I stood in the kitchen with the knife in my hand, hesitating on the threshold of that bleak new existence. That was how things were when Zoltán Draganović walked in from the yard.
He stood looking at me, at first shocked, then affronted, then amused, all three emotions jostling for pre-eminence in his stupefied brain.
‘What’s all this?’ he spluttered finally. Then his eyes narrowed and I could see he was trying to explain to himself what might lie behind this unexpected hostility. ‘Have you been talking to your sister? What’s she been telling you?’
What might she have told me, if she had still been alive? Or if I had been unselfish enough to ask her? I could imagine well enough, now that it was too late. But I could not bring myself to speak of it, even then. Some small part of me still hoped I was wrong.
Zoltán stepped closer. I jabbed the knife towards him, pointing at his throat. One good thrust, I told myself, and he would bleed to death like a slaughtered lamb. I fought to find that last ounce of willpower. But the thought of my own guilt, of my silent complicity in Senka’s fate, left me weak.
Zoltán sensed that the moment of danger was past. He laughed as I waved the knife in front of him.
‘This is my house,’ he said, holding his arms wide. ‘If you want it, you’ll have to take it.’ He swaggered towards me, offering his chest as a target, daring me to attack.
I told him I did not want his house. But I could not say out loud what I did want: to change the past and stay at my sister’s side so that no harm could come to her; to hear her laughing as she climbed up into the branches of an apple tree, or sit with her in the orchard and share again the whispered confidences of our childhood; above all, to know that her trust in me had not been misplaced. But all these things were now beyond me and even Zoltán’s death would not bring them within reach.
‘Then what do you want, young lady?’ he said. ‘What’s got you all in a stew?’ He put his head on one side, as if I were an interesting puzzle to which he was beginning at last to perceive a solution. ‘Maybe your sister’s got you a little jealous.’
Before I could reply, he snatched at the knife, which I pulled away just fast enough to cut him along the palm of his hand. He screamed and struck me in the face so hard I fell against the table. My head swam and I could taste the blood in my mouth. He pushed me back and down, then with one arm lifted my legs clean off the floor so that I fell back onto the table, the same kitchen table where my sister’s body had been stretched out only hours before. Then his weight was on top of me, such weight that I thought would crush the life out of me. The lantern above the table was swinging back and forth so that the whole room seemed to sway. Zoltán spoke all the while, saying he would not have troubled with my sister if he’d known I was game for it; and more things besides that I would not hear. For even as I struggled, I found myself withdrawing from that place and time, retreating into an oblivion where nothing could touch me, where there were no consequences and no dreadful realisations, because there was no knowledge. From this insensible place I could watch the man and the woman wrestling with each other on a table beneath the light of a swaying lantern – and see only that. The man had no name, nor the woman either. And the table was just a table; and the lantern threw shadows over them so that it was hard to tell if their embraces were the embraces of lovers or of mortal enemies locked in a fight to the death. It was only afterwards, when I awoke and found myself alone, that the bitter truth became clear to me and I realised what my weakness and guilt had cost me.
I was scarce on my feet when Maja Lukić returned. She must have guessed what had happened. She wrapped me up in a coat, picked up my suitcase and took me straight away to her house, going the back way. I was in no state to question her choice, but of course she was afraid we should be seen on the main street even though it was almost nightfall. Later the injustice of this made me angry. But Maja Lukić was not an ignorant woman. She knew well the little place in which she lived, and that a woman’s honour once lost, however unjustly, could never be regained. Such are the primitive cruelties of the place where I grew up, where men profess their devotion to modernity and the blessings of enlightenment (who will not travel by steam train, or avail themselves of the best medicine, or electrify their homes when they can?) but leave their hearts in the past, among the shadows of superstition. How well do I understand your impatience with that foolish, rotten old world and your need to be free of it!
I doubt if Maja Lukić shared these opinions, but her concern for me was real. She determined that it would be best if I made my escape from the village as soon as possible. She told me she had thought for some time that Zoltán was not in his right mind, and that she had come close to quitting her position as housekeeper more than once. She feared Zoltán might rather kill me than have me level accusations against him. She gave me all the money she had in the house and sent me to Belgrade the next day, armed with a hastily written letter of introduction to a relative by marriage. I did not argue with her. I did not know where else to go. I could not remain in Orlovat; and without Zoltán’s money I could not continue my studies in Zagreb. I also had it in my mind that he would seek me out there. In short, my state of mind was such that rational decisions were best left to others. Even my memory became unreliable; so that on more than one occasion I awoke not knowing where I was, thinking Senka – and even my mother – were still alive and that the family I once belonged to still existed.
Svetlana Lukić was the sister of Maja’s dead husband. She owned a small dress shop close to Saint Sava’s cathedral and was at heart a kind woman, although somewhat prim and set in her ways. Her principal fondness was for cats, which was unfortunate, for she could not afford to keep any in the house in case they left their fur on the dresses or clawed the fabric. Instead, she would feed the strays that lived in the grounds of the cathedral.
