Surprisingly, Albert agreed to a summer reprieve in August before we began planning for the move in the fall. I never thought he’d agree to visit my parents in Kać at the Spire—he’d resisted since Hans Albert was quite young, so my parents hadn’t seen the three-year-old Tete since he was a newborn—but he proved more than willing. Almost suspiciously so, to my mind. As soon as we arrived in Kać, he began inciting arguments with me about Berlin, and the reason for his complaisance dawned on me. He had hoped to anger me enough that I’d insist on staying in Kać with my parents. That way, he could abandon me with a clear conscience. After watching his mistreatment of me during our visit, Mama and Papa would have supported the boys and me in staying behind.
But nothing he could say or do would shake me. For after Kać, on September 23, he had agreed that I could accompany him to a conference in Vienna. There, Helene awaited.
Helene and I clung to each other like life rafts in turbulent seas.
“Girls, girls, your reunion is beautiful, but we do have places to be,” Albert said with a puff of his pipe and a humorous tone. Astonishing how quickly he could revert to his charming public personality after just yelling at me to walk behind him, not at his side. He found me embarrassing these days.
But Helene and I didn’t listen. “I’ve missed you so much, Mitza,” she said.
“I’ve missed you too, Helene,” I said into her hair. Her once chestnut locks were shot through with streaks of gray, and the furrows between her brows had deepened even further. No wonder. Helene and her family had contended with the Balkan Wars for the past two years, a conflict that made obtaining even basic necessities hard and travel impossible.
How grateful I was that we were together. We would have three glorious days while Albert spoke, conducted meetings, and hobnobbed with his peers. Helene and I would be left to our own devices for most of the time, apart from Albert’s lectures, which Helene asked to attend out of politeness, I supposed. And we would be utterly alone since I’d left the boys in Kać with my parents.
“We haven’t seen each other for years, but I talk with you daily. I’m always conversing with you in my mind.”
Helene giggled, making her sound like the schoolgirl she’d once been. “Me too, Mitza.”
Albert interrupted us again. “Ladies, we really must depart. The 85th Congress of Natural Sciences awaits, and my lecture begins in less than an hour.”
We left the train station where we’d met Helene and hopped into a hansom cab to the hall. Chatting about her girls and my boys, with Albert piping in constant comments about the boys’ intellectual promise and musical talents, the time passed in a blur. Before I realized it, we were ensconced in our seats, awaiting Albert’s lecture.
Helene glanced around the packed lecture hall, her eyes wide. She hadn’t experienced the breadth of Albert’s fame before; my letters had been her primary source about his growing popularity. I scanned the room for familiar faces, but none of the kind professors from Zürich, Prague, or Bern who I’d gotten to know over the years were visible. It was simply an anonymous bobbing sea of sober mustaches and beards. No other women.
“All this is for Albert?” Helene asked.
“Yes,” I answered with an attempt at a smile. “He has become quite a star.”
As soon as Albert walked up the steps to the stage, the hall thundered with the audience’s raucous applause. He beamed at the adulation, his eyes sparkling, a wide grin forming on his lips, the spotlight catching the gray streaks in his wild, dark hair. It was an impersonation of his somewhat impish, eccentric student self, a persona he’d begun to cultivate. Understanding the dichotomy of his transformation immediately, Helene squeezed my hand.
We didn’t need to speak to communicate. Even after all these years.
He cleared his throat and spoke loudly to his fans. “Greetings, esteemed colleagues. I appreciate your invitation to speak at this 85th Congress of Natural Sciences. As you have requested, my lecture today will focus on my new gravitation theory, as it expands on my special theory of relativity as set forth in 1905.”
“Isn’t that your paper?” Helene whispered.
I nodded.
She glanced over at me with a distressed expression. As the only person in the world besides Albert who knew the full extent of my authorship of the 1905 papers—including what it meant as a tribute to Lieserl—she understood how hard it was for me to have my name erased from the project. Tears welled up in my eyes at her sympathy; I was unused to compassion these days. I stared up at the ceiling, not wanting anyone in the crowd to see me cry.
Albert began explaining the work that he and Marcel completed to date. He wrote out their equations and compared the development of his gravitation theory with the history of electromagnetism. When he launched into the two relativity-based theories he was considering and then set forth his own theory, grumblings built in the crowd. When Albert opened up the floor for questions, countless hands rose like a wave, and Professor Gustav Mie from Greifswald stood up without waiting to be called upon. Visibly impatient, the professor contended that Albert’s theory didn’t meet the principle of equivalence, a serious criticism.
Even after the question period ended and Albert stepped down from the stage, he was swarmed with scientists. Some sought answers to esoteric inquiries, and others sought his autograph on various papers and articles he’d drafted. When the throng thinned out, he walked toward us.
“What did you think, Helene?” he asked. Incredibly, even after all the flattery, he sought more. From everyone but me.
“Most impressive, Albert.” Helene spoke to the number of attendees and their fawning reaction, the exact response Albert sought. What else could she say? I knew she didn’t understand the math or the physics; she was a history student.
