The Einstein Girl

by Philip Sington

  ‘There’s no need to swoon on my account.’ Einstein’s face was close to hers. His breath smelled of tar. ‘I assure you, I think no less of a lady who prefers to be fully conscious when making love.’

  The glasses went over, smashing on the floor. Elisabeth Einstein. I am Elisabeth Einstein. I am Lieserl. Your daughter. She remembers screaming the words in her mind. But out loud?

  Blackness then. She has searched for the moment, but nothing comes back to her. She remembers only a taste of blood in her mouth. No idea how it got there.

  ‘Cunning little slut.’

  He had a spray of blood on his white tennis shirt, just above his heart.

  They were outside on the roof terrace. She saw the rowing boat bobbing up and down by the shore. Einstein’s hand was around her arm. His grip was strong: a sailor’s grip. Like a claw.

  ‘Who put you up to this?’

  She broke away, reached the top of the steps, but she could feel him at her back. Then she was falling, arms reaching out into the yawning void. She must have somersaulted most of the way down. Pain lanced through the panic. She remembers asking: have I broken my arm? Her hands were peeled and bleeding.

  The staircase shook beneath her. He was coming down, heavy footfalls pounding on the wood.

  Then in the rowing boat, her heart beating so fast she could hardly catch a breath, looking back at the house: no sign of Einstein, no sign of anyone. Where had he gone? Then the chill water welling up around her feet. Sinking. She would drown in those heavy clothes. They would drag her down like a leaden shroud. But what if he saw her swimming for it? What if he had been following her along the shore? She had to make more distance. She had to get out of sight.

  The sun was long gone. The water was the colour of slate, the surface turning choppy in the stiffening breeze. She tore at her clothes, retching up water as the boat fell away beneath her. The last thing she remembers was the shock of cold as her head ducked beneath the surface, a fleeting dread as she felt herself falling from the light.

  A telephone rings. Mariya looks up. The old man who works behind the front desk comes towards her. Nearly all the staff at the Queen Maria seem too old for their positions.

  ‘Miss Draganović?’

  She nods.

  ‘There’s a car for you outside.’

  She peers out at the street. The boy with the spinning top has gone. Instead there is a motor car, black and shiny. Someone is waiting in the back, smoking a pipe.

  The houses in Novi Sad are like the houses in Belgrade, only older. Time and gravity have pulled them out of shape, robbing them of perpendicularity and, in the process, their dignity. The streets are broad, treeless and empty. The inhabitants of Novi Sad are mostly indoors, Kirsch supposes, taking refuge from the heat. As he rides towards the middle of town, he imagines them watching him from behind their flaking shutters.

  A horse-drawn wagon, loaded high with beer barrels, is partially blocking the road. His driver moves to overtake, slowing to a crawl. Coming the other way, another motor car does the same. Both vehicles slow to a crawl. As they pass, Kirsch sees Mariya seated in the back beside an elderly gentleman in a black broad-brimmed hat.

  At first he isn’t surprised. These days, when he thinks of Mariya, it often happens that she appears before him, at least for a few seconds. The same thing happened during the last year of the war, with the spectres of dead men. He has seen Mariya jump onto a moving tram; he has seen her hurrying along a crowded platform. He has seen her reflection many times in shop windows. Then, with a jolt to the heart, it comes to him what he is seeing. The sights and sounds of the present rush in. And she has vanished.

  But this time she does not vanish. She turns her head, looks directly at him. He smiles at her. She does not smile back. The look on her face is one of shock, as if this time she is the living one, the one of flesh and blood, and he is the lifeless apparition.

  As they move off, the elderly gentleman leans forward, curious to share whatever it is that’s so interesting to his companion. Kirsch sees his face.

