The Other Einstein(11)

I laughed. “Thank you for encouraging me to come today, Helene.”

“I’m so glad you did. Wasn’t it wonderful?”

“Yes, it was. The view and the woods were magnificent. I never thought I could manage such a climb.”

“That’s ridiculous, Mileva. You were more than capable of that hike.”

“I was worried about holding everyone back. You know, with my leg.”

“For a brilliant girl who’s had so much success in the classroom, you’re awfully unsure of yourself elsewhere, Mileva. You did wonderfully today, and now you have no excuse not to join our hikes,” Helene said.

A question about Helene had been haunting me since we met. “Your leg seems not to concern you at all. Don’t you ever worry how people perceive you?”

Helene’s heavy brows knitted in confusion. “Why should I? I mean, it’s a nuisance—sometimes I’m a little unsteady on my feet, and I might not be the quickest in the bunch—but why should it affect how others see me?”

“Well, in Serbia, if a woman has a limp, she’s not suitable for marriage.”

Helene stopped brushing. “You’re joking.”

“No.”

She placed the brush down on the bed, looked me in the face, and reached for my hand. “You’re not in Serbia anymore, Mileva. You’re in Switzerland, the most modern country in Europe, a place that would never adhere to such ridiculous, antiquated ideas. Even in my homeland of Austria, which seems like the hinterlands compared to progressive Zürich, such an idea would never be tolerated.”

I nodded my head slowly. I knew she was right. Still, the notion of unmarriageability had been jangling around in my mind for so long, it almost seemed a part of who I was.

? ? ?

This perception started years before with an overheard conversation. I was seven, impatiently waiting after school on a cold November day for Papa to return home. I had a surprise for him, one I hoped would make him smile.

Bored with pacing around the parlor, I grabbed a book off the shelf and sunk into Papa’s armchair. Tucking my legs under me, I curled around the leather-bound, gold-embossed book, an exterior that belied the dog-eared, well-loved pages within. Although our family library contained many books—Papa believed that it was everyone’s duty to become educated, even if his or her upbringing, like his own, did not provide a formal education—I returned to this collection of folk and fairy tales over and over. The stories were a bit simple for me at seven, but the book contained my favorite tale, “The Little Singing Frog.”

I was halfway through the tale about a couple who prayed for a child and, when they received a frog daughter instead of a human girl, became embarrassed by her differences and hid her away. Just as I was about to read my favorite scene, where the prince hears the frog girl’s singing and decides that he loves her despite her appearance, I erupted in a fit of laughter. Papa had snuck into the room and was tickling me.

I gave him a big hug, then excitedly stood up and pulled him across the room. I wanted to show him the ramps I’d built, based on the sketches I made in school earlier that day. “Papa, Papa, come see!”

Weaving through the fussy green velvet and walnut furniture to the one and only undecorated corner of the parlor, I led Papa to the experiment I had created, based on an earlier dinner conversation about Sir Isaac Newton. We talked about Newton at dinner often. I liked his idea that everything in the universe, from apples to planets, obeyed the same unchanging laws. Not laws made by people, but laws inherent in nature. I thought I might find God in such laws.

Papa and I had discussed Newton’s writings about the force of objects in motion and the variables that affect them—more simply, why objects move the way they do. Newton intrigued me because I suspected he might help me understand why my leg dragged while other children’s legs skipped lightly down the streets.

Our conversation had given me the idea. What if I made my own little experiment, exploring Newton’s question about how increasing mass affects the force of objects in motion? Using strips of wood leaning on book stacks, I could create ramps with different inclines, and if I sent different-size marbles down those ramps, I would have a wealth of data to discuss with Papa. After school, I had begged the strips of wood off Jurgen, our house steward, and then leaned them against carefully stacked books, five books for each of the four ramps to be exact. Once I had tinkered with them for over an hour to ensure the inclines were exactly the same, I thought they were ready for Papa and me to perform the experiment.

“Come on, Papa,” I implored, handing him a marble slightly larger than the one in my own hand. “Let’s see how the size of the marbles affects their motion and speed.”

Grinning at me, Papa ruffled my hair. “All right, my little bandit. An Isaac Newton experiment it is. Do you have your paper ready?”

“Ready,” I said, and we knelt on the floor.

Papa lined up his marble on the ramp. After checking to make sure I did the same, he called out, “Go!”

For the next quarter hour, we released marbles down ramps and recorded the data. The minutes flew by in a blur. It was the time of day when I felt happiest. Papa really understood me. He was the only one.

Our housemaid, Danijela, interrupted us. “Mr. Mari?, sir, Miss Mileva, dinner is served.”

The peppery, meaty scent of my favorite pljeskavica wafted through the air, but still, I was disappointed. I had to share Papa over dinner. True, Papa and I dominated the dinnertime conversation—Mama barely spoke except to serve—but her presence dampened my enthusiasm and Papa’s openness. Mama had so many expectations about who I should be, and none of them included a scientific little girl. Why aren’t you like the other girls? she often asked me. Sometimes, she filled in the name of a specific Ruma child; there were any number of ordinary little girls in Ruma for her to pick from. She never explicitly filled in the question with the name of my late sister, but I knew that was implicit. Why wasn’t I more like Milica might have been had she survived?