Mikael and his brother stripped down to their trunks. Sophie turned away from them, pulled her dress over her head, and folded it neatly beside her leather sandals. She slipped into the water without looking in the direction of the others, hoping that they, too, had done her the courtesy of turning their eyes away.
She yelped a little at the feeling of the cold water on her skin, but really it was lovely. She windmilled to warm up her arms and legs, then rolled over onto her back and lay there floating and looking up at the starry skies above.
Arne struck out almost immediately in the lengthwise direction of the canal, but Mikael and Sophie, in unspoken agreement, set out together at a more moderate pace across its width. They rested at the other side and caught their breath for a minute before swimming back over to where they had gotten in.
Mikael’s brother was long gone by now. They could not even hear the quiet splish-splash of his hands entering the water.
Sophie stood up. It couldn’t be more than three feet deep this near to the edge, and she wondered whether it got much deeper even in the middle. She wrung the water out of her hair, then splashed a handful of water onto her face and turned her eyes up again to the sky.
Mikael was floating on his back nearby.
“Sophie?” he said, coming upright and turning around to look at her.
“Yes?” she said, wading toward him and scrunching up her eyes to make the water run off her eyelashes.
They stood next to each other for a moment without speaking. Then Mikael leaned over and cupped his hand very softly around the back of Sophie’s head. He drew her toward him and planted a very gentle kiss on her lips, then drew back so that he could look at her.
Sophie’s heart was pounding. She didn’t know what to say. She had hardly any clothes on—and it was not a very flattering bathing suit, either!
Mikael seemed more frustrated than flustered.
“Sophie!” he burst out. “You must know I have been wanting to kiss you, only I promised my mother I would do no such thing while you were under our roof as a guest!”
Sophie had to laugh. It was not very romantic to have Mikael’s mother brought into the conversation, but she could see why both Mikael and his mother would believe it was only honorable to leave a guest untouched.
“But, Mikael,” she said, unable to keep the quaver of a smile out of her voice, “surely you are equivocating! When your mother said ‘under our roof ’—or whatever’s the Danish equivalent—you know that really she meant the whole time I was living with you in København, not literally under her roof!”
“I hope you do not think I have behaved dishonorably,” Mikael said.
“Oh, no, it certainly does not count as dishonorable behavior,” Sophie said gravely. For the first time in her life, she felt as though she might be speaking in a way that could be described as flirtatious. Honor mattered to her at least as much as it did to Mikael, and she did not want to tease him about something important, only it was irresistible!
“Perhaps it is more like the way there are special rules on board a ship, where the captain’s word is law,” she added, “or like how magic is supposed not to work over running water. So long as we’re not on solid ground”—she lifted her feet up off the bottom, leaned back, and began treading water—“we might be in a moonlit land of faerie, where all ordinary daytime rules are suspended. . . .”
“That is something like what I thought, though mine was not so poetic,” Mikael confessed, looking out over the path the moonlight seemed to mark for them along the canal. “But, Sophie, I want to be with you, be with you in the boyfriend-and-girlfriend kind of way—how ever will we manage it?”
“By waiting until we grow up?” Sophie suggested.
She couldn’t help laughing again at the horrified look on his face, but in a way it was all one could say. The rigid armature of life in København and the utter straitjacket of honorable behavior made it hard to see how anything very magical could happen between them any sooner than that. “We certainly can’t go sneaking around kissing behind your mother’s back—it’s too sordid!”
Already they could hear the quiet splash of Arne’s steady stroke heading back in their direction. Mikael was looking at Sophie in a way that gave her a warm feeling in her insides, but her hands and feet were growing cold, and she began treading water more vigorously to warm up.
“Your teeth are chattering, Sophie!” Mikael said.
Arne drew up to them and got to his feet. Shaking the water off, he suggested that they should all get out and dry off and get dressed as quickly as they could, then find a café that would serve them a hot drink.
A hot drink sounded distinctly desirable, but Sophie wondered whether they shouldn’t go straight home instead. Fru Petersen might worry, mightn’t she?
“I’ve got things to tell Sophie that I don’t much want our mother to know about,” Arne added, almost as though he could read her thoughts.
Nobel! It must be that Arne finally had a message from him for Sophie; Sophie’s voice almost stuck in her throat, so eager were her questions, but Arne wouldn’t say anything more until they were ensconced around the back table of an attractive little coffee shop with mugs of cocoa (for Sophie) and coffee (for the two brothers) topped with heaps of whipped cream and chocolate shavings.
“Sophie,” Arne asked, “how much do you know about the work your father was doing for Nobel back in the early 1920s?”
“Not much,” Sophie said, surprised that this should be the first thing he would bring up. Surely there were more pressing matters, like when Sophie would meet with Nobel in person and get him to tell her things? “Really only what Mr. Nobel mentioned, that he was working on some sort of a device—and of course, since I’ve been at the institute, I’ve heard bits and pieces from Professor Bohr. . . .”
