by Stuart Clark
‘Up, lads! Something’s brewing. The King needs us to be ready for further orders. We’ll eat later.’
He always made it sound as if the monarch himself was waiting on the front line. The rallying effect was immediate. The troops stood and shook the fatigue from their bones. They gathered their things and snaked back through the darkened city, towards the fight.
Out of the gloom came a terrible rumbling, and a frenzied mass of shadows appeared on the road ahead: cavalry.
Lemaître and the others flung themselves from the path moments before they would have been trampled. It was the French cavalry, tearing past in open retreat. No horse had just a single rider; two or three men clung to each charging mount. As the horses galloped, they raised clouds of choking dust that engulfed the Belgians cowering at the roadside.
Lemaître stared at the rout. Then he sneezed. At first he thought it was the dust, but the spasm drove a dagger into his brain and he winced at the sharpness of the pain. There was a pungent smell in the air that made him want to gag. His eyes began to prickle.
Something was terribly wrong.
Behind the frenzied riders came the infantry. They too were charging down the road, shrugging off backpacks and tunics, throwing away their rifles – anything to run faster.
Lemaitre gazed through watering eyes at their dark skins. He had heard that there was an Algerian regiment in the fight, but he had never seen anyone from Africa before.
‘Cowards,’ sneered the man behind him.
One of the Africans ran blindly off the road, careering headlong into the soldiers in front of Lemaître. The men he collided with scattered as though a grenade had landed in their midst, leaving him open to view. He was on his knees, eyes bulging and frothing at the mouth, which was frozen in a silent scream.
Other runners were dropping from the line too, clawing at their eyes and throats, stumbling in the road like wounded pheasants and bringing others crashing down on top of them.
‘It’s poison gas!’ cried someone.
The Belgians panicked. They too were about to become part of the retreat when the commander called out, steely calm, ‘Steady now, lads.’ He led them away from the road and into a meadow, where they trampled on the early crop buds. ‘We wait for orders,’ he said, and sent a runner.
The men looked to each other for courage.
A dispatch cyclist handed over a message. The commander snatched it and struck a match. The long shadows this threw across his face lengthened as he read, and Lemaître was sure some of the colour drained from the man’s face.
The commander called the men around him and addressed them with an air of normality. ‘I know this will come as a disappointment to you, but we’re to return to the town and regroup. The Germans drove a hole in the line using, as many of you have guessed, some kind of poison gas.’
The men gasped, not about the gas but the hole in the line. Lemaître wondered why they were not being sent to defend it.
‘I’m pleased to say the enemy have not made good their advantage. The Canadians have filled the gap and they’re holding. The British are already on the march to come to our aid. We are to return and prepare for an early start. New orders will arrive at dawn.’
The march back was more a laboured plod. There was no attempt at high spirits. When the men reached the outskirts of town they stared incredulously. It seemed that every ambulance and every medic the army possessed had gathered to tend the wounded. The soldiers picked their way through hundreds of victims, maybe thousands. The wounded covered the ground, filling side-streets and intersections, rolling and groaning. Some smoked weedy cigarettes; others cried, their tears clearing lines down their grimy cheeks.
The groans and the agony were as constant as the distant rumble of gunfire and soon became just as easy to ignore. However, Lemaître could not shut out the small whimpers that escaped those who were in despair. He wanted to stay and help, but his body ached everywhere and his head still thumped from the whiff of the gas.
He turned and trudged away with the others, walking through the camp until he found a small knoll. There he had a good view of the eastern horizon and he crouched down to watch in the direction of the enemy. He ate a tasteless meal and discovered that no amount of praying could help him that night. Instead he just waited beneath the silent stars, knees hunched up before him, smoking everything he had in his top pocket.
His eyes swept the black horizon for silver strands of gas.
10
Berlin
The only way Einstein could deal with the city and its inhabitants was to pretend they did not exist. He hurried from place to place, sidestepping the queues outside food shops and taking detours to avoid the parks he had once strolled in for inspiration. Now they were home to show-trenches that demonstrated how cosy it was on the battlefield.
