by Stuart Clark
‘Death is an inevitability. Why be perturbed by it?’
‘Oh, you say that too often. It’s one of your lines. All a pretence! Anyway, you can’t even look after yourself. How do you plan to look after your sons? If it weren’t for me, you’d be in a sanatorium.’ Without a backward glance, she strode out of the room.
Einstein seethed. He had a nagging feeling she was not too unhappy about his infirmity.
He developed the habit of pretending recovery by sitting in an armchair by the window. He would have preferred birdsong to the sound of the spluttering cars, but the parks were too far away for him to walk. From his chair he read the letters documenting Mileva’s recovery with a grim satisfaction.
He was interrupted by the sound of Elsa’s key in his apartment door. It took all his strength to get to the hallway to greet her with some fake vivacity. He then sat back down and tried to mask his exhaustion by picking up a book and pretending to read it. In reality he was having trouble bringing the type into focus.
Elsa unpinned her hat and looked at him with a smug expression. ‘Guess what? Frau Keller is moving away.’
‘Really?’ he said slyly. ‘I don’t know who you mean.’
‘Yes you do, we’ve talked about her. She lives in the apartment opposite mine.’
Einstein lifted the book. ‘Nernst gave me this, said it reminded him of me.’ He angled the spine for Elsa to read. She hardly even glanced at it, distracted by a damp towel he had left in a heap on the night table.
‘Tycho Brahe’s Path to God by Max Brod,’ supplied Einstein. ‘I met the author in Prague, where I was giving a lecture about special relativity. He was in the audience.’ She turned her back.
‘Tycho died in Prague. He compiled the star chart that Kepler used to find the laws of planetary motion. Nernst thinks that Brod has written Kepler using my characteristics.’
‘Does he constantly deflect the conversation when it doesn’t go the way he wants, too?’ Elsa folded the towel and patted it a little more heavily than was necessary.
With a sinking feeling Einstein lowered the book. ‘What’s wrong with the present arrangement?’
‘You’re not the one carrying stewpots down the street, having to deal with all the beggars staring at you because they can smell sausages. You don’t have to avoid their hungry faces …’
‘I thought you liked the food. What’s the point of my having connections if I don’t use them?’
‘I’m not saying don’t use them. We’re all grateful for the food you provide, especially the girls. But when there are no sausages in the shops, and I’m walking around with a stewpot reeking of them, all I’m saying is that it’s clear they’ve come from the black market.’
‘There’re not black market; they’re from friends. You could cook here.’
‘And then I’d have to carry the girls’ portions back home. Apart from all that, it makes sense to be nearer. Especially since we’ll soon be married.’
She moved on to tidying the blankets.
Einstein’s mouth was dry. He needed water. Nothing had been decided about the wedding. They were still exchanging letters with Mileva’s lawyer over the exact settlement.
‘But I still don’t see why we have to move so close together. Couldn’t we find a place in the next block, rather than just across the landing?’ he said.
‘Albertle! You’ll move to Frau Keller’s apartment or I’ll stop cooking your meals.’
He stared dumbly.
‘Agreed?’ she prompted. He nodded meekly.
Bounding across the room, she planted a maternal kiss on his forehead. ‘Good, that’s decided then. I’ll make the arrangements. Now, can I get you anything?’
‘A large glass of water, please,’ he croaked.
She brought him the drink and he picked up the book again. He tried to lose himself in the story of Kepler and his personal struggles with the great Tycho Brahe. Each had needed the other – Tycho needed Kepler’s maths, Kepler needed Tycho’s observations – yet they could not agree on what to believe. Kepler believed that the sun was the centre of the universe; Tycho clung steadfastly, incorrectly as it had turned out, to the Earth being the centre of everything.
Einstein found himself musing that if he were cast as Kepler, as Nernst insisted, who was his essential nemesis, his Tycho? There seemed to be so many who could fill the role.
