This last section of his travels was consequently a time of painful reflection for Schrödinger, whose real reason for coming here was in any case not sex, which he enjoyed well enough with several lovers in Zürich, but rather the creative energy that sex alone could provide. He had come to Arosa to work on a problem of physics, far removed from what Schwarzkopf called ‘the flatland’, the world below, where daily concerns are as detrimental to the brain as foul air is to the respiratory system.
Schrödinger had come in order to solve a mystery brought to the world’s attention by Einstein, who twenty years ago proposed that light, though traditionally thought a wave phenomenon, behaves in some cases as if composed of particles. Now a young Frenchman named De Broglie had suggested, conversely, that every piece of matter, from a loose thread on Schrödinger’s coat that he picked at, to the steep yet barely noticed mountain road the car ascended, might consist of particles that can be considered waves. How should the motion of those waves be described?
The solution would be enough to bring fame; but for Schrödinger, there could be no solution without sexual fuel. His wife had long ago stopped supplying it; their childless union was one of comfort and convenience. Anny preferred the company of Schrödinger’s friend and colleague Hermann Weyl, and this was an arrangement that could suit everyone (for Weyl’s wife had her own lover too), just as long as none of it went beyond the individuals concerned.
Our affairs, though, send out waves; and it is very hard to guess where those treacherous undulations might finally break. Already, a scented love letter, jammed inside a novel, was making its steady way to Chur, there to be chuckled over, perhaps, by a corpulent porter who would at last have something to chat about, other than his back problems. Schrödinger, fidgeting in the car’s ample rear seat, was being delivered just as helplessly, and now almost reluctantly, to Dr Schwarzkopf’s lofty sanatorium.
Everything, after all, comes down to chance. The letter might fall into the wrong hands, and a succession of other accidents could then follow that would wreck his ambitions. He might be disgraced, yet rise again; for is history not full of great men who defy ruin? Only the other day, he recalled, he was speaking to someone who had attended a National Socialist rally in Berlin. Adolf Hitler took the stage, cheered by a thousand disaffected workers, though he was not long out of prison. Who knows where fortune can take a man’s career?
Some, of course, are less lucky. As the car swerved round a precipitous bend, offering Schrödinger a sudden and unwelcome view of the hillside beneath them, he thought of how his earliest plans had been thwarted when, as a nineteen-year-old, preparing to study in Vienna, he anticipated working with the famous Ludwig Boltzmann. Yet only a few weeks before Schrödinger entered the university, Boltzmann committed suicide.
Boltzmann knew all about the power of chance. The entropy of the universe increases, he reckoned, because a random fluctuation once made that entropy small. Clocks run forwards, people grow old and die – or else hang themselves, like Boltzmann, while on holiday – because of a mere flicker, distant and insignificant. Had it been otherwise, then time would run backwards, or not at all.
What if the car were to skid now? A sudden bursting of a tyre, or an unexpected goat in the middle of the road, and then our hero would be no more, his name surviving only on some forty or so research papers soon destined to fade from expert view. Not even a son to bear his name into the future; and as for Anny, she would soon find someone else. All it would take would be a tiny accident, as easy as forgetting a book on a train – as absurd as the slip of an author’s pen – and Erwin Schrödinger would be dead. The driver too, come to that; though what could the future possibly hold for him?
As a student in Vienna, Schrödinger heard countless stories about dear, fat little Professor Boltzmann, so sorely missed. A man who oscillated between boundless energy and despair, and whose greatest pleasure outside physics was playing the piano. Instead of Boltzmann, it was his successor Fritz Hasenöhrl who became Schrödinger’s supervisor; another man cheated by fate. In 1904, two years before Schrödinger entered the university, Hasenöhrl published a paper showing that if heat were trapped inside a hollow container, then the weight of the container would be increased. If Hasenöhrl had made a simple modification to his formula it would have become E=mc2, which Einstein published the following year.
