life of Violet Grant Page 18