The Other Einstein

by Marie Benedict

  I stared at the paper in my hand. Scribbled across the surface was Mr. Einstein’s address in his sprawling handwriting, as bold as his personality. He had hastily pressed it into my hand as we exchanged farewells the evening of the Sihlwald trip with an earnest request that I write him over the holiday. I used this flimsy slip as a bookmark so I would have an excuse to carry it with me everywhere. Although I refused to part with the address, I promised myself that I would not use it to write him. I adhered to this vow, even when full-blown conversations with him about physics and math appeared in my head. I knew that, if I wrote him, I would be continuing the nascent relationship that started in the Sihlwald, and this would make near-impossible the sort of career for which I’d worked so long, with Papa’s unwavering support. I knew of no professional woman who was also married, so why should I begin with Mr. Einstein something that I could never finish? For consolation, I clung to the picture that Helene and I had painted of a single career life, abundant in culture and friendships.

  Gazing out the window, I studied the fertile, sunflower-dotted plains of Kać. This part of the Vojvodina region, which stretched north from the Danube, had historically been the site of violent struggle between the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the west and the Ottoman Empire to the east and now faced tensions within its artificially created Austro-Hungarian borders from strife between the ethnically Germanic rulers and native Slav population. I had hoped that the familiar landscape, comfortable smells and phrases, and the warmth of my family would help me forget that moment in the Sihlwald with Mr. Einstein. Instead, I felt as torn as the countryside I inhabited, divided by my emotions and my promises.

  The clomp of heavy steps reverberated through the thin bell tower walls. No one but barrel-chested, solid Papa had such a leaden footfall.

  I pretended not to hear him. Not because I didn’t want to see Papa, but because I wanted him to think I still had the capacity to become engrossed in a book, something I’d been unable to do in four weeks. Lying down on the threadbare chaise that Mama had relegated to this little-seen section of the Spire and curling around the book, I feigned total engagement.

  His footsteps grew louder and closer, but I still didn’t look up. I’d been famous for my ability to block out any disturbances in years past, but ignoring Papa’s tickling fingers was a different matter. Within seconds, Papa tickled me in all my vulnerable spots, and I screeched with laughter.

  “Papa,” I screamed in mock-horror, pushing his hands away. “I’m almost twenty-one! Too old for tickles! Anyway, I’m reading.”

  He picked up my book, carefully marking my page. “Hmm, Lenard. It seems to me that you were reading the very same page of this very same book when I saw you last night.”

  My cheeks flushed. He sat down next to me.

  “Mitza, you are not yourself. You are quiet, even with me. You don’t spend any time downstairs with Mama or Zorka and little Miloš. I know that your brother and sister are younger than you, but you used to take them out for picnics at least.”

  Papa’s words made me feel guilty. Several times every summer, I would pack up a picnic lunch for me, Zorka, and Miloš, and we would traipse into the fields. There, amid the sunflowers and under the warm summer skies, I would read my favorite childhood tales to them, even “The Little Singing Frog.” I hadn’t arranged even one of these outings this summer. I considered telling Papa that I’d stopped because, at fourteen and twelve, Zorka and Miloš were getting too old for such escapades, but I thought better of it. Papa would sniff out the lie in an instant.

  He glanced down at my book again and then studied my eyes. “You’re not even really reading or studying. Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, Papa,” I said, trying to stop my eyes from welling with tears.

  “I don’t know, Mitza. You didn’t even seem excited about your grades when they arrived last week. You scored an average of four point five on your courses. Out of six, by God. That’s cause for celebration, but you hardly raised a glass with us.”

  The secret about Mr. Einstein had been burning inside me since I returned home. On many occasions, I had wanted to confess it to Papa. He had been my confidant for as long as I could remember. But something held me back. My fear of disappointing him, perhaps, after the great lengths to which he’d gone to secure my education. My worries about eradicating his image of me as the brilliant, solitary scientist, maybe. How could I tell him about Mr. Einstein?

