The Other Einstein

by Marie Benedict

  I longed to say yes, to believe in Albert, but I couldn’t be so foolhardy. “Do you promise that we will work together again? That in Zürich, you will make time for the sort of physics projects we created for the Annalen der Physik? The articles that have made you so famous and secured you this new Zürich job?” I needed to remind him on whose back he climbed for the heights he now inhabited.

  He blinked but didn’t waver. “I promise.”

  Did I believe him? Did it matter? I had my vow and couldn’t hope for more. So I said, “Yes, Zürich can become our fresh start.”

  Chapter 33

  October 20, 1910, and November 5, 1911

  Zürich, Switzerland, and Prague, Czechoslovakia

  The familiar charms of Zürich worked their magic on me from the very beginning. The aroma of coffee and evergreens in the air, the animated chatter of students in cafés batting about the latest notions of the day, and the allure of strolls through the ancient streets and along the banks of the Limmat River transformed me back into a younger, livelier version of myself. I became the hopeful Mitza of my youth, even when Albert failed to keep his promise of undertaking a project with me.

  In lieu of a project with Albert, I found a surprising outlet for my scientific longings. By happy coincidence, we discovered that a Polytechnic graduate who started the mathematics and physics program after our departure and was now assistant to the head of the University of Zürich’s physics program, Friedrich Adler, and his wife, Katya Germanischkaya, a Lithuanian-born Russian who studied physics at the Polytechnic after we left, had an apartment in our building on Moussonstrasse. We became fast friends with the couple, sharing meals with them and their young children, music, and scientific and philosophical discussions. My satisfaction became even more complete when I learned I was pregnant, a state for which I’d prayed for years. For a time, we inhabited the blissful bohemian world of which Albert and I once dreamed—as long as I didn’t allow myself to reflect on his broken promises of work.

  But then, a mere six months after our arrival, just as I’d gotten fully settled back into Zürich life, Prague began calling. The prestigious German University of Prague dangled before Albert a full physics professorship and the accompanying position of director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics. I knew this to be an irresistible carrot for him. Double the money, a full professorship instead of his junior professor status, and the head of a theoretical physics institute—how could he resist? Still, I begged him not to take us away from our happy life in Zürich, particularly when our second son Eduard was born on July 28, 1910. Tete, as we called him, emerged into the world very sickly, suffering from one childhood infection after another and sleeping very little. I worried how he would fare in Prague, notorious for pollution as industrialization increased in the ancient city. For nearly a year, Albert acquiesced to my wishes and declined the job, although his displeasure grew.

  I sought to alleviate his discontent by expanding our world beyond the Adlers and arranging regular Sunday evenings of music with Polytechnic professor Adolf Hurwitz and his family. I wanted to remind him of the lure of Zürich and reconnect us through our shared love of music. But nothing helped his darkening mood.

  His desire for the Prague job soured him on Zürich. And because of my resistance to Prague, his feelings toward me soured further.

  One crisp autumn afternoon, the fall sun reflecting off the Limmat River in the distance, a large envelope arrived in the mail. It was addressed to Albert in formal script and bore a Swedish return address. Who could be writing Albert from Sweden? I didn’t think his notoriety had spread that far.

  Climbing up the stairs, I placed baby Tete in his bassinet and settled Hans Albert with a book. Because I handled the family finances and, consequently, all correspondence fell to me, I sliced open the letter, even though it was addressed to Albert. To my astonishment, the letter came from the Nobel Prize Committee. It informed Albert that Nobel Prize chemistry laureate Wilhelm Ostwald had nominated him for the Nobel Prize based on the 1905 paper on special relativity.

  I lowered myself to the couch, my hand trembling. My paper was being nominated for the Nobel Prize? No matter how many accolades the paper had already garnered, this tribute was beyond my wildest speculation. Even if no one ever learned of my role in the creation of the relativity theory, I felt a certain sense of peace that Lieserl’s death yielded this magnanimous laurel.

