by Stella Duffy
I have grown tired of these people who are frightened of water, worried by the south. I am irritated by their gibes, their dismissals, their lack of courage in the face of bridges, tube tunnel terror. Irritation might form a pearl in an oyster shell, but not for me. I twist and I have turned for your pleasure, writhing through your dogged isles and yet you cannot bear to cross me, too scared to cross me? Don’t cross me then. Don’t you dare cross me. I have had enough. I am very very cross indeed.
I am so old and yet, twice a day, am remade, brand new, flowing through. I have been burned and iced, open and closed, fresh and fetid. You care, I don’t. I am not interested in how many species live in me, what is the sand and silt content of my shore, where you would place another rail bridge, road tunnel, ferry landing. I am not interested in land. I am what lies between and I hear the lies you tell one another. Your tube delays and trains cancelled and walking in rain excuses, your getting lost in the south, tossed in the south. All your reasons for not getting there, for being late, for being last. I will not hear excuses any more.
I love my north and my south sides equally. Would you ask me to care more for one than the other? Love one half of me more than the other? And yet you do. You do. Elizabeth flowed from Westminster to Greenwich in my soft arms, Churchill rode me dead in a barge and all the cranes of the city bowed down when he passed. When I was young they carved a version of my face and set me fast on the Cutty Sark’s prow, it was like me, but not me. Not quite. I do not allow full likeness and graven images are quickly eroded in water. Cleopatra loaned me a needle once, I was darning something, a sock, a city, I forget which now, I kept her needle, she didn’t much care for sewing anyway, was never one for handicrafts, that girl. More makeup than make do and mend. I have been a silver ribbon misleading bombers from Tilbury to Teddington, I have welcomed the Boudicca’s flowing blood, I have sat cold and uninterested while the city burned, several times, at my sides.
I have been so much, am so much, and you can’t be bothered to cross? I’ve allowed you a dozen different bridges within an hour’s walk. Ferries and ferrymen, water wings and catamaran. Fine then. I am tired of arguing. You have turned me down once too often. Enough is enough.
Come down here, found here, twist and coiled round here, here I am, silted and salty and waiting. Waiting. The Greenwich Foot Tunnel was opened in 1902. It is fifty feet deep, twelve hundred and seventeen feet long, and it never closes. It runs through me. And I through it, though the white-glazed tiles and dry floor would convince you otherwise. But come closer, it’s all right, I won’t bite. There. Feel these tiles, smooth and cold, now this one here, see? There is a hook on the wall above you, an old metal hook, rusted just a little through the water in the air, there is always water in the air – touch and look and yes, this tile slips back, and that, and another. Now, quickly, while the lift doors are closed, the camera turned away, reach in and under, and stretch your fingers just that little bit further. That switch, there. Flick it, click it. Ah – and here we are – our entrance hall, a polished-shell path cleared for you. Come in. It’s all right, I’m with you now. You do not need to leave a trail of pebbles or crusts. I will bring you back here. I promise. I’m good like that. I always return.
Welcome. Those many man-made bridges? They run over me. The world-renowned tube passes under. But this tunnel, this one tunnel, it passes through. Is passing through. My guests do not pass through. Would you like to meet them? They’d love to meet you. They see so many faces down here. But very few who really know, who come and go.
This is Charlie. He has been here since 1913. Hush now dear, don’t cry for the people, it isn’t nice to make so much noise, hush, hush … I said, shut up! Thank you. Good boy. Charlie was perfectly happy to see young Mary from Bermondsey, as long as she made all the running. Mary walked under the river to the Isle for her tea, a strong cuppa and a nice currant bun, with a kiss and a peck for afters. She caught a ferry to meet him, then walked up to Victoria Park, by the bandstand in the dark where no-one would see his kisses, stolen from her lips. Poor tired Mary stood an hour on the tram all the way to Hampstead for the fair, her one afternoon off and again she journeyed to the far north all for him. Once, just once, Mary asked, couldn’t Charlie come to her, bend a little, bend over the water. And then he laughed, right in her face, laughed and shook his head and belched a vulgar grin, his voice raised just that much too loud, his mouth open a little too far, and his words caught on a wind that bore them to me.
