Nothing So Strange (30 page)

He drank the rest of his cocktail at a gulp, but waved away any more.
Presently he continued: “When I realized what this amounted to, the word
success did come, but it had a strange sound, almost like a sound without
meaning. What I chiefly felt was an overwhelming weariness, both of mind and
body. I gave myself a shot of Framm’s brandy and lay down on his couch. I
must have slept instantly, for when I woke there was dawn at the edge of the
window blinds. I had not heard the ‘all clear’ sirens even if there had been
any. I crossed the room to look down at the street; there was a line of
trucks and armored cars parked outside the building and knots of men were
gathered about. I turned on the radio; the voices of announcers, full of
their ghastly tired eagerness, were repeating old news, but it was new to me:
that the German Army was already far across the Polish frontier; war had
begun.

“I suppose that was a turning point of my life—a moment of complete
flux, when I might have done almost anything if one of a number of impulses
had been a mite stronger—perhaps if I had had a few drops more brandy,
or even a few drops less. If Framm had returned exactly then I think I should
have killed him somehow or other—and been promptly caught, tried,
sentenced, and hanged. An American spy, they’d probably have said—not a
real scientist at all. I thought of that as I stared down at the street, and
then the thought came to me- -supposing that was what I had been, all along,
would Framm have suspected it? But of course America doesn’t have
spies—or didn’t have then. We were so God- damned innocent in those
days. We’d debunked the First World War so thoroughly that it was hard to
believe in another—much easier to sell scrap to Japan and at the same
time blame the munition makers…. I won’t try to tell you all the thoughts
that ran riot in my mind, while every now and then the announcer on the radio
would say ‘
Achtung
‘ and give out an emergency instruction about
something or other … that word echoed inside me like a bell tolling …
Achtung … Achtung
….

“Perhaps I was only five or ten minutes in that condition, but it seemed a
long while, and then all at once it came to me that there was only one thing
I could do, in Framm’s absence, and now indeed
because
of Framm’s
absence. It was something very quiet, involving no one else, and it was also
something no one else could do. But it would take time, perhaps not less than
several hours, and whether I should have that much time I could not forecast.
So there was the need to begin immediately and not stop till it was either
finished or interrupted.”

“And forget about killing him?”

He nodded. “Private revenge would only have got in the way of what I
intended to do. Don’t you see, he
trusted
me—and that was more
essential to what I now planned than his death could ever have been. I wanted
him to
live
—and to go on trusting me for a while longer. Viewed
against that, my original desire to kill him seemed almost like a sort of
self- indulgence—like putting my own affairs first. The enemy I really
hated wasn’t to be countered by any personal vendetta, and the hate I had
wasn’t sharp and emotional, but glum and also rather limitless. That was the
mood I was in as I set to work. First I assembled all the results on the desk
before me. They were roughly penciled with many erasures already; this helped
rather than hindered. Framm had never looked them over; he had had (and it
was ironic now to think of it) implicit confidence in my ability to do the
job, and there was also a certain basic laziness in him that made it tempting
to hand work to others. He had never checked where another type of man might
have been concerned to do so, and he had been far too busy lately, fighting
his battles with the authorities, to acquaint himself with even a minimum of
detail. All this made it less difficult to do what I set out to do. It took
me just over two hours. By the time the sun was hot on that early September
morning there was a collection of rough notes, computations, and graphs, in
perfect shape for him to examine. But the end-result now was a reading of
two-point-one-three- four-eight. Not near enough any more.

“When I had written it down I was not only utterly exhausted but
also— and this is a confession—I had a deep depression of spirit.
It was so different from anything I had ever felt before that I tried to
analyze it in my mind; it could not be remorse, because I had accomplished my
purpose, and I was tremendously relieved at having been lucky enough to have
the chance. And yet I felt worse, not better, for having done something I did
not regret. It was as if I had committed the sin I always puzzled over when I
was a small boy at Sunday School—I puzzled over it because I didn’t
know what it was, and for that reason I suspected that, like most sins, it
must be something pleasant to do even if one were wicked for doing it. But
now it occurred to me as something exactly the opposite—it was
horrible
to do, even if, in this particular instance, it was
justifiable. It was the sin against the Holy Ghost, if one believed in
science as I did, and as Framm did too, with one part of his damned
schizophrenic soul.”

