The Sun Chemist (10 page)

‘Well, will you be going for lunch to the San Martin?’ Marta said.

‘No, I’ll just be having a sandwich here.’

I could hear her breathing quietly with annoyance.

‘I will call you later, then,’ she said.

‘Yes. In the afternoon.’

‘I mean, I am not such a wonderful typist,’ Connie said as I put the phone down. ‘But it will need typing, won’t it?’

‘I don’t even know how I’m going to
write
it in the time. There are eighteen – there are
thirty-six
pages here.’

‘Well. If it could be dictated,’ Margalit said. ‘I mean, I don’t like to work Friday afternoon, but if it is so urgent …’

I looked at her. ‘I think that’s – I’ll let you know in a few minutes, Margalit.’

I went along to Julian’s room and phoned Meyer from there.

‘Is she on the staff?’ he said when I’d explained.

‘No, Connie brought her in. She’s the Pitman expert.’

‘Is it so much to do by hand?’

‘It’s thirty-six pages.’

‘It’s full of pictures, the pages.’

‘Well, I can’t draw the pictures.’

‘So what is she – an artist? Leave the pictures,
meshugganeh
. Also the sums. Put numbers on these things and leave spaces. Leave big spaces. They can be copied. My secretary can fiddle with this. All you have to do is the bits between.’

‘It took a solid hour reading those bits between.’

He clucked a little. ‘Don’t exaggerate. Half the time he sat there and thought. I watched him.’

‘It’s a minimum ten minutes a page, Meyer, by hand.’

‘So it’s six or seven hours. What of it? With a rest in between, it’s nothing. What do you want with her? Send her home. Write clearly,’ he was saying as I slammed the phone.

‘Well, that’s terribly nice of you, Margalit,’ I said, in Connie’s room, where she now was, ‘but I’ve just checked and I don’t have to do it all. I can manage.’

‘Igor, is this the secret service?’ Connie said when she’d gone.

‘Meyer has suddenly got very security-minded.’

‘
I’m
not supposed to know?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, darling. Do you think we could try the typing, if I read it out slowly?’

‘Well, of course. Look, if you would just kind of arrange yourself, I will run and get sandwiches while I can.’

She ran and did this and I kind of arranged myself.

*

We plodded away in the otherwise silent House till about three o’clock, when Marta turned up, and we took a break. She’d walked through the Institute grounds. The House itself, in its ten acres of woodland, was outside the Institute property but the whole area was part of the Weizmann Memorial Foundation. By car, you could only approach the House by the side road and the gatekeeper’s lodge. There was no resident gatekeeper any more, and the big solid-paneled steel gate was locked after office hours. Connie had a key to this gate, so she’d been able to leave her car in the drive.

To get to the House through the Institute meant a longish walk. The main Institute avenue ran for three-quarters of a mile. At the end of it was a broad marble-paved plaza
commemorating
the Holocaust; and beyond that a little lane which led to the House. It led to it via the grave.

The doorbell sounded only in the domestic quarters below and we hadn’t heard it, so Marta hallooed a bit in the garden, and I went down and let her in. She hadn’t seen the place before, so I showed her round while Connie went and made a cup of tea. She did this rather silently: we’d had words just before. The
correspondence was very difficult, and the wastepaper basket was filling up. I’d fumbled my way through the correspondence with Finster, but it was much trickier putting it into coherent
sentences
. It didn’t have to be a literary masterpiece, as Connie had pointed out, but I couldn’t have it in gibberish, and the strain was telling. So I wasn’t all that pleased to see the lady with whom I was supposed to be in bed at the moment, and who evidently still had some sense of rebuff, not lessened by her hallooing below. She didn’t obviously show it. But restlessness had brought her on the nice long walk, and there was a certain steely edge to our greeting.

Shutters were down everywhere and keys turned in locks. It wasn’t looking very cheerful; it was rather dim and chill. The central heating had been removed on Verochka’s death. We tramped drearily round. Big dim salon, big dim library: all dim, cold, desolate as charity. Pictures, sculpture, bric-a-brac, all chosen in their day; signed portraits of the long-dead great. The couple it had all belonged to were lying in the grass outside. I wished Marta would run away; and Connie, too. I felt nervy and harassed; something was wrong; the translation was wrong. It wasn’t only the translation that was wrong. Something was wrong.

