Nothing So Strange (25 page)

Both men’s nerves were risingly on edge. Bauer stood up, leaned across the
table, and seized Brad with both arms. “For God’s sake, man, talk softer!…
What do you want from me? I have told you enough. Do you want me to say there
is a hundred per cent proof when there is only … perhaps … ninety-
five?”

Brad subsided. “I am sorry. Thank you. I now understand.”

“Then you had better go.”

Brad proffered his hand, which Bauer took. “Again I am sorry. Your legal
mind and my scientific mind do not condemn easily…. It is good of you to
have arranged this meeting. I hope it has involved no risk to you.”

“Perhaps not much, since there are many of our friends in Leopoldstadt. It
is unfortunate, however, that the wrong impression was given at the trial….
Most of them would not trust you now.”

“Perhaps the other side does, and that will not be so unfortunate.”

“I see your point. But do not look for certainties—only
probabilities.”

“That’s beginning to be good advice even in mathematics.”

Bauer smiled then, the first time, and Brad shook his hand again, wished
him luck, and climbed to the street.

He spent several days after that in a solitude of thought.
Aware that he
would never tackle a scientific problem before minutely scrutinizing all the
elements in it, he realized that his own problem required no less, perhaps
more. It appalled him now to recollect his naďve approach to Sylvie and the
man at the Embassy—truculent as well as naďve, which was a bad mixture.
There must be no more such improvisations, he decided, but a clear blueprint
in his mind for every possible behavior; he must be attitude-perfect, not
merely word-perfect, when the moment came.

He knew already that Framm was back at the laboratory, having made a
remarkable recovery. There were frequent references to him in the
newspapers— gossip that he might shortly organize an Austrian branch of
the Reichsforschungsrat, a report from Berlin that he was in line for an
appointment there. It was this latter, with its likelihood of an early
departure from Vienna, that made Brad speed up his intention.

He called at the laboratory one morning in August. It was like stepping
back into his own past to climb the familiar steps to the portico, push open
the swing doors, and walk the length of the corridor. But there was an iron
gateway now to intercept a visitor to the main building, and a tough-looking
trooper of the new regime eyed him up and down when he gave his name and said
he wanted to see Dr. Framm. “You’ll have to wait,” the man muttered, and
began some complicated telephoning. Presently he said: “Dr. Framm will see
you in an hour’s time. Will you wait here or come back again?”

“I’ll come back again,” Brad said.

He walked about the hot streets, rehearsing any number of parts. When he
returned to the gate the man was ready for him, unlocked it, and led the way
to the room Brad knew so well. It was large, with an enormous littered desk,
high bookshelves, various tables of instruments, and a few worn and
nondescript chairs. Along one entire wall was a blackboard scribbled over
with mathematical oddments: Framm liked to work out his thoughts in chalk
rather than pencil; it made for easier erasure, and also saved his eyes from
overstrain. Another wall contained a huge and evidently recent map of the
combined Germany and Austria. Except for this, there was not much change in
the appearance of things; but in any event the change in the professor
himself would have demanded first attention.

Reports of Framm’s recovery had led Brad to assume that he would look much
the same. Actually, in some ways, he looked better now; he had lost surplus
weight, and the slight physical excess of every feature-quality had been
fined down to a spiritual extreme. The large strong nose seemed longer
because it was thinner, the eyes were more sunken and gleamed brighter, so
that their ranging glance had a mystical aspect superimposed on the merely
magisterial. And all this because of a punctured lung, Brad reflected; it was
almost as if the man’s personality had put suffering itself to work to make
himself more remarkable.

When he saw Brad he got out of his chair, and the whole effect was then
concentrated; he looked fabulously aquiline as he held out a bony hand. But
he had not changed in another way; charm came out of him as before, an
instant distillation. “Well … well …
Bradley
! … How … how
generous
of you to come….”

“I hope you’re better,” Brad said.

