The possibilities crowded in, unwelcome but intractable. Even after all this time, none could be dismissed. Eugen Fischer thought Mariya was party to an elaborate fraud. Even that theory was still tenable.
Kirsch pulled off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. Why had Mariya gone to Berlin? Where had the idea come from? Perhaps the Einstein connection was all in his mind. Had he elaborated scenarios that had no basis in fact?
He closed the file, realised that Zimmermann had been staring at him from behind his desk.
He smiled nervously. ‘Found what you were looking for?’
It was still surprisingly bright outside, though it was late in the afternoon. The snow gave off a phosphorescent light, making it easy to see the way, even as the sky darkened. A solitary pair of tyre tracks made parallel lines on the winding surface of the road.
Kirsch had forgotten about the man he’d glimpsed earlier among the trees, but as he went around the bend below the hospital he saw him again, leaning against the trunk of a pine, smoking a cigarette.
‘You took your time,’ he said.
Kirsch didn’t have time to be surprised. He had a vague recollection of having made an arrangement with this man. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Max threw the cigarette away and stepped up onto the road. His old overcoat was draped across his shoulders. He had been hiding here all these years, in neutral Switzerland, gravitating inevitably towards Albert Einstein’s old stamping ground in Zürich. It had been their secret, just the two of them, a secret Kirsch had kept so well that he’d almost forgotten there was any to keep.
‘Why are you still here?’ Max said.
Kirsch hunched his shoulders and walked on. ‘I’m here for my patient. There are some things I need to understand.’
‘Mariya’s the one with the answers. You won’t find them here.’
‘I might find out who she is.’
‘Don’t you mean who she was?’
‘I don’t see the difference. What’s the difference?’
‘Who do you want her to be?’
It was just like Max to ask the awkward questions.
‘Lieserl. I want her to be Elisabeth Einstein.’
‘Why?’
‘How can you ask me that? You of all people.’
‘You think it’ll make her well again?’
‘Yes.’
‘Like Eduard Einstein. He’s very well.’
‘That’s different.’
Max shrugged. He was sceptical about psychiatry generally, like his hero. As far as he was concerned, it wasn’t a proper medical science. ‘It’s very noble of you to go to so much trouble. If it turns out you’re right, she’ll be in your debt for ever. So will her father.’
They were just above the lake now, where the grey mass of water met the featureless sky. It was like standing before a huge unfinished mural. Only the woods and the town were complete.
‘That’s not why I’m here,’ Kirsch said. ‘I need the facts. I’m tired of conjecture. I need a solid hypothesis.’
Max pulled the coat closer about him. Kirsch felt guilty for having taken it from the house without asking him.
‘I suppose gratitude is something,’ Max said. ‘She’ll remember you, at least, won’t she? After you’re gone.’
‘It’s not like that.’
Max lit another cigarette. He never used to smoke. But he was older now. ‘What is it like?’
Kirsch walked on without answering. After a few seconds he realised that his brother was no longer keeping up with him. He looked over his shoulder. Max was standing in the road, his hands at his sides.
‘You haven’t much time,’ he said.
Kirsch awoke in his hotel room. Blue dawn light bled through a gap in the curtains. It was freezing cold. For an instant he thought he saw Max standing in the corner, watching him. But it was just his raincoat hanging on the side of the wardrobe. He let his head sink back onto the pillow and pulled the covers up to his chin. It had definitely been a dream. He was sure he had taken a taxi back from the Burghölzli. He clearly remembered Dr Zimmermann telephoning for one.
He tried to recapture the sound of Max’s voice, the detail of his face. But in the dream it had been too dark to see clearly. He could recall only a dark figure, stark against the snow. And the voice, had that really been Max’s? Kirsch was no longer sure he would recognise it if he heard it.
He took the raincoat off the wardrobe and slung it over the back of a chair.
Thirty-five
Later that morning, Kirsch sat down at the desk in his hotel room and wrote a letter to Alma. It was not the ideal form of communication, given what he had to say. But he was not at all sure, given her father’s illness, when he would see her again; and it seemed wrong to summon her specially to Berlin just to break off their engagement. In a letter, at least, he could give her a clear explanation. He could set out the argument without fear of interruption; so that she could see for herself that a break was in her best interests. It was a cowardly choice, but no other was left to him. He had already waited far too long. And why? Because, for all that time, voices in his head had told him that his feelings for Mariya were not real. They were a passing fad, a fantasy constructed in the convenient void of her amnesia. But as a truer picture of Mariya began to take form, he had come to see that it was his love of Alma that lacked substance. He had yearned for the idea of her: clean, wholesome and undaunted, like the sun in a cloudless sky.
He addressed the envelope first: the easy part. Then he began to draft, making three false starts before half a page was written. With each new attempt, his explanations, rather than becoming more solid and coherent, seemed to disconnect and disintegrate. I have an illness, he wrote, from which it is more than possible that I shall not recover. He did not say what the illness was. It is doubtful that we would be able to have children. He was not, in any case, the man to make her happy, he said. She would see that very clearly in time. He did not talk about love. Love, he knew, would only confuse the matter. All the same, without it, everything he wrote sounded hollow and false, as if it had been dictated by someone else.
