The Einstein Prophecy

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

“But if a deity, as I have proved, can exist in any universe, then it follows that He must exist,” Gödel was saying, “and in all of them.”

So focused was he on explaining his proof, that it was Einstein who had to pull him back onto the curb of Washington Road before he was run over by a speeding Studebaker. Usually, Einstein was the one who needed rescuing; indeed, on one occasion he had been so absorbed in thought that he had fallen into an open manhole, and clambering out, had begged a passing photographer not to release the picture.

“And all of these universes are rotating, ja?”

“Of course,” Gödel replied, tucking his woolen scarf even more securely into the top of his coat. “I thought we had agreed on that.”

“But doesn’t your God get dizzy then?” Einstein said, resorting to jokes, his usual ploy, to get Gödel off his hobbyhorse. Gödel, he knew, tried to pass off his obsession with the spiritual realm, and most pointedly the afterlife, as an intellectual pastime and no more, but Einstein understood his friend too well — Gödel was a man who feared that death lurked in anything from an uncovered sneeze to a tuna fish sandwich. The thought of extinction was so overwhelming to him that he devoted countless hours — hours that might have been better spent on pure mathematics — to proving that life had no definitive end, but that it was merely shifted to another plane or dimension. Einstein did not share his optimism (if optimism was what it could be called). He had already left blunt instructions with Helen to the effect that, when his time came, he should be cremated and his ashes distributed to the four winds. “Why waste a good plot of earth,” he’d said, “when someone like Adele could be growing tomatoes there?”

As they quit the main thoroughfare for the rural path that led through the woods and down to the shores of Lake Carnegie, his thoughts turned to the work he had done, in an uncanny passion, the night before. It was as if all the powers he had once possessed, almost forty years ago, when he was constructing his theories on everything from relativity to the photoelectric effect, had returned to him in spades. It was all he could do to keep up with the cascade of insights and equations that entered his mind and had to be scrawled on the blackboard, and then, once ironed out, transposed to the notebook that he could dispatch by courier to an anxious Oppenheimer in New Mexico. It was as if a voice, a strange voice he could barely hear, was whispering answers, and encouragement, in his ear.

There had even been moments when he felt that his hand, too, was being guided by some unseen force, some invisible presence, an angel, or, given the nature of the work, perhaps a devil, whose mission it was to guarantee that the last intractable problems were solved, and that the most lethal weapon ever conceived was brought into its full, destructive existence. That he, a man so opposed to war that he could not watch a marching band without instinctively recoiling at its martial air, should have, however unwittingly, laid the groundwork for such a thing as this, was ironic enough; the fact that he had been secretly instrumental in its actual construction was positively astounding.

“Adele tells me we are playing bridge at your house tonight,” Einstein said.

“Yes. That is so.”

“I am going to leave my wallet at home,” Einstein said. “Last time I lost almost two dollars.”

“It is how we pay our rent,” Gödel said, and Einstein laughed. Kurt seldom made jokes — he must be in an especially fine mood today.

A light breeze kicked up some leaves across their path, and Gödel gathered his long coat around himself. “You do not dress warmly enough for the weather, Albert.”

“I dress not as the weather is, but as it should be. And it should be a good day for a sail around the lake.”

“I do not think that I will join you today.”

Einstein laughed, and said, “No, my friend, I will not put you through that ordeal again. Not again.”

“I will wait for you in the boathouse.”

“That’s a good idea. You’ll stay nice and warm and dry in there,” he said, “and you already know where the towels are kept.”

“I hope I do not need them this time,” Gödel said, looking up at the sky, “though it is possible that you might.”

Einstein had seen them, too — great banks of puffy clouds far off to the east. “We will both be back in my study, enjoying a pot of Helen’s tea, long before we lose the sun.”

By the time the boathouse came into view, Einstein was eager to get the Tinef out on the water, and Kurt looked equally eager to get out of the wind. Inside, Kurt took a seat in an old rocking chair, right beside the cabinet holding the binoculars, starting pistol, and first aid kit, and settled in. From the voluminous pocket of his coat, he removed a book — Einstein suspected it was his worn copy of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason—adjusted his spectacles, and prepared to lose himself, as usual, in the realms of higher thought.