  He insisted she call him Albert. So far, though, she has not called him anything, because she doesn’t know what to say. It doesn’t seem to matter. Professor Einstein seems content with the occasional nod of her head, a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. After the first incoherent moments she has even detected a hint of euphoria in his demeanour: in his voice and the way he puffs appreciatively on his pipe, as if a burden has been lifted. He is apparently unsure of her reaction at meeting him again, and is relieved to find her cooperative. There was a misunderstanding in Berlin, he says, for which he intends to make reparations before his departure for America. He does not refer to her amnesia, either because he has not been told about it or because he does not believe it to be genuine. He thanks her courteously for taking the time to travel from Orlovat. He knows it’s a tiresome journey, he says, the Serbian roads being what they are. It’s as if they’re old friends.

  A stranger in a double-breasted suit is driving. His close-set eyes watch her in the mirror – eyes, she feels sure, that have watched her before.

  ‘Who is he?’ Mariya asks, quietly so as not to be overheard.

  ‘That’s de Vries. Don’t worry about him. His purpose is mainly counter-gravitational.’

  ‘Counter-gravitational?’

  ‘He carries my luggage.’

  Up ahead, a wagon rolls out into the road. The driver brakes. They are on the corner of Kisacka Street, halfway to the railway station. Another taxi is coming the other way. There is barely room for the two of them to pass.

  Kirsch tells the driver to stop, but the driver doesn’t understand. He thinks Kirsch is complaining about the route. ‘They dig here,’ he says, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder, then makes circling gestures with his hand. ‘Go round.’

  Out of the back window Kirsch sees Mariya’s taxi pick up speed again, throwing up eddies of dust.

  ‘That way.’

  He points after it, but the driver shakes his head. That’s not the way to the Hotel Queen Maria. He points his chin at the road ahead, sounding his horn, as if that will get them there quicker.

  Kirsch hesitates. What good will it do to follow her? Mariya no longer needs his help. She has found her father; or he has found her. They will not be separated again. She and her daughter will go with him to America, where there will be no need for secrets. And it will be a painless emigration, because they have no ties left to sever.

  Kirsch plants a hand on the driver’s shoulder. The driver jams on the brakes.

  ‘That way,’ he says. ‘Follow.’

  The driver curses and does a U-turn. Mariya’s taxi turns right into a side street. A woman carrying a basket watches it go by.

  ‘There. That way!’

  But the driver has had enough. He pulls over, orders Kirsch out. The lunatic foreigner can walk, as far as he is concerned. Kirsch grabs his suitcase. There are no other taxis in sight, no traffic at all. He has no choice but to continue on foot.

  A rusty iron sign on the corner reads Almaska. The street is narrow, the house fronts dilapidated and sooty. Not a street that leads anywhere. Maybe this is as far as they’re going. Maybe this is Mariya’s final destination.

  A hundred and fifty yards away, he can see a church surrounded by trees, a tall baroque affair with a sloping red roof and a white bell tower. He runs on, looking for a hotel sign, a school, anything that makes sense, but there are only houses, a bakery with its shutters down, rusting iron balconies and peeling paint – and the church.

  Births, marriages and deaths. What can they want in a church? Then it comes to him: churches have records. The church is where they give you your name. Is this where Mariya was given hers?

  But what does it matter now? Some old ritual, ancient and useless. What would Albert Einstein care about that? Maybe Mariya needs a visa to go to America. Maybe the Americans want proof of who she really is.

  Kirsch leans against a doorway. The running has left him breathless a
nd giddy. Barking erupts from within. Canine paws scamper across the flagstones. The door jolts, iron bolts rattling.

  Almaska Street opens out into a tiny square. The church stands in a graveyard with iron railings surrounding it. A breeze stirs the trees. At the far corner of the square, a man in an apron is winding down an awning. The screw makes a squeaking sound. Kirsch has never been here in his life, but something about it feels familiar. It occurs to him, just for an instant, that he is dreaming again, that none of this is real. That’s when he sees them through the gates of the churchyard, walking among the headstones: Albert Einstein and his first-born child.

  He stops. This time Mariya does not look up. Her father is speaking and she is listening intently. What is he saying? What is he explaining? Kirsch wishes he could hear. He wants her to know that he came, if only to bid her a final farewell.

  Then he spots the other car. It’s parked on the other side of the road, the engine running. A short, thickset man stands a few yards away, lighting a cigarette. He looks up and down the street. His demeanour, his way of standing, his face – everything is strangely familiar, but at first Kirsch can’t place it.