‘Where is it you work?’

‘Up here.’

Up the echoing marble stairs. Verochka’s old bedroom. The nurse’s room. Chaimchik’s room.

‘I’ve been working here.’

‘Snug.’

I suddenly realized, with distinct unease, that her eyes had paused on the bed. They paused only fractionally.

‘Will we have it in the kitchen?’ Connie shouted up. ‘Or will I bring it?’

‘I’ll come and get it.’

‘It’s all right.’

Clack-clack, clack-clack, came her feet up the stairs.

How to get rid of them both? Something was wrong. I
remembered
the identical feeling, at the age of thirteen, being whisked out of a room with a Christmas tree in it, in Stockholm. I’d 
experienced it since, but never so strongly. Down below in the library I’d noticed a tray set with drinks; the bottles had been there since 1966, untouched, as Verochka had left them. I thought I would go and have one of those just as soon as these two females were out of the House. I seemed to need a drink. It also seemed to be important that I should be in the place alone.

‘Here we are,’ Connie said.

We all sat and had a friendly cup of tea around the kerosene stove in her room. Both ladies were in a state of concealed ill temper with me. We had rather a jolly talk, and at about a quarter to four I said, ‘You know, Connie, I can’t think of doing any more now. I’ll have a go later.’

‘Can you do it at the San Martin?’

‘I don’t think I can.’ We’d been consulting files as I’d worked; Weizmann’s replies contained references. ‘I thought I’d have a rest and come back here.’

‘How would you get in?’

‘I was wondering if you could lend me your key.’

‘Well, I would. I mean, I am not supposed to – but of course we can get you a key from the key security on Sunday. I mean, you can have my key with pleasure, but how are you going to get here?’

‘I’ll walk, or borrow a bike from Ham.’

‘Well, okay. If that’s what you want. I mean, we could still do some more.’

‘I am going now,’ Marta said. ‘I only came for the walk.’

‘No, I’m tired. I want to stop.’

Connie ran us back, dropping Marta first, and we all parted still in a state of friendly ill humor. I went upstairs to my
penthouse
, stretched out on the bed, and fell fast asleep for about an hour and a half. Then I rang Ham up, and borrowed his bike, and pedaled back.

It was ater six and pitch black when I got there. I left the bike in a patch of bushes in the grounds, kept a careful eye open for the grave, which I skirted, and after a few minutes stopped and tried to divine where the devil they’d put the House. It
was so dark, the big white place was quite indistinguishable in the trees. I’d only done this once before, in daylight. It was bewilderingly different at night. I began to pick my way to where it ought to be, and presently found the three flights of rock steps up from the sunken lawn. After a couple of minutes I found the front drive. Front steps. Front door. I spent a few seconds feeling it for the lock, and then a few more feeling the wall inside for a switch.

It was certainly no more cheerful than in the afternoon – less, in fact. A skull-like sheen shone off the limed oak. A bronze head of Chaimchik observed me coldly. I shut the door and stood there a few moments after the disorienting experience outside. Well, I had the place to myself, at least.

I unlocked the library and switched on the light and made for the drinks tray. Sandeman’s sherry. Gordon’s gin, Old Taylor bourbon, all reasonably full. There was something slightly
sacrilegious
, not to say necromantic, in calling on these old spirits. Still, my need was greater than the museum’s. I poured a spot of Old Taylor and cautiously sampled it. Nothing amiss. The years in the bottle since 1966 hadn’t affected it, except for the better. I went to the kitchen, put a drop of water in, and took it upstairs with me.

A rather desperate chill had settled on Chaimchik’s room, so I shifted the kerosene heater from Connie’s, lit it, and walked about, sipping, till the room warmed up. I had a look at little Miss Margalit’s transcript as I did this. She had done a good job. She had put herself out. She had written in all the things in the margin, and the various things between the lines. She had indicated where there had been a new shorthand page, and had numbered both her pages and the shorthand ones accordingly. She had also very carefully written all the words that had been crossed out, and had then crossed them out again. A very faint whiff of her soap seemed to come off the pages. There were numerous domestic odds and ends not in the Xerox: orders that had been ticked off or crossed out. He’d had a fancy for pickled cucumbers and olives; he was rather insistent that his milk should be fresh. Well, the flavor, at least, had come through in the Xerox. These were only grace notes, after all. There were
some rather more mystifying items, ‘
CROMER-LE-POYTH
?’ ‘
LE-ROY-PARMA
?’ ‘
COONE FIRTH
?’

