The Other Einstein(44)

Proper etiquette be damned. I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. The possibility of a position from a good friend like Michele Besso had more promise than any of the job applications Albert had submitted to universities across Europe. Perhaps our luck was indeed changing.

This was the moment.

“I have some news of my own. Although you may not like it quite as much as I like yours,” I said, my voice quavering.

“Not another job offer, I hope? I confess that it was the teensiest bit humiliating that you got a job offer so easily when I was struggling. Not that I wasn’t proud of my Dollie, of course.” This reference to the job I’d declined in Zagreb reminded me again of my sacrifice. I hoped I wouldn’t have to make more, but my current condition made things complicated. Sacrifice might well be the order of the day.

“No, it’s not that.” How should I say it? What words would soften the blow?

“What then, kitten?” he asked, nestling toward me.

I drew closer to him, so I could whisper in his ear. “I am with child.”

Like a threatened snake, he recoiled from me, moving into the farthest recesses of his chair. “You are certain?”

“I am. A result of Como.”

He ran his fingers through his hair. Then, instead of reaching for my hand as I’d hoped, he reached inside his jacket for his pipe.

“Whatever shall we do, my dearest little sweetheart?” he finally said.

We. While the mention of “we” wasn’t an immediate offer of marriage, this pregnancy was to be our problem, not mine alone. It was an enormous relief. “What do you think we should do, my love?” I asked back, wondering what he would say.

He puffed on his pipe for an interminable amount of time. After blowing a huge smoke ring into the air, he finally reached for my hand and looked at me. “Dollie, I’m not certain how we will manage this exactly, but I want you to be happy and not worry while I work out a solution. You will just have to wait.”

Wait? I had been waiting for so long now, I could hardly remember a time when I had the luxury of impetuousness. I’d been waiting for nearly a year for Albert to secure a job so we could marry, and that was before I was pregnant. “I’m not certain I have an abundance of time, Johnnie,” I said in as pleasant a tone as I could muster. I knew how poorly Albert reacted to pressure.

Running his free hand discretely across my flat abdomen, he asked, “When will the boy arrive?”

“The boy?” I laughed at his assumption.

“Yes.” He smiled. “Our little Jonzerl.” Little Johnnie indeed. “Or maybe a Hanzerl?” I laughed at his proffered diminutive of the name Hans.

“Not a little girl? A Lieserl?” I joked, suggesting a diminutive of Elizabeth. I’d been privately thinking of a girl. It felt good to be laughing with him.

“We shall see, I suppose.”

“I estimate he or she will arrive in January.”

“January.” He smiled. “In January, I will be a papa. That’s many months away, Dollie. By then, I promise that you’ll have a wedding and a home of our own. Can you envision how wonderful it will be for us to be in our own home, completely uninterrupted in our work and with no Mrs. Engelbrecht to look in on us? We will be able to do whatever we like,” he said with a slightly different smile. A naughty one.

Did he not understand that I couldn’t wait until January? If there was any hope for me to work after I passed my exam in July, I needed to be wed now, before my exams and before my pregnancy became apparent. No illegitimate pregnancy could besmirch my name. My personal reputation wouldn’t survive it, and I would have no hope of forging a professional one. All these years of hard work—and Papa’s support—to create a life of science would dissipate in an instant. Even if we did marry immediately and a baby was born in seemingly proper course, I would still face intense criticism and resistance if I chose to pursue my profession while a mother. And what was this mention of working undisturbed in our “own home”? What peace did he think a baby would bring? I remember well the noise and work that followed the births of Zorka and Milo?. A baby would bring nothing but disturbance.

I wanted to scream. Couldn’t Albert see that my world was shattering? I felt nauseated, and not from the baby.

But I said none of the things I thought. Albert valued me as a strong and independent partner. Now was not the time to dissolve into a nagging philistine like the women in his family. I could not risk alienating him in any way. What if he decided to walk away from me? All would be lost.

Instead, I said, “A home of our own? Where no one will disturb us? Johnnie, it nearly makes my worries about our parents’ reactions and my fear about my profession evaporate.”

“Dollie, all the things we want—jobs, a marriage, a home—we will have in the future. I promise.”

Sipping his coffee, he said, “I need to tell you of a very exciting development I had this week.”

“Yes?” Perhaps this was more job news.

“Yes, I had a free morning this week to read Wiedemann’s Annalen der Physik in detail. Can you believe that, in his text, I found validation for the electron theory?” he said, his eyes shining.

How could he think that, at a moment like this, I wanted to hear about his ephemeral studies instead of his career prospects? Did he expect me to engage him in a spirited discourse on the matter of life right now?