Nothing So Strange (15 page)

There wasn’t much I could say to that. The beer had made him a little
expansive. He went on: “Besides, the truth is, I’m not really ambitious in
his
way. All the fuss that was made over him in—in the place
where he lectured—all that would just bore and bother me to distraction
if I ever had to put up with it. And I certainly don’t hanker after some big
administrative job where I’d have to play politics. So everything he can
possibly have deprived me of, he’s welcome to.”

“Wouldn’t you even have liked the slightest acknowledgment from him?”

“That’s another ambition of his I don’t share—to sit pretty with
the— those—” He checked himself in time. “Let’s call them
them.
You know what I mean.”

I nodded and glanced round the cafe. “There seem to be plenty here.”

“Sure. It’s too bad that science has to be interfered with by such
arrogant nitwits. They’ve even closed down the laboratory.”

“Yes, Pauli told me.”

“Why are you smiling?”

“Because you called them arrogant. They are, but you are too, whenever you
use the word ‘science.’”

“Am I? I can only say that my own work makes me feel very humble.”

“That’s only another form of arrogance. Mystics have it. Makes them pretty
hard to get along with.”

“Then I can’t be one … and I don’t think I’m a mystic anyhow. A bit
monkish, if you like—perhaps scientists
are
the modern monks.
They shut themselves up in their cells and let the nonsense go on
outside—and they have a distant goal that makes them myopic about the
foreground…. I remember your mother once asked me if I felt my work as a
sort of priesthood—it startled me at the time, but now I think she
might have been partly right.”

“She also mentioned a vow of celibacy.”

He laughed. “Oh, count me out of that….”

“Good.”

“You too, I should think?”

“
Should
you?”

He laughed again. “Well, I’ve sometimes wondered. You’re attractive,
intelligent, on your own, and you travel about the world meeting all kinds of
interesting men…. What
can
I think?”

“Exactly.” We both laughed.

He began to assemble the saucers that would show the amount of his bill.
“This conversation’s getting too personal. Shall we go?”

“Yes, after one more question. Mind?”

“I might. But go ahead.”

“Just this. You once told me that scientists are in constant touch through
scientific journals—a sort of international freemasonry, quite small,
but very elite. Now if
he
hadn’t jumped the gun, wouldn’t you have
liked to see your work in one of these journals, with your own name on
it?”

He said quietly: “Yes, it would have given me pleasure. But honestly, not
as much as to know that for the last two years I’ve been on the right track,
not the wrong one.”

“But you’d have had that too.”

“I have it now, that’s the main thing. That’s why I’m
celebrating—like this.”

“Brad, I don’t believe you. I think you’re quite a bit hurt by what’s
happened. Only you’re tied to an ideal—you feel you oughtn’t to care
about credit, therefore you try to make yourself not care.”

“And if I succeed, then it’s true that I don’t care.”

“But that could make you a bundle of complexes and inhibitions.”

“Freudian stuff, eh?”

“I don’t know why so many scientists sneer at Freud.”

“We don’t. All we have against him is that the field he opened up became
an immediate playground for amateurs. I’m glad my own field doesn’t offer the
same attractions.”

“There’s something chilly about your mind, Brad.”

That made him laugh again. “Only about my mind, though. Tonight I can
almost understand why people like to shout and get drunk and beat their
wives.”

“But to understand why people do things isn’t the same as wanting to do
them yourself.”

“Let’s hope not. Would you like me to beat Pauli?”

“Quarreling with her might be worse.”

“Listen … get this straight about me and Pauli. She’s a wonderful wife,
I’m in love with her, and she has her own way nine times out of ten.”

“But this is the tenth?”

“Yes.”

“And more important than all the others?”

“To me—naturally. Otherwise I’d have been delighted to give in as
usual.”

“You’d rather fight Pauli than
him
.”

“That’s an unfair way of putting it and you’re quite smart enough to know
it is. I wouldn’t mind fighting him at all if it were on ground where a fight
would be in order. If he’d announced something I thought wrong, for
instance— though I’d have been a bit hesitant to set my mind against
his—still, I’d have done it, no matter how impolitic it might have
been. I’m not that sort of coward.”