  Admittedly, a tiny part of myself smarted that no recognition would fall to me. But when I realized that this award might be exactly what I needed, I tucked away my disappointment. Perhaps the Nobel Prize nomination would soften the loss of the Prague position and make staying in Zürich more palatable for Albert. Maybe he would realize that to climb to scientific heights, he didn’t need to leave Zürich.

  That evening, I waited for Albert by the door with the letter and two congratulatory glasses of red wine, one for each of us. And I waited.

  Nearly two hours after his usual arrival time home, he finally arrived. Instead of chiding him for his lateness, I smiled and handed him the wine and the letter.

  “What’s this?” he asked gruffly.

  “I think you’ll be pleased.”

  As his eyes scanned the pages, I stretched out my glass, ready to toast him when he finished reading. Without clinking his glass to mine, he tossed back the proffered wine and muttered, “So the old boys are finally recognizing me.”

  Recognizing “me”? Had he really just said that? As if he’d forgotten my authorship of the paper now in contention for the Nobel Prize. As if he’d rewritten history in his own mind such that he’d actually created the article himself. I didn’t know what to say; his statement stunned me. It was one thing to present the special relativity theory to the world as his own, but it was quite another thing to pretend to be its creator to me.

  “You are happy that the committee is recognizing your paper?”

  “Yes, Mileva, I am.” His eyes dared me to say more.

  If I was stunned before, I was dumbfounded now.

  Abruptly, he asked, “Is dinner ready?”

  I realized then I had become only a hausfrau to Albert. Mother of his children. Cleaner of his home. Launderer of his clothes. Preparer of his meals. There would never be anything more.

  These were the only crumbs Albert had left for me. Yet he seemed to loathe me for accepting his scraps.

  I had a choice. I could leave Albert and take the children with me, destroying forever their chance of a normal family life and exposing them to the reputational stigma emanating from divorce, all because their father abandoned his promise to me. Or I could stay and try to fashion the best home life for them, walking away from the dream of a scientific partnership with Albert. A partnership, if I was truthful with myself, whose time had passed long ago. Either way, there was no hope of another collaboration. Only the happiness of my children. Certainly not myself. And all of that was dependent on Albert and his satisfaction.

  As Albert walked to the dining room and sat at the table, ready for me to serve him dinner, I said, “Albert?”

  “Yes?” he asked without bothering to turn back to me.

  “I think we should go to Prague.”

  • • •

  Black industrial soot clogged the Prague air, and it settled on me like a deep depression. I felt as if I were swimming through sludge when I made my way through the dense warren of Prague streets with the boys. The unpleasantness of the city’s atmosphere was mirrored by the attitudes of its ethnically Germanic rulers and elite, whose rumored dislike of Slavic people and Jews was confirmed from the start. The mounting political instability in Austro-Hungary of which Prague was a part, as relations between the Ottoman Empire and Austro-Hungary continued to break down and the Serbs tried to create a nation for Southern Slavs within the Austro-Hungarian borders, only reinforced their adherence to their Germanic roots. They wanted to distance
themselves from Slavs at all costs. How could I create the home life I’d decided upon in this setting?

  Still, I tried. When brown water began running from the taps in our apartment in the Smíchov district on Třebízského Street, I traipsed to a fountain up the street and hauled cooking water into our apartment, boiling it before use. When bedbugs and fleas infested our bedding, I made a grand show of heaping the beset items in a bonfire and exchanging the mattresses and dour blankets with brightly colored replacements. I turned the boys’ attention away from the lack of fresh milk, fruit, and vegetables and refocused them on the plentiful music available in concert halls and churches and the city’s exquisite architecture, particularly the famous town clock that sat above the Old Town Hall.

  I stopped clamoring for work from Albert and tried to mold myself into the hausfrau role that he’d left for me. Yet Albert wasn’t present very often to witness my efforts. Theoretical work, teaching, and conferences filled his days, and nights out became his mainstay, leaving the boys and I alone for weeks. The only evidence of his continued presence was trails of clothes on the floor or the sound of his voice lecturing to colleagues in the living room late at night, after the Café Louvre had finally kicked them out or the weekly salon at Mrs. Berta Fanta’s home on Old Town Square closed down.