“Yes, I’m pretty well. Not so fat, as you can see, but that’s all to the
good…. Now tell me how
you
are.” Brad hesitated, a little dazed by
the reception, not because he had expected anything different, but because
(he now realized) he had been quite incapable of expecting anything at all;
but he held to his resolve to talk little about himself and nothing at all if
in doubt about his answers. Then Framm went on: “Come, come … there are
things we have to say and it is well to get them over…. First, I was
distressed indeed to hear of your wife’s death. There are words that would
put that more fulsomely, but I know you would not care for them…. Second,
your publicly expressed loyalty gave me the keenest gratification, and I only
regret you had the ordeal of displaying it in such sordid and tragic
circumstances…. And third … I was—and of course you must have
realized it—deeply grateful for your help in those electromagnetic
researches that have lately attracted some notice….”

He reached to a shelf and took down a volume, opened it and found a page.
“Here … you see?” Brad saw it was an official collection of the lectures
delivered to a Berlin scientific society; one of them was Framm’s lecture,
and at the conclusion of it there was a sentence expressing “sincere
gratitude to my American assistant and co-worker, Dr. Mark Bradley, for his
aid in the preparation and assembly of these results.” Brad remembered
Bauer’s remark that if such an acknowledgment had been made there would have
been no case at all, either legal or ethical, and that if Framm had been
really smart he would therefore have made it. So now it appeared that Framm
had
made it, at any rate in time for the issue of an official text;
probably he had done so deliberately when there seemed to be a chance of the
matter being raised as part of Pauli’s defense.

Brad smiled and handed back the volume. He wondered if if would be
possible to find out definitely that the acknowledgment had not been made in
the original spoken lecture. Not that he cared at all, except to the extent
that it revealed Framm’s behavior.

Framm went on: “I’m sorry you haven’t been with me lately—you’d have
been interested in one little matter…. Perhaps you remember this
equation….”

He swung round to the blackboard, grabbing a piece of chalk and a duster.
The blackboard had hardly any room on it, and it had always been his habit to
begin at the top, writing with one hand, while he rubbed away space with the
other. From the back, with both arms thus outstretched, he looked like a
scarecrow, and that would have been the time to kill him, except that as soon
as this occurred to Brad, the hands stopped moving, and an image in his mind
changed from a scarecrow to a crucifixion. Then came an equally odd
idea—that it was taboo to kill a professor while he was writing on a
blackboard; it would be like killing a priest while he was at his
prayers.

Framm swung round. “Now, Bradley, this is the point….”

He swung back to the board and resumed rapid movement with both hands.
When he next turned round there were lines of equations. “Look that over,” he
said suddenly, throwing down the chalk and duster. “I’ll be back in a
moment.”

He went out and Brad had a feeling that the absence was deliberately
timed, though for what purpose he could not decide. He stared at the
equations, unable to summon enough concentration to give them meaning; it was
months since he had done anything more mathematical than check his change;
his mind for this sort of thing was tired, clogged, out of gear. But all at
once something turned over like a rusty key in a rusty lock; he reached for
paper and pencil on the desk and began copying the top line. He could work
only on paper himself.

Presently Framm came back. “Well, how goes it?”

Brad said: “Extraordinary—that’s the one thing that bothered me all
the time—I wasn’t sure of it till I read your lecture. Then I knew I’d
been right.”

“But you hadn’t been. Neither had I. Because look….” And he went to the
blackboard and wrote again for several minutes; then he explained and they
argued for several more minutes. It had to do with contravariant tensor
densities. Finally he said: “I shall issue the correction in time for any
reprint. Will you set it out?”

Brad stared at him incredulously. “You mean I should work … here …
again
…?”

“If you want to. I thought that’s why you came to see me. There are very
few people qualified for this sort of thing—it would seem a pity for
you to be doing anything else…. And by the way, I might be taking a post in
Berlin soon- -if you liked you could come along with me.”

Brad said: “I’ll…. I’ll have to think it over.”

“Yes, of course. Let me know in a week or so.”