The dinner bell sounded from the house. “Don’t bother,” I said. “My father
isn’t coming down, so it can wait as long as we like.”

“Why isn’t he?”

“He’s not too well. I suppose when you’ve had a stroke you never really
get completely better.”

“Sometimes you do.”

“Not at his age.”

“Yes, he’s old, isn’t he?… Much older, I remember, than your mother
was.”

“Yes.”

He was moody for a moment, then said: “Let’s have dinner, though. I’ve
talked enough.”

“I’d like to know what happened when Framm came back. I suppose he
did?”

“Yes. I’ll tell you afterwards—if we can come out here again.”

“We’ll have coffee here. It’ll still be warm. You could even bathe again
if you wanted to.”

He went off to change, and we dined alone, talking little
while Dan was
around. Not that there was anything special that mustn’t be overheard, or so
it seemed to me; but I had noticed before that suspicion was deep-sunk in his
general attitude towards people and circumstances—doubtless part of the
snarl of phobias and complexes that made up what was wrong with him. And in
the dining room, so full of shadows and dark perspectives, his unease was
very noticeable. It lifted a little afterwards, when we sat by the pool
again. The air was still warm—even warmer than sometimes during the
day, for the breeze came from the long valley, full of earth scents. A small
moon curved over a hill and lit the edge of it.

Brad went on:

… I was asleep when Framm arrived, about ten o’clock on that September
morning, but the commotion he made woke me. He had the radio on at full force
so that he could hear it as he moved from room to room. As soon as I saw him
I knew he was in a mood that would make it easier for me. The war news, or
else the trip to Berchtesgaden, had brought out the
Junker
stuff in
him—he was Prussian-born though he had lived most of his life in
Vienna. And his mood had a peculiar way of showing this in his movements;
when the
Junker
superseded the scientist, he seemed to stiffen to a
height of a few extra inches and his walk became quick and military. At other
times he would stoop and amble; it was an extraordinary phenomenon of
change—as if he felt a need to dramatize something that went on inside
him.

He did not tell me whether he had seen the man whom he sometimes called
“our
Quatschkopf
.” But he radiated an impression that his mission had
been well worth while, that he had done much of what he wanted to do, and had
prepared the way for more. That also—his air of mystery and
secrecy—was part of the transformation; he did not confide at such
times, but snapped out minimum facts like communiqués. So now I got only part
of a story. I didn’t care. It was better for me not to have him put his arm
on my shoulder and say: “Well, how goes it, Bradley? Have we yet found out
what makes the universe tick, or only the philosopher’s stone?” But now he
just said: “Been working? Not finished yet? We’ve got to hurry.”

I said: “It’s finished. The results are on your desk.”

He picked up the papers, briskly but without apparent excitement, merely
muttering: “I think they will show that I am right.” For a moment then the
sick depression came over me afresh. His whole attitude was a mixture of
something superb and something arrogant, and at the last moment of all, with
a touch of the inconsequent that so often intrudes, he couldn’t find his
glasses—he wondered if he had left them on the plane, or if he had a
spare pair at his house. “Well, tell me, tell me,” he said irritably. “I
can’t read without them….”

So I told him. “It doesn’t work out,” I said. “The bulge is in the wrong
place.”

He glared at me, and for an incredible second I wondered if he could read
in my eyes what I had done; but I knew that without his glasses he couldn’t
even see me properly. The sudden fierceness was just the Prussianism, the
age- old barbarian reaction to the bearer of bad news. He banged his fist on
the desk. “So it is in the wrong place, eh? And it could not have happened at
a worse time! No—not in a century!”