Einstein thought he saw something dart by the window, and was reminded that the occasional black bear was spotted in these woods. He hadn’t mentioned it to Kurt, lest the man faint from fear. “I shouldn’t be too long,” he said, going to the window to take a look. But all he saw was a gray owl, head down, wings furled, sitting silently, pensively, on a high branch. “You and I, we are kin,” he said, so softly it did not disturb Kurt’s reading. “A couple of wise old birds.” Then, leaving his door keys on the table — more than once they had slipped out of his pockets when the boat heeled — he said, “Then you are comfortable, Kurt?”

“Quite.”

Closing the squeaky door of the boathouse, he walked down the wooden pier to the spot where the Tinef had been tied up after his last outing. He could tell from the rigor with which the knots had been tied that someone had come along after him and done the job properly, and he smiled. Sometimes it seemed that the whole community — the university, the institute, the townspeople — took a friendly interest in his well-being and watched over him. When he had first immigrated to this small, provincial town from the intellectual and cultural ferment of Berlin, he had thought he might feel stifled — and at first he had, oh how he had — but over time he had come to feel at home here, to appreciate the quiet charms of its very insularity.

Stepping down into the boat and pushing off from the pier, he almost lost his balance and toppled overboard into the water. How amused Kurt would have been to see his bedraggled figure in the boathouse doorway — soaked to the skin, just like when they’d been caught out in the rain.

Once away, he dropped the center board, unfurled the yellow sail and, while raising it, noticed that another canvas sheet had been sloppily stowed in the bow. Had he left it that way himself? He certainly didn’t remember doing so, and it seemed unlikely that his mysterious benefactor, the one who might have fixed his knots, would have left such a rumpled heap there. It didn’t even seem that it belonged to this boat at all; it looked more like one of the canvas covers used to protect the rowers’ boats.

Who could have put it there, of all places?

A cool breeze filled the sail and carried him out onto the deep blue-gray waters of the lake. Einstein zipped his leather jacket up to the top of his throat — perhaps Kurt had dressed more sensibly for the coming weather than he had, after all — and took the tiller in one hand and the rope in the other. As always, he felt that he was leaving all the mundane and often vexing concerns of daily life behind, and passing into a world where no telephones could ring, no doors could be knocked on, no breathless couriers could arrive with outstretched hands for his latest packet of diagrams and calculations.

His eye wandered to the eastern sky, where the towering white clouds looked like a lopsided wedding cake, and then to the thickly wooded shores. While some of the trees had entirely shed their leaves already, others were still bedecked in red and yellow leaves that gleamed in the light of the afternoon sun. A couple of boys on the bank, holding pails and fishing poles, waved to him, and, securing the tiller in place, he waved back. His little blue boat with its distinctive yellow sail was well-known on the lake.

The wind picked up, and rustled the crumpled canvas in the bow. He should have stowed it away under the seat where the life preserver was kept, but it was too late for that now. Despite all the sailing he had done in his life, he knew that he remained a wretched sailor — once he had absentmindedly run his craft onto the shoals, another time into a buoy — and to make matters worse, he could hardly swim a stroke. It was a skill that he had always meant to acquire, but never managed to find time for.

To his surprise, the canvas pile rustled again. Glancing down, he could swear that the fabric bulged, as if something lying beneath it had moved. Could it be wharf rats? The fabric shifted again, and now he was quite certain that something was hiding underneath the cloth. For a second, he considered turning around and heading back to the pier, but even a rat, he knew, would do its best to keep clear of him. Maybe it was some more benign creature, a chipmunk perhaps, that would simply hide out until it could scamper back onto the pier.

The boat heeled, and he had to pull in on the sail. Water splashed over the side, sloshing under the floorboards and soaking the bottom of the canvas heap. Whatever was lurking under it reacted to the intrusion, jerking the canvas out of its way, then tenting it — higher than any rat or chipmunk could have done — and causing Einstein to rear back in alarm on his seat.

Was there a bear in the boat, for God’s sake?

His first clue came when it sat up entirely — and then, to his shock, stretched out one meaty hand, scabbed with blood, from under the wet canvas.

A moment later, it yanked off the cover entirely, shook its head and squared its shoulders, and looked him straight in the eye, like a stoat eyeing a cornered rabbit.