Of Love and Other Wars

by Sophie Hardach

  ‘I don’t see why this question should be so terribly amusing, young man.’ The judge squinted through his round spectacles with the injured air of someone used to being mocked.

  ‘Oh, it isn’t, it isn’t,’ Paul said, grinning. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Well then, once again, what would you do?’

  Paul was about to say, I hope I would have the faith and strength of mind to peacefully resist and dissuade him. It was the answer he had rehearsed dozens of times in his head, but it suddenly struck him as naïve to the point of idiocy. He willed himself to say it, simply say it, but instead his mind was invaded by the powerful image of a soldier grabbing his mother by her hair. It was such a strange and repulsive image, and he managed to push it away almost immediately, but when his mind returned to normal, he found that he did not know what to say.

  ‘I’m afraid I cannot answer that question,’ he said weakly. ‘I cannot answer it because I truly don’t know what I would do.’

  He told himself that it was, all in all, not a bad reply; some people had advised him not to fall into the trap of answering hypothetical questions, so he might have done well to forget his prepared answer. And yet, he felt dishonest. The man had asked him a hypothetical question, but nevertheless a reasonable one, and Paul had failed to give a clear and courageous response. He felt hot and constricted in his father’s suit and wished he could at least loosen his tie. A distinct smell of essence of lavender rose from the warm tweed.

  The tired judge pressed the sagging blue pouches under his eyes for a while.

  ‘Mr Lamb, it strikes me that when you talk about your objection to the taking of life, the life you are most concerned about is your own.’ His nostrils widened with a stifled yawn. ‘Rest assured, this is quite a natural feeling in a chap, but I am not sure one can call it conscience.’ He tapped his pen on the wooden barrier. ‘A more appropriate term might be cowardice.’

  And still, Paul thought, this is for the taking. I can still bend it round. They don’t expect any great speeches here, whatever A. S. Chatterjee says. If I just put my mind to it and remember not to mumble, I can still bend it round.

  It was only then that the friendly glutton in the middle, who had remained silent with his hands folded over his stomach, shifted in his raised seat. The other two looked up at him in reverence and expectation. He gazed at Paul in a lazy, kindly way, and when he spoke, his voice sounded as creaky, deep and inviting as a much-loved old armchair.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Lamb,’ he said, ‘what would you say if I asked you to give me one good, solid, simple statement that summed up your views? You see, we’ve been batting back and forth the same questions and the same answers with a dozen young men like you.’ He bounced an invisible ball between his big hands. ‘One gets a little tired of it all; one comes to see it almost like a tedious and rather repetitive game. And no doubt you, too, have heard all about it from your like-minded friends. So what I like to do, and I believe this to be to the benefit of all involved, is to give you chaps a chance to speak up for yourselves. Why not? Mr Lamb, please give us a good, solid summary of what it is that moved you to come here.’

  Paul stared at him and grinned.

  ‘Take your time, dear fellow,’ the judge said. ‘Collect your thoughts, take your time.’

  ‘Well . ⁠. ⁠.’ Paul began. He looked up. There was the King with his sword. All he had to do was explain that he was loyal to the King but would not, and could not, be loyal to his sword. And that was, after all, what his people had done through the ages; there was no reason why he should fail. He squared his shoulders and said with sudden confidence: ‘It’s really all in the scriptures, isn’t it, but of course in worship we have this principle of “what dost thou say” – it’s a principle of our faith, if you like – and so I suppose I should, as you say, express it all in my own words.’ The man gave a phlegmatic nod. ‘Now, having said that, I always did feel they made rather a good point in Isaiah – Isaiah two verse four to be precise – where they talk about there being no more war. There is a good line in there about mankind rejoicing in the creation, about growing and nurturing things rather than, as it were, destroying them: They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks. You see, if you were to ask me to give you one line that summed up all my views, then that would be it, really: beat swords into ploughshares. Not exactly my own words, of course, but I couldn’t really put it any better myself.’

  Phew. He was through. He was through. Paul felt elated, dizzy, giddy with the satisfaction of a man who had stood his ground and made his point.

