The Sun Chemist

by Lionel Davidson

  And that was it: the idyll in Featherstone Buildings over, the situation far too menacing for him to be kept out of the leadership. He was co-opted back to it, and from then on it was Zionist politics, and my period was over.

  Four years, 1931–35: a fertile wilderness, as I’d observed before. He’d painfully found his way back to science, characteristically lighted on a problem of immense concern to humanity, but hadn’t time to finish it (hence millions dead of starvation who might have lived), made the early laboratory steps with his assistants in laying the foundations of the petrochemical industry, taken a leading part in the resettlement of refugees, kept shaky Palestine afloat for a bit longer, and raised in it the small but promising Daniel Sieff Research Institute, germ for the present splendor.

  Not a bad wilderness.

  Somewhere in this wilderness had been sown another seed, overlooked at the time, whose memory had come back to plague him, in this room, twenty-one years ago, between fiddling with his teeth and his slippers and his diet.

  This was the context, and I penciled my short list:

  Desert reclamation – batatas

  Saline irrigation – batatas

  Protein – batatas

  Bradford – all correspondence

  The German who made the cat laugh was rather a worry. I couldn’t think of anything for him.

  Chapter Five

  ‘What is really very odd,’ I said to Connie (to whom I gave the list), ‘is that there shouldn’t be anything about Vava in the files. I mean, it’s odd, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, we know we are missing many letters.’

  ‘Not in the 1930s. From the early 1900s, yes.’

  This was true. Almost all his early Manchester letters were missing (apart from those to Verochka); all the letters to his family in Pinsk were missing – they’d had no reason to keep them, hadn’t realized young Chaimchik was to be the future Moses. ‘No, we’re pretty complete on the 1930s, apart from a few love letters and the like,’ I said. ‘Yet, here’s Vava, a relative of Verochka, wanting to get out of Germany. He must have written to them about that, at least.’

  ‘Perhaps to Verochka.’

  True enough. Verochka hadn’t been such a careful keeper of other correspondence. ‘Still,’ I said.

  ‘What are you hinting, Igor?’

  ‘Well, letters were going back and forth between them about batatas if nothing else. Where are the copies?’

  ‘Everything scientific went to Jerusalem.’

  ‘Exactly. And stayed there. Then poor Hopcroft gets hit on the head in London, and this chap comes to a sticky end in America, and all of a sudden there aren’t any Vava letters in Jerusalem.’

  ‘We don’t know that there ever were.’

  ‘But there ought to have been, if they existed at all. And we know that they did exist. Olga has the originals – had them. Where are the copies?’

  ‘Igor, you surely don’t mean –’

  ‘I mean we ought to keep things here in future. Something funny could be –’

  ‘In Jerusalem?’ Connie said, wide-eyed.

  Before looking wide-eyed at me, she had thrown a similar look, of the warning type, toward the other person in the room. This was a rather severe-faced young person, the Pitman expert, who was now also looking wide-eyed at me. Security, like charity, evidently began at home.

  I said, ‘Well, Margalit,’ and walked over to her. ‘How’s it coming?’

  ‘So far, it’s coming well,’ she said, collecting herself. ‘I don’t find differences. It’s a correct transcript.’

  I looked over her shoulder. She was writing it out by hand. Her handwriting was rather spiky and not easy to follow, but some differences hit the eye right away.

  ‘Why are you breaking up the paragraphs in that way?’

  ‘You said to copy as it’s in the book.’

  ‘In the book it’s not joined in paragraphs as in the transcript?’

  ‘No, there are spaces – pauses. The sense is joined together, of course. A good secretary would naturally join together in this way.’

  ‘I see.’ Implied was that she was herself a secretary of this type. Miss Knowall. Not bright. I became at once interested. Caroline was too bright. Marta was bright, too, of course, but in a different way – perhaps owing to Finland and thinking in numbers.

  ‘Where the words are crossed out,’ she said, ‘you want me to put in those words and then cross them out again?’

  ‘Exactly. Every mark you see there, I want transcribed.’

  ‘Good. So I am doing this.’