  The reporter. The one he saw with Robert Eisner. The one he saw hanging around outside the clinic. What’s he doing here?

  Kirsch checks his pace. The reporter must be here for Einstein. What else would bring him all this way? But how has he found his man? How did he know where to look?

  Then I did see someone watching the house … a rough-looking man with a florid complexion and a hard, steady gaze. He was there when I returned, inside the cemetery, moving aimlessly from stone to stone.

  Mariya has been followed and the trail has led to Albert Einstein. Was that blind good luck? Or was it envisaged, anticipated, planned for?

  Who would make such a plan? Who had the patience, the data, the means? Not a humble reporter. Not a man who worked for a newspaper. But perhaps a man who worked for the state. A secret policeman, a spy.

  They could have stopped Mariya from leaving Germany, but they had let her go. Kirsch comes to a halt. Suddenly it’s clear. Mariya was no use to them in Germany. Einstein would never return to the Reich. But in Vojvodina, a place he once knew, he might think himself safe. He might drop his guard. The Einstein girl is bait, and hook.

  And now he is here too. Just in time to witness the assassination of Albert Einstein.

  The stranger’s gaze fixes on him. His eyes narrow in puzzlement, or is it disgust? In that moment the last doubts evaporate. Propelled by Destiny, Kirsch starts to run, not away from the assassin, but towards him.

  Hans de Vries recognises Martin Kirsch a few seconds after Kirsch recognises him, and after an instant of rushed reflection, reaches the same conclusion. Kirsch is ambitious and mentally unstable – a man, as they say, on a short fuse. His jealous and obsessive focus on the Draganović case has been noted and suggests a degree of opportunism unusual in his profession. For an opportunist, the presence of Albert Einstein in Novi Sad might well be too good to ignore: it offers still further advancement, care of the new regime, not to mention fifty thousand Reichsmarks if the pro-Nazi newspapers pay up. All he has to do is kill Albert Einstein and escape across the border.

  Any doubts de Vries has about this thesis are buried by the sight of Kirsch breaking into a run – running towards him, jaw clenched, as if bracing for impact. He is no more than thirty feet away when de Vries reaches inside his jacket. The Walther PPK is not there. It comes to him that he has left the pistol in the glove compartment. Three days of playing valet and chauffeur to Professor Einstein have dulled his sensitivity to danger. The scientist seems oblivious to the possibility of attack, exhibits such Olympian confidence it’s hard to remain vigilant.

  De Vries is standing on the driver’s side of the car, the wrong side. Maybe if he makes a dive for it. He yanks open the door, knows at once it’s a mistake. Kirsch slams against it, pinning him against the frame. De Vries can’t get a purchase. He can’t push back. Suddenly there are bells – heavy, clamorous bells – not in his head but above him. In the church the ringers are practising. Kirsch’s spectacles have come off. They hang comically from one ear. He slams the door again, harder. De Vries feels a rib crack, and screams.

  He staggers. Kirsch has let go of the door. He steps back and aims a punch, connecting with the side of de Vries’s head. It smacks off the roof of the car like a bony football.

  Albert stops halfway to the south door and looks around, as if trying to get his bearings.

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ he says. ‘Mileva showed me once, but I’m not sure …’

  He points his pipe first one way, then another, then grunts in apparent satisfaction and heads off around the bell tower, which shines a brilliant shade of white in the hazy sunshine. The churchyard is small but orderly, with yews and broad-leafed trees standing at intervals among the stones. Flowers, some weathered and brown, speak of quiet communions between the living and the dead.

  They walk on for fifty yards.

  ‘There it is,’ Albert says. ‘This is it.’

  He leads her to a cluster of stones close to the church wall. The names on the stones read MARIĆ. He points to one of them. A clay vase of peonies stands at the head. Like the stone itself, they look freshly cut.

  ‘This is Milos Marić,’ Albert says. ‘My father-in-law, as was. This is where Mileva would have ended up if she hadn’t …’

  He doesn’t complete the sentence. He doesn’t have to. Mileva had brought dishonour to the family by getting pregnant. In her father’s eyes she turned out no better than a kurva. Then it comes to Mariya what Einstein is saying: I don’t make these rules. They have nothing to do with me.

