The Other Einstein(31)

“Come here, Dollie.”

I took one small, stingy step in his direction, refusing to look into his persuasive eyes again.

“Closer, please,” he said.

I craned my neck to see if anyone was in the entryway. It would be the end of my standing at the pension if anyone spotted us in such close proximity. Physical contact was the worst violation of Mrs. Engelbrecht’s house rules.

I took another step, and he drew me tightly to him. Whispering in my ear, he said, “You are so good to your Johnnie. I promise never to ask so much of you again.”

Shivers traveled up and down my spine. I leaned toward him. Just as our lips brushed together for a kiss, the front door slammed, and we jumped apart. Ru?ica and Milana poked their heads into the parlor, checking to see if it was free. Once they saw that we occupied it, they very politely but coldly took their leave and headed into the gaming room. Only Helene brought us together these days, and she was in Serbia meeting Mr. Savi?’s family. They had just gotten engaged.

Albert knew how Ru?ica and Milana’s treatment upset me. He grabbed my hand. “Don’t you worry, Dollie. They are just jealous. Helene has Mr. Savi?, and you have me. They have only each other.”

I squeezed his hand back. “I’m sure that’s all it is, Johnnie.” I didn’t dare tell him that I’d long suspected that he was the problem.

“More time for our studies, Dollie. Think on the bright side.”

We sat down side by side on the settee, legs near but not touching, and exchanged notes. He clucked over Weber’s lectures, and I marveled over Drude’s descriptions of the various theories of light. Drude explained that embedded in the debate about the nature of light was a debate about the nature of the invisible void of the universe; this played to my privately held view that the secrets of God lurked in the corners of science, a belief at which Albert would certainly scoff but which I felt certain. Was light made up of tiny particles, or ether, as Newton suggested, or was light a kind of shifting in the plenum, an invisible fluid surrounding us, as René Descartes believed? Or, in an idea by James Clerk Maxwell that transfixed us, was light really a dance of electric and magnetic fields intertwined? And could this notion—that light rays were electromagnetic oscillations—be proven by mathematical equations? We turned this theory of electromagnetism round and round and, on my recommendation, decided to drill down into it with doubt and mathematical analysis. Our credo was to trust simplicity above all else and eschew archaic complicated ideas when necessary. Something of which I had to remind Albert, with his tendency toward tangents, constantly.

The dinner bell rang. I heard it but wanted one more moment with Drude. I flipped to the last page of the textbook, wanting to check on a reference, when a single piece of paper floated to the floor. As I reached down to pick it up, I noticed a distinct floral scent. Looking more closely, I saw not Albert’s messy scrawl but unfamiliar handwriting.

Who wrote this sweet-scented letter that Albert carefully folded and kept in the back of Drude? My stomach lurching, I flipped it over. I saw a distinctly feminine script. I prayed that it was from his teenage sister Maja, the only one of his immediate family who still championed our relationship. Not his mother.

Last fall, Albert’s parents, Pauline and Hermann, had visited Zürich as part of their roundabout trip to deliver Maja to Aarau, Switzerland, where she’d be studying and living with the Winterlers, longtime family friends. Immediately, I connected with the sweet, bright Maja. She reminded me of my own sister Zorka, and we found many commonalities of which to speak.

The same ease of manner did not apply to Albert’s quiet, imposing father or his firm, opinionated, and perfectly bourgeois mother. When Albert presented me to them over afternoon tea at a local café with a sweeping gesture and a slightly naughty smile that made me blush, his mother assessed me head to toe with flinty gray eyes that matched her demeanor, not to mention her striped gray dress. Under her unflinching gaze, I felt small and dark and ugly.

At first she was silent, and I glanced over at Albert’s father, assuming she was waiting for him to address me as protocol usually required. But I soon realized that, while he appeared formidable with his carefully waxed mustache and pince-nez, Mrs. Einstein was in control. Perhaps Mr. Einstein’s string of failed businesses lessened his standing with his wife, or perhaps it was simply the natural order of their relationship.

“So this is the famous Miss Mari?,” Mrs. Einstein finally said. To Albert, not me. It was as if I weren’t even in the room.

“It is indeed,” Albert said.

I could hear the smile in Albert’s voice, and it relaxed me enough to say, “It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Mrs. Einstein. Your son speaks of you fondly and often.”

Acknowledging the compliment with a nod in Albert’s general direction, she then turned her steely eyes back upon me and addressed me for the first time. “Your people come from”—she paused dramatically as if it pained her to even mention the name of my hometown—“Novi Sad, is it?”

“Yes, that is where I grew up—for part of the time, at least. And where my parents still live for part of the year,” I answered, forcing a smile upon my face.

A long pause ensued before she spoke next. “I understand you are as intellectual as my Albert.”

This was no compliment, and I didn’t know how to respond. Albert had led me to believe that his mother, though irritatingly bourgeois in her concerns and ideals, was otherwise perfectly innocuous. By her last remark, I saw immediately that this was untrue. She exerted an insidious power over her family, and she planned on utilizing it with Albert about me. This would not bode well, as her dissatisfaction with me was unconcealed.