‘Cross the river? Not me, no fear, you won’t catch me crossing there!’
But I did, didn’t I, sweetheart? Catch you, caught you, kept you, keep you. Mary cried once or twice, wondered where he’d gone, her daring beau, the darling boy. Then she moved on. Charlie did not move on. Charlie stayed down here with me. Forever nineteen, and never crossing the river, never quite to the other side. His brothers looked up and down the shore for his body, night following night for seven weeks. It never turned up. Because Charlie did not drown. My guests do not drown, they are cool and dry and going nowhere. Ever again. Still, it could have been worse. He could have gone with his brothers to the Somme.
This is Emma. Say hello poppet. Emma? Be nice now, say hello – I mean it. You know what I can do. Say … Good. Thank you. Emma used to work in the City, didn’t you, my lovely? Smart job, smart house, smart suit, smart girl. Not so smart girl. All they wanted was one quick trip, that’s all they were asking, her friends. A hen night. In Clapham. How bad could it be? But oh no, not our Emma. She just laughed. Laughed in the bride-to-be’s face. Giggled behind the back of the long-suffering bridesmaid. Said she’d do her best, see what she could arrange, try, give it a try. Try my eye. She never had any intention of crossing. Not going to chance getting her peep-toes wet, that one. Never had, never would. That was her vow. Proud of it too, she was. Too damn proud. Still, I was patient. I’m happy to wait. I have all my life to flow downstream. And now I have all of Emma’s life. My little Queen of the Slip-Tide. How did I catch her if she didn’t cross? Good question. See how I bend, I twist? You can barely tell which side I’m on down there at Canary Wharf. And City girls always have to go to the wharf. They’re drawn to the bars, the waterfront cafes, the rich, rich men. Ordered steak frites and not a single frite passed her lips. Girl. Emma left her City friends drinking by the water, drinking no water, and went for a wander. Well, I spin into the docks too you know, all those glass-fronted places reflecting my glory, refracting my shadowed light. A wind leapt from the water, splashed single drops on to each of her five hundred pound shoes, Emma bent down to check the leather and then I was there. Now she is here.
Aaron was a taxi driver. He wouldn’t go south of the river, not for twenty quid extra, not for a generous tip to the charity of his choice, not for love nor money. He does not go south now either. As I do, he simply leans from east to west and back again on the rising and falling tides. He goes nowhere. An idle man, he would happily sit in his cab, eating bacon sandwiches and drinking large mugs of sweet tea, prefer that to driving south, rather earn less than cross the water, no matter how often his wife reminded him of the bills and the long hours she worked and the mounting debts and the cost of their children’s future. Their long fatherless future. Aaron would drive anywhere now if I let him, anywhere at all, his hands hunger for a steering wheel. I won’t let him.
Martin travelled all the way from South Africa to London, such a distance he came. But when he got here, the river was one step too many for him. Would only live north, work east, play west. So very impolite. I will not be crossed. Martin’s return ticket remains unused and he only remembers the sun. Sam journeyed south from Hexham. Stoke Newington became his new north east, and I the Thames barrier he could not face. Now Sam is my angel of the north and, try as he might, he cannot stretch his arms wide enough to reach the shore. Kane from New Zealand. Feared walking across Hungerford Bridge, mocked what he called my dirty waters, but he needed a closer look to prove London pollution and Antipodean superiori
ty. He got his closer look. Now Kane knows the water all too well, the taste and texture is all he knows, has become expert in the ways of silt and silence, sand blocking his sighs.
There they all are, so many, so much, so missed. So mine.
