by Stuart Clark
Ilse wrapped herself around him from the side, trapping his left arm in a clumsy embrace of triumph. Self-consciously she let go of him again. ‘Well done, Albert. Congratulations. I can’t wait for you to tell Mama.’
‘Tell your Mama? I intend to tell the world. From now on, no one can have any doubt.’
The scraping of a chair from the neighbouring office drew his attention, reminding him of his sole other employee. He steeled himself to go and break the news.
‘Excuse me,’ he said and headed across towards the ante-office. Freundlich met him at the doorway, his face a mask. After a moment, the astronomer awkwardly proffered his hand.
‘Congratulations, Albert, this is a great moment for you.’ Einstein was about to reassure him that there was much work for Freundlich still to do, and greater glory for him as well. He clasped the hand and shook it firmly, but when he opened his mouth to deliver his words of consolation, he paused and thought again. Then he said simply, ‘Thank you.’
Einstein burst through the apartment door and in one motion shrugged off his jacket, removed his hat from his head and took the violin he was carrying from its case. It did not turn into the graceful display he had imagined, but, with some frantic armwaving to extricate himself from the sleeve, he soon had the instrument under his chin.
Elsa appeared, a look of bemusement on her face.
Rather than talk, he began a version of the Wedding March with more enthusiasm than accuracy. He also began to jig.
Elsa chuckled. ‘I don’t recognise the violin.’
‘I just bought it,’ he said, continuing to work the bow. ‘I’m celebrating. Marry me, Elsa.’
She looked at him as if it were one of his jokes. ‘I thought we had already decided.’
‘No, I don’t mean in 1921. I mean now, right now.’ He stopped playing and stood there with his arms outstretched. ‘I’ll convert your attic into my study and move in with you.’
The force of her embrace almost knocked him from his feet.
Elsa’s wedding ring glinted in the sun as she sifted through the newspapers on the dining table.
‘This one’s from New York.’ She passed over a cutting with an impish look.
Einstein took the sheet and his head rocked back at the headline. ‘Light all askew in the heavens! Men of science agog!’ He thought he would cry with laughter.
Einstein Theory Triumph. Stars not where they seemed or were calculated to be, but nobody need worry. A book for 12 wise men. No more in all the world could comprehend it, said Einstein when his daring publishers accepted it.
‘Where do they get this stuff ?’ Einstein tutted, but he was unable to summon any genuine annoyance. His eyes fixed again on his name in the headline.
‘It’s in all the papers.’ Elsa spread them about. ‘Listen, “One of the greatest – perhaps the greatest – of achievements in the history of human thought”.’
‘Who would have thought there could be this much interest in my little theory?’
There was a knock at the door.
Elsa pushed her hair into place and hurried to the hall. Einstein ambled along behind.
Standing on the doormat was a sandy-haired postman with a freckled forehead. ‘The lift isn’t working.’
Einstein frowned at his insolence. ‘The electricity costs too much these days.’
‘I’ve got some letters for you.’ The postman pointed down the stairwell.
‘You couldn’t carry them up the stairs?’
‘The sack’s heavy.’
Einstein followed him downstairs, shaking his head and muttering.
In the hallway the postman pointed to a bulging canvas sack.
‘Aren’t you going to at least hand them to me, or do I have to pick them out myself ?’
The postman looked at him wearily. ‘These are all yours.’ Einstein stared at the overflowing contents. ‘All of them?’
‘All of them.’
He heaved the sack upstairs, developing some sympathy for the postman in the process, and buried the newspapers under the deluge of correspondence. They slid across the polished wood of the tabletop and spilled on to the floor.
‘How will I ever answer them all?’
He picked up letter after letter. Most were addressed with some variant of Albert Einstein, Berlin. ‘Let us separate out the ones that are properly addressed. That way, we may deal first with the ones from people who know us.’
Elsa grabbed a handful. ‘Some of these are from America!’
‘Universities?’
