Making History

NATURAL HISTORY

Still waters run deep

‘Find me a map of the area,’ said Kremer. ‘A geological map. The latest.’

Bauer scribbled on a request form, which he packed into a small, brass torpedo. Going over to the wall he asked Kremer how late he imagined they would be working that evening.

Kremer, hunched over the microscope, said nothing.

Bauer slipped the torpedo into the communication tube. He smacked the cap closed and listened as the torpedo was sucked away and clattered down the pipework on its journey to the first-floor typing pool. He looked at his watch: thirty-four minutes past five. Hartmann, Head of Documents maintained that any document in the university could be retrieved and delivered within fifteen minutes. He had promised to buy Bauer a whole litre of Berliner white beer if he failed to live up to this proud boast by so much as a second. This should be a good test and on such a sultry August day, a large beer, maybe with a shot of raspberry, would be welcome.

‘Ruth, a moment,’ he said, beckoning his assistant. ‘Would you perhaps be so kind as to telephone my wife and tell her that I will be late home again this evening?’

Ruth nodded and moved stiffly to the telephone. She did not take kindly to being treated as a secretary.

Bauer returned to his part of the bench and began to sort idly and hopelessly through his papers. Kremer looked up from the microscope, snapping his fingers.

‘Well? Where is it?’ he said.

‘The map? Good God, Johann, give them a chance. You only asked me a minute ago.’

‘What? Really? Yes, I’m sorry.’ Kremer smiled across at him like a rueful schoolboy. ‘Still, I do wish they would hurry up.’

‘Have you seen something?’

Kremer pinched the bridge of his nose wearily, his eyes closed. ‘No. Nothing.’

‘You were examining the zinc and sodium levels?’

‘Yes, but it’s nothing. Higher than average, but lower than our own supply here. We should be looking for something bigger, something much bigger.’

‘What about those traces of methyl orange?’

‘It’s contamination, it must be. That original doctor, I assume. What was his name?’

‘Schenck. Horst Schenck.’

‘Yes, him. The whole thing is insane, Dietrich. If I hadn’t seen it work on our mice I would believe it was all a hoax.’

Kremer turned back to his microscope with a sigh.

‘Doctor Bauer?’ Ruth held out the telephone towards him as if it were contaminated with anthrax. ‘Your wife asks that you come and say goodnight to your son.’

Bauer took the telephone and listened for a while in affectionate amusement to the quick breathing of his child.

‘Axi?’ he said at last.

‘Papa?’

‘Have you been a good boy today?’

‘Papa!’

‘I shall see you tomorrow.’

‘Milk.’

‘Did you say “milk?” You want some milk?’

‘Milk;

‘Mutti will give you milk. I can’t give you milk over the telephone, you know. Ask Mutti for some milk.’

There followed more quick breathing and then a longer silence.

‘Axel? Are you there?’

‘Fox.’

‘Fox?’

‘Fox. Fox, fox, fox.’

‘Well, that’s nice.’

Bauer heard a clatter as the telephone was dropped. After another silence Marthe’s voice echoed in his ear. ‘Hello, darling. We saw a fox today. In the garden. It’s his favourite animal now.’

‘Ah. That explains it.’

‘I think he’s got ear-ache again. He says “naughty ear” and bangs the side of his head with the palm of his hand.’

‘I’m sure it’s nothing serious. I’ll take a look tomorrow morning.’

‘How late are you going to be? That Jew student of yours wouldn’t tell me.’

‘I’m sorry, darling. But what I’m working on. It’s very important. Top priority.’

‘I understand. I do. But you will try and eat tonight,

‘:you?

‘Of course. We’re very well looked after here, you know.’

‘I know. The Führer’s favourites.’

‘Goodbye, darling.’

Bauer replaced the receiver. Ruth was standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, looking busily at a clipboard to show that she hadn’t been listening.

‘I think you might as well go home, Fraulein Goldmann. Professor Kremer and I can manage without you for the rest of the day.’

‘I am very happy to stay, sir.’

‘No, no. Please. No need.’

On her way out, Ruth almost collided with a breathless messenger from retrievals. A glance at his watch told Bauer that he would have to buy his own beer again this evening.

§

‘Nothing,’ said Kremer disgustedly. ‘Absolutely nothing. The most topographically boring, geologically undistinguished and minerally commonplace terrain in the whole wide world.’

‘Not even especially pretty,’ agreed Bauer. ‘For Austria, that is.’

‘Then what is going on? What in deepest hell is going on?’ Kremer hammered his pipe-stem onto the map. ‘It simply makes no sense. No sense at all.’

‘Maybe…” said Bauer hesitantly. ‘Maybe we have missed something obvious. You always taught me that every centimetre one moves from an erroneous first principle takes one a kilometre further from the truth. Maybe we are going in entirely the wrong direction.’

Kremer looked up from the map. ‘Explain.’

‘We are searching desperately for the cause of an effect that we do not understand. Perhaps it is the effect itself we should be examining.’

Kremer looked at him steadily. ‘Perhaps,’ he said slowly, drawing out the word with reluctance. ‘But, Dietrich, we are down to thirty centilitres. The stakes are so high, the pressure from Berlin so intense. We cannot afford the luxury of a blind alley.’

‘That is the point I’m making, Johann. A blind alley is where we are. Let us go back. Let us go back to the beginning.’

Bauer stretched out a hand to the shelf above the bench and pulled out the file marked ‘Brunau’.