scene.
Now he summons up courage to issue an invitation to Mileva. He proposes she accompany him on a hiking expedition. Eine Wanderung. To look at the world from Zürich’s Uetliberg mountain.
The day-trippers take the train from Zürich’s Hauptbahnhof, riding up the Uezgi, entranced by the mountain blooms and blossoms.
‘Look,’ says Albert. ‘Allium ursinum.’
‘What?’
‘Wild garlic.’
At 2,850 feet, the Uetliberg towers over the rooftops of Zürich and the vivid blue lakes.
Albert puts his arm around her shoulders. ‘There’s the Reppisch Valley,’ he tells her. ‘Over there, the Bernese Alps, the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau.’ He takes her hand. They gaze into each other’s eyes.
He stoops down, picks a flower and holds it out to Mileva. ‘For you.’
‘For me?’
‘For you.’
‘What is it?’
‘Myosotis alpestris. It’s a forget-me-not. Promise me?’
‘Anything.’
‘Forget me not.’
She draws his mouth to hers. Her lips are full. Her tongue playful. He strokes her cheeks. Inhales her fragrance, cologne. He rubs his hand slowly up and down her back. She moans softly. They stand in silence, smiling.
On holiday in Milan his mother finds him transformed. The family laugh, play the piano and violin, and joke.
Albert immerses himself in the history of the Jewish community of Milan, which is fairly recent, starting in the early nineteenth century. Before then, under the Sforza and Visconti, the Jews were permitted to stay for just a few days at a time in the city. Then, in the early 1800s, the restrictions were lifted. In 1892, the Central Synagogue was inaugurated.
He relishes the idea that Milan is also the only city in the world with a vineyard at its heart. He finds it in the courtyard of the House of Atellani on the Corso Magenta. Best of all, the owner of the vineyard had once been none other than Leonardo da Vinci. Albert is transported right back to 1490 when Leonardo planted it.
He plunges into reading da Vinci, sometimes writing out Leonardo’s observations and thoughts that seem to confirm many of his own. He annotates Leonardo’s remarks: I know this to be true.
When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.
Poor is the pupil that does not surpass his master.
The perspective of light is my perspective.
If the Lord – who is the light of all things – vouchsafe to enlighten me, I will treat of Light; wherefore I will divide the present work into 3 Parts . . . Linear Perspective, The Perspective of Colour, The Perspective of Disappearance.
Who will offer me a wage to exist? It vexes me greatly that having to earn my living has forced me to interrupt the work and to attend to small matters.
He thinks of Mileva. I love you. I love you, Mileva Maric.
‘Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love,’ he mutters to himself.
Leonardo says: ‘The act of procreation and anything that has any relation to it is so disgusting that human beings would soon die out if there were no pretty faces and sensuous dispositions.’
Ich liebe dich, Mileva. Ich liebe und verehre dich.
I love you, Mileva. I love and adore you.
He returns to Zürich in high spirits and makes straight for Plattenstrasse, only to be greeted by a thunderbolt. Mileva’s landlady, Johanna Bachtöld, answers the door.
‘Here to see Mileva?’ she says.
‘Yes.’
‘She’s left,’ Fraulein Bachtöld says.
‘She’s what?’
‘She’s left. She’s given up her studies.’
‘Where’s she gone?’
‘Back to Hungary,’ says Fraulein Bachtöld.
‘How long for.’
‘I don’t know. For ever, I suppose.’
For four weeks Mileva keeps a baffling silence.
Albert assumes, rightly, that she must have gone home to Kac in Hungary, almost a thousand kilometres east of Zürich, to the family villa, the Spire, where Mileva was born.
As a bright, temperamental child, she does her best to disguise the hip dislocated at birth. She learns the piano and tries to dance.
Her father says her dancing reminds him of a wounded bird. The pattern of her education is as spidery as Albert’s. Her father’s postings as a civil servant mean that she attends Volksschule in Ruma; the Serbian Higher Girls’ School in Novi Sad; the Kleine Real Schule in Sremska Mitrovica, and other establishments in Sabac and Zagreb. She develops a passion for mathematics, which leads her to Zürich and to the ETH and Albert. And now? She’s back home.
What drives her to go home is a mystery; perhaps even to herself. She doesn’t communicate with Albert. Albert doesn’t, or rather can’t, communicate with her.
She once more begins travelling, west to Heidelberg, where she takes a room in the Hotel Ritter.
She introduces herself to Philipp Lenard, recently appointed professor of theoretical physics at the University of Heidelberg and a pioneer in the development of the cathode-ray tube, in which cathode rays produce a luminous image on a fluorescent screen.
Back in Zürich, after some nifty detective work among her friends, Albert discovers her whereabouts.
He writes to her asking her to get in touch. Her reply is long in coming. When it does Albert opens the envelope in a fever of excitement. His loved one writes:
I would have answered immediately to thank you for your sacrifice in writing, this repaying a bit of the enjoyment you had of me during our hike together – but you said I shouldn’t write until I was bored – and I am very obedient (just ask Fraulein Bachtöld). I waited and waited for boredom to set in, but until today my waiting has been in vain, and I’m not sure what to do about it. On the one hand, I could wait until the end of time, but then you would think me a barbarian – on the other I still can’t write to you with a clear conscience.
As you’ve already heard, I’ve been walking around under German oaks in the lovely Neckar valley, whose allure is unfortunately now bashfully cloaked in a thick fog. No matter how much I strain my eyes, that’s all I see;