Hasenöhrl was a kind, generous man, Schrödinger now recalled. A good friend, a perfect teacher, and perhaps therefore an imperfect scientist, concerned too much for other people, and with too great a sense of honour. When he was blown up on the Italian front, it was as if Schrödinger had lost a member of his own family.
During all these thoughts, the driver was sometimes chatting. Schrödinger wished he would shut up and concentrate on the road. Having evidently been up and down it many times, the driver felt no need to take care.
‘I understand you’re a physicist, sir?’ the driver asked, turning his head enough for Schrödinger to see the man’s profile as he gazed casually at right angles to their direction of travel.
‘That is correct,’ Schrödinger replied.
‘What do you think of Einstein, then?’
These days, even a driver wanted to know about relativity, having caught a whiff of Einstein’s fame from the daily newspapers. At a station kiosk, we might add, before mounting his train, Schrödinger had seen for sale a popular guide to relativity, written for the benefit of just such a person as the man he was now speaking to.
‘Einstein formerly held the professorial chair I now occupy,’ Schrödinger said with an air of ostentation quite lost on the driver. ‘Then he became a celebrity and went to Berlin instead. As for relativity, I find it highly persuasive, but still not conclusively proved.’
‘What about that eclipse, then?’ the driver countered. He remembered some front-page photograph a few years ago of a blackened sun which, according to the headline writer, had changed the world.
‘Science, like history, is never as simple as journalists would have us believe,’ Schrödinger told him, and this silenced the driver, who left his passenger once more to reflect on the mislaid love letter and its possible implications. His own friends would not be shocked – colleagues like Weyl and Debye, whose adventures were far more outrageous than his. Nor would Anny be surprised. Since his lover’s husband was a public figure, though, the affair could be a matter of wider interest. Schrödinger might find himself drawn into scandal, destined to be remembered only as ‘the other man’. And he had not even slept with her for ten years!
‘You think he’s wrong, then?’ the driver suddenly asked, swivelling his head once more, which only added to Schrödinger’s annoyance. ‘Einstein, I mean. I’ve heard there’s experts reckon he must have made a mistake. Can’t be too careful with the circumcised, can we?’ He took a bend too sharply, sending Schrödinger sliding towards the window before pulling clear.
It was true, some doubted Einstein’s work. Lennard was the most vociferous, citing Hasenöhrl’s paper as evidence that Einstein’s discoveries were pre-empted by Aryans. Now there were plans to conduct a mountain-top experiment that could finally disprove relativity. Schrödinger was keen to see it performed.
‘Science is a complicated business,’ he told the driver dismissively. ‘Politics only makes it even more complicated. Hence I avoid politics altogether.’
They might have pursued this philosophical discourse further, but were now approaching the Villa Herzen. Perched on a snow-covered slope, its steep roof sporting long icicles, the clinic came into view as they rounded the last bend, and soon the driver was pulling up before the entrance. It might be better to call the place a hotel, such was its overall appearance of comfort, were it not for the almost incidental affinity of sickness that the guests shared among themselves, providing a common culture around which all life inside the Villa Herzen could slowly revolve. Though they came from Germany, France or Britain, the guests found in tuberculosis and its dialects a lingua franca whose voc
abulary they could exchange, while taking the air from their balconies, as easily as a nod of greeting.
A few of them, like Schrödinger, came back as visitors after they were cured. Most, however, were never cured; their stays extended into lifetimes measured, by those left down below, as barely a few months, but which in the other timescale appropriate to these morbid altitudes, possessed the idleness of years. If any mountain-top experiment were thought necessary to demonstrate the plasticity of time, it was surely enough to come here; and perhaps even to seek out – in the company of some patrolling, crisply uniformed nurse – those grey faces haunting the more secure and quarantined sectors of the Villa Herzen, in an annexe to the east, and to see in the eyes of those now-hidden guests, whose former places in the well-appointed dining room remained ominously empty, how an extra day or second of life, if grasped for with sufficient desperation, can seem like an eternity.