Anyway, thank you, you should go now. Really, you should go. The tide is turning, London’s burning, and you don’t want to be down here when it does. Seriously, I mean it. go now. This way, back through here, that’s it, past the cool white tiles, bye bye my little ones, I’ll be back later, always back later, hush now – hush damn you! Hush! Come on, keep up, don’t you want to go back up? To the day and the bright, the riverside light? Didn’t you have an appointment? At the Elephant was it? Or Kennington? Putney? You did mean to cross didn’t you? Yes? Well go on then, cross. Quick. Off you go. Trip trap over the bridge. Wave good bye. Bye bye. See you again. Maybe. When the moon hangs fat and full over St Paul’s and you look down from Waterloo Bridge and you could swear, just swear, there was something in there. Beneath the water. Something, someone. Looking up. Calling out. Asking you to reach in and help. Calling you down. Don’t look down. Don’t come in. Keep on, cross over, make like the geese, head south. And don’t you dare, even in jest, say no to the river crossing. As I said, I’m bored with it. I have had enough. Cross me. Come on. Cross me. I’m waiting.
Everything is Moving, Everything is Joined
LEWIN MINKOWSKI AND Rachel Taubmann were married beneath the chuppah in the small, light synagogue. Rachel, fully veiled (though Lewin had seen her face already, checked in the ante-room that she was the bride she promised to be, not a substitute ugly stepsister), walked seven times around her bridegroom, the glass was smashed beneath Lewin’s foot, they were married. Mr and Mrs Minkowski. Two people, one name.
We were married my love, remember? We smashed glasses when we cheered our union too forcefully, smashed teeth, bones, body, when we came together not too forcefully, but just forcefully enough. Two into one, two as one.
Lewin and Rachel Minkowski came together and out of the shards of broken glass, away from Germany where they themselves had begun, Mr and Mrs Minkowski began their sons. Oskar was born in 1858, Hermann a long, wanted, waiting time later in 1864. He was a summer baby, born the same year that the Governor General of Vilna, according to the wishes of the Tsar, ordered that all school books be printed only in the Cyrillic alphabet, the banning of the Lithuanian language had begun.
In Cyrillic, letters have numerical values, A equals 1, B equals 2; words and numbers are joined.
In 1872, when Hermann was eight years old, one of the works of fiction that later morphed into part of the infamous Protocols of Zion was first translated into Russian and appeared in St Petersburg; several different fictional works, combining, uniting, presenting as one truth. This was also the year that the Minkowski family returned to Germany, Lewin and Rachel’s homeland.
Then. There. Hermann was eight, Oskar was fourteen. They were in Königsberg, Prussia. It was 1872. It was not yet Germany. It would be.
Here. Now.
Because the earth is always in motion, because the earth moves around the sun, because the sun moves in the galaxy, the galaxy in the universe and on and on – and in and in, because the thing, anything, you, me, an apple, is made of atoms, is made of electrons, is made of so much we have yet to know – because everything is moving, there is no true coordinate for here. Because time is also moving there is no true coordinate for now. We cannot measure here and now because we cannot name the one place to begin our calculation, to say let’s start here.
We started here.
And yet we like to think we can do this naming, name the moment, that one point of realisation, of understanding, of love. We like to play with this/now and that/then, and we make plans and determine and build on what is always moving, as if it is stationary, as if it will not change. It’s all about perception.
I built on what is always moving when I said yes to loving you.
As a boy, Hermann’s mathematical aptitude was noticed at the Gymnasium in Königsberg, he started university in the city in 1880 and also studied at the University of Berlin in the winter that bled from 1882 to 1883. It was during that winter the first permanent street lighting was installed in Leipziger Strasse and Potsdamer Platz. Warm electric light for the cold winter nights of Hermann Minkowski’s studies.
Albert Einstein was born in Germany in 1879. His family were secular Jews. His father’s name was Hermann. His father worked for a company manufacturing electronic equipment.
Everything is moving, everything is joined.
An apple falls from a tree. In the foreground a train travels along a track. In the distance another train, on a parallel track, travels in the same direction. The apple tree is located between both trains. From the train in the foreground it appears that the train in the background is stationary, that it is the tree that is moving, the tree and the falling apple receding, travelling away, travelling back, behind, travelling to where we’ve been. It’s all about perception.
