Nothing So Strange (26 page)

And the cloud again, the hidden nerve touched. It was so obvious, even
while I was keeping one eye on the road, that I said: “Oh, Brad, what comes
over you at times when you suddenly look like that?”

“Nothing that I can tell you about.”

“All right. I don’t mind.”

“If that’s true, it’s wonderful.”

“It
is
true, Brad. Please get it into your head that you don’t have
to say a thing. You’ve explained why you went to Germany, that’s what I was
really curious about.”

“And now you understand?”

“Well, you said you went there to kill Framm.”

“But you don’t really believe me?”

“Of course I believe you if you say so.”

“But it doesn’t even startle you?”

“No more than so many other things. The world’s been a bit full of queer
happenings these last few years. I’ve seen a lot that weren’t pretty. I’ve
seen people beaten up, starved, terrorized, bombed—I’ve seen them under
stress of all the crude emotions that you could only make credible to Park
Avenue if you got Lillian Hellman to write a play about them—and then
the audience wouldn’t believe in
them
, they’d only believe in the
play…. When you tell me you decided to kill somebody it doesn’t seem too
remarkable in a world that nowadays seems to have decided to kill
everybody.”

“By God, you’re more right than you know. But you take it so calmly.”

“How else can I take it? You were calm when you visited Framm in his
office that day. You must have been, or else he’d have suspected you.”

“I used to wonder whether he did. He certainly must have puzzled over my
motive in coming back to work for him. And
his
motive
too—because after all,
he invited me
… but why? It was an odd
situation. He’d grabbed all the credit for my work, and he must have known I
knew that; he knew too that my public defense of him was only for Pauli’s
sake. And he must have doubted whether I really accepted what had happened to
her as a natural death. Of course he may have thought I was just a sucker
about everything—except mathematics. Perhaps that fascinated him, to
have someone like that around all the time … I don’t know. I’ve often tried
to think it out. He was a strange man. There were different layers of his
mind all revolving oppositely in concentric circles. And then, mixed up with
everything else, was the work we did. I don’t mean that it brought us
together in any sentimental sense, but it kept us apart from all other
issues, while we were both at it. It was a sort of world in which being
either a murderer or a sucker was irrelevant … if you can understand
that.”

“I think I can. But it makes me wish I knew that world myself.”

“Too bad I can’t explain much—if I tried to make it simple you
wouldn’t get the right idea. It wasn’t anything dramatic or romantic. Those
discoveries you read about in the papers—everything twisted out of its
context to make the whole business seem like a treasure hunt—science
isn’t really like that at all. But people think it is—it’s the kind of
science they want to believe in, so they choose it, just as in an earlier age
they chose the kind of religion that suited them. I remember once Framm got
hold of an American comic strip— Buck Rogers, I think—he’d never
seen anything like it before, and it amused him enormously—he passed it
to me with a roar of laughter and said—‘Look—
Science
!—the opiate of the people!’ That’s why it’s hard to
discuss science with nonscientists. It isn’t that they don’t know what you’re
talking about—I wouldn’t know what a biochemist or a biologist was
talking about, but as a member of the same general trade, so to speak, I
should know the language of his thought even if I didn’t have the jargon. And
it’s the jargon that people get a smattering of so easily these days. Framm
once said that in medieval times the really popular argument was how many
angels could dance on the end of a needle, whereas nowadays, judging from the
magazine ads, people prefer to worry about how many microbes can dance on the
end of a toothbrush…. And he wasn’t sure that was progress.”

“I believe you rather liked Framm,” I said.

“
Liked
him? Good God, no. But when you’ve made up your mind to kill
somebody and you’re not sure when or how the chance will come, it’s
surprising what a tie that makes between you.”

I wondered if he were serious till I saw his face. It was under the cloud
again, and we were at Vista Grande having drinks before it lifted.

We didn’t climb the next day, for a number of reasons; Brad
was tired and
got up late, and Dan’s car showed a flat that had to be repaired in the
nearest village several miles away. It wasn’t perfect weather,
either—rather moist and misty, but towards evening the sky cleared and
Brad said he reckoned we should start at five in the morning if we wanted to
reach the snow line. He didn’t promise the summit.