He had caught sight of ladies with their spring bonnets bobbing along at ground level, as if on a carnival ride, and the grinning soldiers guiding them along, all polished buttons and chivalry as they proffered their hands to help the ladies climb the ladders. The sight had been sufficient to engulf him in depression for days. So now he stuck to the roads, back streets if possible, where he could not accidentally overhear the triumphalist war talk.
Yet there was no way of avoiding the soldiers outside the university that afternoon. As he arrived they were milling around a car with its bonnet up. The uniformed driver was leaning in, winged gloves twisting as he made adjustments.
Einstein was about to lower his gaze and hurry past when he saw officers in smart uniforms appear from the university buildings.
One of them looked like – no, one of them was – Fritz Haber. Einstein stared. The chemist was wearing an officer’s uniform, his monocle hanging from a black cord around his neck. He carried a pair of leather gloves in his hand, but his body language was at odds with this image of studied nonchalance. His jaw was set, and he walked self-consciously, as if someone had over-starched the uniform.
Their eyes met. Haber gave the briefest of nods and ducked into the car. The officers followed and the soldiers jumped on the wooden runners. The driver closed the bonnet, revved the car once, and drove it smoothly away.
Inside the building, Einstein found Nernst standing beside the corridor window, head in hands.
‘Walther?’ Einstein rushed over.
The chemist straightened himself and looked away, pulling out a handkerchief and sniffing loudly, trying to compose himself.
‘What’s wrong?’
Nernst looked up through bloodshot eyes. ‘It’s Clara.’
‘Is she ill?’
Nernst shook his head. ‘She’s dead.’
Einstein stopped himself from saying anything trite and gradually coaxed the story out of Nernst.
Haber had returned from Belgium, flushed with the success of the gas attacks. Five thousand Allied soldiers had been extinguished without a shot being fired, and Haber had immediately been recruited at the rank of captain. During a celebratory dinner party he and Clara had fallen into a terrible row, much worse than the one before Christmas. Haber flatly refused to give up the gas research; Clara refused to accept it as anything other than murder.
That night, Clara took Haber’s service revolver from his uniform and crept into the garden. There, in the darkness of the night, she turned the gun on herself and pulled the trigger.
The crack of the gun woke their son, who found his mother on the grass, bleeding from the chest. He had time to lift her head on to his lap before her eyes went as dark as the sky above.
Einstein shook his head in disbelief. ‘But I just saw Fritz outside, getting into an army car.’
Nernst grabbed his arm; the chemist’s whole body was trembling. ‘That’s the worst of it. He’s left for the front again. They’re to carry out more gas attacks, eastern front this time.’
‘So he doesn’t know about Clara?’
‘Oh, he knows.’ Tears sprang to Nernst’s eyes. ‘He knows she’s dead, but he doe
sn’t care.’
*
The shock of Clara’s death and Haber’s disregard for it was like tuberculosis that had taken root in Einstein’s bones. As the sun dropped below the horizon and the day’s lean promise of warmth collapsed, he made his way to Elsa’s.
Numbly, he made a fire and sat looking at the crackling glow. Elsa cleared away the dinner things and came back through. She peered into the half-empty coal scuttle.
‘I’ll buy you more coal, Elsa,’ he said patiently, almost kindly. She settled in her chair and set about knitting a new dishcloth. Ilse glided into the room, preening herself as she did so. She was a taller, slimmer version of her mother. Her thick dark hair was squared off at the jaw and swept back from her face in precisely defined twists.
‘You’ll catch your death of cold,’ said Einstein, looking at the calf-length summer dress she was wearing.
‘No, I won’t.’ Her voice was full of sparkling certainty. She lifted her chin for a final inspection in the mirror over the mantelpiece. ‘And if I do get cold, Georg will lend me his jacket.’ She winked at her younger sister, who was curled up so tightly on the sofa it was easy to miss her.