  “I’m fine, Papa.” Even as the words left my mouth, I knew they sounded false.

  He pulled me to sitting, held onto my shoulders, and gently turned me to face him. He knew I could not lie to him or even omit a single aspect of the truth when looking at him straight in the eyes. “What is going on, Mitza?”

  The tears I’d dammed up for four weeks broke through the barrier. Crying so hard that my chest heaved, Papa simply waited until I told him everything.

  When my breathing finally slowed and the tears stopped, Papa still didn’t speak. I glanced up, terrified that he was angry with me. That I’d failed this test, one far more important than my exams.

  Tears were streaming down his face. “My poor Mitza. Why must your road be so hard?”

  How could my invincible Papa be crying? How could this conundrum perplex him to tears? He was the one we turned to—indeed, governmental officials of all stations turned to—when we faced an insurmountable problem. Reaching into my pocket for the lace handkerchief that I always kept there, I wiped his eyes and cheeks. “You’re not mad, Papa?” I was thankful, at least, that he wasn’t angry at me.

  “Of course not, my sweet girl. I wish more than anything in the world that your path was an easy one, that you could have everything your heart desires. But brilliance brings burdens, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose,” I said, disappointed that this might be Papa’s advice. For my entire life, I’d heard his admonitions that I had a responsibility to nurture my intellect. Even though I knew it was unreasonable—impossible even—I’d hoped he could fix this problem of Mr. Einstein like he had so many others.

  “Do you want to continue on your course of studies? Would you still like to be a professor of physics?”

  But what of Mr. Einstein? I thought to myself. Instead, I willed myself to say what was expected. “Yes, Papa. That’s what I’ve always wanted. What we’ve always discussed.”

  “Do you think it’s prudent to return to the Polytechnic next term where Mr. Einstein exerts so powerful a presence? Perhaps a term away at another university might give you perspective. You could return the following term, once you’ve achieved a certain objectivity about Mr. Einstein.”

  A term away. My heart clenched at the thought of a longer separation from Mr. Einstein than three months, but the more I considered Papa’s proposal, the more relief coursed through me. I wouldn’t have to face Mr. Einstein, with his eager expression and hangdog eyes so capable of swaying me, for the next few months. The time away might work the necessary magic.

  My gaze settled on the Lenard book I’d been carrying around with me for days. “Papa, I think I know just the place.”

  • • •

  In early October, just before my arrival at Heidelberg University, a near impenetrable fog descended on the Neckar River valley in southeast Germany that the university called home. The fog showed no sign of lifting in the days after I settled into the Hotel Ritter, where I’d stay for the term. While the physics classes I was permitted to audit were indeed world-class, led by such renowned professors as Lenard himself, I could see nothing of the rumored loveliness of the buildings and setting of the ancient Heidelberg University through its heavy veil. In fact, laden with dense mist, the forest and river surrounding the university only served to remind me, by despairing comparison, of the gleaming beauty of the Sihlwald. Indeed, sometimes I felt as though the fog had affixed to my mood, so gloomy did I feel.

  Loneliness outweighed a
ny incandescence of thought brought about by Lenard’s kinetic theory of gases and his experiments on the speed at which oxygen molecules travel. I missed the companionship, laughter, and compassion of Ružica, Milana, and Helene most of all, even though I hid my feelings in cheery letters to them, simulating excitement about my lectures. And in the dark hours alone in my hotel room, if I allowed myself to be honest, I missed Mr. Einstein too. But my malaise was so deep that I wondered whether missing my friends and Mr. Einstein were the sole sources of my despair.