He looked at his watch. It was time to go. He placed the letter unfinished in the envelope, and left the envelope on the desk. He would finish it later or, more likely, start again from scratch. By the time he had reached the lobby he had decided not to write a letter at all. He would make a special journey to Oranienburg on his return, and explain himself face to face. It was the least Alma could expect.
Unfortunately, while Kirsch was away, the chambermaid took the letter and gave it to the concierge who affixed a stamp and sent it out with the rest of the mail, making the appropriate addition to Kirsch’s bill. Kirsch did not discover what had happened until his return.
By the time he arrived at the Burghölzli, the sun had begun to break through the clouds, making rafts of white light on the surface of the lake. But inside the conservatory it was gloomy, the glass roof being covered by a blanket of snow. On one side, several panes had been smashed, shards of glass framing the sky like broken fangs. Only there did the sunlight shine through.
Eduard was tending a row of shrubs in earthenware pots, tying lengths of rag around the ends of the branches. He wore an unbuttoned overcoat over a red dressing gown and a pair of pyjamas. His hair flopped untidily over his forehead.
‘Camellias. See, they’ve already started to open.’ He showed Kirsch a sliver of pink petal, peeping through the folds of a waxy green bud. ‘One hard frost and they’ll be ruined.’
His breath made clouds in the air.
‘We should go inside,’ Kirsch said. ‘You’ll catch a chill out here.’
Eduard began to wrap up the bud. ‘I didn’t think you were that kind of doctor. Are you qualified for general practice?’
‘I was a surgeon before I was a psychiatrist.’
‘Really? Why did you stop?’
Kirsch hunched his shoulders. Eduard’s mood was combative. It had caught him off balance.
‘Does there have to be a reason?’
‘Now that’s an interesting question. Does the human mind belong to the world of classical physics or quantum physics? Is there an unambiguous reason for every thought and desire? Or can they arise spontaneously?’
‘Let’s say I needed a change.’
‘You don’t have to tell me, if it’s a secret.’ Eduard carried on wrapping up the bud, splitting the end of the rag and securing it with a knot. ‘I stopped because I didn’t like the cadavers. After a few dissections I started dreaming about them. And that terrible smell. Even formaldehyde can’t hide it. I expect you know what I mean.’
‘Yes.’
‘I could never get rid of it. It was as if it had seeped into my brain, into my mind. I could smell it on my pillow when I went to bed. And on other people, living people. That’s why I began to stay away from them. I didn’t want that smell on me.’
At the front they used to store the dead in the nearest available cellar until they were ready for removal. But during the big offensives against the Russians the cellars would always fill up – though they laid the bodies on top of each other, three deep – and they would have to make do with tents. The orderlies wrapped up the corpses if there were spare sheets available. Otherwise they simply dressed them again and placed sacks over their heads. Either way, the sickly smell always found its way back to the field hospital within a day or two. In no time the whole placed smelled of death, and no amount of chlorine or phenol would cover it. As more wounded men were brought in, they could see the crows and the ravens lined up along the roof. Eduard was right: once you had lived with that smell, you never forgot it. The olfactory imprint was permanent, and any reminder of the time or place would bring it back with sudden repulsive force.
‘When it comes to the mind, I veer towards the quantum view myself,’ Eduard was saying. ‘Isn’t thought composed of electricity? And aren’t electrons quanta? At any rate, I don’t believe the operations of the brain are purely mechanical. Cause and effect. Tick tock. There’s more to it than that.’
‘You mean, there’s the soul.’
Eduard tut-tutted. ‘Turning to the supernatural won’t get us anywhere. One simply swaps one set of unanswered questions for another.’
‘Then what did you mean?’
Eduard fingered a camellia leaf. The tip had turned yellow. Soon it would fall. ‘The difficulty is one of language. In the quantum world there are things for which we have no words: objects that crystallise in time and space only when observed; position and form that exist potentially but not actually. Human language doesn’t recognise such spectral states of being. An object can’t be in more than one place at a time. It exists or it doesn’t exist. But that’s not the quantum world – which is what all the others are made of. Niels Bohr said when it comes to atoms, the only language that’s any use is the language of poetry.’
By now Kirsch was shivering. ‘I have some questions, Herr Einstein. I hope you don’t mind.’
Eduard reached into his pocket for another piece of rag. He tried to tear off a strip, but the material twisted in his hands. ‘Have you got a penknife on you? Or scissors?’
Kirsch kept a penknife in his top pocket, mainly for sharpening pencils. It had an ivory handle, yellowed with age. He hesitated, then took it out, folding out the blade before handing it over.