I did my best to help around the shop. I had no skill with a needle, but was able to assist in the ordering of her accounts, which were in such a shambles that any tax inspector would have had her at his mercy. Then, after a month or so, I set about looking for a teaching position which I found with ease, there being a great shortage of female teachers in the fields of mathematics. In the years that followed I tried as best I could to continue my own education. Thanks to the intervention of a tutor at Zagreb, I was granted access to several of the most important academic libraries, and was even able to attend certain lectures at the university of Belgrade, which fed my appetite for physics and the many startling discoveries in that field. I do not suppose my efforts at self-tuition were any substitute for a proper degree, but the rigours involved in following this science and the contemplation of its mysteries did much to bring me peace in those times, even if that peace was incomplete.
But I am letting my account run ahead of itself. There is more I must tell you of that torrential spring when my sister died, though it is hard. Besides myself I believe only Maja Lukić knows everything. Soon you shall know too. You must, or my long journey here will have been for nothing. You see, I offer you my long-guarded secrets in hope of receiving one from you in return. This is what I ask of you and only this.
I was still staying with Svetlana when I began to receive letters from Maja Lukić. I opened them always with a heavy heart, knowing that they would contain tidings of people and things I wanted only to forget, saving of course my poor sister. Maja informed me that Senka’s body had been removed to Novi Sad, the provincial capital, and buried in the Draganović family plot. To this day I wonder why Zoltán went to the trouble. I can only suppose he was concerned to keep up appearances. Now that his daughter was dead, he could afford her all the honours in the world and receive the world’s sympathy into the bargain. I wished I could have been there for that final farewell, but what I wished even more was that she had been laid to rest elsewhere and in better company.
It became clear to me that, just as I had felt some responsibility for Senka’s fate, so Maja Lukić felt some responsibility
for mine. From her letters, awkward but sincere, I could see that she was tormented with guilt. Perhaps my scant replies deepened those feelings, for she became ever more desperate to set my mind at ease. In this vein she began to hint, then suggest, then assert as if it were a matter of record that Zoltán Draganović was not my father. She repeated something I had once heard from my grandmother about my mother having had a baby before me who had fallen sick with scarlet fever. I had all but forgotten this story, assuming it to be some fancy of my childhood. As far as the world was concerned, I was the first-born. I had gone down with the fever at six months old, but recovered. That was the end of the matter. But Maja Lukić told a different tale.
She had been working in our house at the time and saw the first-born child close to death. My mother, she said, was in a dreadful state and inconsolable. Then Maja had been sent away for a fortnight or more. No one was given admittance to the house, not even the priest, which was unusual; for when a child was thought likely to die it was the common practice to bring forward the Christening so as to make safe its soul. When Maja was eventually permitted to take up her duties again, she found the child as right as rain – except that it was not the same child. ‘This baby was older by two months at least,’ she wrote. ‘She had a rounder face and darker eyes.’ In her opinion, there was only one explanation: I had been adopted in secret, either to compensate my mother in her grief, or because Zoltán was afraid he might otherwise have no children at all. On the other hand, she had no idea where I might have come from, or whose child I truly was.
Maja Lukić was afraid that I might be upset or insulted by this revelation, even after what had happened. It was one thing not to be my father’s child; quite another not to be my mother’s also. But when I read that letter, it was as if a puzzle I had been grappling with all my life had suddenly been solved. For years I had felt like an outsider in the Draganović family. Here at last was the reason. It came as a shock to have my feelings so suddenly and decisively confirmed. But it was also a comfort, more than even Maja Lukić could know.
I could, I suppose, have demanded that Zoltán tell me the truth. But nothing would induce me to contact him, let alone reveal to him my whereabouts. Finally, some nine years later, I received word from Orlovat that he was dead of a stroke. His lawyer came from Novi Sad to settle his affairs, but could find no will, except for the one that he had drawn up before my mother’s death. There being no other surviving kin, I was informed that the residue of the estate, once certain creditors had been satisfied, would fall to me. The value was more than I had expected, for, although Zoltán regularly drank the proceeds of his meagre pension and the rents that came in from his land, the land itself had remained in his possession. In addition, he had left certain family effects, as well as the house.
I returned to Orlovat to take possession of the estate. I made certain sales of land for a fair price and then turned my attention to the house. I had put off the task of going through Zoltán’s papers, but was advised that the job was a necessary one, and so finally sat down to do it. Everything was in a chaotic state, and I was tempted to put the whole lot on the fire. But then I came across a number of notes from his bank in Novi Sad, going back more than ten years. In each case the bank informed my father that funds had been received from a bank in Zürich. Three times a year moneys had been sent from a Frau Einstein-Marić – enough to pay for a university education. Furthermore, the payments had ceased around the time I had abandoned my studies and gone to live in Belgrade.
You may imagine how curious this made me. I remembered Aunt Helene’s taciturn companion, and the effect her presence in the house always had on my mother and father. More particularly, I remembered what I had learned subsequently of her achievements and her fame. It was at that moment, sitting alone in the very room where Frau Einstein had once sat as our visitor, that I dared to believe Maja Lukić’s story.