‘Tell me all about it when you get home?’ asked her sister.
‘I will. Don’t wait up, Mama.’
‘Back before ten, young lady.’
‘Of course.’ Ilse skipped from the apartment, forgetting to close the front door.
‘Margot, go and shut that,’ said Elsa with a bemused grin.
‘Georg Nicolai?’ said Einstein.
‘Yes, you remember him. He wrote that paper no one would sign.’
‘Of course, I remember him. I’m just surprised. I mean, he’s so much older than Ilse.’
Elsa shrugged. ‘He makes her happy. That’s all I care about.’
As the evening wore on, Einstein could see Elsa eyeing the clock. Usually he had made his excuses to leave by now, so that he could calculate for a few hours before falling into bed. But he had no stomach for mathematics tonight. He cleared his throat. ‘I wonder if I might stay here tonight, Elsa?’
Her face lit for a moment before her brow creased. She nodded towards the girls’ room.
‘I’ll sleep on the settee.’
Her face lifted, though not so much out of happiness as contentment.
‘I’d like you to stay,’ she said, and bustled off to fetch the spare blankets.
Some weeks later, Clara’s ashes were sitting on Haber’s mantelpiece. A picture of her as a younger woman had been placed next to the ornate urn. She was holding a letter and looking through her eyelashes at someone out of shot. Einstein studied the picture. The more he looked at it, the more he thought how unhappy she looked.
Haber, back from the east, looked like a stranger in his own home. He wore a black suit and a similar countenance as he exchanged subdued greetings and handshakes with his guests. Einstein watched him, unable to fathom the tightly controlled body language.
As Haber passed by the fireplace he caught sight of the urn and stopped. He touched a finger to the gilded leafwork, and his chest heaved. The next moment, he turned and left the room.
‘Wait here,’ said Einstein to Elsa and set off in pursuit.
Haber was in the hallway, resting on the turned mahogany of the banister, nursing a drink.
‘Would you like to talk?’
‘It’s not true that I didn’t care about her,’ Haber began. ‘You know how infuriating wives can be, but I didn’t want her dead. She screamed at me that night until I couldn’t think straight. Nothing I could say would calm her. She just screamed and screamed at me until I was concerned for her heart. I had to walk away from her in the end. I didn’t know what she was going to do.’ Haber looked desolate; he glanced at the high ceiling and the magnificent cornice. ‘Of course, I’ll never be remembered for the fertiliser now, just the gas. Without me though, this country would have starved already.’
‘Then give up the gas work. Turn your research back to good use.’
‘I can’t turn back now. The military are fully behind the work; I’m part of the chain of command. They’re supplying more money, more staff. They want industrial-scale production: hundreds of men, maybe thousands, working to produce gas. And I’m to find better compounds …’
‘Better?’ Einstein spat out the word.
‘Quicker,’ murmured Haber. They lapsed into silence.
‘Would you stop if you could?’ asked Einstein eventually.
Haber looked into his glass. ‘I haven’t forgotten that we promised you a physics institute to direct.’ He drained the glass and hauled himself up the banister-post. ‘I’d better be getting back.’
The reminder stung Einstein into silence, allowing Haber to return to the mourners.
Einstein and Elsa were halfway home when she turned to him.
‘Will you stay tonight?’
Einstein shook his head. ‘Not tonight.’
‘But why not?’ There was a note of pleading in her voice.
‘Elsa, you know I relish the single life, and yet I have you as a dear little wife to return to whenever I need.’
‘Whenever you need,’ she said sarcastically. ‘What about whenever I need? I’ve been many things to you Albert, but I am not your wife.’
‘But you are, you are. It is how I think of you,’ wheedled Einstein. A new thought struck him. ‘Is this because we don’t, er, sleep together? Is that what you want?’