  Albert turns and walks on a few paces, studying one stone after another. A few yards further on, partly obscured by a sprawling yew, is another family plot. The monuments here are less well maintained: most of the stone is worn and weathered, the wrought-iron crosses pitched over at an angle by the importunate roots below. A simple wooden cross has a small brass plate nailed to the crosspiece. It reads: S.D. It is the only one of the Draganović graves with flowers at the base, though the flowers are withered and brown.

  For Mariya, the Draganović family and the Marić family have been separated by thirty years and a thousand miles. But here, in this graveyard, all that lies between them are a few metres of earth. Here they are neighbours, friends, dust of the same dust – only she was not allowed to know it.

  Albert stares at the wooden cross. ‘Do you know who this is?’

  ‘Do you?’

  Albert digs his hands into his pockets. ‘I forget the first name. What was it?’

  ‘Senka.’

  ‘Ah yes. She drowned. Wasn’t that it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Finally Albert removes his hat. ‘She told me it was you. My ex-wife, I mean. She said Lieserl was dead. Drowned. So when you claimed…’

  ‘Why? Why would she do that?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  Family honour. That’s what he wants to say. All this happened so as to protect the Marić family honour. But the lie would only have been necessary if Albert had threatened to upset matters, to seek out his daughter, to make her existence known to the world. And where is the evidence for that? Perhaps Mileva told her ex-husband that he no longer had a daughter because that was what he wanted to hear. It was one less potential encumbrance, one less earthly tie.

  Albert reaches into his coat and produces an envelope. Mariya knows at once that it contains money. A parting gift. In return for her silence.

  Mariya crouches down to pick up the dead flowers. She left them a few months before, on her way to Switzerland. ‘You never came to see either of us, did you, the way Mileva did? You never made enquiries. Weren’t you even a little curious?’

  Albert shakes his head, puts his hat back on and turns away. For a moment Mariya thinks he’s going to leave her there, but then he looks back. ‘My dear, what on earth was there to be curi
ous about?’ He gestures at the sky, the sun, the light. ‘Compared to this?’

  A grandfather. Mariya has been waiting for the right moment to tell him. This is why I came to find you. This is what I wanted you to know. But now she sees, with diamond clarity, that the right moment will never come.

  Albert is talking again, something about the circumstances and her right to an explanation, but Mariya can’t make it out over the clamour of bells. They are ringing out across the little square, not a melodious peel of celebration, but a stiff, mechanical clanking that shakes the air. Albert holds out the envelope, then leans forward and drops it in her lap. It is then that she sees Martin Kirsch – there is no doubt this time – hurrying towards them through the churchyard.

  It looks to Hans de Vries as if the gutter is swarming with black ants. There are millions of them, a seething mass that covers everything – except that, unlike the ants he has seen before, these have no collective direction, no discernible line of march. These are ants in chaos, purposeful and industrious, but devoid of a guiding purpose, their efforts doomed to counteract and conflict, so that the colony dies. He feels their legs on the back of his hands. He feels their tiny pincers on his arms.

  He forces himself up onto his knees. The car beside him now stands on the slope of a steep hill. He wonders anxiously whether he remembered to put on the handbrake, and if the car will slide away from him before …

  Before what? Then he remembers: before he can recover the pistol, the pistol he needs to shoot Martin Kirsch. He hauls himself to his feet, scrambles across the driver’s seat, flips open the lid of the glove compartment.

  The Walther feels solid and heavy. Simply holding it steadies him. As he climbs out, the car seems to right itself, like a boat coming slowly out of a capsize. He blinks, aware of something sticky in his eye, gumming up the lid. He rubs it. His fingers come away bloody.

  He looks around the square. The church bells are ringing, but there is no one about. Where is Einstein now? How long has he been gone? The idea jumps into his head that they are ringing the bells to mark Einstein’s death. Or perhaps he is not too late, after all. Perhaps they are calling for help.