We drove as before and by ten o’clock were at the place where we had
picnicked. We stopped for coffee, then pushed on with the added zest of
covering new territory. We hadn’t talked much, during either the drive or the
climb, and I realized, as the trail steepened and became more overgrown, that
we were on ground that might not have been trodden for weeks or even months
by any other human being. Not that this was a feat, merely that so few people
cared for uncelebrated mountains, or in wartime had the time or the gas for
them. The whole enterprise, I said to Brad, was thoroughly unpatriotic
whichever way you looked at it.

“Suits me,” he said, refilling the thermos with water. Then he walked on
ahead, and as I guessed he was in a mood to be alone, I followed a few
hundred yards behind. We must have climbed for an hour like that. Suddenly we
came to a point where we could see the ridge above us flattening out into a
kind of meadow meeting patches of snow. “That’s where we’ll stop,” he said,
pointing, and though I thought we should do better after another rest I kept
on without making the suggestion.

The trail grew sketchy, then lost itself in a wilderness of boulders, and
with that curious change of perspective that mountain scenery offers, the
ridge itself looked more distant as we climbed. There came a moment when I
knew we were off the trail and that the rocks were hazardous if one of us
should slip. He was still ahead of me, often out of sight, and I began to
wonder how much more of it I could stand. Then, having scrambled up a chimney
with knees and elbows, I found myself against a huge slab, steep and smooth,
with only a crack for a foothold and a hundred-foot drop if one missed it.
There was no other way of continuing, and I didn’t think I could keep my
nerve. I shouted and heard nothing but an echo. I called his name again and
again. Then I saw him. He had crossed the slab and was a stage higher, but at
a place that led to a sheerly perpendicular rock face that hadn’t even a
toehold. He was staring up and down as if bewildered. It seemed impossible
that he had not heard my calls. “We can’t do it,” I shouted. “At least I
can’t. Let’s go back.”

He waved to me, but did not speak. The way he was standing hid his eyes
and expression. But suddenly, as if a message had come directly between us, I
knew he was scared. I called out: “Stay there, I’m coming up. It’s all
right.”

That made him yell back: “No, don’t. You stay where you are. It’s no
use.”

“I know it’s no use, but you’re in a bad spot. I’ll help you down.”

“For Christ’s sake, don’t try it. I’m all right. Give me time.”

I waited, perhaps for several minutes, then began to inch my way across
the slab. I don’t know if he even saw me doing it. The crack was crumbly in
places, and when a fragment fell the interval before it hit anything gave me
an extra qualm. I don’t know how I got across, but at last I could relax and
steady myself for a moment, gasping with a kind of fear that was new to me. I
once stood in a doorway in a Paraguayan town with bullets crisscrossing the
street and smashing windows all round, but I wasn’t quite so terrified.

“You’re crazy,” Brad said, when I reached him. His face was gray and his
hands still trembled.

“You’re crazy too.”

“Why the hell didn’t you stay where you were?”

“Because I could see you weren’t very happy up here.”

“You’re damn right I’m not. I’m stuck. I’ve no nerve to go up or down.
That’s no reason why you should have come, though.”

“You’ll get your nerve back soon.”

“I don’t think I shall. I’m stuck, I tell you.”

“That’s nonsense. You don’t suppose you’re going to be left here to
starve, do you?”

“Very funny, very funny.”

“Now look here. Pull yourself together. Let’s sit down for a while and
rest. Then if you’re still scared I’ll go down myself and bring men with
ropes or something.”

“Men with ropes? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Got to be done, if it’s the only way. There must be people in the valley-
-forest rangers, maybe. They could climb up higher and drop a rope. Of course
you might have to spend the night here first.”

“Too damn cold.”

From the way he said that I knew he was already calmer. I made him sit and
there was so little room that we practically clung to each other for
equilibrium. It was far too uncomfortable to be in any way romantic. We had
left both rucksacks below, but we had a few cigarettes. We smoked, and all at
once he began to laugh. “It
is
funny,” he cried. “I’ve climbed all
those mountains in Switzerland—the Jungfrau, the Matterhorn, even the
Finsteraarhorn- -and now I get stuck in a place like this that hasn’t even
got a name!”