“But his discoveries don’t happen to be wrong. They don’t even happen to
be his.”

“I told you before that in the sense I look at it, they’re neither his nor
mine, but the common property of anyone who can use them.”

“Holy ground, eh? Only strictly scientific fights permitted. If you want a
private one, run home to your wife. You must be pretty hard to live with,
Brad.”

“No, I’m easy. I have few vices and my virtues are decently hidden.
Furthermore, I’m a very affectionate animal. So is Pauli. We get on pretty
well. You don’t have to worry about us.”

“I know. She’s very happy with you—personally…. And by the way,
I’m neutral.”

“In what?”

“In anything you have arguments about with her.”

He had paid the bill and we were walking out of the cafe. He summoned a
taxi that was already curving towards us. “I can see
your
side, Brad,
and it’s wonderful and superb, like the Matterhorn, but if I were Pauli I’d
probably see her side better.”

“Oh no, you wouldn’t. You’d still see mine,” he said, timing it for the
last word as he waved good-night.

I didn’t meet or hear from him again for several days,
despite his
expressed readiness to take a walk; but I did mention the matter to my lawyer
friend, a brilliant young Austrian named Bauer, strongly anti-Nazi, whom I
had met at a party and liked exceedingly.

It was the political angle that interested him most, and he confirmed the
likelihood that Framm was boosting himself in Berlin with an eye to a big job
if and when the Nazis moved into Austria. “It’s a smart thing to do, the way
things look, and they certainly look worse every hour.”

I asked him what chance he thought Brad would have, supposing he were
willing to begin any legal action.

“Probably not much. To begin with, those documentary proofs you say exist-
-the notes and so on—they’re all abstrusely scientific, I
suppose?—you couldn’t explain their meaning to a court—you’d need
expert evidence from other scientists even to interpret them. Well, where
would you get such witnesses? Why should anyone back an unknown person
against an influential big shot? And furthermore, even if you
could
show that Bradley’s notes were more or less in line with the Berlin lecture,
who’s to say that your friend worked independently?”

“Pauli could testify to that.”

“She wouldn’t count—she’s his wife. She was also, I understand, a
former employee of Hugo Framm till she was dismissed by him…. Not good, not
good.”

“But it could be proved that Bradley left his notes lying around in a desk
at the laboratory, where Framm could have had access to them.”

“Perhaps Framm did the same and Bradley could have had similar access.
What if Framm were to say that Bradley copied
his
notes?”

“You mean he copied them with a view to bringing an action later? Isn’t
that farfetched?”

“A jury might think it looked like blackmail.”

“
Blackmail
…. That’s fantastic.”

“You understand, Miss Waring, the idea’s purely hypothetical. I’m only
trying to imagine what I might say if I were Framm or his counsel.”

“Of course. But it’s still fantastic.”

“No more than the whole issue. That’s the trouble. If it were plagiarism
in a book or a play you could get the hang of it, but all this scientific
stuff…. What’s Bradley’s salary, by the way?”

“I don’t know exactly, but far less than it ought to be—which is
another thing that might show a jury the kind of man Framm is.”

“It might also be used to show them the kind of man Bradley is. Framm
could say: ‘These are good wages for a mere laboratory assistant working
under my supervision all the time….’ And there’s another thing…. The
legal issue would narrow down to whether Bradley had any ownership claim on
work done while he was a salaried worker for Framm, even if you could prove
that Bradley did do everything on his own.”

“So you think it’s all rather hopeless?”

“Nothing’s
quite
hopeless in a court of law. Sometimes a decision
goes against all logic as well as evidence. Framm’s a charmer—I’ve seen
him in action—he has that kind of brilliant ruthlessness that makes him
nearly irresistible—and yet, you never know—some people might
side with David against Goliath. What’s his type?”

“He hasn’t got a type exactly. He’s shy in manner and quite good-looking.
Of course he hasn’t the slightest intention of bringing an action. I told you
I was merely asking out of curiosity.”