  It wasn’t constant marginalization. Albert would sense that I’d reached the limits of his neglect and show up for a few family dinners. He’d toss the boys in the air and tickle them, and once, he even hinted at collaboration. “Should we return to relativity, Dollie? Should we explore the connection that gravity might have to relativity?” The next day, it was as if he’d never spoken the words. I tried not to let it bother me.

  Sometimes, I wanted to give up, but I needed to stay stalwart for Hans Albert and Tete. I shared the toll on my self-esteem only with Helene, telling her how starved I was for kindness and affection, how alone I felt, and how thankful I was to have her in my life. Only with her could I be my true self.

  I thought I was bearing it with a certain outward grace when I caught sight of myself in the mirror one afternoon. “Who is that woman?” I asked myself as I stared at my own reflection.

  Broad hips from bearing children, the still trim waist hidden under the voluminous folds of an ugly housedress. Thickened nose and lips, coarsened brow. Once-lustrous skin and hair now dull. I was only thirty-six, but I looked fifty. What had happened to me? Was my neglected appearance one of the reasons Albert had turned away from me?

  Just as my eyes began to well with tears, a loud, barking cough came from Tete’s bedroom. Creaking open his door quietly so as not to wake him from his nap, I stared down at my youngest son. With his dark hair and soulful brown eyes, he resembled his older brother, but his constitution was quite different. Where Hans Albert had always been a sturdy lad, Tete was delicate, always catching the latest illness. Unclean Prague had been hard on him.

  His cheeks looked flushed, so I placed my hand on his forehead. He was burning up. Fear bubbled up within me. I ran out to the desk, wrote a note to the doctor, and then, asking a neighbor to watch Tete for a moment, I raced out to the street to summon a messenger. Within the hour, a doctor knocked on our door.

  “Thank you so much for coming, Doctor. You were quicker than I imagined.” I had waited eight hours for a doctor the last time Tete came down with a fever, so I had expected a long, anxious wait.

  “I was just in the building next door. There’s been an outbreak of typhoid, you see,” he explained.

  My heart beat wildly. Typhoid? Tete had managed to survive countless colds, ear infections, and even a bout of pneumonia, but typhoid? His constitution was far too weak.

  The doctor saw the terror in my eyes. He took my hands and said, “Please let me examine him, Mrs. Einstein. He may simply have one of the many flus I’ve seen around Prague. It may not be typhoid at all.”

  I led him into Tete’s room, thankful that Hans Albert was still at school, and watched as the doctor examined my listless son. Whispering the Hail Mary to myself over and over, I prayed for a common cold or one of the recurrent ear infections to which Tete was so prone.

  “I don’t think it’s typhoid, Mrs. Einstein. I believe that your little boy has some other sort of infection, however. He’s going to need ice baths to bring his fever down and close watching. Can you manage that?”

  I nodded gratefully, made the sign of the cross, and leaned down to smooth Tete’s hair. For a moment, I saw Lieserl’s flushed, feverish face burrowed into the sheets, and my heart stopped. This isn’t Lieserl, I reminded myself. This is Tete, and he will survive. And this is not scarlet fever or typhoid but a typical flu. Yet I also knew that I couldn’t continue to expose the children to Prague’s contaminated water, air, and food. We needed to get out of Prague.

  Three days after Tete’s scare, Albert returned home from the Solvay conference in Brussels, a prestigious gathering of twenty-four of the brightest scientific minds in Europe. I took special care with my appearance that evening. Then, without mentioning Tete’s illness or exerting pressure upon him of any kind, I gave him dinner and let him relax with his pipe to tell Hans Albert and me stories about the event. Albert had been so distant since we arrived in Prague, it was a relief to watch his animated face and hear about the conference. All the physics luminaries were there, the ones we’d been reading and discussing for decades—Walther Nernst, Max Planck, Ernest Rutherford, Henri Poincaré, and the like. But it wasn’t these old-school scientists who impressed him; he was drawn to the new band of Parisian physicists, Paul Langevin, Jean Perrin, and the famous Madame Marie Curie, who had won the Nobel Prize herself while they were in Brussels.