Walking down the long aisles toward the hall exit and then out onto the sidewalk, Helene and Albert nattered on. I overheard her ask about Berlin, and he responded enthusiastically above the move.
As Albert had requested, I walked a few steps behind them. When peers stopped Albert with questions or comments on his talk, they addressed Helene as “Mrs. Einstein,” no matter her attempts at correcting them. Me, a dark shadow cast behind Albert’s light, they utterly ignored.
On one street corner, Albert became engrossed in a debate with the persistent Professor Mie, and Helene and I took our leave. Albert had other meetings to attend anyway. Spotting a cozy café on a nearby street corner, we ordered coffee and two Linzer tortes, the city’s specialty.
Biting into the intoxicating blend of cinnamon, almond, and raspberry, Helene sat back and sighed as she chewed. “It’s been so long since I tasted anything this decadent.”
“You have suffered so much hardship, Helene.” I had taken note of her frayed blue gown—almost a patchwork quilt with its mending and stitchery—which was undoubtedly her best.
“Things haven’t been easy for you either, Mitza.”
“Oh, not nearly as bad as for you. I haven’t had trouble finding healthy food or basic necessities. I haven’t had the specter of war looming over me. I’m fine; it’s just the same sort of marital distress that you’ve suffered too.” Although she hadn’t mentioned marital troubles for some time, I was ever mindful of it.
“Mitza, you may not have been dealing with the harsh reality of war on a regular basis, but your situation is terrible. Why do you think I’m here? Your letters had me so worried I found a way to travel to Vienna to check on you. But now that I see you and Albert in person—and I stare my beautiful friend in the eyes—I think you are far worse than you described. Worse even than when you lost Lieserl.”
Conflicting feelings coursed through me. I wanted to protest that all was well enough, the mantra I’d been uttering to myself for years, the rationale I’d offered over and over to Mama and Papa, but my true feelings bubbled to the surface. I started crying.
“Mi
tza, you walk behind Albert like a servant. His colleagues were calling me Mrs. Einstein, for God’s sake, and neither you nor Albert corrected them. No matter the private troubles I’ve endured with my husband, I always have his public respect. How has it come to this?”
“I don’t know, Helene,” I said through my tears. “I don’t know.”
“I no longer care for Albert,” Helene said. “I do not like the person he has become.”
It was as if a great weight had been lifted from me. No one else saw the man behind the public mask. “Truly, Helene? I could hug you for saying that. Other friends still admire him for his scientific achievement, even when they’ve witnessed his treatment of me. It’s as if they’ve transformed their professional admiration into unshakable personal affection, no matter how contemptibly he has acted.”
Helene grabbed me by the shoulder, forcing me to look her in the face. “Where are you, Mitza? Where is the brilliant girl I knew from the Engelbrecht Pension? You seemed so quiet back then, but you were always ready to lance anyone with your sharp wit when necessary. Where has that girl gone? We need her back.”
Terrible heaving sobs wracked my body. The prim café’s patrons stared at me, but I didn’t care. “I don’t know where she’s gone, Helene,” I cried.
“Mitza, you must wake up that latent part of yourself, that strong girl you’ve allowed to fall asleep for so many years. Because the future has become clear to me, even though I’m no soothsayer. You are going to have to do battle.”
Chapter 39
July 18, 1914
Berlin, Germany
Albert had been gone for six days, his longest unexplained absence since we arrived in Berlin. Six days of Hans Albert and Tete asking about their father’s whereabouts. Six days of running into Albert’s colleagues, who shared tales of wondrous lunches and dinners they’d just experienced with the lauded professor. Six days of pretending that all would be well when he chose to return to our apartment at 33 Ehrenbergstraße after storming off when I simply asked if he would be home for dinner that evening.
But all wouldn’t be well when—or if—he returned. At Helene’s urging and Madame Curie’s example, I had awoken my strength. I would not endure humiliation at Albert’s hands again, whether personal or professional. If Albert didn’t appreciate the meek helpmate I had become in our latter years together—the failed physicist from whom he could pilfer ideas at will and the wife bendable at his beckoning—he positively loathed the return of the old Mileva in Berlin. And that was precisely who would greet him at the door when he returned from his cowardly flight to his lover, Elsa.
The very thought of Elsa—all perfumed and dyed blond hair, exactly the sort of idle, pampered, bourgeois woman about which Albert used to complain—sickened me. Less because she had “stolen” Albert from me and more because of her perfidy.
“Please, Mrs. Einstein, allow me to help you,” Elsa had said with an obsequious smile when the boys and I went to Berlin alone in the days after Christmas to find an apartment. Albert had sent her over to the hotel to “assist” us without my foreknowledge.
Staring at the ruby-red smile painted upon her lips, I couldn’t speak. Her audacity coming here, seeking out the woman she’d betrayed, silenced me.
Elsa, as she insisted we call her, continued regardless. “I know all the best real estate brokers in Berlin. It would be my pleasure to help you find just the right apartment,” she cooed. As if her angelic offer of assistance were for the benefit of me and my boys—not for the true purpose of securing an apartment convenient for Albert to visit her.