“You’re not stuck. You’ll be all right in a minute.”

“I’m a nervous wreck, that’s what’s the matter with me.”

“No, you’re not. I was nervous too. Most people would be. I’d like to see
how Newby would shape up here.”

“Oh God, Newby! Think of it!” He thought of it and it set him laughing
again. That way it effected a cure—perhaps the only time Newby really
did him any good.

“Well, what do we do?” he asked at length. “Is it to be up or down?”

I liked the question even if it were partly bravado. “Down,” I said,
“unless you want to get us into some real trouble.”

“All right, but I’d like to try this again someday. I had my eye on that
snow.”

“Yes, we can come here again.”

But I didn’t think we should; it was about
my
limit, anyhow. We
finished the cigarettes and began the descent. It wasn’t as hard as I had
expected and we both kept our nerve. Half an hour later we were eating
sandwiches and drinking the ice-cold spring water. I suppose the small
adventure gave us sensations of special ecstasy now that it was all over and
no harm done. The snow still beckoned, but our eyes were much more drawn to
the rock slab that had perhaps (though perhaps not) come near to finishing us
off. I told Brad I felt I could gloat over it.

He answered: “Perhaps that’s how Framm felt about me, if he could really
read my mind, but I don’t think he could.”

He stared at the rock for a long moment, then went on: “Perhaps I was
gloating too, in a different way. Over Framm, I mean. The motive of personal
revenge isn’t an adult one for a civilized person, so, if it comes, he has to
do something to it, or else let it do something to him—or more likely,
both things meet in a compromise. You said I liked Framm—no, I
didn’t—I
loathed
him, but there were times when I’d have been
sorry if I’d heard he’d died in his bed. Once he had a bad cough—his
chest was always weak after the injury—and I insisted on taking his
temperature and making him go home…. And once the screen of the X-ray
machine wasn’t fixed properly and he nearly got electrocuted—fifteen
hundred volts—that would have finished him off, but I wasn’t
thinking—I dragged him away in time. It gave me an idea, though.
Meanwhile our show of getting on well and being on friendly terms would
doubtless provide a good psychological alibi. The thing began to appeal to me
as a problem as well as an act of retribution. I don’t know whether you’d
call me mad for having such thoughts. And, as I said before, there were
his
motives too—they gave me another problem. I could never be
certain how he felt about me, apart from knowing I was damned useful to him.
Because I was, by this time. I did all the routine stuff that cropped up in
his computations. I had begun to be a real mathematician, and he knew that,
and I knew that he knew it, and there was that unspoken awareness between us
that always exists when two people can share a tough job without wasting each
other’s time.”

“He seems to have worked much more closely with you in Berlin than he did
in Vienna.”

“Oh yes. In Vienna we only met when he came around every few days to check
the galvanometer or glance at the graphs—he’d say ‘Getting along all
right?’—and I’d answer ‘Oh yes’—and that would be all for perhaps
another week. He probably thought I wasn’t much good, so why should he
bother.”

“He didn’t think your work was much good until he found it worth
appropriating.”

“In a sort of way, that’s exactly true, and from him it was the perfect
tribute…. He’d used other people’s work before—I found that out….
On the other hand, I can see now there was a special reason why he didn’t
think I was much good when I first started with him in Vienna.”

“Why?”

“Because … well, it concerns your father.”

“How?”

“I don’t know whether you knew it, but he paid Framm to take me as his
assistant.”

“He
paid
Framm?”

“I didn’t find out till I was in Berlin, and then, of course, I understood
why Framm hadn’t taken me very seriously at first. He just thought I was a
rich man’s protégé, so he set me to work on what he thought wouldn’t come to
anything and left me to it. He had a few rich students he treated the same
way. He’d take anybody’s money, but you couldn’t exactly buy him with
it—he’d let you think you could and then secretly go back on the
bargain.”