“Sophie’s father,” Arne told Mikael, “was an inventor of great insight, and even genius. At the time of his death in 1923—an explosion blew up his munitions factory, just over the Finnish border in Russia—Alan Hunter had devised an altogether new kind of weapon, one so powerful it promised to put paid to conventional warfare. All his research, though, had been conducted in such secrecy that when the factory exploded, there were no records of his work elsewhere. The personnel in that part of the compound were all killed, including Sophie’s mother as well as her father; Sophie, who was there that day because her nanny had been called away for a family emergency that later proved spurious, was virtually the only survivor. The blast flung her out through an open window, and the worker who found her in the yard was amazed that she was largely uninjured, aside from some scrapes and bruises and a broken leg.”
Until this evening, Sophie had known only the bare facts surrounding the explosion itself and her own near-miraculous survival. She had never heard anything so particular about the nanny or about the circumstances of her own preservation—how on earth had Arne learned all this?
“Have you actually spoken to people who were there?” she asked him eagerly.
“I have not,” said Arne. “This information was given to me by Mr. Nobel, and there’s no use asking more questions—I don’t know where or how Nobel obtained it, except to say that there is a very good chance he will be in a position to give you the names and addresses of several people who can provide a significantly fuller picture of your parents’ last days. Nobel’s most concerned just now, though, with what happened to the plans your father was working on fifteen years ago.”
“When he and I spoke over the telephone that day at Ardeer,” Sophie said slowly, “Mr. Nobel said that after having believed, for many years, that the only set of plans had been destroyed in the explosion, he had recently learned of a second set of plans having survived the accident.”
“Well, that’s the other thing, Sophie . . . ,” Arne said, his voice trailing off.
“What is it?” Sophie asked, putting down her cocoa and staring at him.
“It seems as though it may not have been an acciden
t after all. . . .”
“Do you mean to say that someone blew up that factory deliberately?” Mikael asked.
“It was only when rumors quite recently surfaced of a set of plans sounding suspiciously like what Hunter—sorry, Sophie’s father—was working on that Nobel sent a team of investigators to look into it,” Arne said apologetically.
Mikael glowered at him, and Sophie, though she tried to school her expression, felt a surge of distress at Nobel’s cavalier opportunism and Arne’s seeming willingness to go along with his employer’s disregard for Sophie’s need to know everything she could.
“Needless to say,” Arne added, “regrettable as it may be, a tragic explosion at a dynamite factory does not always raise suspicion—there was every reason at the time to think the blast the consequence of a workplace accident. One of Nobel’s own brothers died in a similar explosion, you know.”
“It’s all right,” said Sophie impatiently, “you don’t have to dance around the question. Only if it really wasn’t an accident, it’s a pity they didn’t think of it sooner; surely it is all so long ago by now that it will be impossible to get to the bottom of what happened!”
“What sort of rumors were there, though, about the missing plans,” asked Mikael, digging a spoonful of cream out of his mug and giving the implement a meditative lick, “and what have you been able to learn since?”
“The first we heard of the plans actually came by way of Sophie herself,” Arne said.
“Wait a minute,” Sophie said slowly. “You’re talking about the images that we saw on the pantelegraph machine in Edinburgh, aren’t you? The ones that made you have a fit?”
Mikael looked puzzled, and Sophie realized she had never mentioned them to him, so she quickly filled him in: one day near the end of term back in Edinburgh, a mysterious incident had taken place in which a mechanical drawing had somehow been transmitted from the ether to the facsimile machine Sophie had been operating in chemistry class, to the teacher’s all too evident surprise and dismay.
“That was the first harbinger—then Nobel put the word out that he would be interested in seeing further materials from that set of plans, and soon enough the arms dealers were all abuzz with it. Nobody had actually laid eyes on them, but it sounded as though the documents included details about an explosive process that could unleash exponentially more power than nitroglycerin, along with instructions for safely producing the raw materials needed and initiating the chain reaction.”
“That sounds familiar,” said Mikael, and Sophie gave him an inquisitive look.
“Indeed,” Arne said, “and this brings me to our most recent concern. The process I’ve mentioned, the one in the plans, the one designed to produce an explosion more powerful than anything known to man—”
“Yes? What?” Sophie asked. Arne had the most terribly roundabout way of explaining things that she had ever heard!
“It’s almost the identical process that Frisch and Meitner have just discovered—the one they were talking about this morning in the lunchroom. They’ve come up with the idea more or less independently, though they had read a few papers Sophie’s father published as a postdoctoral student, and it was Bohr’s letter earlier this week on the new reaction that led Nobel to order me to leave at once for København.”
“Does that mean that Mr. Nobel doesn’t need the old plans after all?” Sophie asked.
“On the contrary,” Arne said grimly. “If they should fall into the wrong hands, the consequences could be literally devastating. The thought of their free circulation will be especially troubling if war is declared, as Nobel expects it to be at any moment.”
It occurred to Sophie that several weeks had passed since she’d looked at a newspaper. She could understand only about a third of the Danish radio broadcasts that Mikael and his mother listened to, and somehow it was almost always the inconsequential joining-together words rather than the substantive ones.
