Mariya Draganović. Why hadn’t she given him her real name at the Tanguero? Why had she lied? To hide her Slavic origins, perhaps, the way the working girls did? Or had she thought that concealing her identity might keep her safe?
She hadn’t trusted him, of course. It was as simple as that.
He thought of going back to the clinic at once and sharing with her everything he had learned. But how would all that information affect her? Where psychogenic fugue was concerned, the case histories were not encouraging. Hans J, his identity recovered, had returned to his home in Nürnberg and his job at the bank. But after that, his life and his mind had slowly fallen apart. It was the same with one of the English cases, a twenty-eight-year-old woman called Ethel. Ethel, too, had recovered her lost memories and returned to her home in Manchester. But in subsequent interviews, members of her family claimed that she was not the same woman, that she had become secretive and was apt to disappear for hours at a time without explanation. An aunt even claimed that the new Ethel was an impostor and had reported the matter to the police.
The root of these afflictions lay not in the fact that information had been lost. It was to be found in the mind’s decision to forget, to blank out memories with which it was dangerous or impossible to co-exist. In Mariya’s case, it might make the same decision again. And this time, Kirsch would be forgotten too.
Back at his apartment, he shrugged off his heavy overcoat. The notebook landed on the floor with a thud, several loose scraps of paper spilling out. He knelt down to gather them up again. One was an old letter. The paper was yellowed with age, the address written in a neat, feminine hand. It read: Fr. Mileva Einstein-Marić, Tillierstrasse 18, Berne, Switzerland.
Belgrade, 21 April 1903
Dear Mileva,
I am taking this opportunity to write to you quickly while the children are asleep, Milivoj is out, and there is some peace in the house. I should like to have replied to your letter earlier, with all its warm wishes, but the baby has taken up so much of my attention that it has been hard to stay on top of my other duties – while continuing to give little Julka the attention she deserves too.
I read with some surprise your enquiry about finding work here in Belgrade. Is this really something you have discussed with your husband? It is regrettable, of course, if his present employment is not to his liking, but the kind of academic posts he has searched for in the past are not to be found here, even at the university, which, as you know, is not of the first rank when it comes to science. As for your teaching German here, I cannot but think that would be a waste of your talents in mathematics and suchlike, which led you to study in Switzerland in the first place.
I know that Lieserl is on your mind when you ask such things. But I urge you to be cautious in this matter and observe, as much as it is in your power, the agreements that have been entered into. We were fortunate in being able to find people who were prepared to help us, and it would be most unfortunate, for the child as much as for everyone else, if matters were to unravel now. I hope I can at least set your mind at rest for the time being with news from Orlovat, which I have from my friend Irena who was there a week ago. She said the child appears quite healthy, has a good appetite and is well looked after. It further appears that she will soon have a little brother or sister, for Frau D is expecting again, and is due in six weeks or so. She has been poorly of late, however, and they have some fears for the health of this child, as for the last.
Now that you are married, and Albert has found employment to support you both, I hope with all my heart that you will be blessed with a family of your own, and will be able to put these concerns behind you. Milivoj and I are of course delighted to hear of your plan to visit later this year, but I do hope you are not thinking of using your time here to undo what has been settled according to your wishes and for the good of all.
I will write to you at greater length in a few days’ time. In the meantime, I send my very fondest regards to you both.
Your dear friend,
Helene Savić
Kirsch sat down on his bed. The names in the letter meant nothing to him. They were thirty years old in any case; the preoccupations of strangers, long since overtaken by the march of history – memories now at best, lacking all substance.
What was Mariya doing with this old letter? Had someone given it to her? Or was it like one of those scraps of private correspondence he sometimes found hidden between the leaves of a second-hand book: a thing of no more significance than a bookmark?
He lay down. He felt exhausted but anxious without knowing exactly why. He should have been reassured by what he had found in Mariya’s room – the cleanliness, the order – but he was not reassured. It came to him that the room was ghostly, sepulchral, like a tomb awaiting its occupant.
He looked at the letter again. Spring, 1903. A world before the war, a world he could hardly remember. A world that was certainly dead.
Twenty
The next day Kirsch received a letter from his old commanding officer. He hadn’t heard from Gustav Schad in more than twelve years, but the colonel had seen his name in the newspaper and felt encouraged to write.
I heard a rumour that you had moved into psychiatric medicine. I’m delighted, though not at all surprised, to see you have made a success of it.
After years of working at a hospital in Essen, Schad had recently returned to the capital and set up a private practice.
I got tired of breathing smoke and decided it was time to sample the famous air that you Berliners are always singing about. I have as yet few acquaintances and would welcome a chance to mull over the bad old days with a comrade.
Kirsch made a note of the address: it was in Charlottenburg, in the west of the city, a relatively genteel district, populated with rheumatic old ladies and querulous dogs. Though he had always respected Schad, he doubted if he would find time to make the trip. Similar reunions, for all their back-slapping and bonhomie, invariably awoke memories he preferred to leave alone, as far as he could. The knowledge that others felt the same way didn’t make them any more enjoyable. Some old comrades he would gladly have seen again, but as far as he knew, they were all dead.