  She conscientiously got on with it while I looked over her shoulder. Connie went out of the room, anxiously studying my list. A rather pleasant smell of soap came up off the young expert’s neck. Her nail-varnished fingers moved swiftly and gracefully. The severity, which had to do with her high Slavic cheekbones, didn’t seem to extend below her neck. The continuation of her, in fact, was in no way restrained. As I made this observation, I was suddenly aware that she knew I’d made it, and at the identical moment; the familiar, but encouraging lightning female reflex. She made no adjustment to the general state of affairs.

  I saw she’d left a two-line space and was writing:

  NEW PAGE:

  Yes, start again. It is cold in here. Which indeed we have found in the work with Ketone Bill

  I said, ‘Margalit, there’s a bit at the end about a German. I wonder if you could find it. Right at the very end.’

  She leafed over a few pages, managing to do it in a way that quite confirmed my observation, and pored over the last page.

  ‘Yes, here.’ Her nicest fingernail was describing an elegant circle around a few lines of hieroglyphs.

  What does it say?’

  ‘It says –’ she compared with the transcript. ‘It says what it says here.’

  ‘Nothing more?’

  She checked again. I noticed a few words of English written sideways in the margin and screwed my head round to see. ‘SUPPER – NO CHUTNEY.’ This was crossed out, too. There were several crossing-outs.

  She seemed to misconstrue my head-screwing and sat up a bit straighter. ‘No. That’s all. It’s a good clear shorthand. Of course, the spacing is a little different. This last line – it was said after the rest. “We will celebrate the holiness of the day.” Actually, this is a quotation,’ she said.

  ‘Of course. From the Yom Kippur service.’

  A keener look set in above the cheekbones. ‘You know this?’

  ‘I know a lot of things, Margalit,’ I said, and smiled at her. ‘Why is the chutney in the margin?’

  ‘Chutney? Ah. There was a previous mention.’ She skimmed back a page. ‘Yes, Chut-ney. Well, it is spelled out also,’ she said, just as I saw it was. Another crossing-out. It had been ringed as well, apparently as a reminder. It said, GREENYARD’S PICKLES – CHUTNEY,’ with a couple of squiggles in front of it.

  ‘What does the shorthand say?’

  ‘It says the same. It says, “He wishes for GREENYARD’S PICKLES – CHUTNEY.”’

  ‘Igor!’ I’d heard sounds off from the direction of Julian’s room, and Connie now ran from there. ‘Meyer is on the phone with Julian. Will you speak with him?’

  I gave the expert a little nod, and she gave me a little nod back; both nods quite interested and noted for future reference; and I trotted back along the corridor with Connie, and received the phone.

  ‘Yes, Meyer.’

  ‘What is this goddam nonsense?’

  ‘Which goddam nonsense?’

  ‘In Bergmann’s department there is a spy?’

  ‘I said no such thing. Letters are missing that I think should not be missing. People drift in and out there, I saw myself.’

  ‘We shouldn’t tell them about all this?’

  ‘About all what?’

  ‘I hear you have worked out a clever list of questions.’

  ‘Well, there’s enough to occupy people here for the moment.’

  ‘I thin
k it’s a piece of goddam nonsense.’

  ‘Fine. Tell them, then, Meyer. I’ve got enough to attend to on my own. To tell the truth, I’m a bit cheesed off Vava. I’ve got Hopcroft going cross-eyed in London. I’m sorry I ever heard of Vava, I really am.’

  ‘Nu, meshugganeh,’ he said in a more muted tone. ‘So come and have dinner with me tonight.’

  ‘I can’t have dinner with you tonight.’

  ‘For lunch I’m busy. See me at three.’

  ‘At three I am going to see a muscle machine.’

  ‘So you’ll see it another time.’

  ‘Goodbye, Meyer.’

  ‘Wait. What? Igor?’

  ‘Meyer, you’ll do exactly what you want. Get everybody busy in Jerusalem.’

  ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’

  ‘I am going to the Dead Sea tomorrow.’

  ‘What is this, a paid vacation?’

  ‘With many grateful thanks to you.’

  ‘Well. Listen. Until you can spare me a moment in that busy life, do it your way.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘But I never heard such goddam nonsense.’

