The Day Without Yesterday

by Stuart Clark

  pinpointing the distance to each one and discovering that most were far beyond even the Andromeda galaxy. But that was not the most amazing part.

  Hubble and his assistants had measured the redshifts and found that the more distant was the galaxy, the larger was its redshift. The paper contained a graph with distance on one axis and redshift on the other. Hubble had been able to draw a straight line through them. It was the perfect confirmation of the de Sitter effect, and exactly the behaviour with distance that Lemaître had predicted in his paper to the Brussels Scientific Society.

  There could be no doubt any more: the universe was expanding. All of the galaxies were being driven away from each other by a relentless movement of the void. And Lemaître had predicted it first.

  Einstein couldn’t ignore him now, he thought.

  He read Hubble’s paper over and over, shaking his head in astonishment each time he reached the conclusion. His cheeks began to hurt with the effort of smiling, but his joy was soured when he finally turned to the last page and found that his name was not among the references.

  A moment of anger lanced through him for sending his work to the Belgian journal. He should have published in English or German. Perhaps then the paper would have received more attention, and it was puzzling that Eddington had not written back to comment.

  Lemaître knew that he needed to be bolder about his ideas. That was no sin. After all, what was the good of doing the work if it wasn’t being read?

  He trembled as a thought struck him. It was an idea, really, one that he recognised had been trying to grow inside for a while. He had hardly dared acknowledge it before, but now that the expanding universe had been proven he realised he could nurture the truly astonishing idea that lay within.

  Epiphany swept through him.

  This time, when he was finished, he would let people know. He would target Einstein with personal letters. As for the rest of the scientific community, he knew exactly where to start: at Harvard, where he had been invited to a meeting of the International Astronomical Union early the following year.

  That should give him enough time to perform the calculation. He lit a cigarette to calm his mind and pulled a fresh sheet of writing-paper on to the blotter. He would not be sleeping tonight.

  30

  Berlin

  On the day of Margot’s wedding there was a Nazi parade. Many of the marchers were dressed in quasi-militaristic, brown-shirted uniforms with armbands that bore jagged swastikas. Einstein felt close to panic as he watched them pass the Berlin marriage bureau where the guests were gathered.

  It was not the same as the joyous, if misguided, march to war Einstein had witnessed when he first arrived in Berlin. This parade was regimented and dangerous, oozing power and aggression.

  ‘You’d think they were already in power,’ said Walther Nernst, trussed up in his best suit next to him.

  ‘I fear it won’t be long. They increase their share of the vote at every election.’

  Nernst peered out through cloudy eyes. ‘Then what’s to become of us? I’m sixty-six, my career’s on borrowed time, and they’re not going to want a Jew in a position that can be filled by a Nazi half my age, with half my knowledge.’

  The march progressed relentlessly, forcing people to scurry out of their way. From the sidelines onlookers watched, a mixture of curiosity and uncertainty on their faces.

  ‘It’s no use talking to Max. He thinks we should just pretend nothing’s happening.’

  Einstein nodded sadly. ‘I used to trust him. I used to look up to him. Really look up to him.’ It was as if nothing was as it once had seemed. ‘How can we pretend that nothing is happening?’

  ‘I know. Try telling Fritz.’

  ‘Haber? What do you mean?’

  ‘My God, haven’t you heard? He’s gone already. The Nazis have hounded him out. He’s heading for England.’ Nernst rolled his moustache between his fingers. ‘Still, today’s not the day for worries, eh, Albert? They’re a good-looking couple, Margot and Dimitri. Where are they honeymooning?’

  Margot was dressed in green velvet with grey fur trim. Her husband stood proudly next to her, both of them chatting easily with the guests.

  ‘We’re leaving them in the apartment. It’s Elsa and I who are clearing off, back to America. Pure science this time: two months’ research at Caltech, no fundraising, no worries, no politics – just science.’

  Inevitably word had spread of his visit, and new offers of appearances were being telegrammed through every day. Thankfully Elsa was dealing with all of that, flatly refusing the lot no matter the sums of money involved. As she rightly said, playing hard to get only increased the fees.