He spent the morning trying to catch up on paperwork. The backlog of unwritten reports and case notes had begun to grow, and new patients were being admitted every day. Nor had he made a start on Dr Fischer’s project, despite the anthropologist’s impatience for results. He began work at once, hammering away on his old Adler, typing relentlessly and fast, not pausing to correct mistakes, trying to maintain the noise and motion.
He finished one report, filed it, began another: Preliminary Assessment of Patient Joseph Grossman. Grossman was a musician, a violinist in one of the city’s symphony orchestras: forty-seven, small and balding. His playing had become increasingly erratic; so much so that he had begun to disrupt rehearsals. It was only then that other peculiarities were noticed: the detached and unstructured nature of his conversation (and, it turned out, his correspondence), his habit of talking to strangers in the street and on the train, the nonsensical music that he had written in his apartment, not only on piles of manuscript paper, but on the walls, the door, the lampshades and the furniture. When his landlady had tried to scrub it off, he had threatened to cut her ears off.
Grossman’s behavioural abnormalities were textbook indicators of schizophrenia, and clearly recognisable as such; but what was puzzling to Kirsch was how long it had taken anyone to notice them. In spite of the sociable nature of his work, Grossman seemed virtually friendless, a situation that had only begun to be remedied after he entered the clinic. There his playing had made him quite popular with the other patients, especially Mariya. Even when he played outside, she would come and listen, her gaze fixed on the action of the bow and his nail-bitten fingers as they shuffled crab-like from string to string, slowly turning blue in the cold.
For a moment, Kirsch thought he could hear Grossman playing now, a distant cadence echoing in the yard, bu
t it was only the wind, catching on the side of the building.
He went on typing, got as far as recording the patient’s name, then stopped. His fingers were paralysed. His mind would no longer form the appropriate words. It was just a report, a routine statement of preliminary findings, a provisional conclusion. But he couldn’t write it. He flipped through his notes, hoping to find some purpose there, some sense. But it was hopeless. Everything he read, every phrase, every professionally crafted observation, felt like a fraud.
He turned to the notebook he had taken from Mariya’s trunk. He stared at the lines of exotic symbols and numbers. There was something poetical about them. All mathematics of this kind was an attempt to bring the world into balance, to reveal the precise equivalence between apparently disparate things – acceleration and gravity, energy and mass; to balance reality on a single fulcrum, represented by the two parallel dashes than made up an equals sign. In theoretical physics the task was delicate and monumental, heroic even: a journey into a world where nothing, no matter how fundamental, was set in stone; where human perceptions and human language were as likely to prove enemies as friends.
But what was the object of Mariya’s search? What problem was she trying to solve?
Perhaps there was no problem. For all he knew, he might be looking at gibberish, like the music Joseph Grossman had scrawled all over his lodgings.
Max would have known. For him it would have been perfectly clear, like so much else that his older brother found opaque. But Max was only alive in his dreams.
They had labour gangs out on Unter den Linden, stooped, haggard men recruited from the doss-houses and the soup kitchens, shovelling grit onto the icy pavements for a few Pfennigs an hour. Unlike the labour, the grit was in short supply. The men queued to fill their shovels from small piles deposited at intervals along the road. They stood, backs bent, waiting for well-heeled pedestrians, scattering a little of their loads ahead of them as they scurried alongside, as if they were casting palm fronds before a conquering hero, in hope their deference might earn them a tip.
Kirsch’s pockets were empty by the time the sooty columns of the opera house loomed up ahead of him. Slithering on slush, he hurried across the road towards the Academy of Sciences, dodging a procession of taxis. A raw easterly wind tugged at his clothes, threatening to strip the hat from his head. It would have been easier to stay balanced with his arms outstretched, but his arms were occupied with the notebook he held tight under his coat.
He was at the corner of Franz-Joseph Platz when he heard the urgent rasp of a car horn. He looked up in time to see a green Mercedes lurching around the inside of a truck, bearing down on him at racetrack speed. He leaped for the kerb, lost his footing, went down hard on one knee. The notebook spilled out onto the ground, landing face down. He scrambled to recover it, but the damage was done. Ink had smeared across the pages, the numbers and symbols blurred and streaked. The paper was of low quality. It soaked up water like a rag, clumping together into a pulpy mass. The Mercedes blasted past, showering him with slush. He cursed out loud, spun round in time to see the driver’s head framed in the open window of his car. It was a man, at least fifty, with a drooping moustache and sad, bloodhound eyes. His face wore a sheepish expression, as if he knew an apology was called for, but was in too much of a hurry to give it. The Mercedes braked, took a hard right into the square and disappeared, leaving a trail of smoke.
The porter at the Academy of Sciences looked Kirsch up and down, taking in the muddy trousers and the water that still dripped from his raincoat. ‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Dr Martin Kirsch of the Charité Psychiatric Clinic.’
The porter sighed and disappeared into his office, leaving Kirsch alone in the lobby. A grand marble staircase led up to the first floor, where another porter – a burly man with a shiny bald head – stood looking down at him. From the corridor came the sound of a lecture in progress. The lecturer said something humorous. Polite laughter briefly filled the space.