16
Cambridge, England
1918
Once Arthur Eddington had arranged himself in a seated position, he tried not to fidget. As in all things, it seemed to him best to get it right the first time. It was a tactic that also meant he was less likely to draw attention to himself.
He sat on the wooden bench in the long corridor, one leg hooked over the other, his back straight and his hands primly in his lap. His companion – Frank Dyson, the Astronomer Royal – suffered no such qualms about readjustment, pulling at a dense black moustache, raking a fingernail through the natural arch of his eyebrows, and drumming his feet on the black-and-white tiled floor, sending echoes up and down the corridor.
‘How can you just sit there? Aren’t you worried?’
‘Conscience is the opposite of worry. One worries only when one is unsure of one’s own mind.’ Eddington spoke as precisely as he sat, all traces of his Kendal accent having been erased long ago, first by his schoolmasters, then by his own careful design.
‘I don’t mean about your decision, I mean about what they could do to you.’ Dyson nodded in the direction of the heavy wooden door that led to the tribunal. ‘You can go to prison for refusing to fight. Or they’ll send you to the front regardless.’
‘In which case, I’ll carry stretchers. The war is coming to an end. The papers are full of the advances being made across the Somme.’
‘I’m somewhat reluctant to believe the papers these days. Seems we’ve been close to victory since the whole bloody thing started four years ago.’
‘Even if the Germans counter-attack, our case for exemption is strong.’
‘Let’s hope they see that. I must admit that I’m not sure I truly believe it.’ Dyson lifted his eyes to the ceiling.
‘Einstein’s work is right, mark my words.’
‘How can you know that so certainly without doing the test?’ Eddington looked at his companion. ‘Because the mathematics is so elegant.’
‘Don’t look at me like that.’
‘Like what?’ asked Eddington.
‘Superior, with a smirk.’
‘I’m not smirking.’
‘Yes, you are. You do it all the time. Most off-putting to strangers.’ Eddington considered the criticism for some moments. ‘Perhaps that’s what my face looks like normally.’
A door opened, disgorging a pompous-looking official who was looking down his nose at his notes. ‘Arthur Eddington?’
Both men stood; Eddington nodded.
‘Just Mr Eddington.’
Dyson took a small step backwards. ‘It’s Dr Eddington.’
The man looked unimpressed and indicated the open door. Dyson muttered nervously in Eddington’s ear. ‘One more thing:
I may have forgotten to mention that Mr Einstein is a German.’ Eddington turned slightly and nodded. When he spoke, his plummy voice was lowered so that only Dyson could hear. ‘A wise precaution. And yes, I am as worried as you. I just choose not to show it.’
The tribunal consisted of three aged men, wrinkled as prunes, with heavy-lidded eyes. Eddington positioned himself on the spindly wooden chair before their heavy table. The man on the right wore a suit with dandruff-covered shoulders, the one on the left had frayed lapels and was barely awake, and the chairman looked over a set of notes with studied indifference.
‘You are?’ said the chairman.
‘Arthur Stanley Eddington.’
‘Born?’
‘The twenty-eighth of December 1882, in Kendal.’
The chairman rolled his eyes in Eddington’s direction. ‘Kendal, in England, I presu
me?’
‘Yes, in England.’ It was hard to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
‘You are thirty-five, unwed, passed your medical with grade two, yet for the last four years you have been exempt from active service because your work at the University of Cambridge’s Observatory has been deemed,’ a slightly disbelieving tone entered his voice, ‘to be in the national interest.’
‘With respect, sir, I am Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Cambridge Observatory.’
‘Quite so. The exemption ends on the first of August this year, and you have applied for a further exemption on religious grounds.’
‘I am a Quaker, sir. We are pacifists.’
‘That won’t matter to the Kaiser and his hordes.’
‘Maybe not, but it matters to me.’
The chairman tutted. ‘And what would happen if we all felt like that?’