A few weeks later, I sought out Aunt Helene in Belgrade. I had not seen her for many years, but she remembered me and offered me her condolences on the death of my father. I told her that due to my changed circumstances, I now intended to continue my studies abroad. I asked her where I should go and if she could suggest where I might gain the necessary tuition in mathematics and physics such that I might re-enter the academic world. She greeted my enquiry thoughtfully and, I thought, with some pleasure. In due course, as I knew she would, she suggested I go to Zürich, and seek out a teacher known to her there. I need hardly tell you who that teacher was.
I did not tell Aunt Helene the truth, or at least not the whole truth. I should have liked nothing better than to study again. I have dreamed of grappling with those strange and beautiful riddles once again, of striving for the final and absolute enlightenment which I know now occupies you. To win that prize, if it can be won, will surely prove the crowning achievement of mankind. Nothing could be more important or worthwhile. But my purpose in travelling to Zürich, my purpose in coming to Berlin, is simpler: to discover my parentage and learn, once and for all, if Maja Lukić’s story is true. I believe only you can help me. Those others that could speak, I am certain, will not do so while you remain silent. Such is the hold you have over them. It seems you are twice blessed: not only with the power to command men’s minds but also their loyalty and love – a consequence that flows, I have no doubt, not only from your very great wisdom, but from goodness and kindness too. So it is with confidence that I place myself in your hands, safe in the knowledge that to you, of all men, the perpetuation of a lie is an intolerable thing, however convenient its continuation may be to men of narrower vision and lesser principle.
Forty-seven
Le Coq sur Mer, Belgium, April 1933
The sun beats down through a film of haze, making the shadows pale. The sea is a dead, unnatural calm, the horizon melted into a white sky. From the veranda of the Villa Savoyarde Albert Einstein watches one of the detectives pace the water’s edge. His name is Gilbert and he spends most of his time patrolling the beach and the tall dunes that surround the villa. An assassin might attempt to land by boat, he explained to Elsa one morning. Besides that, he has said very little. Mainly he smokes cigarettes and stares at the trawlers as they chug up and down, fishing for grey shrimp. Beyond them, in the far distance, the ferries can just be seen slipping out of Ostend harbour on their way to England.
Another detective is always in the house. His name is Flemish and therefore unpronounceable. He sits in the hall, accepting cups of coffee and watching the driveway. Whenever visitors appear, he leaps to his feet, challenging anyone he does not recognise. The locals in Le Coq have been asked to feign ignorance when questioned about Einstein’s whereabouts, but this has had little effect. Every day more and more people come wandering along the beach, some affecting nonchalance, others blatantly rubbernecking or snapping photographs. Both Gilbert and his colleague have become noticeably edgier. They frequently check their revolvers and make hushed phone calls to their superiors about the lack of a viable perimeter. There have been altercations in the dunes with reporters and a newsreel camera crew, not to mention several delegations of academics. Less than three weeks in situ and the sense of siege is palpable. Elsa spends hours upstairs, locked in her bedroom. There can be no question that this refuge, provided gratis by the King of Belgium, will be purely temporary. Nazi Germany is too near, its reach too long. Working here has become impossible.
Einstein’s private secretary, Fräulein Dukas, a plain, thin woman with raven hair, looks up from her shorthand notebook. Einstein has paused mid-dictation: a letter to Lord Rutherford concerning the upcoming visit to Britain. Memorial lectures at Oxford and Glasgow. Rutherford needs to confirm the dates.
Without having to be asked, Fräulein Dukas reads back the last line: ‘I hope to arrive in Dover no later than May twenty-sixth …’
Normally the diary is her affair. She knows her employer’s commitments and obligations by heart, and those of his wife. But there are some commitments she cannot schedule
for him, some obligations only he can evaluate.
A trip to Zürich is long overdue. He promised to visit in May. But for how long should he stay? Three days? Four? Elsa wants him to stay at a hotel, but that would be churlish and needlessly proper. Mileva has a perfectly adequate guest room in her Huttenstrasse apartment. On the other hand, there is a danger that she will bring Eduard back from the Burghölzli so as to maximise their time together. Father and son will play musical duets, which will be painless, and converse on the subjects of psychiatry and literature, which will not be. He will avoid talk of final farewells. He has been careful never to say anything to the press about settling in America permanently. His public comments about the Land of the Free have been disparaging. All the same, he longs to bid farewell to the complications of the old world once and for all, to set down the burden of caring about it, publicly or privately. The old world, like his old life, is a distraction, an itch he cannot quite reach. The thought of putting an ocean between it and him is more attractive every day.
Three days and three nights. More than that and Mileva’s good humour wears thin. Resentments surface. Her pleasure and pride at seeing him is gradually superseded by her innate sense of grievance. Mileva the martyr. No encounter is complete without some allusion to broken promises or neglect. In that sense their younger son is the perfect weapon, a living reproof. Two years ago she turned up unannounced in Berlin at the wedding of Elsa’s daughter, bearing bad tidings about Eduard’s mental state. But the madness doesn’t come from his side of the family. Just look at her sister, Zorka. She’s been in and out of psychiatric hospitals most of her adult life. Now she lives alone in Novi Sad in a house with forty cats.
Three days and two nights. That should be enough.
The Einstein Girl Page 34