A porter was attending to the luggage now, while a male nurse welcomed Schrödinger and escorted him inside, into the panelled lobby with its guns and antlers hanging on the wall, and its blazing fire giving much-needed warmth. Nothing had changed since last Christmas, Schrödinger noted, when he was here with Anny. Even the seasonal decorations were the same, as if in this isolated, timeless place there were only a single Christmas, re-enacted perpetually for the benefit of patients in whom a single, classical pathology was itself repeated and multiplied.
He was invited to sign the register, laid open on the heavy walnut desk. Leaning over it, Schrödinger quickly glanced at the other entries on the page, noting that his lover’s name was not there, and he decided that it might be best on this occasion to omit his own name from official record. He was about to offer an excuse for not signing when a bellboy approached, bearing on a silver tray a letter that had arrived that morning for the professor. Schrödinger took it, and knew before opening it what its message must be. Her husband’s plans had changed, she wrote, and she was no longer able to come to Arosa. Schrödinger read the note swiftly before burying it in his pocket, telling himself this turn of events was probably for the best. But he left the register unsigned in any case, since a new interruption now came to distract him.
‘Herr Professor, how wonderful to see you again!’ Bearded, portly Dr Schwarzkopf, director of the establishment, was approaching with outstretched arms. ‘I must say, sir, that you are looking very well indeed.’ And as he shook Schrödinger firmly by the hand, the doctor began to scrutinize his former patient’s face, as if perhaps expecting to find hectic spots upon it. ‘No shortness of breath?’ Schwarzkopf enquired brusquely. Schrödinger shook his head. ‘And the sputum, I take it, is clean? Good, good! You will certainly enjoy a peaceful Christmas with us, professor.’
Schwarzkopf turned and noticed behind him a colleague, standing in the dining-room doorway, whom Schrödinger had observed already but did not recognize. A lean man with a cunning look, he approached at Schwarzkopf’s bidding.
‘Professor, allow me to introduce Dr Hinze, who has come to us recently from the Burghölzli hospital.’
Schrödinger knew of the place, which was in Zürich. ‘That’s a mental institution, is it not?’ Schrödinger asked, offering the new doctor his hand and finding Hinze’s grasp to be as cool and firm as a coiled snake.
‘My position there was temporary,’ Hinze explained, his voice soft and somewhat rasping. ‘I’ve decided on a change of field.’
‘I see,’ said Schrödinger. ‘From lunatics to consumptives: an intriguing leap.’
Dr Schwarzkopf, sensing some impropriety in the remark, intervened gently. ‘Dr Hinze’s expertise adds a new dimension to our regimen of care, since we can now offer our patients psychoanalysis. It’s advertised in our prospectus. And you know, I even think one or two of our newest arrivals may have been attracted more by that, than by the fresh air!’ Schrödinger, though, showed little interest in pursuing the topic further, and so Schwarzkopf suggested that perhaps he would like to go to his room to freshen up.
‘Is it the same room as before?’ Schrödinger asked.
‘Unfortunately not,’ Schwarzkopf told him. ‘I had expected your usual room to be vacated in time for your arrival; however, its occupant has rallied, and may even remain with us for a few more weeks. Which is, of course, excellent news; though clearly something of an inconvenience for yourself, Herr Professor.’
Schrödinger disliked being placed in the position of regretting that a patient had not managed to die soon enough for him to enjoy the view he was accustomed to. ‘Logistical problems are not my concern,’ he said loftily. ‘If you will have me shown to my room now, I can find out if it is suitable.’
‘Of course, of course,’ Schwarzkopf said obsequiously. ‘Hans, take the professor to number thirty-four.’ The bellboy began to lead the way, carrying Schrödinger’s two suitcases. ‘And, professor,’ Schwarzkopf added, ‘I do hope that you will join us in the restaurant for dinner.’
‘I should be delighted,’ Schrödinger told him, then followed the bellboy to the lift, whose cage lay open in readiness. The youth closed it, and a moment later they began to ascend, carried with much heavy whirring to the first floor.