He said, just before I left his office: “The real dynamite in a thing like
this would be political. Nobody cares about electromagnetism…. But if the
case were even to be started it would do Framm harm, and that might be worth
while from a number of angles…. Look, I’ll take it on. I don’t think we’ll
win, and unless we do win and get damages, it’s understood there’ll be no
fee.”

I said I was positive Brad wouldn’t bring any case.

“Ask him again.” Bauer’s enthusiasm seemed to be rising as he contemplated
the matter. “After all, what can he lose? Tell him my offer.”

I promised, and when I did tell Brad, the result was emphatically what I
had expected. Brad said: “So I’m to provide a nice little
cause
célčbre
for the politicians to smack their lips over? Tell your lawyer
friend I’ve
everything
to lose—everything that I care about- -my
time, my work, and my peace of mind. The only thing I haven’t to lose is
doubtless what he was thinking of …
money
.”

“All right, but don’t be sarcastic. He’s not as different from you as
you’d think. Why don’t you let me arrange a meeting? You might even like him.
You could use a few more friends in this town.”

“No, Jane, please keep him out of my affairs. And for heaven’s sake don’t
tell Pauli you’ve found a free lawyer. It’s the cost of the case I’ve been
stressing to her.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s easier to explain than the other reasons I have.”

The international sky darkened, with Vienna as its storm center. The city
throbbed with rumors and counter rumors, ranging from the dangerously
plausible to the sheerly impossible, but behind the smoke screen one thing
was clear: events were now too presaging to be gainsaid, either by wishful
thinkers or by those whose adherences tied them long after the expiry of
either wishing or thoughtfulness. I have been a witness of several upsets
that could be called revolutions, and one thing that strikes me as an almost
clinical sign of approaching crisis is the way it is smelled ahead by those
who have never been extreme enough to make a change of views difficult, or
important enough to have such a change suspected. Perhaps the bulk of people
go this way and that, not so much aiming to be with the tide as to avoid any
feeling that it exists.

There was a curious vacuum in the Viennese atmosphere during that pre-
crisis week, a definite break in tension; the crowds in the streets
diminished, or perhaps one thought so because they went about more quietly; a
few misread the signs and wondered if everything would now “blow over.” But
from across the frontier accurate reports came more alarmingly than before,
so that the seeming lull was ominous rather than satisfying. To me it was as
if curtains were being drawn over big store windows, while behind them
dressers were at work, changing the display for some moment of sudden
unveiling in a now predictable future. Few people, probably, are consciously
hypocritical when, to suit their convenience, they swap sides. Even to
themselves the move must be rationalized, must be given that appearance of
sincerity which it partly has; and this requires a little time, a few days at
least, a small tribute of delay paid by human apathy to the freedom which it
surrenders.

I wrote articles during those strange days, and once I called at Brad’s
apartment but did not stay long. I was distressed to see that the issue
between him and Pauli had already caused a rift, and I knew that especially
now I must avoid making Pauli resent my own friendship with him. There had
been no sign of this so far, but it could doubtless thrive on any backing I
gave him in his attitude. For Pauli, however, mere neutrality was not enough;
I soon saw that to keep her warm to me I would have to be on her side against
Brad, and this was even less possible.

Meanwhile it was in the papers that Framm had returned from Berlin, a
considerably more eminent personage than when he went. The laboratories were
still closed, owing to the likelihood of further political rioting, but Framm
contrived to get himself into a steady limelight of statements and
interviews. He was clever enough not to seem boastful about his Berlin
success, but to allow the common knowledge of it to support his political
attitude, which now became openly pro-Nazi.

During this interval I also heard a curious story from Bauer to the effect
that Pauli had approached another lawyer, denouncing Framm and inquiring
about the possibilities of a lawsuit; to which this lawyer had replied that
since action could only be started by Bradley himself, there was no point in
discussing it except with him. However, the story got around. I thought this
a pity, since it made Brad’s attitude look somewhat unheroic; but again there
was nothing I could do either by argument or by advice.