As he left the building Brad realized that going to Berlin would give him
ample opportunity for what he intended, and perhaps the only possible
opportunity.

He stopped talking and lit another cigarette. The sun had
moved round, so
that we were now in shade, and that made the air instantly cold. “Perhaps we
should move,” I said, meaning move a few yards into the sun.

He said: “Yes, let’s go down. We don’t want to be back too late. And I’ve
talked enough.”

“We can come here again.”

“Oh yes. Tomorrow if you like. But let’s start earlier and climb
higher.”

“Yes.”

We gathered up the picnic things. “These are good rucksacks,” he said.
“Norwegian style. They fit squarely down the back. Where on earth did you get
them?”

“I haven’t an idea. Maybe they came with the house.”

“Like Dan and everything else?”

“Maybe.”

“What made your father want to live in a place like that?”

“He says it suits his health.”

“I thought he preferred Florida.”

“Perhaps it had too many memories after my mother’s death.”

“I read about that. I was terribly shocked. I wanted to write to you but I
didn’t know any address…. Were you with her?”

“I was in Canada. There was just time to join my father and fly to where
it had happened. She died soon after we got there.”

“Texas, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“What was she doing?”

“Driving too fast at night.”

“Why?”

“God knows. Why do people do things?”

He nodded. “That’s the same question, isn’t it? The one we were talking
about.”

We followed the rest of the trail to the car in silence. Dusk falls
quickly in the mountains and before we were many miles along the road it was
almost pitch-black, with just the feel of high earth or empty air out of the
window. Despite the climb and the long conversation he didn’t seem so tired
as during the outward drive; at any rate, he didn’t sleep. Once the
headlights focused on a coyote in the middle of the road ahead; I slowed down
and eventually stopped, for the animal did not move, but seemed hypnotized by
the glare. Finally I switched off the lights and heard it scampering away.
The darkness was alarming then; it invaded the car like something unleashed
on us. Suddenly he leaned over and kissed me, not passionately, but rather
experimentally.

I said after a while: “I hate to put on the lights but if we’re going to
stay here in the middle of the road….”

He laughed. “Put them on.”

I did so and then drove a little ahead, parking at a safe place.

“Well?” he said.

“Well?”

“I guess you didn’t like that.”

“I did, but I’d hate to be run into. After all, you were fussy about
fires.”

“I know. They scare me. Maybe one reason is the way I was injured. The
plane caught fire. I thought I was going to be roasted alive.”

“And I understand you pulled the pilot out?”

“Who told you that?”

“Never mind.”

He said sharply: “Don’t figure me a hero, that’s all. I never got within a
thousand miles of the enemy.
I
smashed up in Texas too.”

“I don’t see that it makes much difference where you happen to be when you
risk your life for other people.”

“You’re being far too romantic about it.”

“You’re being much more romantic in belittling yourself. All the storybook
heroes do that. They say—Oh, it was nothing. But I know it wasn’t
nothing, or you wouldn’t have been in a hospital for the past six
months.”

“I wasn’t badly hurt. I was damned lucky.”

“But you keep on thinking about it—as you showed just now.”

“Not
thinking
of it exactly.”

“It might do you good to fly again sometime.”

“Maybe. It isn’t important, anyway.”

“What do you mean—not important?”

“I mean, compared with other things.” He paused, then said: “Shall we move
on, or….”

I switched out the lights. He was still nervous and rather sweetly afraid
that being kissed in a car was not quite the sort of thing I cared for. He
said “cared for,” but I expect he meant “used to.” I said: “I’m not used to
it, but it’s not the first time it’s happened.”

He answered: “Nor with me, either. But in Europe one doesn’t have a car so
much.”

“Yes, it’s a great convenience, a car.”

He said: “I always used to wonder what affairs you had, traveling about
everywhere and meeting so many people…. I thought perhaps there’d be some
hints in your book.”

“No … I can keep secrets.”

“Thank God for that.”