Eddington wanted to say that if everyone was a pacifist there would be no wars, but he sensed the chairman was talking only about England. Eddington found himself wondering if he really did look smug. He decided to say nothing and wait for the chairman to speak again.
‘I have here a letter of support for your exemption from a Dr Frank Dyson, Astronomer Royal. He says that your research in astronomy should be ranked as highly as Darwin’s in the zoological sciences. And that there is an eclipse in May next year that you are preparing to observe in order to …’
‘To weigh a beam of light, sir.’ Eddington jumped in with his prepared line. He knew he did not have charisma on his side and over the years he had come to rely on manners and erudition. He had also learned that the occasional quip could go down well. Yet he sensed that today was not the day to deploy his analytical humour.
‘Weigh light?’ said the chairman.
The two gargoyles either side of him stirred. One said, ‘Something we can tax perhaps?’
The chairman turned a sour eye, confirming Eddington’s assessment about humour being inappropriate.
‘Why the sudden urgency, Mr Eddington?’ asked the chairman.
‘I’m given to believe that these eclipses come around every year or so.’
‘They do, but this one is particularly important for the testing of general relativity.’
‘And that is?’
‘The new theory of how gravity is generated by mass.’ Eddington ploughed on. ‘This eclipse occurs in front of the Hyades star cluster, a particularly rich grouping of stars, which will allow the deflection of starlight to be measured much more accurately because a large number of stars will be affected. A similar eclipse in such a rich star field will not happen for another century.’
‘I still don’t understand why we need to weigh light,’ said the man with the flecked shoulders.
‘Because either we will cement Newton’s place in science, or we shall make the next breakthrough. Either way, Britain will be confirmed as the pre-eminent scientific power.’
The old men exchanged glances. The chairman scratched out a note and passed it to his companions. There was some nodding and shrugging before the chairman fixed Eddington with a disdainful look and announced his decision.
Dyson jumped up from the bench on seeing Eddington. ‘Well?’
It took a moment for Eddington to find the right words. He was trying hard to remain composed. Eventually he squeezed out the words. ‘One more year’s reprieve.’
Dyson grinned widely and gripped Eddington’s upper arms.
‘You can do the eclipse.’
Eddington smirked. ‘We must prepare. We have science to perform.’
17
Berlin
1919
As millions of soldiers and civilians had before it, so the war died. The collapse began at Amiens when the Allied forces opened a gap in the German lines. On 8 August, 1918, thirty thousand Germans were killed, seventeen thousand were captured and the Allied line advanced over ten miles. Panicked, the Germans began to retreat.
Fresh offensives at Albert, Noyon and Arras all yielded similar results. The Germans were in disarray and, as the allies began to breach their last line of defence, an invasion of Germany looked certain. To prevent such a disaster, the Kaiser and his advisers were prepared to agree to almost anything.
They did just that in a railway carriage in the forest of Compiègne on 11 November 1918, in the form of the Armistice. For the German civilians it may have averted invasion but it did not end the hardship. It worsened it.
Elsa surveyed the meagre groceries laid out on the kitchen worktops. ‘I thought the end of the war would mean the end of our troubles. But, look, this is all I could get. The prices have almost doubled since November. If this goes on, I don’t know how we’ll eat. I won’t be able to buy enough.’
Einstein looked towards the window. ‘I don’t know how long the government can last.’
There had already been one revolution, back in the winter at the turn of the year. The rifle shots had set the apartment windows rattling.
‘It’s not the government I’m worried about.’
‘I know,’ said Einstein distractedly. Food parcels from his friends were more likely to go missing these days than arrive. He had run out of tea in his own kitchen and shuffled over the landing to Elsa’s apartment. He had been about to return with the steaming cup when she returned from shopping. ‘I’m doing all I can. I’ve instructed Mileva to move back to Germany.’
‘What?’ Elsa’s black eyebrows lifted.
‘Don’t be alarmed. There is nothing for you to be upset about. This is a matter of practicality. I’ve warned her that I will not be able to keep up the payments to her if the mark keeps falling. Soon the bank notes will be worthless.’