‘It doesn’t matter. I can guess why you stopped being a surgeon.’ Eduard weighed the penknife in his hand. ‘There’s something about cutting into the dead. The desecration. At the anatomy classes people used to laugh and give them nicknames – the cadavers, I mean. Good morning, Kasper; good evening, Molly. Only so much meat, they used to say, like a butcher’s shop, only not so fresh. We used to keep them in a cold store, but it wasn’t cold enough in the summer. I used to dream they came back, all blackened and mangled from the class.’ He tested the blade against the palm of his hand. ‘I expect it’s different with living specimens. I suppose they can’t come back to haunt you if they’re still alive.’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’
‘Unless they die right there on the table.’ Eduard folded the rag tight over the blade, and pulled down on it until it tore. ‘It must be a terrible thing, to have someone’s life in your hands. Suppose you make a mistake?’ He reached for another camellia bud, rubbing his thumb over the surface. ‘Why don’t you sit down, Doctor? You look pale.’
There were several canvas deckchairs stacked up against the back wall. Kirsch considered fetching one, but then it came home to him how peculiar it would look, him sitting while Eduard was on his feet. As Dr Bonhoeffer would have said, such things undermined the bedrock of the patient–doctor relationship.
‘I knew you’d come back,’ Eduard said. ‘You want to talk about Mariya again, don’t you?’
‘If that’s all right.’
‘Oh yes. I like talking about Mariya. It helps me remember her. She’s pretty, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘And so clever too, though it isn’t obvious when you first meet her. When you meet her, she seems merely innocent. Like a visitor from a better world. You feel embarrassed that your own world isn’t like that, because it should be.’
‘Your mother said Mariya was suggestible and easily led.’
Eduard sniffed. ‘My mother’s ashamed.’
‘Of what?’
Eduard turned his back and walked on to the next plant, stooping to smell a bloom, though it had not yet opened.
‘Eduard?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s like I said: the world isn’t how it should be. That’s all I meant.’
Kirsch reached for a cigarette and lit it. He needed the facts. The cause and effect. Stick to that.
‘When we talked before, you didn’t tell me that Mariya had been a patient here. Why was that?’
‘I thought you knew.’ Eduard went back to work. ‘I put her in a story, you know. You might say she was my muse.’
Kirsch watched Eduard cut into another length of rag. He was glad he hadn’t sharpened the blade in a while. ‘Dr Zimmermann told me about your book.’
Outside, two workmen dressed in overalls came around the side of the building, carrying a ladder between them. They stopped outside the conservatory. The man in front peered through the glass.
‘It’s set in a psychiatric hospital,’ Eduard said.
‘So I understand.’
‘It’s about a psychiatrist who falls in love with a patient.’
With a loud bang the workmen leant their ladder against the side of the conservatory.
‘That’s an interesting premise,’ Kirsch said. ‘Why does he do that?’
‘Why does anyone fall in love? Because they find someone who can give them what they want, or what they need. Someone who can set them free.’
‘I see. And how does it end?’
‘Not happily, I’m afraid. Endings have to be credible or the reader feels cheated. There’s nothing like an unlikely ending to spoil a good story. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Why should I mind?’
Eduard began wrapping another bud. ‘Perhaps it’s a quantum story, Doctor. Prose instead of poetry. Have you thought of that?’
Kirsch tapped the ash from his cigarette into an empty flower pot. Eduard was playing with him, trying to keep him off-balance. No doubt he had played the same games with Mariya. It was his way of having fun, an outlet for his warped and restless brilliance.
‘What about you, Eduard? Is that the real reason you came here, to research a book?’
‘Research is important. For the setting. The setting has to be convincing too. Readers expect it nowadays. The willing suspension of disbelief – that’s what they call it. You need it to make your readers believe.’
‘And what about Mariya? Why did she come here?’
Eduard didn’t answer. Once again he seemed too absorbed in protecting his precious camellias. The buds were wrapped up now like small bandaged fists, waving pugnaciously in t
he air.
One of the workmen outside was holding the ladder. The other had climbed it. All that could be seen of him were his feet and ankles.
‘That’s Hermann,’ Eduard said, without looking up. ‘Manic depressive disorder. Sometimes they let him come and listen to me play the piano. Inordinately fond of Schubert. Likes Mozart too, but I have to be careful or he starts dancing around.’
A small cascade of snow fell from the roof. A column of sunlight parted the gloom. Hermann’s face appeared above them, a mask of concentration, his tongue sticking out between his lips. Kirsch took in the stubble, the slack jaw, the village-idiot haircut.
‘They’re afraid the glass roof will cave in,’ Eduard explained, ‘especially now it’s been damaged. It happened once before, a few years ago, when the snow got too thick.’
For the first time Kirsch noticed that the frame of the conservatory was creaking. ‘Tell me more about your writing,’ he said. ‘Do you show it to people?’
‘Not usually.’
‘What about some of the other students your mother taught?’
Eduard shook his head.
‘But I heard you got on very well with them. Fräulein Anka Streim, for one, and Maja Schucan. You definitely played for them. And you went out dancing.’
It had all been in Eduard’s file: how Eduard would come in at the end of the lessons and give short recitals. Mileva had encouraged him. She was proud of her younger son and anxious that he should not sink into introspection and depression as he had at university. Generally, her pupils found Eduard charming. He accompanied them on outings and evenings out. But then his behaviour had begun to deteriorate. Instances of jealousy and ‘inappropriate conduct’ put an end to any prospect of romance.
Eduard shrugged.
The Einstein Girl Page 27