  Julian and Connie were looking quizzically at me as I hung up. ‘Well, damn it, Julian, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think it is a bit funny,’ he said neutrally.

  ‘Do they eat much chutney in Israel?’

  ‘Chutney?’

  ‘He seems to have been screaming for it, for his supper. That last memo.’

  ‘Oh, that. The Greenyard’s. Well, that would have been Mrs Weizmann. She kept rather an English table, you know, Robertson’s jam and Tiptree marmalade, and the old Earl Grey. I expect there was H.P. sauce and Colman’s mustard, as well.’

  ‘Was he in the habit of giving his dinner orders to the secretary?’

  ‘You see, Mrs Weizmann wanted to know every word he said then. He wasn’t easy to understand, he was having trouble with his teeth, and she couldn’t hear too well herself. She was deaf in one ear, you know – blast from a flying bomb outside the Dorchester during the war.’

  ‘Igor, this is a most tremendous amount of work,’ Connie said, flapping the list. ‘Which is the most urgent?’

  ‘Well, it all is, Connie. I suppose Bradford would be easiest, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Well, if it is just letters to Bradford. But I mean, my goodness, this is years and years of letters. There are thousands of letters. I guess we would have to start, what –1933 and work right on to 1952?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But you’ve got the subject index.’

  ‘We have the subject index, which is fine if the whole letter is about Bradford or to someone in Bradford. But if it’s just a stray reference to some personality in Bradford, it is not going to show up in the index. And all these batatas! Well, I just don’t know what we are going to do with the batatas!’ she said, with a glint of panic. ‘I mean, desert reclamation, okay. Saline irrigation,okay. Protein, okay. All these things are certainly in the index. But who can know if it’s batatas?’

  ‘Bergmann and Weiss weren’t here in 1952, were they?’ I said.

  ‘No. Beylis was, though,’ Julian said. ‘Do you want me to fix up a meeting?’

  ‘Thanks. What I think for the meantime, Connie,’ I said, ‘is press on with Bradford.’

  ‘Okay. I’m glad, anyway,’ she said as we left the room, ‘that you remembered you couldn’t have dinner with Meyer tonight.’

  ‘What delights, have you got in store?’

  ‘That’s a good question. You’ll see. Where in God’s name is Bradford, anyway?’

  ‘Everybody knows that,’ I said. But apparently everybody didn’t; and it also turned out to be a good question.

  2

  The muscle machine was a great disappointment. From the reference to the lifting of hands and the scratching of noses, I’d expected something brisker than the rather surly contraption that rumbled wheels and raised weights after ponderous pauses.

  I masked my disappointment while the others fiddled with the machine, and presently, with Ham Wyke and Marta and the dreaded Dr Patel, who had joined the party, I followed Michael Sassoon on a tour of the building. He’d told me that a few Soviet immigrants were there, and thought they might like a chat in Russian. It seemed impolite to refuse, though I impatiently awaited a chat with Professor Beylis on questions relating to batatas.

  The tour was rendered less useful still by the fact that the Soviet scientists were not only trying to forget Russia, but didn’t want to talk Russian. Ham began using his stumbling Russian on a youngish physicist who had come from Kiev University, which Ham had visited during his stay, trying to establish with him the name of a well-known immunologist on the campus. The fellow couldn’t remember the name and said so, rather reluctantly, ‘K’to onbil? Patom skarzhu,’ and they were still trying names on each other when I left.

  I caught Beylis signing letters and looking at his watch. But he made a phone call when he saw me and told someone he would be late.

  ‘Batatas,’ he said. ‘Yes, there was a bit of work done, I can just about remember it.’ He made a note. ‘I’ll get on to the plant genetics people.’

  Plant genetics. Another one for the list. I made a note, too. ‘Was this in Weizmann’s day?’

  ‘Oh, yes. In his last days, in fact. It didn’t go far. Sweet potatoes aren’t eaten here much.’

  ‘It wasn’t for petrol?’

  ‘Nothing to do with petrol. For the desert, actually. A saline water test, if I remember aright. Batatas will grow under poor conditions, you see. It’s a climbing plant, Ipomoea, the same family as convolvulus and morning-glory. The edible varieties are able to convert low-grade materials, saline water, into a lot of starchy tuber. That was the interest for Weizmann. The desert stimulated him. Of course, it did everybody. They were quite stirring days.’

