The Other Einstein(51)

But when Messrs. Solovine and Habicht returned to the table with bottle and glasses in hand, I banished the image of Albert’s mother from my mind and reached for a glass. Holding it out for Mr. Habicht to fill, I smiled and said, “Thank you for keeping Albert such good company for me.”

As Mr. Habicht poured the glimmering, rich red wine into my glass, a few drops spilled on the white tablecloth in the process. I stopped short for a moment; the droplets reminded me of blood.

Mr. Habicht set the bottle down, and he said, “Thank you for loaning him to us. We wouldn’t have the Olympia Academy without him.”

“Hear! Hear!” The three men clinked glasses at the mention of the Olympia Academy. Together with Albert, they shared a restless quest to understand the world, and they had formed their “academy” to pursue this mission. Parsing through books by mathematicians, scientists, philosophers, and even Charles Dickens, they held lively debates; most recently, the men read Karl Pearson’s The Grammar of Science.

Mr. Solovine raised a glass in the direction of Albert and me and said, “To the newlyweds.”

As we sipped our wine and kissed lightly at their insistence, Mr. Habicht then stood and raised his glass. This time, he toasted me alone. “To Mrs. Einstein, a beautiful and brilliant lady. We can’t imagine what Albert did to deserve you, but we would like to make you an honorary member of the Olympia Academy.”

I laughed out loud. I’d been convinced that lively discussions about science and the nature of our world of the sort I’d grown used to at Café Metropole would be out of my reach, and I was delighted at the inclusion. For a fleeting minute, I felt like a Polytechnic student again, brimming with hope and wonder at the universe’s mysteries. Not at all like the grown woman who’d failed her physics exams and spilled her blood in the birth of her child.

“I would be honored,” I said with a nod of my head. “I welcome a vigorous discussion with Academy members on your latest reading, Pearson’s The Grammar of Science. I wonder if you all agree with his statement that it’s impossible to separate science from philosophy.”

Messrs. Solovine and Habicht looked over at me, surprised and impressed. What a relief. I’d been quiet around them until now, having grown rusty in thought and speech after months spent solely with Lieserl and her simple routines and then mostly alone in Bern and Zürich while I awaited Albert’s summoning.

“Brilliant idea,” Albert concurred. “Wish I’d thought of it myself.”

So do I, I thought ruefully. I buried this sentiment deep within myself and instead said brightly, “I insist that the Olympia Academy meet at our apartment from now on. Dinner, drinks, discussion.”

Albert beamed at my invitation, proud of the bright, bohemian wife who sat next to him. The woman he’d always wanted me to be. I smiled back and continued in this lighthearted way for the rest of the day. I kept my step light even when we said farewell to Messrs. Solovine and Habicht, and Albert led me by the hand down the cobblestone streets of Bern to the red-tiled roof of our new apartment on Tillierstrasse, high over the winding Aare River. Because every step brought us closer to Lieserl.





Chapter 23


August 26, 1903

Bern, Switzerland

The bell downstairs rang. Glancing up at the clock from the floor I was scrubbing, I saw that it was nearly four o’clock. The postman must have rung. Individual delivery notification wasn’t his normal practice, but I’d begged him to signal me whenever he had a delivery for us, and he’d begrudgingly agreed. I didn’t want to wait a single moment to read Mama’s letters about Lieserl.

Placing my scrub brush in the bucket, I wiped my hands on the apron I wore over my flowered housedress and raced down the stairs as quickly as I could. My mobility and speed had diminished since Lieserl’s birth. The damage that labor did to my hips would probably not heal, the midwife admitted, but I learned to adjust. I’d never been quick, after all. I felt dizzy as I descended; maybe I stood up too quickly in this August heat.

In the eight months since our wedding, I put to use all the skills I’d learned from Mama in our time alone at the Spire. Cooking, cleaning, shopping, and mending filled my days, the work Papa had barricaded me from as he urged me toward a life of the mind. I’d become the embodiment of an old Serbian phrase, Ku?a ne le?i na zemlji nego na ?eni; the house doesn’t rest on the earth but on the woman. I tried to tell myself that I enjoyed taking care of Albert in the way Mama took care of Papa. I even wrote to Helene that Albert and I were more blissful as a married couple than as university students. Was I trying to convince myself with those words? Because in my honest moments, I found the work of caring for Albert and our home mind-numbing.

Fortunately, the nights kept my brain engaged. After dinner or sometimes during, Conrad and Maurice arrived, and with them, the self-dubbed Olympia Academy was convened. Honorary member that I was, I sat in the background, knitting, listening, and occasionally chiming in when my natural reticence allowed. But once the Olympia Academy left, I really came alive. Returning to our original shared passion and my secret quest—discovering where God’s secrets are hidden in the language of math and science—Albert and I researched the nature of light, the existence of atoms, and most of all, the notion of relativity. In those moments, late at night huddled together over our kitchen table with cups of coffee in our hands, despite my doubts and my suffering, I allowed myself to fall in love with Albert all over again. He had promised that he wouldn’t allow me to fall away from science, and he had delivered. Together, he said, “we would unlock the secrets of the universe,” and I believed him.