Albert Einstein, working alone in Switzerland, dared to ask if the problem lay with the absolute system of reference itself. After all, in the end it was, like the aether, an abstract construction of the human mind, lacking tangible existence. No invisible box surrounded the universe; no clock ticked away at its heart. These concepts belonged in the realm of metaphysics. But light, that was measurable, observable. And its velocity in a vacuum was always the same. How would a model of the universe look if its laws were based on that?
The distance an object travelled was revealed by multiplying its speed by time. A train travelling at forty miles per hour for half an hour would cover twenty miles. But light took no notice of distance or time. Its speed remained the same even when the body emitting it was hurtling through space at immense speed. What then did this additional motion, the motion of the emitting body, affect? If it was not the speed of light, then the only remaining elements in the equation were space on one side and time on the other. It was these that had to change, these that were local, flexible, relative. Einstein realised that motion did not take place independent of space and time, as common sense dictated. It changed them.
Einstein’s mathematics shook the very principles of scientific observation, as understood since Galileo. That was what Max loved about it. For hundreds of years, astronomers had struggled to improve the accuracy of their measuring equipment, their telescopes, astrolabes and sextants, only to discover that the distance between two points could not be measured in any objective way. Distance was not simply a relation between two points. It also involved the observer, whose relation to those points directly affected the outcome of the measurement. As for intervals of time, they had no absolute value either, since the flow of time directly depended on the relation between object and observer. What Man had taken to be the universe, was in fact only a subjective perception of the universe, seen from one specific frame of reference.
Max had talked about this revelation, in breathless monologues at the supper table that only their father pretended to understand. To the rest of the family it was the product of an over-active imagination, too many late nights or an incipient attack of fever. For in this strange new universe, clocks in motion ran more slowly than clocks at rest. Time at the Equator ran more slowly than time at the poles. Different observers could perceive two events as occurring in different sequence, while others might see them as simultaneous. Their perceptions might be different, but none of them would be wrong. If the dimensions of space and time were relative, there could be as many right answers as there were observers.
The Special Theory of Relativity had been published when Kirsch was still a boy. But there had been no newspaper headlines then, no crowds of onlookers eager for a glimpse of the visionary behind it. The scepticism of his family was universal. Even many physicists assumed that Einstein was only concerned with theoretical problems of astronomical observation, rather than the nature of reality itself. Only when he extended relativity to the laws of gravity, the dominant force in the universe, did it dawn on them that he was building a completely new model of creation, with the speed of light as its founding principle. For while motion affected time and space, it was an observable fact that gravity affected motion. You only had to let go of an apple to see that.
For eleven years he worked to derive the equations, juggling Newton’s laws of motion with the new geometry of flexible space. He completed the General Theory of Relativity in 1916, the year of the great offensives on the western front. While armies clashed at Verdun and the Somme, in a desperate attempt to redraw the notional frontiers on their notional European maps, Einstein remained at work, quietly stripping space and time of all objective reality. In this new model of Creation, matter and space were part of one single continuum, a fabric of existence running unbroken throughout the universe, coalescing in different forms but never breaking apart. Geometry was dictated by gravity, and gravity by mass. All fixed points of reference were banished: they had to be, because time and space were nothing more than artefacts of the gravitational field. If the Earth travelled in circles around the sun, it was not thanks to a mysterious and invisible force of attraction. It was because space and time were pulled out of shape by the presence of the star. The Earth was travelling through curved space and curved time, like a tram riding curved rails round a bend on the Schönhauser Allee.
This was the work Einstein completed in Berlin, after years of working at the frontiers of scientific knowledge. He had been making a new world just as the old one was marching off to war, killing off redundant metaphysical certainties just as the youth of Europe was being sacrificed to defend them. Did Max understand the irony? Was that why he had given his brother Einstein’s book? Or was there more to it than that? Were the discoveries set out on its pages, the scale and wonder of them, supposed to render human losses minuscule and insignificant, and therefore easier to bear?
Kirsch was still looking through the book when he heard knocking downstairs. It was after half past ten. He waited for the sound of Frau Schirmann’s door opening, the old woman bustling out into the hall, but there was nothing. The knocking came again, louder this time. He could hear the bolts rattling, but still Frau Schirmann did not stir.
He went to the window. His view of the front of the building was obscured by the small stone balcony and the branches of a tree. A motor car was parked by the kerb, its polished black panels beaded with rain. He put down the book and went out onto the landing.
‘Frau Schirmann? Are you going to answer that?’
The knocking came a third time. Kirsch hurried down the stairs, wondering what his landlady was playing at. Was she too afraid after what had happened to Herr Bronstein? Or was it that she had taken her make-up off and couldn’t bear to be seen in her natural state?
His hand was on the bolt when something made him hesitate. It was late, too late for social calls.
‘Who is it?’
He heard the crunch of grit against stone.
‘Dr Kirsch?’ A man’s voice.
‘What do you want?’
‘Excuse me for disturbing you. My name is Bucher. I called before.’
Bucher. Kirsch was still not sure if this was his paranoid schizophrenic or not. He turned on the light. ‘Do I know you?’