‘I don’t know.’ Elsa shrugged.
‘Perhaps I could do a lecture tour, raise some money.’
They sorted the letters into piles, but Einstein couldn’t resist ripping open one with a British stamp. ‘It’s from Eddington.’ He scanned the contents, growing breathless with excitement at what he read.
It is the best possible thing that could have happened for scientific relations between England and Germany. I do not anticipate rapid progress towards official reunion, but there is a big advance towards a more reasonable frame of mind among scientific men. Although it seems unfair that Dr Freundlich, who was first in this field, should not have had the satisfaction of accomplishing the experimental test of your theory, one feels that things have turned out very fortunately in giving this object lesson of the solidarity of German and British science even in time of war.
‘I must reply to this one at once,’ he said, dashing to his study.
18
Louvain, Belgium
Lemaître hurried down the cloisters, vestments flying, dodging the other seminarians and drawing looks. The morning shadow of the clock tower lay across the courtyard and the bell in the apex began tolling the hour, confirming just how late he was.
With a sinking feeling, he spotted Father Luc dead ahead.
‘Overslept again, Lemaître?’
‘No, Father, I was working and lost track of time.’
‘Working?’
‘After morning prayers. On these.’ Lemaître opened one of his textbooks.
‘That looks like some fancy mathematics on those pages,’ said the priest, ‘I don’t recall it from any of your classes here.’
‘Don’t be angry, Father Luc. I can’t help being so interested. It seems such an elegant way of understanding God’s realm.’
‘So this is why your grades are slipping. What is it?’
‘I have been working through a book written by the English astronomer Arthur Eddington. It describes a mathematical theory of gravity called general relativity.’
Father Luc scanned the books in Lemaître’s hands. His eyes locked on one title. ‘The Physics of Einstein? The German we’ve been reading about in the papers? The German!’
‘It’s not what you think, Father.’
The towering priest made a gruff noise. ‘Are you not being taught all you need to know in your classes?’
Lemaître cradled his books and papers. ‘I’m taught so much here about the Lord and his works that it inspires me to look further. I believe there are passages in the Bible that presage modern scientific knowledge.’
‘And you think a German Jew can fill in the blanks, do you?’ Father Luc glared at him. ‘A German Jew who, from what I have read about him, doesn’t even believe in God. Hand me those papers.’
One look into the slate-grey eyes and Lemaître meek ly complied. ‘It’s not evil, Father.’
‘Now, be off to your lessons. And pay good attention today. No more of this daydreaming.’ Father Luc shook the papers at Lemaître. ‘We’ll let Cardinal Mercier be the judge of these.’
That night the seminary felt claustrophobic. Lemaître’s head felt stuffy, as if he had a cold, and he slipped away to walk the streets of the city. He headed for the solitude of the bombsites, preferring them to the more populated areas. There was a stillness to the burned-out buildings and the piles of rubble that was comforting. The damage was so extensive that it would be years, perhaps decades, before the r
econstruction was completed.
After some wandering he found the spot not too far from the seminary that he liked, and climbed the mound of debris. Near the top he sat down and rested back on his hands to scan the inky black sky. Then he reached for his cigarettes and lit one.
He felt pleasantly giddy from the tobacco. The sound of someone approaching made him turn. He scrambled to his feet, slipping on the loose debris.
‘Calm yourself, Georges, I’m not here to admonish you. I know you slip out of the seminary at night to come here. I’ve seen you from my window,’ Cardinal Mercier said calmly.
In the darkness the Cardinal looked like a skeleton. He moved with delicate determination, as if he weighed nothing, and lowered himself gingerly on to the broken bricks. ‘Ouch. I should have brought a cushion.’
Lemaître sat beside him. ‘Sorry, Cardinal, I’m a little more padded than you.’ He patted his hips. Although the war had been over for more than a year, he still found a full stomach a novelty and indulged whenever he could. ‘We can go back if you would prefer.’