  Nernst was studying him. ‘It’s interesting the way you say that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘America. You say it with affection.’

  The sound of Margot taking in a sharp breath caught Einstein’s attention. Her earlier smiles had been replaced with a look of incredulity. Einstein followed her gaze across the street and gasped too.

  The Nazis had gone, and in their place was a small darkhaired woman in a shabby overcoat. She looked bedraggled and desperate.

  Mileva.

  Einstein was already in motion, rushing down the bureau steps and across the road. Mileva was swaying like a stalk of wheat in a breeze, and now that he was with her she lost all cohesion. She dissolved in his arms, her body convulsing with sobs and her mouth emitting an awful wailing.

  A black seed took root inside him. ‘It’s Tete, isn’t it?’ She nodded into his shoulder.

  ‘Is he …?’ His voice failed.

  Through her anguish, she uttered, ‘No, he’s still alive.’

  ‘Thank God.’ The relief gave Einstein some clarity. He soothed her in his arms until the sobbing subsided. ‘You must have travelled through the night. Let me take you for something to drink.’

  With a furtive look over his shoulder he saw Elsa and the others in the wedding party watching him, aghast. These two parts of his life should not overlap. He waved uncertainly and led Mileva away.

  He chose the first café they came to, opening the door for her. She was still dabbing tears from her eyes. What an odd couple they must have looked as they sat down, Einstein in his suit and striped tie and Mileva bedraggled in her tatty coat.

  The blond-haired waiter took one look at the pair and turned to serve another couple. ‘You can wait, Jew.’

  Mileva looked shocked.

  ‘It’s like this all the time,’ said Einstein, trying to brush it aside.

  ‘Tell me what happened with my boy.’

  Her eyes filled again but she controlled it. She fixed her gaze on the salt and pepper pots at the centre of the table.

  ‘He tried to throw himself out of his window when you left. It was all I could do to hold on to him. He’s so big now, so heavy. I scratched him deeply. I didn’t mean to. I was desperate, clawing at him to try to hold on to him. I drew blood.’ She pulled her fingers down her face, across her jaw.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In the hospital. Sedated.’

  ‘Does Albert know?’

  ‘I’ve written to him.’

  Einstein’s mind was in uproar. ‘But Tete seemed so much better when I left.’

  Annoyance flashed in her eyes.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘It’s difficult for me.’ That was a stupid thing to say. He rubbed his brow, searching the room for some better inspiration. He noticed a watermark on the ceiling in the corner that had been painted over to try to mask the damage. ‘Oh, my boy,

  what have you done?’ he muttered over and over, a mantra to calm himself and get him thinking again.

  The happy chatter of the other customers buffeted him. He caught snatches of discussions about last night’s theatre trip and the price of petrol, all of it detestable bourgeois nonsense.

  ‘I can’t do this alone, Albert.’

  Don’t you think I know that? he wanted to snap at her.

 
; ‘I need your help. I need you to …’

  ‘I’m going to America tomorrow,’ he blurted. He might as well have slapped her in the face.

  ‘America?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me the other night? You said you’d do anything.’

  ‘Anything I could. I meant it.’

  ‘But how can you, if you’re going to America?’ Her voice drew the attention of the waiter, busy holding a chair for a pencil-slim woman with immaculately-styled hair.

  Einstein chewed his lip. Gears were shifting inside him, grinding his insides together.

  ‘That’s always been your problem, hasn’t it, Albert? You’re great at the general principles, but the specifics escape you completely.’ There were no tears in her eyes now. ‘You say that you’ll help, but you can’t muster the least specific action. You used to say you loved me, yet you couldn’t do anything to nurture our marriage.’

  ‘That’s unfair, Mileva.’ He should have been getting angry with her, but instead he was feeling a growing panic.

  ‘Is it really unfair, Albert? Really?’