The trains are moving forward in time and in space. An apple has fallen. The trains have passed on. Past? Present.
You love me. Past.
An apple falls from a tree. I give it to you. Present.
In 1883, the French Academy of Sciences awarded the mathematics Grand Prix to both the nineteen-year-old Hermann Minkowski for his manuscript on the theory of quadratic forms and also to Henry Smith, an Irish mathematician who would have been fifty-six, had he not died two months before. The time and the place were good for Minkowski, the timing less so for Smith.
An apple falls from a tree. A man is near that tree. From the first train the man on the ground appears to walk slowly, while on the ground the man perceives himself to be walking quickly. If the train is heading east, the apple tree appears to be heading west at an equivalent speed. Close up the apple tree appears stationary. Nothing is stationary, it is all moving. Both move in reality and in time, it’s all about perception. Light is the only constant. See? C. Let there be light. Let c be light.
Hermann Minkowski and David Hilbert became friends at university in Königsberg.
We were friends and then we were lovers. I was married to you, became related to you, our wedding day was an event in space and time, but the only constant is the speed of light in a vacuum, and I was not fast enough to keep up with the bright light of you. Our life was no vacuum.
When Minkowski applied for a job at the University of Bonn, his interview was an oral explanation of a paper on positive definite quadratic forms. He got the job. Years later, this oral presentation became the basis of his ideas on the geometry of numbers. And there is a geometry to love, an equation that is always the same.
(Without, with, with, with.)
(With, without, without, without.)
Back to the trains. The trees alongside the track appear to be passing the east-bound train incredibly fast, they go by in a blur, a distant cow, lumbering slowly, ever so slowly, in the opposite direction, appears stationary. But when the train stops, the cow is moving, the tree stationary. Time passes.
Two clocks. One stationary, one moving. The passage of time appears to slow down for the moving clock.
A thirty-year-old man on earth ages a day. A thirty-year-old woman, with the exact birthday as the man, in the (non-existent) spaceship travelling at light speed also ages a day. Individually, time is a constant for both people. Separately, the man on earth and the woman in space are now different ages. Time for each has passed in the same way. Relative time – his to hers, hers to his – has not.
A thirty-year-old man loves a thirty-year-old woman. She loves him. Love is a constant for both people. His love for her, her love for him, these things are not constant. It’s all about perception.
There is space and there is time. Had we world enough and time. We do. And we don’t. Relatively speaking. It’s all about perception. And an apple falling not mattering as much as it once did. And time passing.
In 19
02, Hermann Minkowski, having taught in Zurich (where Karl Jung gained his PhD that same year), and in Königsberg (where Kant held the chair of metaphysics and mathematician Leonard Euler’s work led to graph theory) and in Bonn (where Beethoven was born) returned with his family to Göttingen – where the goose girl is kissed by graduating students. David Hilbert had created a position for him in the mathematics department. The old friends, once more in the same time and place, began working together.
I located you, in time, in space. We were once an event, we came together at that place-space – in that time. There are two ways of looking at us, the event of us.
There is this way: With, without, without, without.
And there is this way: Without, with, with, with.
I am time-travelling.
Forward, forward, forward, away from you.
In 1905, Albert Einstein, the theoretical physicist, working in the patent office in Bern, introduced the theory of special relativity in a paper he published on the electrodynamics of moving bodies. Six hundred and forty seven kilometres to the north-north-east, Minkowski and Hilbert were working on mathematical physics, Minkowski particularly interested in the simplicity of equations, the elegance of mathematics.
David Hilbert said of this time, working with his friend, ‘Our science, which we loved above all else, brought us together; it seemed to us a garden, full of flowers. In it, we enjoyed looking for hidden pathways and discovered many a new perspective that appealed to our sense of beauty.’
There is no moment. No eureka moment. No overflowing bath, no hypotenuse to square, no apple falling. There is just time. And space. And it was noticed, noted, united. Made a moment and another moment and another moment. Time. A moment of time. A moment of time and space, four – not three – points, to measure all points.