The door moved gently against the locks and bolts.
‘I have an invitation from Dr Fischer. He wanted me to wait for a reply.’
‘Dr Fischer? I don’t know any Dr Fischer.’
‘Dr Eugen Fischer, Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology.’
Kirsch had heard Fischer’s name, knew he was considered eminent, but could recall little of his work, only that some of it had concerned the effects of racial intermarriage in southern Africa.
‘He certainly knows of you, Dr Kirsch.’
The stranger sounded hurt, but it was hurt of the playacting kind.
Kirsch hesitated, then threw open the door. The stranger stepped back, pulling off his hat. He was younger than the Bucher Kirsch remembered, and a great deal smarter.
‘Dr Fischer leaves for Munich tomorrow afternoon, and wishes to know if you can meet him beforehand.’ The stranger smiled, revealing a marked overlap in his upper incisors. ‘He apologises for the short notice.’
He handed over an envelope and stood back while Kirsch read the contents. It was an invitation to lunch at the Adlon Hotel. I was much impressed by your paper, and am most anxious to discuss it with you before my departure. Kirsch was surprised. He had always assumed his study was too brief and insubstantial to impress anyone. But then he recalled what Alma had said about her father showing it to some people, and all the learned institutions he supported with his money.
‘Will you be available tomorrow, Dr Kirsch?’
Kirsch folded up the letter. The Adlon was reputed to have the best restaurant in Berlin.
‘Tell Dr Fischer I shall be honoured,’ he said.
Fifteen
The kitchen doors swung o
pen, releasing an aroma of seared meat. An affable clamour rose above the crescendos of sizzling and the clattering of pots and pans. Kirsch wished he had put on a better show. His collar was a day old and there had been no time to get his suit pressed. His waistcoat was patterned with parallel creases, like an overextended concertina. Worse, he had spent another bad night; not sleepless, but filled with tortuous dreams in which he was always on the move, running for assignations that he couldn’t miss, riding on express trains as they hurtled through tunnels and crowded stations, everything accompanied by the scream of steel on steel.
The head waiter led him into the dining room. Inside, more waiters in tailcoats moved between the tables or stood to attention beside the great log fire. Kirsch’s stomach rumbled. From nothing, the smell of the grill had summoned up an appetite. It was never like that at the Charité canteen. The smell there was always of stale grease and boiled cabbage, a permanent, ineradicable stink that seemed over the years to have seeped into the walls.
He was taken to a table by the window with a view across Pariser Platz. Outside, traffic moved steadily along the avenue, passing beneath the arches of the Brandenburg Gate. He declined the offer of an aperitif and glanced around the room. The Adlon was renowned for its celebrity clientele. Before the war it had played host to the Kaiser and the Tsar of Russia; in more recent times, Henry Ford and the Rockefellers, Marlene Dietrich and Albert Einstein. Such was its fame abroad that Hollywood had made a film about it, starring Greta Garbo. It was also where Alma’s father stayed on his rare trips to the capital, a fact that left Kirsch wondering if he wasn’t being drawn deliberately into a more comfortable and elevated social sphere, as befitted Otto Siegel’s future son-in-law.
Kirsch recognised none of the other diners. Instead his gaze came to rest on a tall bearded man twenty years his senior, striding across the room with one hand tucked into the pocket of his waistcoat, addressing affable remarks to the head waiter.
‘The eminent Dr Kirsch. Delighted to meet you.’
Kirsch got to his feet. ‘Dr Fischer.’
In spite of his lanky frame and huge hands, his host had an impish appearance, with a high forehead, protruding ears, and a narrow chin accentuated by a beard. He took Kirsch’s hand and shook it warmly, bringing his other hand to his elbow, prolonging the gesture as if to underscore that it was more than a matter of mere politeness. ‘I do hope this place suits you. Not too far from the clinic?’
‘Barely a ten-minute walk.’
They sat down, Fischer unfurling his napkin and accepting a menu. ‘You walked. Excellent. Even a thinking man must take exercise. Too many neglect it. The same goes for food. Scholars have a regrettable habit of starving themselves.’
Kirsch opened the menu, read in disbelief the prices. ‘I fear some have no choice.’
Fischer laughed. ‘Allow me to address that lamentable state of affairs. I hope you’ve brought a good appetite.’ And he began interrogating the head waiter, whom he addressed as Konrad, on the dishes of the day.
For ten minutes the talk was of food and Dr Fischer’s personal routines. Kirsch felt like a favourite nephew on the receiving end of avuncular wisdom and a good meal. Fischer’s familiarity was such that he wondered if he was not, in fact, related to the Siegels in some way, and would therefore be shortly related to him. Only when they were tucking into a venison terrine did he bring up the subject of his paper.
‘What you wrote was courageous,’ he said. ‘It takes courage to be radical, especially in a profession as conservative as medicine.’
‘I was simply drawing attention to a few diagnostic inconsistencies.’