  It took all his willpower to stay in the chair. He wanted to run. But where to? Back to the wedding? Swap this family duty for that one? The wall he had carefully constructed between the two families was crumbling away. Mileva’s hard stare was cutting into him. They had shared so much, produced a family. Margot and Ilse, yes, he loved them – in a way – but not like the boys. Blood was blood, and those ties go to the very bone. He knew that now.

  Tete needed his father. Mileva needed her husband.

  But Elsa was so loyal, so undemanding in a way. They had shared the experiences of seeing the world, constant companions in a way that he and Mileva had never been.

  He couldn’t live without Elsa. She took the burden of practical responsibility off him; she made his life easier – not that it seemed at all easy right now.

  Mileva’s voice cut into his thoughts. ‘If you really wanted to help, you would stay. Nothing else would matter.’

  He was numb. Elsa’s face, horrified as he led Mileva away from the marriage bureau, floated into his mind, blotting out the real image of his first wife.

  He watched, paralysed, as Mileva stood up. ‘Goodbye, Albert. It may take you a while to understand this, but I’m glad I came today. I’ll write to you.’

  He tried to do something. Anything. He imagined standing and catching her arm. What could be more important than Tete? he would say, and they would travel back together. That was the right thing to do, surely?

  But by the time he realised that this was his intention, she was almost at the door. There was a determination in her movements that he had never seen before, and this gave him more pause for thought. She pulled open the door, the breeze catching her already untidy hair, and she slipped into the street. A moment later she was lost to the crowds.

  Einstein waited a long time, struggling to understand his own inertia. At last he heaved himself to his feet. He had made the decision, or rather it had been made for him.

  The surly waiter squared his shoulders. ‘And shut the door behind you.’

  31

  Harvard

  1931

  It was hard not to catch the astronomers’ excitement. The conference attendees were gathered on the staircases and in side rooms; they halted in their tracks and blocked entrances in their enthusiasm for discussion. Cosmic secrets that had been concealed for millennia were falling open so fast it was becoming impossible to keep up with it all. Astronomers were dividing into specialities, stars and galaxies, and gatherings like this one had become essential for them to learn about each other’s work.

  Lemaître spotted Eddington almost at once. His former mentor was navigating the assembled astronomers with the kind of oldfashioned courtesy that meant he could acknowledge everyone without ever inviting them to detain him. They all wanted to talk to him, of course. He was the man who had proved relativity, yet he was as self-contained as ever.

  Lemaître had learned at Cambridge that the only way to halt Eddington in public was to ambush him, so he hid behind a group busily discussing spectral lines in red-giant stars. When his quarry was so close that Lemaître could smell the stale tobacco, he stepped out into his path.

  ‘Hello, old chap,’ said Eddington reflexively, coming to an abrupt stop. His expression was essentially the same, although deeper jowls and deeper creases in his brow had shifted it from smug to somewhat perplexed. ‘I was hoping to see you.’

  ‘Really?’ said Lemaître.

  ‘What’s Einstein up to? All this nonsense about hidden realities and refusing to use the quantum theory …’

  ‘Don’t ask me; I’m as confused as you. He and I generally stick to relativity.’ After Hubble’s discovery Einstein had suddenly started taking more interest in Lemaître’s work. ‘He’s in Caltech working on his unified theory, now’ said the priest. ‘He’s invited me over there after this meeting to give some lectures, but I’m still concerned. Has he always been so stubborn?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Eddington, winding up for his punchline. ‘The only difference is that before, he was right.’

  ‘Do you think a unified theory is possible?’

  ‘It’s possible – got some ideas myself – but Einstein hasn’t found it. Take that last paper of his.’ Eddington’s expression became wry. ‘Do you know they exhibited a copy in the window of Harrod’s? It pulled a crowd so large it nearly stopped the traffic. Not that they could understand a word of it, of course. But then, I’m not sure I could either.’

  ‘Me neither.’ Lemaître had felt empty reading it. Einstein was chasing shadows, drowning in preconceived beliefs instead of letting the universe guide him.

