The Day Without Yesterday

by Stuart Clark

  ‘He understands music,’ Einstein whispered. ‘Some people practise for years and never understand the subtleties of phrasing. He has it. My boy has it instinctively.’

  Mileva smiled at him from the settee. ‘He gets it from you.’

  He returned her smile. ‘Think how he would sound on a concert grand.’ His mind filled with images of concert halls and standing ovations: Tete would be a grown man in black tails, taking his applause and sweeping his arm to the box at the side of the stage, where Einstein would be on his feet applauding. They would exchange respectful looks and then Einstein would turn to share the moment with Mileva.

  Mileva? Elsa!

  The fantasy shattered. He was once again in the shabby apartment with its rugs and cluttered shelves.

  ‘I get to listen to him play every day,’ said Mileva with wonder in her voice. She had moved from the settee, her voice low and intimate, her mouth close to his ear.

  He jumped, forcing her to back away and disturb Eduard, whose crystal melody stopped short of its resolution. His small head jerked round, uncertainty written on his face.

  Einstein felt breathless. He had nearly fallen into the trap. ‘We have to talk,’ he said gravely.

  Mileva backed away.

  ‘We have to bring this to an end.’

  She clutched herself and shook, stammering, ‘No. You promised me, Albert. No divorce.’

  ‘Mileva, we must talk about this like adults. It’s not for me …’

  ‘Then who?’ Her eyes were wide open.

  ‘Elsa,’ he said quietly.

  ‘You don’t need a divorce to be with her.’

  ‘That’s not the reason. It’s for her eldest daughter. She’s young, innocent, beautiful. There’s a danger that gossips will ruin her chances of marriage because of her mother’s association with me unless I can marry Elsa. You wouldn’t want to harm an innocent girl …’

  Mileva flushed crimson.

  ‘I was confident that you would understand. This isn’t for me. Elsa has agreed to be cited. As part of the settlement, I will guarantee you the money from my Nobel Prize.’

  Mileva glowered. ‘Oh please, Albert, spare me the Nobel Prize talk again.’

  Through her venom he could see the way her eyes were glistening, and the tiny tremble in her lower lip. He pressed the advantage. ‘Just agree and I’ll be gone. We’re finished. We have been since Berlin. Why prolong this any more? For you it’s a matter of formality – you and the boys already live alone – but for Elsa and me it’s a matter of importance. There are gossips in Berlin. Those girls have done nothing. They should not be tarred by this.’

  Mileva collapsed into the corner of the settee, breathing heavily. ‘And what of our sons?’

  ‘Nothing will change. I spoke about this to Albert today. Once Tete is old enough, I will speak to him as well.’

  ‘You spoke to Albert about this before speaking to me?’ She bit her bottom lip, fighting for control.

  Einstein waited for her to acknowledge him again, eventually shuffling his feet to try to catch her attention. For her part, she continued to stare into the corner of the room. A solitary tear crossed her cheek.

  After some time, Einstein whispered her name. ‘Please?’

  he said.

  She hugged herself more tightly, looking more like the third child of the family than the mother. Then she nodded tightly. ‘You win,’ she said, and squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

  ‘Thank you.’ Einstein turned to leave.

  Hans Albert was waiting in the hallway. Standing rigidly, he would not look at his father but held the door open.

  ‘Remember what I said, there are advantages to being my son.’ The words generated no response. Einstein clapped his hands softly against the boy’s shoulders: still nothing. He was as unmoving as the coat rack standing beside the door. Einstein stepped out on to the landing.

  The door slammed behind him so violently that the draught ruffled his hair. It was only later that he realised he had not said goodbye to Eduard.

  13

  Berlin

  As the curvature of space forces objects to move into orbits, so mountains force train tracks to curve around them. The swaying rhythm of a carriage could often lull Einstein into a pleasant doze, but not today. The encounter with Mileva and his sons was too raw to permit him any rest.

  The train rattled over the points back into Germany and, after what seemed like an age, the fields outside gave way to the buildings and streets of Berlin. The train slowed and the other passengers began to gather their belongings.

