The Other Einstein(70)

The past seven months in Zürich hadn’t brought the new life for which I’d hoped, although the familiar surroundings and network of old friends helped keep things civil between Albert and me, particularly our Sunday evenings of music at the home of our old friends the Hurwitzes. Otherwise, any spare time Albert had available from his new professorship was spent with Marcel. As I washed dishes, reviewed homework, read books to the boys, and readied them for bed, I quietly listened to Albert and Marcel work into the night. The beginning of their partnership had been giddy as they hammered out the notion that gravity creates a distortion in space-time geometry and, in fact, bends it. But as the days grew longer and the math became more elusive, their despondency grew. As did their desperation. They delved into a version of space-time geometry invented by Georg Friedrich Riemann and played with various vectors and tensors. They struggled with the goal I’d set out for myself since the death of Lieserl, a generalized theory of relativity that extended the principle of relativity to all observers, no matter how they were moving with respect to one another, and posited the relative nature of time.

At this juncture, they couldn’t make it work. They couldn’t achieve the holy grail that Albert had convinced himself that he, and not I, had created. In fact, the men were preparing a paper called “Outline of a Generalized Theory of Relativity and of a Theory of Gravitation,” or “Entwurf,” in which they laid out the beginnings of their theory but acknowledged a failure, that they hadn’t yet found a mathematical method to prove their theory.

I could’ve led them toward the answer. Even though Albert hadn’t invited me into his theoretical world for years, not with any regularity since the Maschinchen, I hadn’t exactly slept through that entire time in a haze of dishes and diapers. I’d been reading and thinking and quietly writing about the broader reaches of my relativity theory. I knew that they needed to jettison the goal of finding a law of physics applicable to all observers in the universe and focus instead on gravity and relativity as it applied to rotating observers and those in steady motion—by using a different tensor. But I had been waiting to be asked to the dance before I shared my knowledge. If Albert wasn’t going to invite me, I wasn’t going to dance for him.

I let him struggle. It was my only actual rebellion against his ever-mounting annoyance with me.

As Albert grew gloomier, I retreated into myself and grew darker still. Only to Helene did I confess the black fog that had descended upon me, explaining that, as Albert had become a renowned physicist and an important member of the scientific community, the boys and I had faded into the background of his life.

Birthday dishes done, kitchen clean, instruments and sheets of music assembled, I had an hour or so to tackle the piles of paper in the dining room before we left for the Hurwitzes. Ever messy, Albert had left the detritus of his work with Marcel all over the dining room table. Inwardly, no matter how willingly I seemed to assume the hausfrau role, I snarled at having to be his maid. How had my life devolved entirely into this?

Heaped on top of some notes left behind by Marcel was an array of letters conveying birthday wishes. Work colleagues like Otto Stern, old friends like Michele Besso, Albert’s sister Maja, his mother Pauline, even his cousin Elsa, all remembered the famous professor’s birthday. Never mine. Not even Albert recalled mine.

I was curious about this cousin Elsa, the one he’d stayed with in Berlin to see over the Easter holidays last year instead of returning home to celebrate with us.

Dearest Albert,

Please don’t be upset with me for breaking our agreed-upon silence by sending you birthday wishes. Daily, I think of our trip to Wannsee last Easter and recall your words of love. Since I cannot have you, since you are a married man, can I at least share your science? Can you recommend a book of relativity suitable for a layperson? Can you send a photograph of yourself for my private reflection?

I remain your devoted,

Elsa

Swaying a little, I sat down on a dining room chair. The submerged sensation I’d experienced when I read the suggestive letters from Anna Meyer-Schmid returned. But this time, they reappeared laced with terror. This was no affair contemplated. This was an affair consummated. I had no ability to stop it before it began.

I read the sickening words again, praying I’d misinterpreted them. That I was overreacting. But there could be no mistake. Albert and Elsa had professed their love for one another.

I started crying. My last thread of hope—that even if Albert wasn’t my scientific partner, he was still my husband—disappeared before me. He loved someone else.

Albert walked into the room. “What is it, Mileva?” Mileva is what he always called me now. Never Dollie. Never even Mitza.

Not trusting myself to talk, I stood up. I wanted desperately to leave the apartment. I didn’t care that the streets were icy and dangerous, especially with my limp. I didn’t care that I wasn’t wearing a coat on a frigid day. I needed to flee.

But I had to pass by Albert to leave the room. As my arm brushed his sleeve, he grabbed my hand. “I asked you a question, Mileva. What is wrong?”

Handing him the letter, I started to walk away from him. To the streets, to a café, anywhere but the apartment. He grabbed me. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I have to get out of here. Away from you.”

“Why?”

I glanced at the letter in his hand. A silent invitation for him to read it.