What if the lecturer were Albert Einstein? It had to be a possibility. It was at the academy that many of his most important papers had been presented. The thought that he might be there in the building, might any moment come walking down the stairs, set Kirsch’s heart beating faster.
‘Dr Kirsch?’
A man wearing pince-nez and a wing collar stood before him. His name turned out to be Klepper and he held an administrative position at the academy.
Kirsch produced the notebook. He explained that it appeared to contain calculations attempted by one of his patients. ‘No one at the clinic is qualified to judge whether they’re sound. The mathematics is too complex. But one of your distinguished members would know at once.’
Klepper glanced at the notebook, at the wrinkled pages and blurred ink. ‘I’m not sure I follow. This is a mental patient you’re talking about?’
‘Yes.’
‘And this patient is a mathematician?’
‘A student of mathematics. Or perhaps of physics.’
‘So you want …’ Klepper frowned. He could not have been more than thirty, but everything in his dress and manner said he yearned for the gravitas of middle age. ‘You want tuition for him?’
‘I want to know if these calculations show evidence of a disturbed mind. I want to know if they make mathematical sense.’
‘If your patient is a student, surely you should consult his teachers.’
‘I’m afraid that’s impossible.’
Herr Klepper shrugged. ‘Be that as it may, Dr …’
Kirsch felt a cold draft at his back. Someone was coming in through the front door. ‘My name is Kirsch.’
‘Our members are not in the habit of providing free consultations to …’ Klepper’s gaze came to rest on his muddy shoes ‘… anyone.’
‘It would only take a few minutes. To a physicist –’
‘Out of the question, I’m afraid. These are extremely busy men. As I’m sure you can appreciate, their time is valuable.’ Klepper gestured vaguely towards the street. ‘You might try the university.’
Kirsch turned and found himself looking at a middle-aged man with a high forehead and a white moustache.
‘Good morning, Professor,’ Herr Klepper said. ‘Can I be of assistance?’
The professor gave Kirsch a regretful look, and it was then that he remembered the speeding Mercedes that had nearly run him over, and the driver’s face framed in the window.
The professor pulled off a pair of heavy leather gloves and offered his hand. ‘Max von Laue. You were looking for a physicist, you said?’
Von Laue. He had won the Nobel Prize just before the war for his work on X-rays. He had written a book on general relativity.
Kirsch introduced himself and explained the purpose of his visit. The professor nodded gravely and accepted the notebook, turning over a couple of damp pages. But the light was poor in the lobby and the way he squinted, it was obvious he could make out very little.
‘Perhaps you could leave this with me,’ he said. ‘I promise to take good care of it.’
Upstairs, the lecture had drawn to a close. Applause briefly interrupted the atmosphere of reverential calm. This was Max’s world, a world of ideas, of pure thought; the world he was born for, but had never lived to share.
Kirsch handed over his card and left, casting a final glance up the marble staircase.
In the staff common room the talk was all of General Schleicher and his elevation from Minister of War to Reich Chancellor. Most were of the opinion that it was only a matter of time before martial law was declared, as there was little chance of his being able to assemble a workable majority in the Reichstag. Others thought a coalition with the more pragmatic wing of the Nazi party would be cobbled together, leaving Adolf Hitler out in the cold. Economic conditions were showing signs of improvement, and popular support for the nationalists was already waning. The Nazis might never get their hands on power again.
Kirsch went back to his
office and continued with the backlog of paperwork, but after a few hours his eyes were aching and he couldn’t write anything more. His arm felt cold and heavy, as if the flesh were slowly petrifying. He hadn’t examined it in days. He went out to the landing and lit a cigarette. Across the grounds, the snow and slush were blue in the twilight. On the far side of the canal what looked like a pile of refuse was burning, the fitful yellow light colouring the misty air.
There were prints in the snow outside, animal as well as human. Stray dogs came sniffing around at night, especially when it was cold, drawn by the smell from the kitchens. More than once they had knocked over the dustbins, strewing peelings and offal across the yard. Kirsch traced their looping paths until the light was gone.
He left the clinic at around eight. Outside, the air was damp and raw. The slush on the pavements was turning to ice. It crunched underfoot, like broken glass. He hunched his shoulders, burying his chin beneath the lapels of his coat.
A car was turning around outside the main hospital. Kirsch saw his shadow drift across the brick walls. He squinted into the headlights as the car edged along the kerb beside him.
‘Dr Kirsch?’
The rear passenger door swung open. Billowing exhaust fumes masked the interior. Then he saw the bearded face, the weathered sea-dog complexion, the angular frame canted forward.
‘Dr Fischer?’
‘What luck! Get in, get in. Bucher and I are entirely at your disposal.’ Fischer’s driver got out and held open the door. ‘Be quick now. It’s getting cold.’
Kirsch climbed in. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t expecting you, Dr Fischer. Did we arrange …?’
‘I just got in from Munich. Thought I’d stop by on the off-chance. I called from the station, but no one seemed to know where you were.’
The Einstein Girl Page 15