  Planck was waiting on the platform, arms clasped behind his back. ‘How was it?’

  Einstein hefted the valise he was carrying. It was not the weight of his clothes but the journals that provided the bulk. ‘It was all right,’ he lied. ‘I must admit I hadn’t expected a welcome party.’

  Planck’s brow creased. ‘I wanted to tell you that Karl’s back.’

  ‘Schwarzschild?’ Planck nodded.

  ‘This is good news, indeed,’ said Einstein.

  The older physicist shook his head. ‘No, it’s not.’

  The smell of carbolic clotted the hospital air. Einstein wrinkled his nose, not at the smell of the soap, tarry though it was, but at the lingering odours it was trying to mask. He shuddered inwardly and forced himself to continue deeper into the claustrophobic hallways. Head turning from ward to ward, he was eventually accosted by the Matron, who blocked his path with two firmly planted feet.

  ‘May I help you, sir?’ Her tangled grey eyebrows were formidable.

  ‘I’m looking for Karl Schwarzschild. He’s been injured and brought here from the front.’ He flicked her a hopeful smile but she remained impassive.

  ‘This way.’ She led him back the way he had come.

  They paused to let an old man struggle by on two crutches. As the patient drew close, Einstein saw that he was not a geriatric, rather his face was drawn in pain and his stilted gait was the result of an artificial leg.

  Einstein doffed his boater for a reason he could not quite fathom. Schwarzschild was dozing, head partly hidden by a ballooned pillow. His legs looked like sticks under the thin blankets.

  ‘I’m Albert Einstein.’

  The astronomer’s eyes opened in surprise. He smiled and tried to push himself into a sitting position but winced with the effort.

  ‘Can I help?’

  Schwarzschild shook his head. ‘Best you don’t touch.’

  He wore a pair of striped pyjamas with a frayed collar. Beneath the limp material, his neck was covered with blisters, some of which had opened into sores. ‘I’m sorry, I must look frightful. I do apologise.’

  ‘I thought you had been injured.’

  ‘Not by bullets. Not even the gas. Whatever it is, I caught it in the mud. Started at my feet. My mother used to tell me off for not drying my toes properly after a bath. Looks like I didn’t learn.’

  The attempt at humour snagged Einstein and set his emotions tumbling. He forced himself to smile, but it was a feeble effort. He distracted himself by retrieving a chair from another bed. ‘Your letter gave me the greatest joy to read,’ he said, sitting down.

  The skeletal face brightened into a smile. ‘It’s a wonderful thing that you have done. I still find it miraculous that from giving space a shape instead of nothingness comes a conclusive explanation of the Mercury anomaly. What do you call this invisible landscape?’

  ‘The space–time continuum.’

  Schwarzschild nodded. ‘There’s something truly profound in your work. I’m glad that we finally have the chance to meet.’

  ‘Me, too. I’m just sorry I can’t shake your hand.’

  They were bandaged except for the fingers.

  ‘I have your calculations. They are more precious; I have the touch of your mind.’

  ‘I’m astounded you had the time to work on this.’

  ‘Oh, most of the time you’re just waiting around.’

  ‘But you fou
nd a solution so quickly. Ten equations simplified and solved, a perfect description of space–time curvature around a spherical celestial object. You are perhaps the first person to truly understand my work.’

  Schwarzschild closed his eyes momentarily and swallowed with difficulty. ‘It didn’t seem quick to me. I might not have been so keen to start if I’d known how long it would take me.’

  ‘Well, you persevered. Thank you. Until now, I have had only one true ally. Erwin Freundlich.’

  Something changed in Schwarzschild’s eyes.

  ‘Do you know something I don’t?’ queried Einstein.

  ‘It gives me no pleasure to say this, but there’s a growing resentment of Erwin. He’s not precise in his calculations. He makes mistakes and doesn’t seem to think it matters. Struve is …’

  ‘I know all about Struve’s disapproval, and von Seeliger has a mighty temper, too. He refuses to accept what I have done. The light deflection is the greatest game now. Erwin thinks that we can measure it from Jupiter rather than needing a solar eclipse.’