‘No, no, I want to talk to you here. You obviously come here for a reason.’
Lemaître tilted his head upwards. ‘Well, I look at the stars and I wonder. The light from these stars takes years to cross space. I like to think that some of it will have begun its journey to Earth back when Thomas Aquinas was alive. It comforts me. Makes me feel a connection across time.’
‘We both share a scholarly affection for Thomas, I think.’
‘You flatter me, Cardinal. My baccalaureate in his philosophy is nothing to your lifelong contribution.’
Mercier ran his eyes across the sky. ‘One’s studies are never truly finished.’
Faint sounds of the city floated around them on the breeze.
‘Father Luc came to see me today,’ said Mercier.
Lemaître dropped his head to await the judgement. Instead the old man asked, ‘Where do you feel closest to God?’
Lemaître drew in his legs and hugged his knees. ‘I suppose I should say in chapel at prayer, but the truth is, when I’m out here looking into eternity. Is that so wrong?’
Mercier made a soothing sound. ‘We must each find our own way. There’s no single path. Remember Thomas and his Deus absconditus?’
‘The hidden God.’
‘Precisely, the more actively you search, the more hidden God will become to you. You cannot prove him like you can some mathematical equation. But if you accept him, you will find that he lives inside you.’
Lemaître thought of the wire-cutting patrols that had retreated from each other without violence that night in Ypres.
‘Remember,’ the old cardinal continued, ‘we can know something exists even if we cannot know the precise nature of it. That is not a failure. We don’t need to know the essence of God to know that He exists. Even in the sciences, we can know water exists, without knowing that it is made of two hydrogen atoms for every oxygen.’
Lemaître searched the gaunt face. ‘I’m surprised by your knowledge. I thought …’
‘You thought my mind was closed to the new thinking. It isn’t. I may not have your gift with mathematics but I am just as fascinated by the discovery of atoms, and stars.’
‘Cardinal, do you think God became weary of us? Is that why He is hidden from us, because He has abandoned us? Perhaps that is why I still feel the need to look for Him. I still feel He must be visible.’
‘You will never find proof for Him, and especially not by looking at external things. All you need is already within you. God placed it inside you, along with your immortal soul. But even then you can’t go looking for it, you must just accept it, as you would a gift, and you will find that it warms you on the coldest of nights. You don’t need to look for unifications in all things. Things can exist side by side and still have meaning. Galileo once said that the Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how Heaven goes.’
‘But I see the connections. I don’t think there’s much difference between a mathematician’s infinity and the concept of eternity, for one thing. For another, in the book of Genesis it says that God created light and matter together and then Einstein discovered …’
A twig-like finger waved him silent.
‘If there is a connection, then it is a coincidence and of no importance. The Bible does not teach us science. The most we can say is that occasionally one of the prophets made a lucky scientific guess.’
‘I want to believe you.’
‘Taking the Bible to be infallible science led to Galileo’s trial.’ Mercier shook his head. ‘A lamentable episode. We must never again have theology pitted against science.’
‘Can one believe in both?’
‘So long as one is clear about what each can do and what each requires. Your confusion comes from the fact that you conflate the two. Science requires mathematics and proof; religion requires belief and faith. Each of us must decide on the balance.
There will be those who live their whole lives in doubt, looking for proof. That’s fine for a scientist trying to find the working of the universe around him, but for a soul in search of salvation it will lead to confusion. Even if you see Him in the starlight, it doesn’t mean that you can find Him by measuring that light.’
Something seemed to collapse inside Lemaître. ‘When I hear you speak, I think that I can be a priest but I’ll never be a theologian.’
‘A priest is good enough for any seminarian, and you have other gifts, your mathematics. From what I can gather, Einstein’s ideas are beyond most men – even beyond most mathematicians. If you can comprehend them, then perhaps you should think about pursuing them.’
‘You mean leave the seminary?’
