The Other Einstein(77)

The very thought of Elsa—all perfumed and dyed blond hair, exactly the sort of idle, pampered, bourgeois woman about which Albert used to complain—sickened me. Less because she had “stolen” Albert from me and more because of her perfidy.

“Please, Mrs. Einstein, allow me to help you,” Elsa had said with an obsequious smile when the boys and I went to Berlin alone in the days after Christmas to find an apartment. Albert had sent her over to the hotel to “assist” us without my foreknowledge.

Staring at the ruby-red smile painted upon her lips, I couldn’t speak. Her audacity coming here, seeking out the woman she’d betrayed, silenced me.

Elsa, as she insisted we call her, continued regardless. “I know all the best real estate brokers in Berlin. It would be my pleasure to help you find just the right apartment,” she cooed. As if her angelic offer of assistance were for the benefit of me and my boys—not for the true purpose of securing an apartment convenient for Albert to visit her.

With Tete tugging on my arm and Hans Albert eyeing her suspiciously, I refused. My boys could see what their father could not. What sort of human being gazed into the eyes of one she’s betrayed and pretended to offer salvation?

The door slammed. The boys flew to my side. Even though I never told them what was transpiring between Albert and myself, they sensed it. Their protective instincts were on high alert. Looking into their chocolate-brown eyes, so like Albert’s, and whispering in their ears that everything would be fine, I sent the boys off to their bedrooms. No matter how I felt about Albert, I didn’t want them to witness this exchange.

I followed Albert into his study, where he had retreated immediately upon entering the apartment. Without a greeting, even for the boys.

“So Elsa has taken you from me at last, has she?” I said very matter-of-factly. Why should I mince words? Better we all understood our positions.

He turned to look at me, his eyebrows raised in surprise at my remark. Since we arrived in Berlin, I had been clear about my expectations of fidelity, but I never mentioned Elsa outright. I couldn’t bear to say her name aloud; I couldn’t even fathom what he saw in the vapid, uneducated matron. But after his six-day disappearance—days in which I heard some of his colleagues snickering at me at the local market, as many of our acquaintances in Berlin were part of Elsa’s longtime circle—we were past that point.

“Elsa cannot take from you what you do not possess,” he answered coldly.

The old Mileva would have crumbled at his icy words, but I did not relent. I remained calm and said, “Please allow me to rephrase. You have abandoned me and your children for Elsa. Am I correct?”

To that, Albert said not a word.

“I suppose it’s not the first abandonment, is it? You left us for science long ago, didn’t you?” I continued.

Huffing in anger, he yelled, “It’s not me who’s abandoned you for science and other women but you who has abandoned me with your jealousy and the withdrawal of your affection. You forced me into Elsa’s arms.”

Shaking my head, I smiled at his infantile worldview. Was he truly so self-focused that he believed I withdrew my affections first? That my self-protection and the recent strengthening of my resolve happened before he cheated on me and bled me dry of my scientific ambitions? That I pushed him into Elsa’s waiting arms? It was so ridiculous that I didn’t bother to fashion a response. It would be like arguing with a madman. One made powerful by his popularity, at that.

“Why are you smiling?” he asked angrily.

“Your comment reflects the typical sort of selfish thinking I’ve grown to expect from you. But which I will tolerate no longer.”

“Is that so? I have prepared something that I think will wipe that smile from your face.” He thrust his hand out toward me. It held a single piece of paper.

“Oh really?” I asked, taking the paper from his hand.

“Really,” he taunted. “Take a look.”

“What is this?”

“It is a list of the conditions upon which I will stay in this apartment with you and the boys. This is only so I can maintain a relationship with the boys. As for you and me, I want our relationship to become a business one, with the personal aspects reduced to almost nothing.”

“Are you serious?” I asked. Did he think I was chattel for which he could enter a contract? Helene would scream aloud at this demand if she were here, and I couldn’t even fathom what Papa would do. Even Mama would not want me to stay in this situation.

“Absolutely. If you cannot agree to these conditions, then I will have no choice but to ask you for a separation.”

I glanced down at the sheet of paper. It was covered in Albert’s scrawl and resembled nothing so much as the protocols for a physics experiment, the sort Albert and I had written in droves. But the closer I examined it, the more I realized that it was unlike any document Albert had ever written before. It was probably unlike any document anyone had ever written before.

It was a contract for my behavior. As I read the barbaric agreement term by term, I grew more outraged. The document enumerated the household duties I must perform for Albert: his laundry; the preparation of his meals, to be served in his room; and the cleaning of his bedroom and study, with the requirement that I never touch his desk. Even more incredible was his list of his requirements that I must “obey” in my personal dealings with him. He demanded that I renounce all interaction with him at home; he would control where and when I spoke and what sorts of statements I could make to him and in front of the children. In particular, he mandated that I forgo all physical intimacy with him.