Next to her, Henry Mortimer’s serious gray eyes are shining with the afterglow of the day’s work in the laboratory. “I’ve read all Dr. Grant’s articles, of course, but it’s astonishing, isn’t it? Like looking inside the actual atomic nucleus.”
“It isn’t, though. Not really. You’re only seeing the results of one proton colliding with another.” They are sitting on the piano bench. Violet opens up her leather satchel and takes out a few sheets of music, the Bach and the Dvo?ák, as they had agreed. Her movements are brusque and efficient; she has done this so many times before, and she wants to communicate that fact to Mr. Mortimer, that the sheer wonder of scientific discovery grays quickly into the drudgery of endless repetition, getting nowhere in particular, persevering out of sheer goat-headed stubbornness.
As she has.
“Exactly. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Henry holds up the bow of his violin. “A billion atoms form the tip of this bow, and I’ve seen the collision of a single component of a single nucleus. It’s the heart of matter, the beating heart.”
“You’ll grow accustomed to it.”
Henry twirls his bow around his thumb and forefinger. His hands are long and patrician, the nails neatly trimmed into razor crescents at the tips. He tilts his head, watching her with his quiet eyes, his ancient composure. “I only want you to know how much I appreciate your taking me on this summer, Mrs. Grant.”
Violet skims her hand along the top of her satchel and turns to Henry. He must look a great deal like his father, she thinks, because there’s very little of the Comtesse de Saint-Honoré in his narrow face, in his small mouth and grave eyes. Only the lashes recall his mother, thick and excessive, a bristle of black around the lighter gray of his irises. He sits there twiddling his violin bow, looking at her expectantly, a thick curl of his overlong hair drooping into his forehead.
“In the end, it was my husband’s decision,” she says.
“Well, I appreciate it. It’s the most tremendous opportunity. I—”
“Here you are, Frau Grant. Are you sure you’ll only have water?” Herr Planck stands kindly before her, every eminent inch of him, offering her a crystal tumbler.
“Yes, thank you. Just water.” She takes it from him.
“I’m sorry your husband couldn’t be with us tonight.”
How she hates that look of sympathy. “I’m afraid he had another engagement. And Walter would rather listen than play, I’m afraid.”
There is the briefest of awkward silences, as everybody looks away, except Henry, who lifts his violin to his chin and plays a few notes.
“Shall we start with the Bach?” says Lise cheerfully.
Dear Lise. How might Violet’s life be different, if there had been an English Lise Meitner at the Devonshire Institute? Like her, Lise has fought for her place at the institute. Unlike her, Lise has the encouragement and financial support of her intellectual Viennese parents, and she remains unmarried. She works with Otto Hahn in the basement of the chemistry building, patiently discovering the isotopes of various radioactive elements. At present they are investigating thorium. What does Frau Hahn think of this arrangement? Violet can’t imagine, because Lise is an attractive woman, dark-haired and large-eyed, and a distinct air of kinship fizzles between her and Herr Hahn.
Violet turns to the piano keys behind her, and Henry rises to his feet, violin still at his chin, and makes his way to an unoccupied chair. Henry has all the notes by memory; Violet has never seen him study a sheet of music.
They start with the Bach. In its elegant symmetry, its intricate phrases, the Violet of laboratory and matrimony soon dissolves. She’s been playing with her colleagues for months now, and sometimes it’s the only thing keeping her alive, the only thing keeping her whole, this music in which she creates and participates, free from Walter’s sharp eyes and his neatly clipped fingers stroking his neatly clipped beard as he reads over her latest laboratory notes, her frustrating lack of progress. The last movement ends, and a sweet silence arrests the air of Max Planck’s music room. Beyond the windows, the summer night is falling at last.
A maid arrives with tiny glasses of schnapps. This time Violet accepts one and sips it delicately. Otto and Lise are laughing together at some miscue in the second movement. A few yards away, Herr Einstein’s thick, dark head is bent over his violin. Violet takes another sip, another, sets down her empty glass, and approaches him.
“Good evening, Herr Einstein,” she says, possibly the bravest act of her life. She has played Bach with him for months, and still she hasn’t spoken with him like this, eye to eye with the brilliant Einstein, whose 1905 paper still ricochets like revolutionary gunfire about the halls of physics. His line of inquiry lies as far apart from Violet’s as the infinite from the minute, but oh, the breathtaking audacity of his thought! The brash overturning of the static Newtonian universe!
“Frau Grant.” He sets aside his glass of schnapps and stands politely.