The room wasn’t warm enough to work in yet, but the Old Taylor was doing a good job, so I went below and poured another. The library looked much less unfriendly now, a tribute to Old Taylor. It was a big room, forty-five feet by fifteen. Sofas and easy chairs were grouped around the fireplace; the remaining acres scattered with cabinets, chests, tables.

For privacy, Mendelsohn had put no windows in the outside wall, but instead a series of glass portholes to admit light, well above eye level. The inner wall was well-windowed (though curtained now) and looked out to the swimming pool. At the opposite side of the pool was the salon, which also looked out to it. In front of the pool was the vine-clad patio where the old man had drunk endless glasses of tea on his good days: Panama hat, dark glasses, shifting himself from one seat to another. A restless man. He hadn’t paused long anywhere between Motol and here.

The library portholes were above the bookshelves (limed oak, of course): the whole wall clad with books. One large section consisted of his old chemical library. Above the fireplace was the Oswald Birley portrait of him, which Verochka had greatly liked. She’d made Birley change the cheekbones, but she’d thought it the best likeness of him. I went and had a look at it, and wondered why. It caught the slightly Mongolian look,
Lenin-like
, but warmer; there was presence, authority, aloofness. The lurky humor of the photos wasn’t there; the Yiddish element. Well, it just hadn’t been her element.

Old Taylor and I drifted about for a while, glancing at the framed photos on tables and cabinets. Love from everybody: the Queen of the Belgians, Einstein, Churchill, Lloyd George, Smuts, Balfour, Truman. The great enchanter had enchanted them all. An extraordinary life: rather a magical and miraculous life, which had found him always waiting and receptive. Then the dreary end. Well, it was as I’d told Caroline! I poured another draught of ancient Old Taylor and took it upstairs. Time for work.

I picked up where Connie had left off, writing very clearly as
instructed, and trying it out on other bits of paper first. I did this for about an hour, and then paused, wondering what it was that was so wrong. I’d had the sense of unease for hours; had had it yesterday. Not evidently from these scientific mysteries, which were well beyond me, anyway. Some overall thing was wrong; something that I’d come across and not digested. To do with the last memorandum, but not only that. What had bothered him so on his last coherent day? Or, more to the point, what bothered me about what had bothered him? There was a desperate feeling in the memorandum that he was not being understood.

It was nearly eight o’clock. A good three hours’ work lay ahead translating the nattering that had gone to and fro between
London
and the Sanatorio Stefania in 1933. I would have to get some dinner. I certainly didn’t fancy negotiating the woodlands again for it. It was a question of seeing what was in the fridge below.

I went down and found some sliced smoked turkey, and cut a bit of loaf and made sandwiches. While I was at it, I put the kettle on as well. I walked about with my cold collation on a plate; unlocked the salon and had a little tramp in there.

It was bigger than the library: an extra bay for the fireplace corner. The whole area was spread in most stately array, with the acquisitions of the magpie who’d popped so often into Christie’s and Sotheby’s. In a far corner, somewhat dwarfed, was a grand piano, in the favored and ubiquitous limed oak. Pictures everywhere, a couple of Utrillos, a Laura Knight, a Ruben; a T’ang horse, Japanese ceramics; marvelous silk rugs on the floor.

All a long way from the days when he’d pawned his compasses and dreaded the landlady. I remembered the early tender letters between them. They’d sent each other little bits of money to bail the other out of some emergency. She’d had her ways, had often taxed him with not loving her enough. He’d driven himself silly saying he did, that he longed for her, that it was rainy and foggy in Manchester and everybody half daft and they had no cafés or argument. He was slogging doggedly away at his chemistry and trying to talk English to Perkin’s assistant and aching for her. If only they could be married, how they would comfort each other!

There was a photo of her, evidently from the early 1930s: a
three-quarter portrait, soft dreamy focus; more than a touch of Sybil Thorndike, or some great European diva. There was a tiny remote smile on her face as she looked out of the photo, as though waiting for something. For what? For the slippery bathtub that also waited in the Dorchester?