  Schwarzschild shook his head feebly. ‘Jupiter’s deflection will be too small to measure. You must know that; they’re your equations.’ Einstein’s bravado dropped away. His ideas were naked before this man. He felt very weary. ‘The astronomers shun me. The physicists are too busy with their investigation of the atom. I’m a lone voice.’

  ‘You have me.’ Schwarzschild’s voice was momentarily impassioned. It was followed by a difficult moment. The temporary nature of the astronomer’s support was clear to both of them.

  ‘Forgive me, Albert, I’m afraid that we will not be able to come easily to agreement over Erwin.’ Schwarzschild’s voice was a ghost of what it had been a moment ago.

  ‘Maybe you’re right, but what kind of a fellow would I be if I rebuffed him now? After all the hours over the years he has devoted to my work.’

  ‘What do others say? Beyond Germany?’ asked Schwarzschild.

  ‘Lorentz has grasped it. I’m hoping to hear back from de Sitter, but we’re isolated from England and America. No one there would dream of reading a German theory at the moment.’

  ‘The war will pass.’

  ‘But human memory will remain.’

  ‘We had to fight, Albert. It was our right.’

  Einstein forced himself to nod. Deny the war now, and it was tantamount to saying that Schwarzschild was dying in vain.

  Schwarzschild continued. ‘You’re going to need allies for relativity, and if Germany can’t offer them to you then you must look to other countries.’

  ‘But where?’

  ‘There is one man who will understand.’

  ‘Who? Tell me his name. I will write to him at once.’

  ‘Eddington at Cambridge.’

  ‘Cambridge? England? We’re at war. I can’t just write to the enemy.’

  ‘You’ll find a way.’

  Einstein noticed a pencil stub and a sheaf of papers resting on the white sheets. ‘More calculations?’

  Schwarzschild lifted his bandaged hands. ‘I ask them to leave the pad there, so that I can imagine writing on it. Once I’m out of here, I’ll bring the calculations round and talk you through them.’

  Einstein dared not look into those sunken, dried-up eyes. ‘I’d like that very much.’

  There were too many funerals in Berlin these days. Schwarzschild’s was the latest. All were conducted with the same stiff formality. Einstein looked around the congregation and wondered when the population would realise that this was the price of their ludicrous nationalism, that the quick victory they had been promised was impossible.

  There was Planck, ramrod straight, belting out the hymns. No one would guess that his second son had been killed at Verdun and that his first was still listed as a prisoner of whom there had been no word for over a year.

  Nernst was at Einstein’s side, rumbling along to the verses. He, too, had received the awful message about one of his sons. His retaliation had been to swallow his previous objections and join Haber in the laboratory to search for deadlier compounds of gas.

  The gas had not been decisive and had only driven the Allies to seek revenge with their own. Only the day before Einstein had seen a young man stumbling through the streets with a cane to compensate for his destroyed eyesight. He was clutching a tin of coins, having been moved on by the police for begging.

  Still Germany’s capacity for self-delusion towered. Deep down they must know their country’s isolation meant defeat was inevitable, yet they chose to continue the charade and babble about victory.

  The blossom was gone and summer was upon the city. Unable to resist, Einstein spent the morning pacing through the Tiergarten. Avoiding the show trenches, he stalked his thoughts from one avenue to another. He was wearing a comfortable, old, creased linen suit but had forgotten his hat today. He was grateful for the shade from the trees. Centuries ago, under the same leafy canopies, the royal family had come to hunt. Einstein hoped they had been more successful.

  The true meaning of relativity pricked him. Proving the theory via a light-deflection test had become so important to him that it had become a fog in his mind. He had written to Lorentz in Holland to ask if he could put the theory before Eddington; perhaps the Englishman would listen as the request came from a neutral Dutchman. Now he had to put it aside and concentrate.

  Schwarzschild’s calculations had been so elegant, the product of a clarity of thought that Einstein seemed rarely able to muster these days. He knew there was more to relativity than just Mercury’s orbit and the deflection of starlight. Sometimes he could almost see it, like glimpsing a moving shape through the fog, and he was sure it was profound, a way of using relativity to investigate not merely individual celestial objects but the universe as a whole.