  He turned back to the judge, who had slumped even deeper into his seat, one hand dangling by his side, the other resting comfortably on the barrier. He was playing with his fountain pen and looked at Paul calmly, almost without interest. For a moment Paul thought he had not even listened.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Lamb, for giving us this little exposition. Interesting that you should mention those poor wretched ploughshares. We all know, of course, that Isaiah is not the only one who talks about them. As it happens, they are mentioned at least twice in the dear old Book of Books. Could you do an old man a favour and quote the other passage for me, Mr Lamb? Or would you like me to give you a hint? I quite understand that one’s memory does tend to fail in these rooms.’

  Paul felt the blood rush to his face. He shook his head, so utterly thrown that he was no longer even grinning. The court reporters, bored no more, sniggered. Their pens were poised to take down this unexpectedly interesting tribunal, which would merit more than the usual four-line write-up in the paper.

  The judge sighed with tired disappointment. ‘No? Nothing there? Here’s my hint then, Mr Lamb. The other passage has almost the same wording as the one you quoted. One might almost call it a mirroring passage. And if you were to ask my opinion, which is only by the by, since I am not the one whose conscience we are all grappling to understand here, I’d say the two passages should never be torn apart and quoted as casually as you did just now. They should always be quoted as a pair.’

  He stretched two fingers over the wooden barrier and opened and closed them like a pair of pincers. Paul, close to tears now, could only shake his head once more.

  ‘Well then, I am, of course, referring to the passage that begins, Prepare for war, wake up the mighty men,’ the judge said in a bored drawl. ‘Turn your ploughshares into swords and your pruning-hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong.’ He paused. ‘Joel three verse ten.’

  And then he repeated: ‘Let the weak say, I am strong. Do you disagree with that, Mr Lamb? Mr Lamb, would you rather let the weak stay weak?’

  PART TWO

  Under the Noise

  Café Brilyantn

  ‘The purpose of this paper is to develop a mathematical formula for the perfect cut, allowing even a cutter of modest means and average ability to achieve maximum brilliancy.’

  A Theory of Diamond-Cutting

  1

  When Mrs Morningstar went to see the Wizard at the Institute, she did something rather peculiar. She stepped off the bus at Hatton Garden and walked the length of the street from Clerkenwell Road down to Holborn Circus. Along the way she discreetly touched certain walls and windows with her gloved fingertips. Had someone stopped and asked her what she was doing, she could not have explained herself. It was a primitive impulse, a superstitious ritual of the sort she usually despised.

  When she had married, left her parents’ home and moved to Hampstead, she had walked the length of the road and touched certain buildings while a stern voice in her head commanded: And you, and you, and you, do not dare to follow me. Now she retraced her steps and touched those same places as if to make amends.

  She touched the mud-smeared windows of the corner café. It was a grim place, which Nathan had mockingly called Café Brilyantn. Inside, a dozen men with thick grey, black and reddish beards bent over rickety tables. They shook diamonds out of small white envelopes onto the dark wooden surface
and sorted them with quick merchants’ fingers. During the last war, all of Antwerp had been compressed into this café: the fur-swaddled merchants from the Antwerp Diamond Bourse, the brokers in frock coats with silken lapels, the apprentices in mended cotton shirts. Esther had expected it to be crammed with wartime émigrés once more, but many of the chairs were empty. The waitress in her black dress moved about easily with her tray of coffee in glasses. Where shoulders in black coats had once pressed against the windowpane, there was now a cautious gap. The men gathered at the back of the room, instinctively avoiding the glass.

  Esther let her fingertip trail along the windowpane. When she had left Hatton Garden for good, she had stopped here and drawn a line through the gesticulating men. She had deleted them with her finger. Farewell, diamond café. Now she retraced that line. She turned up her palm and stared at her black fingertip with sudden guilt: she should not have been so glad to leave Café Brilyantn behind. Once it had contained the hopes and ambitions of her entire family. Her father, mother, her three brothers, her four sisters. Each of them had looked at the mud-smeared windows as an enchanted mirror holding a wonderful future: a rich husband with a Belgian accent; a merchant with a beautiful daughter; a formula for the perfect cut.

  ‘That would be a way to make a packet,’ Nathan had said.