‘Inconsistencies that call into question the basis of modern psychiatry, as practised by your superiors.’ Fischer broke apart a loaf of fresh bread and handed Kirsch the larger piece. ‘A self-interested man would have been more accommodating in his choice of study. He would have ignored those inconsistencies, just as everyone else does.’
The terrine was delicious. Kirsch struggled not to talk with his mouth full. ‘It did surprise me that no one had really studied the question before.’
Fischer made an appreciative noise. Everything he did – eating, talking, gesturing – was done with an intensity verging on impatience. ‘Status. It’s the Achilles heel of the whole profession.’ He made little circles with his butter knife. ‘Psychiatry’s been so caught up in this headlong rush to establish itself, to achieve the same status as conventional medicine. But conventional medicine is grounded in centuries of anatomical study. Do we have any such grounding where the workings of the mind are concerned? No. And it will be a very long time before we do.’ Another waiter appeared, pouring wine. ‘But to suggest that psychiatrists might be getting ahead of themselves, to even suggest that the founding assumptions of the whole business are not, in fact, rock solid – that, Dr Kirsch, is heresy.’
Fischer was right. What had Bonhoeffer called his paper? Practically a letter of resignation in itself.
Fischer brought his wineglass to his nose, rolled it around for a moment and smiled. It was as if he had been in Bonhoeffer’s office the day before, and overheard the argument. Kirsch toyed with the base of his glass, wondering how much Fischer did know.
‘Was there anything in particular that prompted your …? I had the impression there was some urgency …’
For a moment Fischer stopped chewing. He smiled again, then eased himself back from the table, brushing the crumbs from his lap. ‘You are quite correct in divining an ulterior motive.’ His tongue smacked against his hard palate. ‘I have a proposal, one I hope will appeal to you.’
Kirsch’s findings to date had relied on too small a sample, he said. The inconsistencies in diagnosis could be dismissed as anomalous and unrepresentative. But that would not be the case if a new study took in a broader swathe of the German-speaking world and covered a longer period.
‘A body of evidence on such a scale couldn’t be ignored. It would force the profession to re-examine its approach to mental abnormality. It might bring about real change.’
Kirsch thought about Sergeant Stoehr and the other patients subjected to Heinrich Mehring’s experimental treatments – treatments for diseases classified and schematised the way medieval theologians had once categorised different types of demon, and with just as much regard for observable fact. He thought about the ‘improvements’ they were said to effect, and the half-baked theorising that was sure to follow about the nature of the diseases themselves.
‘It’d be a huge undertaking,’ he said. ‘It’d need almost everyone to cooperate; many different institutions.’ Fischer was looking at him expectantly. He reached across the table and topped up his wineglass. ‘You aren’t suggesting I should do it? I’m afraid that’s impossible.’
‘You’d be paid, of course. The Kaiser Wilhelm would commission the study. And publish it.’
‘The anthropology institute?’
‘Or the medical. We’ve commissioned a great deal of research: family genealogy, craniometry, blood groups. We work increasingly across disciplines nowadays, not to mention frontiers. Very much an international effort. It’s time men of science stopped living in their intellectual ghettoes and pulled together for the common good. Don’t you agree?’
‘Yes, but –’
‘I think I could promise you the equivalent of a year’s salary. In advance.’
With particular care, Fischer began buttering another piece of bread, leaving Kirsch to wonder if all this really had been arranged behind the scenes by Otto Siegel.
‘Forgive me, but I thought your particular field was anthropology.’
‘It is. But I study the origins of mankind for a reason. Like you, I believe that to protect the race one must first understand it.’
‘The race?’
Fischer cut into his slab of terrine. ‘The Nordic race. The one we all belong to. As far as psychiatry is concerned, I believe many forms of mental illness have a hereditary component. It’s to be expected. In
telligence runs in families, after all, to say nothing of physical disabilities. Your own study contained a number of instances of mental illness passing between the generations, the schizophrenic type in particular.’
Kirsch frowned. ‘Incidentally perhaps. But not enough to –’
‘Oh, I agree: incidentally. Quite so. But then a much larger survey might clear up the matter once and for all. We can’t have too much information, can we?’
‘I suppose not.’
Kirsch sipped his wine, considering briefly how useful a year’s pay in advance would be. He had to do something once he left the Charité. A commission might provide a cloak for his departure. It would be perfectly understandable that he should give up practising psychiatry in order to concentrate on academic studies. Alma would understand it, her family would understand it, and so would potential future employers.
‘May I ask,’ he said, ‘if you’re acquainted with Otto Siegel?’
Fischer looked blank.
‘My future father-in-law.’
Fischer shook his head. ‘I didn’t know you were engaged. My dear fellow, congratulations.’
‘Thank you. I just thought perhaps …’
But before Kirsch could explain, the waiters reappeared, pushing a trolley on which sat a roast leg of lamb, browned and glistening.
Fischer took his time with the meat, eating it largely unaccompanied and remarking on the importance of protecting the digestion as the years went on: ‘The digestion is like a conscience,’ he said. ‘Treat it badly in youth and it’ll return to give you sleepless nights when you’re old.’
The Einstein Girl Page 11