interpreter. I can’t send the tobacco, because should you have to pay duty on it, you would curse me and my present.
It really was too enjoyable in Prof. Lenard’s lecture yesterday; now he’s talking about the kinetic theory of gases. It seems that oxygen molecules travel at a speed of over 400m per second, and after calculating and calculating, the good professor set up equations, differentiated, integrated, substituted, and finally shows that the molecules in question actually do move at such a velocity, but that they only travel the distance of 1⁄100 of a hair’s breadth.
Best wishes, your Mileva
Mileva considers returning to Zürich.
The one misgiving her father has about her decision concerns the eighteen-year-old Albert. ‘I know it amuses you that he has no interest in his clothes or grooming. That he’s always losing his keys, leaves his suitcase on trains. You’re four years older than he is. That’s quite a gap.’
‘Maybe,’ she says. ‘But he’s my peer. He’s someone I can talk to. He feels the same about me.’
‘What are his job prospects?’
‘He’ll find work as a teacher somewhere, Papa. And his family has some money.’
‘Do you love him, Mileva?’
‘Yes, Papa. I do.’
‘It shows, it shows.’
Albert writes to her as if she’s a friend: ‘Liebes Fräulein.’ Then he playfully calls her ‘Liebes Doxerl’, ‘Dear Dollie’. She addresses him as Johanzel, Johnnie.
‘Without you I lack self-confidence,’ Albert writes, ‘passion for work, and enjoyment of life, in short, without you, my life is no life. If only you could be here with me for a while! We understand one another’s dark souls so well.’
Then comes news from Mileva that she has a goiter, an abnormal enlargement of her thyroid gland producing a large lump at the front of her neck.
The news appals Albert’s parents. Mileva is obviously a disabled freak. Their insults mortify him.
Mileva spends her time on solitary walks along the river banks and in the forests. She is highly amused by the copy of Mark Twain’s A Tramp Abroad that Albert sends her. He underlines:
In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print – I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:
Gretchen: ‘Wilhelm, where is the turnip?’
Wilhelm: ‘She has gone to the kitchen.’
Gretchen: ‘Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?’
Wilhelm: ‘It has gone to the opera.’
Alone, she attends lectures, reads in the library or visits the Kurpfälzisches Museum of art and archaeology in the Palais Morass.
Her solitude proves too much, the distance from Albert too far. She pines for him. So she goes back to Zürich.
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