at the letter from Born.
‘I believe,’ Born declares, ‘that ideas such as absolute certitude, absolute exactness, final truth, etc. are figments of the imagination which should not be admissible in any field of science.’
‘I agree,’ says Albert to himself.
‘On the other hand,’ Born continues, ‘any assertion of probability is either right or wrong from the standpoint of the theory on which it is based. This loosening of thinking [Lockerung des Denkens] seems to me to be the greatest blessing which modern science has given to us.’
‘Very good,’ Albert mutters.
‘For the belief in a single truth and in being the possessor thereof is the root cause of all evil in the world.’
‘So says Born,’ says Albert. ‘Quite right.’
Albert’s treasured Biedermeier-style grandfather clock chimes ten. When the chimes end, he smiles to himself. F = L + S. Frieden entspricht Liebe und Stille. Or: P = L + S. Peace equals Love plus Silence.
EINSTEIN ATTENDS A CONCERT WITH HELEN DUKAS ATTHE GREAT SYNAGOGUE IN BERLIN, 1930
Outside Albert’s study, his live-in secretary and housekeeper, Frau Helen Dukas, has been waiting until the clock chimes the hour. She doesn’t like what she’s just heard Albert saying on the telephone. ‘You will call me again?’
You = another time-wasting female admirer.
She comes into the study bringing with her the aroma of camphor. Albert has long meant to tell her: ‘The organic chemical C₁₀H₁₆O is unpleasant.’ He’s never quite summoned up the courage to do so.
Frau Dukas opens the green shutters of the study’s main window with a flourish, the clatter intended as a reprimand. The window looks out onto the weeping willows, maples and elms of the leafy suburban street.
The sunlight increases the wateriness in Albert’s eyes. He rubs them with the back of his hand and blinks.
Frau Dukas, austere, tall and slender, is originally from southwest Germany, the daughter of a German-Jewish merchant. Her mother was from Hechingen, the same town as Albert’s second wife. As Albert’s secretary and gatekeeper for some twenty-five years she’s dedicated herself to providing him with a quiet life.
Her bedroom in the house on Mercer Street, separated by a bathroom, is next to Albert’s. There’s also a small studio and bedroom set aside for Albert’s stepdaughter, Margot, when she visits. And another that had been Albert’s sister, Maja’s. Maja died four years ago.
‘Who was that you were speaking to?’ Frau Dukas asks.
‘A young lady called Mimi Beaufort. I like her voice. From good old Boston. The home of the bean and the cod, where the Lowells talk only to Cabots and presumably the Beauforts. Families that talk only to God. D’you think you can find out who she is?’
‘She calls you by mistake and you want me to find out who she is?’
‘I do. Anyone who’s never made a mistake has never tried anything new.’
‘Do you mind me saying you mustn’t waste your time?’
‘Helen. Kreativität ist das Resultat Verschwendeter Zeit. Creativity is the residue of time wasted. Find out who this Mimi Beaufort is. Check out the name in the Greenwich, Connecticut, telephone directory. And please bring me a cup of hot chocolate.’
Albert wears scuffed leather slippers, no socks. His frayed shirt, open at the neck, reveals a worn blue sweatshirt.
Frau Dukas arranges a blanket around his feet. ‘I have never seen so many birthday cards,’ she marvels.
‘What is there to celebrate? Birthdays are automatic things. Anyway, birthdays are for children.’ Once again he wipes away the wateriness from his eyes. Their sparkle contrasts with the lines and furrows of his brow. ‘I am seventy-five. None of us is getting any younger.’
He fills his pipe from the tin of Revelation tobacco and lights up. A cloud of smoke billows upwards. ‘Please, Helen, bring me my hot chocolate.’
‘All in good time.’
‘What are you holding, Helen?’
Frau Dukas hands him a newspaper photograph of the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima on 6 August 1945.
‘Some schoolchildren from Lincoln, Nebraska, have asked you to sign this. Are you prepared to sign it for them?’
Shrouded in the cloud of pipe smoke, Albert stares forlornly at the image. ‘If I must.’
‘I will get your cup of chocolate,’ Frau Dukas says, as if promising a reward.
She leaves him alone to sign the photograph A. Einstein 14 March 1954.
Then he takes out a sheet of paper and writes:
140,000 souls perished at Hiroshima. 100,000 were terribly injured. 74,000 perished at Nagasaki. Another 75,000 suffered fatal injuries from burns, injuries, and gamma radiation. At Pearl Harbor – how many died? They tell me 2,500. The British poet Donne tells us: ‘any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ The western world is satisfied, satisfied. I am not. The wonderful things you learn in school are the work of many generations, produced by enthusiastic effort and infinite labor in every country of the world. All this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it to your children. Thus do we mortals achieve immortality in the permanent things that we create in common.
Frau Dukas returns with the hot chocolate. Albert loads more tobacco in his pipe, waving at Frau Dukas to be seated: ‘A letter please . . . Helen, to Bertrand Russell.’ He dictates: ‘I agree with your draft proposition that the prospect for the human race is sombre beyond all precedent. Mankind is faced with a clear-cut alternative: either we shall all perish, or we shall have to acquire some slight degree of common sense.’
The grandfather clock chimes the quarter hour. ‘Here, then, is the problem,’ Albert continues, ‘which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war – With kind regards, Albert Einstein.’
He takes off one of his old slippers, removes a small granite pebble from between his toes and sets it on top of Born’s letter.
‘I liked the young lady’s voice. Think of relativity. When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute – and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity. Mimi Beaufort. Beaufort is a remarkable name.’
‘Why?’ Frau Dukas says with a tone that suggests there’s nothing remarkable about it.
Turning towards the windows to ponder the play of dappled sunlight on the trees, Albert says: ‘It means the beautiful fortress.’
The sight of a group of Afro-American children playing in the sun makes him smile.
The leader sings: ‘My momma livin . . .’
The group sings: ‘Where she livin?’
Performing a hip-shaking dance, they sing in unison:
‘Well, she lives in a place called Tennessee.
Jump up, Tenna, Tennessee.
Well, I never been to college,
I never been to school.
But when it comes to boogie
I can boogie like a fool.