  One afternoon in late October, I returned from classes to find a letter from Helene waiting for me at the front desk of the hotel. Clutching it in my hands, I took the stairs by two, no mean feat with my leg, so that I could read Helene’s letter all the more quickly. Slicing through the envelope with my razor-sharp letter opener, I devoured Helene’s words. There, amid chatter about her studies and pension gossip, I read, “I thought Heidelberg did not allow women to matriculate. A family friend from Vienna tried to study psychology there, and she had to obtain permission from the professor on a course by course basis just to attend lectures! No credit for coursework allowed. Won’t this decision put you behind a term?”

  I slowly laid her letter down on my spindly hotel desk, better suited for the morning correspondence-writing of a lady than the heavy coursework of a student. In her usual shrewd way, Helene laid her finger on the source of my unease. My ill mood did not emanate solely from the fog or even my loneliness but on the burden that this term away might place upon my career path. What if this break from my schoolwork at the Polytechnic set me back in my studies? What if I barricaded myself away from Mr. Einstein’s affections so that I could secure my career only to damage my career in the process? What if I returned, hampered by this Heidelberg term, and succumbed to Mr. Einstein anyway?

  Helene’s letter set me ablaze with determination to make this term in Heidelberg fulfill its purpose. I would simultaneously do my Heidelberg and Polytechnic courses so as not to fall behind. And I would make my intentions perfectly clear to Mr. Einstein.

  I decided that I’d finally respond to the letter Mr. Einstein sent me three weeks into my stay at Heidelberg. He had ascertained my whereabouts from the girls, since I never wrote him over the summer. In its scrawled pages, it contained details of the Weber lectures I missed, descriptions of talks by Professors Hurwitz, Herzog, and Fiedler, and some remarks about the requisite number theory course. Even though I scoured every line, it bore no comment or reference, obvious or covert, of our moment in the Sihlwald. Nothing. Yet within each line, I sensed the words unsaid.

  My fingers had itched with the desire to write back in the weeks since he wrote it, but now I was glad that I’d resisted. I was ready to make myself perfectly clear. I wrote, “You instructed me not to write you unless I had absolutely nothing to do, and my days in Heidelberg have been hectic until this very moment.”

  After chattering on about the magnificent lectures I’d heard, echoing much the same verbiage I had sent to Helene, I ended the missive with what I hoped was a clear message. I referenced a bit of gossip he’d shared in his letter—that a mathematics classmate had left the Polytechnic program to become a forester because he’d been spurned by a Zürich sweetheart—and said, “How peculiar! In these bohemian days, where there are so many paths available other than that of the bourgeois, the notion of love itself seems so pointless.”

  I prayed my letter was unambiguous. Should I return, romance between us was not to be part of the equation.

  No reply arrived from Mr. Einstein. Not in November. Or December. Or January. His silence told me that he had received my message. It was safe to return to Zürich.

  Part II

  The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.

  Sir Isaac Newton

  Chapter 9

  April 12, 1898

  Zürich, Switzerland

  Dusted with an early spring snow and topped with the icy spires of its clock towers, resembling the ivory marzipan peaks of the desserts I’d seen at the Conditorei Schober, Zürich welcomed me back. The girls and I quickly settled into our routines. Meals, whist, tea, music. But as the days marched toward the purpose of my return—matriculation back into the Polytechnic—I felt nothing but dread.

  Mr. Einstein’s failure to respond to my letter had initially filled me with relief; it gave me license to reignite my Polytechnic studies without fear of his romantic interest. As our reunion drew nearer, however, the reality of his silence struck me. I would be sitting beside Mr. Einstein in classrooms for the next two and a half years, the duration of our program. But what would I face from him? Disdain because of my rejection? Rumor-mongering among our classmates over our sole kiss? Would our previous friendship be my undoing? My reputation as a serious student was everything. Women scientists didn’t get second chances.

  As the days mounted, so did the apprehension that my return to Zürich was anything but wise.