With Tete tugging on my arm and Hans Albert eyeing her suspiciously, I refused. My boys could see what their father could not. What sort of human being gazed into the eyes of one she’s betrayed and pretended to offer salvation?
The door slammed. The boys flew to my side. Even though I never told them what was transpiring between Albert and myself, they sensed it. Their protective instincts were on high alert. Looking into their chocolate-brown eyes, so like Albert’s, and whispering in their ears that everything would be fine, I sent the boys off to their bedrooms. No matter how I felt about Albert, I didn’t want them to witness this exchange.
I followed Albert into his study, where he had retreated immediately upon entering the apartment. Without a greeting, even for the boys.
“So Elsa has taken you from me at last, has she?” I said very matter-of-factly. Why should I mince words? Better we all understood our positions.
He turned to look at me, his eyebrows raised in surprise at my remark. Since we arrived in Berlin, I had been clear about my expectations of fidelity, but I never mentioned Elsa outright. I couldn’t bear to say her name aloud; I couldn’t even fathom what he saw in the vapid, uneducated matron. But after his six-day disappearance—days in which I heard some of his colleagues snickering at me at the local market, as many of our acquaintances in Berlin were part of Elsa’s longtime circle—we were past that point.
“Elsa cannot take from you what you do not possess,” he answered coldly.
The old Mileva would have crumbled at his icy words, but I did not relent. I remained calm and said, “Please allow me to rephrase. You have abandoned me and your children for Elsa. Am I correct?”
To that, Albert said not a word.
“I suppose it’s not the first abandonment, is it? You left us for science long ago, didn’t you?” I continued.
Huffing in anger, he yelled, “It’s not me who’s abandoned you for science and other women but you who has abandoned me with your jealousy and the withdrawal of your affection. You forced me into Elsa’s arms.”
Shaking my head, I smiled at his infantile worldview. Was he truly so self-focused that he believed I withdrew my affections first? That my self-protection and the recent strengthening of my resolve happened before he cheated on me and bled me dry of my scientific ambitions? That I pushed him into Elsa’s waiting arms? It was so ridiculous that I didn’t bother to fashion a response. It would be like arguing with a madman. One made powerful by his popularity, at that.
“Why are you smiling?” he asked angrily.
“Your comment reflects the typical sort of selfish thinking I’ve grown to expect from you. But which I will tolerate no longer.”
“Is that so? I have prepared something that I think will wipe that smile from your face.” He thrust his hand out toward me. It held a single piece of paper.
“Oh really?” I asked, taking the paper from his hand.
“Really,” he taunted. “Take a look.”
“What is this?”
“It is a list of the conditions upon which I will stay in this apartment with you and the boys. This is only so I can maintain a relationship with the boys. As for you and me, I want our relationship to become a business one, with the personal aspects reduced to almost nothing.”
“Are you serious?” I asked. Did he think I was chattel for which he could enter a contract? Helene would scream aloud at this demand if she were here, and I couldn’t even fathom what Papa would do. Even Mama would not want me to stay in this situation.
“Absolutely. If you cannot agree to these conditions, then I will have no choice but to ask you for a separation.”
I glanced down at the sheet of paper. It was covered in Albert’s scrawl and resembled nothing so much as the protocols for a physics experiment, the sort Albert and I had written in droves. But the closer I examined it, the more I realized that it was unlike any document Albert had ever written before. It was probably unlike any document anyone had ever written before.
It was a contract for my behavior. As I read the barbaric agreement term by term, I grew more outraged. The document enumerated the household duties I must perform for Albert: his laundry; the preparation of his meals, to be served in his room; and the cleaning of his bedroom and study, with the requirement that I never touch his desk. Even more incre
dible was his list of his requirements that I must “obey” in my personal dealings with him. He demanded that I renounce all interaction with him at home; he would control where and when I spoke and what sorts of statements I could make to him and in front of the children. In particular, he mandated that I forgo all physical intimacy with him.
The document would indeed turn me into Albert’s chattel.
I felt Helene standing alongside me in solidarity, emboldening me to say, “What on earth makes you think that I would agree to this? That I would sink further down than I’ve already let you bury me?”
“I will not stay in this apartment with you otherwise,” he said with a certain aplomb. I then realized that he won, whether I agreed or not. Whether I stayed or not.
I shoved the paper back into his hands. It saddened me to think that I already met most of these conditions. How low I had plummeted.
I took a deep breath and calmly announced, “You needn’t worry.”
He looked incredulous. “You will agree to the terms?”
“Oh no, I would never agree to those terms, Albert. You don’t have to worry about staying in the apartment with us, because we will leave.”
Chapter 40
July 29, 1914
Berlin, Germany
The train whistle cried out, and Tete clapped at the sound. He didn’t understand the magnitude of this leave-taking. For him, it was just one more trip to one more destination. There had been so many.
For me, this train ride back to Zürich was an entirely different sort of journey. Zürich represented old friends, my years of education, possible work, a healthy climate and steady political situation for the boys, and the best chance at a happy life without Albert.
The Other Einstein Page 24