They had been lovers briefly, but the wanting had turned out to be greater than the resolution. Their ardour had quickly dwindled. No matter what he thought about Mileva, she had always been so passionate.
‘No, it most certainly is not, Albertle. Neither of us needs that complication. You’ve lied to me. There’s no other way of putting it.’ They continued along the pavement, mingling with men toting briefcases, freshly discharged from the day’s office work.
‘Elsa, now is hardly the time or the place.’
‘Then when is? When you decide it is? Why must it always be you who sets the agenda?’
‘You know as well as I do that it is the man’s role to dominate.’ She stepped squarely in front of him, forcing him to halt. ‘Only in your male head. After Mileva left, you told me to have patience. Well, I’ve been patient for the better part of a year now, and for two years before that. How much …’
‘I also told you to be content with what you had.’
A lamplighter brushed past them, lifting a long metal taper to the streetlamp overhead.
Elsa waited for him to complete his job. ‘You have wormed your way into the girls’ affections. Ilse thinks of you virtually as a father, Margot even more so. When I think of the letters you used to write to me, all about your undying love for me, the depth of your desire to be with me … I believed it all, and I’ve put up with this for long enough.’
They stood in the yellow glow of the gaslight.
‘But the little bit of distance that we have from each other is a good thing. It insulates us from the banality of everyday life, the dullness of routine. It keeps us in love.’
‘Do I look as if I’m in love with you right now?’ He searched her eyes for some warmth.
‘I’m serious, Albertle. You’re dallying with me, and I have two girls to find husbands for. The chances of me doing that successfully are improved by one of two things: either I become a married woman again, or …’
Einstein swallowed, waiting for her to finish.
‘Or, I become single again. But I cannot and will not remain a woman who is having an affair with a married man.’
‘But I promised Mileva I wouldn’t divorce her.’
Thunder rolled across Elsa’s face. ‘Find a solution, Albertle. It’s what they say you’re good at.’
The pencil slipped from Einstein’s fingers as a strange quivering took possession of his insides. He jumped up and pressed one hand to his heaving chest. With the other, he gripped the pad of writing paper. Nothing could force him to let go of
that after what he had just written.
The morning light filling his study suddenly burned his eyes, and his balance began to fail. Even though the situation was terrifying, he wanted to laugh at the euphoria inside him. He steadied himself on the edge of the bookcase. How ironic, he thought, fighting breathlessness, to die from the shock of finally succeeding.
When his vision cleared, his eyes were looking at the portrait of Newton hanging on the wall. Could this have been how he felt?
Einstein collapsed back down at his desk. Bringing his breathing under control, he scanned the pencil marks on the page. It was still there, in his own handwriting, the number he had dreamed of deriving.
Beneath the tower of equations sat the answer: forty-three arcseconds. It was the exact deviation in Mercury’s orbit that the astronomers measured: the forty-three arcseconds that were completely impossible to understand using Newton’s law of gravity.
Newton! The greatest scientist who had ever lived. His work on gravity had led to the Age of the Enlightenment and changed everything. His way of analysing forces had bred the engineers that were now transforming the world with bridges, dams and skyscrapers. And now – Einstein grew breathless again – now, more than two hundred years of Newtonian thinking had been overthrown by forty-three seconds of arc.
There could no longer be any uncertainty. The universe was an invisible landscape of contours. General relativity worked.
No one could doubt him now.
PART II
Time
11
Berlin
1916
There was an uncomfortable silence when Einstein finished his talk. He looked out over the assembled fellows of the Academy. The light from the chandelier glinted from their monocles and the gilt edging of the portraits that lined the walls. Perhaps he had not explained himself correctly. He knew he had a tendency to celebrate the details at the expense of the basics. He opened his mouth again.
‘Newton believed that gravity was a physical force carried somehow through space. He believed that space and time were absolute, a rigid framework that objects moved through. If you take away the objects then space would remain as an empty box. Relativity shows this is not true, that space and time only have meaning in order to explain the relationship between objects and events.’