  But he could not yet find the way to see it clearly.

  Eventually he gave up his wanderings and headed for home. He was crossing the tramlines of the Alexanderplatz when he spied a familiar shape sitting alone at a café table. Nernst was holding a cup and saucer, using each nervous sip as cover so that his bulging eyes could scan the groups of people coming and going across the concourse.

  Einstein approached. ‘You look troubled, Walther.’

  He caught the chemist off guard. ‘Sit down, Albert,’ he said urgently. ‘Tell me what you see.’

  Einstein glanced around the other customers. People in their summer clothing were passing like clouds in the sky.

  ‘Have you noticed?’ asked Nernst, not waiting for a reply. ‘All Germans together. No Jews, except us – and no one’s talking to us. They still don’t trust us despite everything we’ve done. Fought alongside them at every step.’

  Einstein’s shoulders dropped. Not this sad lament again.

  ‘I thought it would be different,’ Nernst continued, ‘that we would stand and fight together, German and Jew side by side. I thought it was what my Rudolf really died for, not territory but acceptance.’

  ‘Is that really how you see yourself ? A German Jew?’

  ‘What else? You should join us.’

  Einstein spluttered, halfway between humour and derision. Nernst’s hair was unkempt, and his breathing was laboured even though he was sitting down. Despite the rationing, his pot belly seemed larger than ever.

  ‘The German Jews need you. If your ideas really are as revolutionary as you profess, then declaring them as German will greatly help.’

  ‘German Jews!’ scolded Einstein. ‘There is no such thing. In the eyes of the Germans you are still a Jew. I’m still a Jew. We’re all still Jews. Barely tolerated.’ A cold hand reached into Einstein. ‘Oh my … Walther, is Gustav safe? Tell me nothing has happened to him as well.’

  Nernst’s eyes clouded.

  ‘I’m sorry …’ began Einstein.

  ‘No, he’s alive, but … but they’ve pulled him back from the line, put him on supply duty. Just him. None of the others, none of the other Germans. Then, a week or so later, they asked him to complete
a questionnaire about his current duties. Not his service record, just his current duties.’

  A dreadful realisation spread through Einstein. Now he understood why Nernst was upset. ‘So, finally, German Command acknowledge that they cannot win.’

  ‘I think so.’ Nernst’s face was bleak. ‘They’re looking for scapegoats.’

  Einstein looked around again. Whereas before he saw strangers passing by or conversing, now he saw accusers, angry people willing to swallow the government line about why the war was lost: lazy Jews sapping morale and not pulling their weight. A man with a sharp face glanced over. Einstein was sure he was sneering and rapidly looked away.

  ‘Germany is going to become a dangerous place,’ hissed Nernst, resuming his surreptitious watch.

  ‘What else can nomads expect but to be outsiders wherever we go?’ said Einstein forlornly.

  ‘Germany is my home.’ Nernst jabbed the table, making his cup rattle and drawing looks of disapproval. He added in an undertone, ‘It has to be, we Jews have no other country to call our own.’ Einstein fancied he could already see accusation in the eyes of those around them. Something hardened in his heart. ‘Perhaps that’s the root of the problem.’

  14

  Ypres

  The dim gloom of the dugout and the peaty smell of the earth were things that Lemaître had learned to relish. Sheets of corrugated iron kept the walls secure and canvas sacking provided flooring on the duckboards. The shelter would offer no defence against a lucky hit during a bombardment but at least it kept them hidden from machineguns and snipers, and rain clouds.

  Wooden bunks were three high along the walls, leaving a central area for eating around an old card table. Lemaître was on a bottom bunk and, although he could not sit up, there was just enough space to hold a book at a comfortable reading distance. If he wanted to write, or work through a derivation from one of his textbooks to investigate how the author had arrived at a conclusion, he did so by lying on his side. The straw mattress did not provide the most stable writing surface, nor the most comfortable sleeping one, but it was adequate for both, and he was grateful.