If only the Nobel would come his way, then the prize money would pacify Mileva once and for all. Yet again he had been nominated and passed over by the committee in Stockholm. Why were people so loth to accept relativity?
It was enough to trigger his stomach complaint again. The ulcer was little more than a memory now, but occasionally he thought he could feel it returning.
Elsa stepped towards him. ‘Let us marry, straight away.’
‘You know I can’t do that. The divorce says two years.’
The terms had been agreed and the paperwork completed earlier in the year.
‘We could do it quietly. She need never know.’
‘Two years, Elsa. 1921 will be our year.’ He looked at her beseechingly. ‘Why be in such a hurry?’
‘By 1921 it will be nearly ten years since you first told me you loved me.’
Einstein felt his cheeks redden. Was it really that long? He lifted his drink to his lips, but it was too hot.
‘Besides,’ Elsa continued, ‘I think Ilse and Georg are getting serious.’
‘Georg?’
‘Georg Nicolai?’ She deployed the mocking tone whenever he was having a lapse of memory and she wasn’t sure whether his absentmindedness was real or feigned. ‘The doctor, you must remember him. You wrote the peace manifesto together at the beginning of the war.’
‘I know. But really? She hasn’t said anything to me.’
‘Why else do you think he’s been visiting so much?’
Einstein shrugged; the question had never really entered his head. ‘I’m sorry Elsa, I have other things on my mind.’ He blew ripples across the surface of his tea.
‘As usual.’
‘Why don’t we hear something? Why don’t they write?’ he complained.
Eddington and the English had sent out two eclipse expeditions in 1918, one to Brazil and the other to Africa. That was all that Einstein knew; since then, nothing. He didn’t even know whether they had seen the eclipse. Both sites could have been cloudy. All might now be forgotten, but no one had thought to tell him.
Perhaps he would not have been so on edge if the Americans had been successful. They had sent a party to the eclipse under someone called Curtis who claimed to have measured no deflection at all. But he had averaged all his results togethe
r. One photographic plate had been in almost perfect agreement with relativity, yet all people were hearing about was the failure.
Planck had arrived in his office to offer commiserations.
It could have been anything, a speck of dust or a flaw on the plate, an incompetent observer or a clumsy analysis, thought Einstein, smarting. But no, if there is any doubt to be had, it’s always laid at my door.
He finished his drink and stalked back to his study, where he threw himself into his chair. He felt the sudden urge to cry: ridiculous in a grown man. He had not cried since the day Mileva and the boys had left. That too was ridiculous. They were divorced now. That should be the end of it, yet she seemed to occupy his thoughts more than ever.
He heard someone on the tram the other day laugh like Mileva used to, and it had upset him for the rest of the day.
*
That evening he watched Ilse laying the table for dinner. The delicate curve of her wrists matched the fragile proportions of the crockery.
‘What hopes do you have for marriage?’ he asked.
She appeared a little embarrassed. ‘Happiness and companionship.’ Then with a sideways look to the kitchen, where her mother was preparing the meal, she added, ‘Love and excitement.’
Her eyes glittered and Einstein felt quite breathless.
‘Herr Einstein, I saw you as I got off the tram. I’ve been following you.’ The man stood in the university courtyard. He wore an immaculate three-piece suit, its pale grey complementing his glowing complexion and short black hair. His eyes were close-set and burned with some deep passion.
‘And who might you be?’ retorted Einstein. He felt at a distinct disadvantage in his shabby cardigan; when he looked down he saw that he had buttoned it out of sequence.
‘My name is Kurt Blumenfeld.’
‘Are you an astronomer?’
His eyes creased, amused by the thought. ‘No, but you and I have a common interest at heart. We are one tribe, as I think you would say.’
‘I see clearly that we share Jewish roots.’
Blumenfeld nodded. ‘Perhaps there is somewhere less public that we could talk.’