People had been talking of war for so long now—all of her conscious life, really—that even all the recent alarm had not quite brought it home to Sophie what profound changes might ensue if hostilities were declared. Sophie was in Denmark only as a visitor, though with the approval of the appropriate consulates and embassies; would she even be allowed to stay in the country, or might she be detained or interned as a foreign national in the event of war?
“I can only hope,” Arne added, looking painfully worried, “that Professor Bohr will have the sense to keep a lid on what’s going on here. It’s pretty much hopeless, though—he has been rhapsodizing about these new discoveries to everyone he meets!”
“Yes,” said Mikael, impatiently and with considerable sarcasm, “there’s no doubt that this very idealistic notion about science being international and free to all comers in the spirit of intellectual inquiry makes it very difficult to keep things secret!”
“It is very strange,” Arne said, his tone of perplexity making Sophie slightly want to laugh despite the gravity of the situation. “It will be a disaster for all of us—a disaster for the planet—if the Europeans are placed in a position to design and manufacture such a weapon. And yet he’s not willing to keep these matters to himself! A noble internationalism, but distinctly dangerous.”
* * *
14 September 1938
Dear Sophie:
I spent the weekend at my parents’ place—the countryside is glorious at this time of year!—and had a very good visit from Jean and Priscilla. They’re about to start at IRYLNS; they told me a most perplexing story about Miss Chatterjee having telephoned Priscilla and arranged to take the two of them out for tea, only for her to try to persuade them not to enroll in the program after all! I am pleased to report that they were not swayed by her blandishments. Good for them! You know neither of them would be much use in the army, but I feel certain they will excel at IRYLNS—can’t you imagine Priscilla all beautifully dolled up in a gorgeous suit and awfully high-heeled shoes, and taking dictation like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth?
Sophie, I can’t really tell from your letter, but it was very short—are you sure that you are quite happy in København? I notice that you do not say anything about that boy, as Priscilla calls him—I suppose you must know him much better by now. I can hear you protesting, “But I do not at all think of him in that way!”—and, Sophie, I promise I will not pester you—but I hope you will introduce me to him one of these days so that I can see with my own eyes whether or not he is worthy of you! With love and all best wishes from your most grateful friend,
Nan
Sophie winced at the word grateful. The basis of whatever ill-founded gratitude Nan might feel toward her was the séance in which Sophie had so memorably and horribly contacted Nan’s brother, who had died some days earlier in a skirmish on the eastern front. Ever since Sophie had been in København, she had mercifully heard nothing from anyone dead—no voices, no knocks or raps, no nudges of any kind— and it could be described only as an enormous relief. She supposed that some tiny, greedy part of her had felt special to have been singled out with such an unusual and striking gift, but her larger rational self was horrified by the whole grotesque business and immensely relieved that this chapter of her life seemed to be over.
As she refolded the letter and tucked it back into the envelope, the cat Trismegistus leaped up onto the little writing desk and padded over to twine himself into Sophie’s arms, pressing his muzzle against her face and purring like a windup toy. He seemed to know she needed comfort, and she rested her forehead on his fur and sighed.
Of all Sophie’s wishes and regrets, perhaps the most heartfelt concerned her failure to persuade her school friends Jean and Priscilla not to enter the Institution for the Recruitment of Young Ladies for National Security. Sophie had been taken there for a visit by her great-aunt, a patroness and founder of the society, as a kind of warning, and further investigation had revealed a horror show behind the scenes: girls medicated and shocked and all-around brainwashed into subordina
ting their own wills and desires and personalities to the needs of Scotland’s most influential men.
Sophie had believed that a change in government might allow Great-aunt Tabitha to put a stop to the depredations of IRYLNS, but in fact it had proved quite otherwise—political flip-flopping at the ministry seemed to have left IRYLNS even more deeply entrenched in the landscape. It was to Miss Chatterjee’s credit that she had broken the seal of secrecy to the extent of trying to warn the girls away from the place, but of course they would not have listened to her.
Without realizing it, Sophie had been stripping little bits of paper off the edge of the envelope, and she found herself with a pile of confetti in front of her where Nan’s letter had once been, with Trismegistus forgetting his dignity enough to bat at a few pieces and watch them propeller their floaty way down to the floor.
A knock came at the door, and Sophie called out, “Come in!”
She expected it would be Fru Petersen with a stack of neatly folded and sweet-smelling clothes, but in fact it was Mikael. She swept the remaining scraps of letter over the edge of the desk and into the palm of her hand, then disposed of them in the wastepaper basket. She felt extremely self-conscious around Mikael inside the flat, never more so than when he crossed the invisible barrier at the sill of her bedroom door.
Mikael looked around as though he did not quite know where to sit, then perched awkwardly on the trunk at the foot of the narrow bed. It was the trunk in which Sophie had escaped from Scotland, hidden inside the secret compartment that a magician friend of Miss Chatterjee’s had used in his stage show. She had no way of returning it to him, not unless Miss Chatterjee sent a forwarding address—but hurtfully Sophie had heard nothing from her former history teacher since the day of that terrifying cross-country drive.
“Sophie,” Mikael announced solemnly, “when Arne sends for you to come and visit Mr. Nobel, you have to let me come with you!”
Invisible Things Page 4