  ‘Aha! Just the two I’ve been waiting to see.’ The small figure of Harlow Shapley jostled in between them. ‘What do you two make of all these observations coming out of Mount Wilson? What’s Hubble up to?’

  ‘The observations make perfect sense,’ said Lemaître firmly,

  ‘The universe is expanding.’

  Shapley exhaled noisily. ‘He’ll be insufferable now. What I want to know is, what the hell is it expanding into?’

  ‘Space itself is expanding,’ said Lemaître. ‘The galaxies sit in space, being carried ever further apart like currants in a rising dough mixture.’

  ‘Trust you to think of a culinary analogy,’ quipped Eddington. Lemaître ignored him. ‘The universe needs nothing to expand into because there is nothing outside the universe. It is everything.’

  ‘And how the hell do we explain being at the centre of the expansion?’ Shapley said in his excitable drawl.

  ‘It’s an illusion,’ said Lemaître. ‘We’re not aware of our own motion; instead we see it imprinted on the movement of the other galaxies. If we were to live in one of the distant galaxies, we would see the Milky Way flying. That’s just relative motion.’

  ‘Relativity again, huh? Give me the stars any day,’ said Shapley.

  ‘Still, at least you both seem to understand it.’

  Eddington wagged a finger. ‘But that’s just the problem. We can’t, Einstein can’t. His solution was a static universe, so was de Sitter’s. Seems as if general relativity can’t explain the universe after all. The question is: how do we reconcile it? Shall we put a little motion into Einstein’s universe, or a little matter into de Sitter’s?’

  Lemaître stared in disbelief.

  ‘What?’ said his former mentor. ‘Have I just committed a blasphemy?’

  ‘I sent you the solution. Do you not remember my paper? I sent it at the time of Solvay.’

  Eddington’s face fell. ‘Oh my, I’d forgotten. You’ve had a crack at this, haven’t you?’

  ‘A crack? I solved it. I showed how Einstein’s universe could evolve into de Sitter’s by expanding. I predicted the rate of expansion and got an average of 625 kilometres per second. Hubble’s value is around 500. I was so close.’

  ‘You predicted that?’ aske
d Shapley.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And you believed it?’

  ‘Of course.’ Shapley whistled.

  Eddington looked stricken. ‘Sorry, Georges, I’ve let you down badly. I’ll arrange publication in Monthly Notices as soon as I get back.’ He sounded genuinely contrite.

  Lemaître had never witnessed that before. He suddenly felt resigned. ‘Probably no need to include my prediction of the expansion rate now, is there? Now that Hubble’s measured it, I mean.’

  ‘As you wish. I suppose it would seem like fixing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Does Einstein know of your solution?’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s why he invited me. The trouble is, I’ve changed some of my thinking. Originally I thought his closed universe could be the starting point, but it can’t; the calculations show that it’s unstable. I can find nothing to limit the original size of the universe.’

  ‘But how small would it get?’

  ‘That’s the thing. I can’t see anything to stop it until it runs into an infinitely dense point, and if that’s not bad enough, before it gets to that point it’s going to get so densely packed that the laws of quantum theory are going to take over.’

  Eddington whistled. ‘And you’re going to tell Einstein all of that?’

  ‘I am,’ said Lemaître.

  ‘Then you’re a braver man than I.’

  32

  Pasadena, California

  When they greeted each other on the steps, Einstein’s face looked greyer than Lemaître remembered. It was as if the ash from his pipe had invaded his flesh. Although the physicist smiled, it was a mechanical movement of his mouth. His eyes took no part in his expression.

  ‘Welcome to Caltech,’ he said flatly. His English was much improved, though still spoken with a heavy accent.

  It was early January and the air was not unpleasantly cold. Louvain would have to wait until spring for such a temperature.

  They turned to climb the stairs and were accosted by a man in a raincoat and a pork-pie hat. ‘Mister Einstein, can you explain relativity for our readers in a sentence?’ The reporter stood poised with his pencil and notepad, as though taking a wicketkeeper’s stance.