  On the first day of term, I delayed entering the classroom until the last possible second. When I heard the scrape of chairs pulling under desks, I knew I could wait no longer. Finally pushing open the door, I saw that my same seat was empty. The other chairs and desks were occupied by the familiar five students who had filled Section Six my first year; no other student had been added during the winter term that I’d missed, and no one else had dropped out. Had my seat been waiting for me all this time? It looked as forlorn as I felt. As I limped over to it, careful to fix my gaze on the desk and nothing else, I felt Mr. Einstein’s dark brown eyes on me.

  After I took my seat, I kept my eyes solely on Professor Weber. Initially, he played at my invisibility, and then suddenly, he said, “I see that Miss Marić has decided to rejoin us from the hinterlands of Heidelberg. While she undoubtedly witnessed some intriguing experiments during her sabbatical, I wonder if she can keep pace with the critical concepts that you all have been mastering in the first term of this year, the year of my cornerstone physics class, the foundation of your physics degrees.” He then launched into his lecture.

  My cheeks hot with shame at Weber’s troubling comments, I scribbled down notes as quickly as he could speak. Weber’s message was plain. My term in Heidelberg was ill-perceived, by Weber and God knows who else, and Weber would not be lenient with me. I reminded myself that I was making the right choice to return to Section Six, to reclaim my path to a physics professorship in spite of Mr. Einstein. I could not let Weber or anyone else at the Polytechnic see me as soft. I had worked hard—harder than any of my classmates, and certainly harder than Mr. Einstein—to reach this point, to examine the questions that philosophers have asked since time immemorial, the questions that the great scientific minds of our day were poised to answer: the nature of reality, space, time, and its contents. I wanted to scrutinize Newton’s principles—the laws of action and reaction, force and acceleration and gravitation—and study them in light of the latest investigations into atoms and mechanics to see if any single theory existed that could explain the seemingly endless variety of natural phenomena and chaos. I hungered to examine the newer ideas about heat, thermodynamics, gases, and electricity, as well as their mathematical underpinnings; numbers were the architecture of an enormous physical system integral to everything. This was God’s secret language, I was certain. This was my religion, I was on a crusade, and crusaders couldn’t afford frailty. Feeling Mr. Einstein’s eyes on me, I reminded myself that crusaders couldn’t afford romance either.

  “Gentlemen, that will suffice for today. Tonight, I want you to revisit Helmholtz. I will weave his theories into those we explored today.” Weber pronounced this with an acid glare as he exited the classroom, robes trailing. Other than his obvious disgust with me, who knew what else we had done to warrant his wrath? There were a myriad of ways that we, once again, proved ourselves unworthy of him, he who h
ad studied under the great physics masters Gustav Kirchhoff and Hermann von Helmholtz.

  Chatter only started once Weber’s departure was certain. Messrs. Ehrat and Kollros offered me a pleasant welcome back, and Mr. Grossman bowed toward me. I returned their kind words and gestures with a quick curtsy, but then I sensed Mr. Einstein’s approach. I scrambled to pack my bag and wrap my coat around me. I couldn’t bear to have this awkward moment in front of my classmates. My reputation and my tenuous relationship with them wouldn’t survive it.

  Clomp, drag. The sound of my uneven footfalls echoed throughout the otherwise empty corridor outside Weber’s classroom. I thought I’d escaped, but then I heard the race of footsteps behind me. I knew it was him.

  “I see you are angry with me,” he said.

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t even stop walking. My emotions were fluctuating so wildly, I was afraid to speak.

  “Your anger is understandable. I never wrote you back. That failure is rude and inexcusable,” he offered.

  I slowed my pace but still didn’t respond.

  “I’m not certain what else to do but to apologize and ask for your forgiveness.” He paused.

  I stopped and considered my response. He didn’t seem angry at my rejection. Was I angry at him? Was he really offering a simple apology and requesting nothing more? Seeing him again, I felt myself slipping into old feelings of tenderness, warmth, even surrender. Was a simple apology—and nothing more—what I wanted? I wasn’t sure, but I could not go back; I had sacrificed an entire term to secure an independent path and had made promises to Papa. I must pretend what I did not feel.