‘Tell me, lad,’ Schrödinger asked, as they emerged. ‘What’s the gossip on Dr Hinze?’
‘I don’t know what you mean, sir,’ said the bellboy, setting off along the corridor and soon arriving at number thirty-four, where the key was in the lock.
‘Come now,’ said Schrödinger, following him into the room. ‘I’m sure there must be many stories about this new psychoanalyst whom Schwarzkopf has employed. Is he a fraud, or a genius?’
Illuminated by a shrouded electric bulb, the room was much like the one Schrödinger was used to, where he and Anny had been accommodated during their previous visits. There were twin beds, narrow and firm, neither of which was likely, Schrödinger reflected sadly, to see much action this Christmas. The balcony – such an essential feature of the treatment he recalled receiving during his nine months here – looked out across the valley, and although it was now too overcast for him to assess the view properly, he anticipated the sort that would console any doomed consumptive for the freezing cold he must endure in the supposed interest of his own health.
Schrödinger brought out some coins from his pocket as a tip. ‘We all know what psychoanalysts are obsessed with,’ he said with a knowing wink to the bellboy. ‘Tell me, are there any pretty young patients here for him?’
The bellboy weighed the coins in his hand and found them sufficient. ‘There’s the one they call the Invisible Girl,’ he replied. ‘They say she’s Dr Hinze’s special patient. She isn’t consumptive at all, though. I don’t expect you’ll see much of her – no one does.’ He closed his hand, then slid the coins into the narrow pocket of his neatly tailored trousers. Schrödinger guessed that more was required, and was prepared to bring out his wallet in order to find a bank-note. But the bellboy, as if struck by a sudden pang of conscience wholly inappropriate to his occupation, said, ‘It’s not my place to discuss the guests.’ Then he turned on his heels and went out of the room, leaving Schrödinger to puzzle over the mysterious Invisible Girl, whom he imagined to be adequately attractive and conveniently vulnerable.
He thought of her as he opened the suitcases and began to unpack; but very quickly his thoughts moved to other spheres. There was his lover, whom he was not after all to see. Schrödinger’s Christmas was genuinely to be the solitary one he had described to Anny when he told her of his need to work on De Broglie waves.
He thought of the seminar he had given at the university a few weeks previously, describing De Broglie’s idea that all particles are associated with waves. Debye had remarked that if there are waves, then there must be an equation describing how they move. And this was Schrödinger’s problem. If he could solve it, who knows, it might make his name. One day Einstein, sitting in the back of a car, might see his driver turn to him and say, ‘What do you make of this new fellow Schrödinger?’
> He opened the oak wardrobe’s heavy door and began to hang his shirts. De Broglie’s formula was so simple – that was its beauty and its power. A particle of momentum p has an associated wavelength λ. Multiply the two together, and you always obtain the same magical number, Planck’s constant h. The yellow light issuing from the electric bulb, and casting a sickly hue upon the walls and ceiling of the room, had a wavelength λ, and hence a corresponding momentum p. Each quantum of light carried a tiny, irreplaceable amount of weight from the bulb; each of these raindrops of luminescence exerted an infinitesimal pressure on the surface – be it carpet, washbasin or bed-side chair – where it was absorbed.
The electric current producing this light consisted of moving electrons, of momentum p', let us say. And by De Broglie’s formula, these electrons also had a wavelength, λ’. Are light quanta and electrons really little bundles of travelling waves? Schrödinger knew this could not be so. Or are the particles we observe merely passengers, riding on waves that represent a deeper reality? For Schrödinger, the idea was attractive.
There was a heavy red curtain drawn across part of the wall behind a desk. He went and drew back the curtain, finding a door whose smooth knob he tried, supposing it to be a cupboard. But the door was locked, and the key-hole was covered by a wooden flap rendered immoveable by several coats of the same glossy white paint that had been used to smother the rest of the door, which now appeared purposeless and inconvenient.
Mobius Dick Page 7