  ‘It couldn’t have been for his protein idea?’

  ‘It wasn’t for any particular idea. People were just growing things,’ he said. He was looking at me quite kindly and helpfully. ‘The land had been bare for a long time. Hills were being reafforested, swamps drained. It is quite stimulating to have a land of your own. I don’t think there was more to it than that.’

  There obviously had been more to it than that. Little Miss Margalit hadn’t finished the memorandum, however, and she needed the Xerox for comparison, so I had nothing to show.

  ‘Anyway, we’ll see,’ he said. ‘Finster is carrying on with the work.’

  ‘With the ordinary kind of batatas.’

  ‘It’s all we have.’

  ‘Wouldn’t the plant genetics people have any others?’

  ‘Not specimens. The plant doesn’t come true from seed, and they wouldn’t have kept tubers after the work was dropped. They’d just have records of crosses, sports, et cetera.’

  ‘What crosses, sports?’ I said.

  ‘If you want new strains, you cross-fertilize, or watch out for mutations – sports. It’s a slow business, and the roots don’t keep. In countries where they grow this thing – the West Indies, Africa, et cetera – they do it with bits of tuber or cuttings. You have to keep growing them on to keep them in cultivation. They wouldn’t have done that after the research was called off.’

  Why would it have been called off?’ I said.

  Well, there was a host of pressing problems, you know. People were pouring in by every ship, from camps in Europe and elsewhere, the Arab lands. The country was really very primitive. People were living in tents. They had to be fed and clothed, somehow taught a common language. Quite a lot of confusion, as you can imagine. I expect the sweet potato was just quietly dropped.’

  ‘Without his knowledge?’

  ‘Oh, he’d lost interest by then.’

  ‘By when?’

  ‘The period we are talking of – his last days.’

  I felt my brain beginning to unhinge slightly. An unaccustomed mass of lore had been thrust into it lately. As soon as I grappled with o
ne lot, it was dislocated by another. Weizmann had lost interest in the sweet potato in his last days? But he’d surely exhibited the most violent interest in it, and on his last day; and not from a bucolic desire to ‘grow things’ but to make petrol.

  ‘I mean, he specifically says so,’ I said. ‘It’s almost his last coherent thought.’

  Beylis sat and rubbed his nose and looked at me.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Well, I didn’t know about the date. It might explain certain contradictions. We are having trouble with Vava.’ He rubbed his noise a bit more. ‘You see, from the note to Fritz Haber, which is all we have, Weizmann doesn’t seem to be taking the work seriously. If Vava had achieved real results, I don’t see how he could fail to be interested. He was, after all, a classic innovator himself in the field of fermentation. Yet he is laughing at it. Why?’

  ‘It doesn’t work?’

  ‘I don’t know. It looks as if we never will. But there certainly is something a bit odd about Vava. What he has apparently done is three things: he has found a particular plant, and a particular bacterium, then a method of converting the result into something much better.’

  ‘Is that difficult?’

  ‘The speed is. Just the plant, just the bacterium, just the method – all in a few weeks. Each of them can take years.’

  ‘Do you mean he couldn’t have done it?’

  ‘He could – given a series of very happy accidents and uncommon intuition. But Vava wasn’t famous for his intuition. He was not one of the great lights of science, you know.’

  ‘Are you saying he invented the whole thing?’

  ‘I’m saying he wasn’t noted for his intuition. On the other hand, Weizmann was. You see?’

  ‘Ah.’ He was smiling at me rather sagely as he said this, and nodding, so I nodded back. ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Well.’ He rubbed his nose again. ‘If you’re right about the date, it might explain a couple of things. You see, at the time of the saline water tests he was absolutely not interested in petrol. I mean, this I can tell you. I remember it. Not a flicker of interest. He’d been through the petrol thing. He did manage to make it, incidentally – and very expensively, I may say. Nothing in it. But if after the tests he suddenly recalled Vava again, and in a context of sweet potatoes and petrol, and with an apology, so to speak, for having laughed at him, it does seem to indicate he’d thought of something new.’