  Inside the café, one of the men sat his little son on his lap. He drove a needle through a sheet of cardboard and angled a diamond so that the light struck the stone and was thrown back onto the cardboard in an explosion of brilliant dots. The galaxy of miniature rainbows danced and changed size as the father slowly moved the stone. The boy tried to catch them with his fingers.

  The man’s lips moved and Esther knew what he was saying: Look, this is what we call the fire of the diamond. Her own father had shown them the same trick one afternoon by the kitchen window. And as soon as Nathan had seen it, any thoughts of forged emeralds had been replaced by an unceasing ambition to perfect that fire. It had become her ambition, too. Her father cut stones the way his father and grandfather had cut them. The wonder girl smiled condescendingly at their traditions, their superstitions. As soon as she learned about dispersion and diffraction, she drew lines, angles and arrows on a piece of paper and showed them to Nathan. He smiled and tugged her frizzy braid: ‘That would be a way to make a packet.’

  The man with the boy on his lap looked up and she quickly walked on.

  Some of her family’s dreams had come true. Others, like the calculation of the perfect cut, had vanished. It was wrong to draw a line through a window that had at least partly kept its promise.

  There was a scratched black door two blocks down from the café and she gave it a light affectionate tap. Red Leybesh had lived up there, her studious brother Solly’s friend, who had dashed off to Russia.

  Tap, tap, tap. There was the pawnbroker’s. A woman with a shawl drawn deep over her face slipped inside.

  Then Rubin & Sons, owned by Leybesh’s father. The optimism of that ‘Sons’: Leybesh’s older brother worked in the shop. Perhaps Leybesh would tire of hammers and sickles and come back to the scaife, too. Do not be heartbroken, Mr Rubin. One son is better than no son. Adler & Sons have not been that fortunate.

  A cluster of men in long black coats blocked the door to the staircase that led up to the attic. Esther’s hand touched the brick wall and stayed there for a breath or two. When she had left Hatton Garden for good, she had bundled up her scraps of Yiddish and Flemish and sent them up to the workshop. There was to be no talk of shlemiels and scaifes in Hampstead.

  A few of the men nodded at her in recognition. She nodded back and quickly walked away from them. And again she was pricked by guilt for having deleted those men in the café with her finger all those years ago. How clever she had felt that day! She remembered it so clearly. She had bidden farewell to the attic and the shops. She had banished the whole of Hatton Garden from her life, had taken the bus up to Hampstead, had walked into her big empty house carrying one man’s child and another man’s wedding ring.

  *

  Tufts of white hair wafted around the Wizard’s massive bald head. The prominent widow’s peak had disappeared, making his face appear rounder and larger. His stomach blocked the door.

  He must have a house in town by now and another in the country, Esther thought. It surprised her that he would still cram his mahogany cabinets and grandfather clocks into this flat above the lab. Then again, there might be certain advantages. Presumably the wife was now conveniently tucked away in one of the houses.

  ‘Miss Adler.’ He slapped his forehead. ‘Mrs Morningstar. I apologize.’

  ‘I’m the one who ought to apologize. I’ve been meaning to respond to your letter for, gosh, for months now, I suppose.’

  ‘Ah. I did wonder why I didn’t hear from you. Whether there was a case of, as it were, divided loyalties.’ He chuckled and wagged his finger.

  She was once again the earnest student forever failing to catch the joke.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

  ‘Forgive an old man for a bit of mischief. It was a sly dig at your German roots.’

  ‘My roots are Belgian and Russian.’

  ‘Quite, Miss . ⁠. ⁠. Mrs Morningstar. Quite.’ And he made a flourish with his hand as if to say, it’s all the same anyway, isn’t it? ‘In any case, I’m very pleased to see you. Loyalties aside, I was a little worried that you were holed up in some evacuated physics department in Shropshire, gathering cobwebs and brooding over old grudges.’ He chuckled again.

  ‘I don’t hold any grudges.’ She smiled. ‘No one’s ever given me any reason to hold a grudge. But I suppose the bit about the cobwebs is true. I haven’t exactly fought at the forefront of science over the past couple of decades, which is why I’ve been struggling to imagine how I could be of any use.’