  I had questions about Madame Curie; she’d long been a hero of mine, and I admired the scientific partnership she and her late husband had formed, the sort of relationship I once thought I’d have with Albert. Yet as his stories continued and the hours ticked by—hours in which Tete’s disturbing coughing must have become apparent even to the often oblivious Albert—my impatience grew. At the two-hour mark, after I put Hans Albert to bed and checked on Tete, I plunged in and asked him the dreaded question. “Albert, do you think that there’s any way we could leave Prague? Return to Zürich or move to any other healthier European city?”

  He paused, a deep furrow appearing between his brows. “That sounds awfully bourgeois of you. I know Prague doesn’t have the comforts or sophistication of Zürich or even Bern, but it’s been quite the opportunity for me. It’s quite a selfish ask, Mileva.”

  Mileva? I didn’t think he had called me Mileva since we had first eschewed the formal “Miss Marić and Mr. Einstein” all those years ago in Zürich. Putting aside my concern at the use of “Mileva” and his unkind labels of “bourgeois” and “selfish,” I said, “I’m not asking for me, Albert. It’s for the children. I am worried about the effect of Prague on their health, Tete’s in particular. We had quite a scare while you were in Brussels.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tete became very sick last week. We suspected typhoid from the contaminated Prague water.”

  “I thought you’d been getting water from the fountain and boiling it.”

  “It wasn’t enough, unfortunately.”

  He didn’t speak. He didn’t even ask how Tete was faring.

  I got down on my knees before him. “Please, Albert. For the children.”

  As he stared at me with his dark brown eyes, I wondered how he saw me. Did he see only my haggard face and thick hips? Or did he remember the quick intellect and deep affection as well? The Dollie he’d once loved.

  His face expressed no sympathy or concern, only disgust. “I’ve been prolific in Prague, Mileva. You are asking me to give that up.” Albert stood up suddenly, causing my balance to waver, and I fell back on my heels. Without offering a hand of help, he stepped over me, and as he walked toward the kitchen, he said, “You only ever think of yours
elf.”

  Chapter 34

  August 8, 1912

  Zürich, Switzerland

  Fortunately, a return to Zürich didn’t rest solely on my unheeded supplications. As if answering my prayers, prayers that had become increasingly commonplace, Zürich began wooing Albert. Our alma mater, the Polytechnic, had summoned Albert with a job offer he couldn’t refuse—senior professor of theoretical physics and the head of the department. I told myself that I wasn’t delusional, but still, I hoped that a return to Zürich would lead to a return of civility between us.

  The time in Prague had been hard. Hard on the bodies and minds of me and the children. Hard on our relationships as husband and wife and father and sons. The accusation I’d once made against Albert—that he and I were “one stone” but “two hearts”—proved an uncanny prediction, particularly in Prague’s inhospitable clime. But surely, the bohemian atmosphere of Zürich would soften him, and his very separate, mercurial heart would cease its constant fluctuation. We could return to steady decorum at least. I’d stopped hoping for more.

  Arms full of produce from the market, I pushed open the door to our new apartment in Zürich. Outside, I had paused for a moment to admire the five-story stucco building, mustard-colored with bay windows, a red-tiled roof, an iron gate, and a view of the lake, city, and Alps. How far we’d come from our student days.

  “Hello? Is anyone home?” I called out once I’d walked up the stairs and headed into the kitchen. I’d left the boys with Albert for a half hour while I shopped for dinner, and it was strangely quiet. The boys didn’t get a lot of time alone with Albert, so I expected them to be loudly clamoring for his attention.

  I rubbed my joints as I began to unpack the produce; my legs and hips had worsened considerably in recent months, and the steep climb to our apartment would be challenging. But Albert would never hear me complain a word about my health; I was too happy to be back in Zürich.