‘No. Finish your studies here, become the priest you want to be. But then seek your fulfilment in the sciences. I don’t imagine it will be an easy path for you – so much of science these days is hostile to religion – but perhaps you can restore some balance. But, Georges, know exactly why you are doing it. Science, technology and knowledge are ways of learning about God’s creation but they cannot lead us to God. He is forever hidden from us in this world. If we glimpse Him at all, it is in the quiet, surprising places, where you least expect it.’
‘Thank you, I will think about it.’
‘Then I will bid you goodnight and leave you to your contemplation.’ With a swish of his robes, Mercier disappeared into the darkness.
Lemaître looked back at the stars. His eyes had adjusted enough now that he could clearly see the Milky Way, hanging low over the sky. The constellation of Cygnus swam along the starry river, the great swan’s neck stretched out and its wings spread wide.
‘The Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how Heaven goes,’
he said aloud. ‘I like that.’
19
Berlin
1920
Einstein glanced at Nernst from underneath a large felt hat.
‘Remember, not a word to anyone.’
‘And you remember, if this goes wrong, it was your idea.’
They joined the crowd outside the Berlin Philharmonic Hall. The only clue that this was not a concert performance was the lack of evening gowns and black ties. Yet neither was it a rabble. Einstein scrutinised the sharp business suits and the polished shoes. Then he said contemptuously, ‘Bourgeois.’
Nernst looked at him askance. ‘You can’t criticise them for that. Don’t you have wallpaper in your apartment?’
‘Elsa has wallpaper. I still prefer not to wear socks.’ He glanced down. Beneath his shapeless coat and trousers, sure enough, his naked ankles flashed as he walked.
A billboard on the side of the building was plastered with a black-and-white poster. Antirelativity Rally organised by the Study Group of German Scientists for the Preservation of a Pure Science.
Nernst indicated the poster. ‘Who the hell are this lot, anyway? Why haven’t we heard of them at the university?’
‘They’re a front for something. Political, I shou
ldn’t wonder. But if they can hire the Philharmonic they’ve got backing.’
‘I don’t like it, Albert. Let’s just leave.’
‘What, and miss all the fun? We need to know who these people are.’
He strode off, leaving his friend no choice but to trip along after him.
They took their seats and let the hall fill around them.
When the lights dimmed a stringy-looking man in his thirties took the stage. He announced himself as Paul Weyland and quickly shrugged off the small hint of nervousness that had accompanied his entrance.
Einstein leaned towards Nernst. ‘So that’s what this is about. I know him. He’s an activist, a right-wing nationalist. This isn’t about science, it’s an attack on Jewishness.’
Weyland spoke with utter confidence from the stage. ‘Relativity is a big hoax,’ he announced before proceeding to denounce not just the science but Einstein himself. ‘He engages in a businesslike booming of his theory and his name.’
Einstein gripped the arms of his seat and concentrated on holding himself rigidly in place.
‘Relativity undermines the very absolutes that countries are built upon: certainty and self-determinism. How can such Jewish science do otherwise? They wander the globe in search of places they can usurp, people they can exploit. They undermine absolutes everywhere they go, in their attempt to confuse and manipulate us. We are a people who have been wronged, and it must never happen again.’
There was an explosion of applause from the audience. One or two even rose to their feet to raise their fists and cheer.
‘We are rationalists here,’ shouted Weyland. ‘If further proof were needed of the grand sham of Jewish science, let us now hear from the highly distinguished physicist Ernst Gehrcke.’
The physicist shuffled on to the stage clutching a sheaf of notes. He almost dropped them as Weyland clapped him on the back. Adjusting the papers on the lectern, Gehrcke twisted the ends of his grey moustache.
‘Distinguished!’ scoffed Nernst. ‘We barely see him these days.’ Einstein couldn’t help but let out a cackling laugh as the faltering professor read from his notes. Every time Gehrcke used words like ‘absurd’ or appealed to the audience’s common sense, Einstein would let rip, attracting hostile looks from those close enough to hear him.