  ‘I don’t remember you being this bashful in the old days. They’ve ground you down in Shropshire, eh? Or . ⁠. ⁠.’ he scratched his stomach, ‘. ⁠. ⁠. or is it Mr Morningstar?’

  He did not ask her in, and she wondered whether there was someone sitting in the green armchair. It had been madness to walk up these stairs, to knock on this door. But the lines she had prepared so carefully could no longer be held back.

  ‘I have been thinking about your offer every day for the past months.’ She cleared her throat. ‘If it still stands, well, it would be an honour and a privilege to work at the Institute again.’

  Her daughter had once unsuccessfully tried to teach her a piece on the piano. It was a simple piece, no more than half a page, that began in an ‘allegro moderato’, held its breath for three long notes in the middle, then continued in the same ‘allegro moderato’. But as much as Mrs Morningstar tried, she could not find the stillness in the middle. ‘Just imagine time being suspended for three bars, and then it picks up again,’ Miriam had said. But she could not do it; she needed to rush on because she feared nothing more than those moments that were suspended in time.

  The Wizard stood in the door and she waited for his reply. One bar passed, two bars, three bars.

  ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘I shall see you next Monday at eight o’clock then. I suppose you still remember how to find your way to the east wing.’

  She hardly heard what he was saying. All she heard was that he did not reject her, that the letter had not been a mistake. An unbearable sensation of tension and discomfort fought with her grateful joy at having been chosen, at having been plucked out of Statistics for Freshers. She wanted to break out of this suspended moment that they had shared in the past and shared again now, and yet wanted nothing more than to work in his lab again. It was impossible that he should have chosen her: but he had, he had, and nothing else mattered.

  2

  Bentham College had no option but to let Esther go for this project of national importance. She delighted in her colleagues’ envy. Every morning she ran to the lab as she had not run for twenty years and arrived with the flushed cheeks o
f a young girl. No one was more solicitous to the Wizard than she, no one more modest and industrious. It had been magnanimous of him to invite her back; it showed he was able to put personal feelings aside for the war effort. And so was she.

  Every day she walked past the empty glass cabinet at the centre of the lab and cast a guilty look at the top shelf, which held a wooden stand with a semi-circular hollow. There was one thing she must do, and yes, she would see to it; but for two, three weeks she and the Wizard had behaved with impeccable politeness, and she feared upsetting the delicate balance. If she asked him for permission and he said no, she would have to do it anyway. Better perhaps not to ask him, and hope that the righteous nature of her plan would leave him no room for objection.

  It took her two, three weeks to summon up the courage to do what she knew she must. She ran to the lab, as every morning. She unpacked her books, her folders and pens and lab coat. Then she reached deep into her bag and pulled out the heavy Nobel medal. She held it aloft for everyone in the lab to see.

  ‘Who in here remembers Mr von der Weide?’

  A few men of her own age raised their hands. The younger ones stared at them with admiration. She turned to a pale weedy chap and held out the medal for him to look at. He touched the golden rim with his fingertips.

  ‘Hold it. All of you, take a good look at it. Mr von der Weide used to stand where you are standing now, yes, right here. I assume you’ve heard about his recent difficulties. He’s given me his Nobel prize medal for safekeeping, and I don’t know what you think, but I can imagine no better place for it than right here, in the laboratory that was so dear to him.’

  The man closest to her began to clap. The others joined in the applause. Drunk on their approval, she climbed on a stepladder and opened the glass cabinet in the centre of the room.

  ‘I suppose some of you may have wondered why there is an empty wooden stand in this cabinet.’ The stand, with its moon-shaped brace, sat on a high glass shelf where it could be seen from all sides. The medal fitted perfectly into the semi-circular space. Still standing on the ladder, Esther turned to face the room. ‘You see, when I was here as a young researcher, we were told that the stand had been designed to hold the laboratory’s first Nobel medal. Well, as you know, other laboratories in the institute have collected carat after carat of gold since then, but somehow our corner of the building must have been a little cursed. I’m pleased that our dear Mr von der Weide’s prize will grace this cabinet until he is in a position to take it back.’