Behind him on the blackboard were a number of equations connected with the
general plan of the work we had been doing. He swung round to give them a
stare that lasted several moments, then in an access of rage seized the
duster and wiped the rows of chalked symbols into a smudge. “Very well …
since these are our mistakes, the truth must lie elsewhere.” It was clear
that any idea of doubting the accuracy of my calculations had not even
remotely entered his mind- -which was in a way dreadful, and yet exactly what
I had hoped. “But I shall find it,” he muttered angrily, as if even the truth
were capable of yielding to threats.

That gave me my chance to say: “I’m afraid I shan’t be able to help you in
it, Dr. Framm. The war makes it necessary for me to return to America.”

He seemed hardly interested. “Oh it does, does it? When do you want to
go?”

“Immediately.”

“Very well.”

I left his office a few minutes later. At the doorway as we shook hands he
turned on the charm for a few seconds, but it was tired and semiautomatic; I
could see his mind was elsewhere. “Of course you are deserting me,” he said,
but that too was automatic, just one of his numerous attitudes, posing as a
martyr when he was in no position to play the tyrant. I had seen it work so
often, but now there was nothing for it to work on … and it was hardly a
wasted effort because it was not even an effort.

I gathered up the few personal things that were in my own laboratory and
then went down the slow elevator for the last time. And I never saw Framm
again.

But an odd thing happened that same afternoon as I was leaving the
American Express office. I ran into a biochemist named Muller, whom I had
sometimes chatted with in the corridors of the Institut—a quiet decent
fellow who disliked Framm and had often expressed surprise that I apparently
got on so well with him. I told him I was leaving Germany and he said: “I’m
very glad— for your sake. It will save you a good deal of trouble.” He
then told me that the war crisis had generated a good deal of feeling against
foreigners working on scientific projects, and Framm, he added, had recently
thrown out hints that he considered me not altogether “reliable,” and that he
had been “watching” me for some time.

This threw me into a mood of near-panic, coming when it did; and for a
moment it seemed to me an example of special villainy on Framm’s part, until
I reminded myself that my own behavior and intentions, if he had suspected
them, would have amply justified him. Actually, however, though I did not
decide this till long after I had left Germany, I don’t think Framm suspected
me at all, ever, or of anything. I think he
trusted
me—personally as well as professionally. I think he found me a willing
and occasionally able slave, and was ready to use me as long as possible, but
he was also preparing an alibi for himself, in case the antiforeign feeling
should increase. All this would have been exactly like him, for I had seen
him do the same sort of thing to others far more innocent than I was….

“So it was a good thing you didn’t kill him,” I said.

“Well, I wouldn’t have had much chance to get away with it if what Muller
said was true.”

“I think you got away with quite enough, if it prevented his success in
whatever it was he was trying to do.”

“Don’t exaggerate. In itself it was a very minor piece of sabotage. What,
if anything, it prevented or delayed, nobody can ever say exactly. Perhaps
very little. The Germans were often so stupid that no outside assistance
could have made them blunder more than they did.” He added, as if eager to
leave the issue: “There’s an ironic little anticlimax to file away with the
rest. Just before I left Berlin I went to the bank to close my account. My
weekly salary had come that morning and though I couldn’t take money out of
Germany I thought it might buy something on the train trip. But when I tried
to cash it I found it had already been stopped…. Now that’s what I call
attention to detail. It must have been one of the first things he did after I
left … perhaps the
very
first. I couldn’t help laughing, right there
at the bank counter. To think that after the wrong figures I’d given Framm
the wrong one he gave me was only on a check!”

That was the night, after the talk, when I was wakened by
hearing a
scream; I sat up in bed to listen and it came again. It didn’t sound like
Brad, but immediately I thought of him, and when I got outside his door he
screamed again, so I knew. But it still didn’t sound much like him. I went in
and shook him; he was in a state of complete nervous terror; I had never seen
anything quite like it. When he was properly awake he mastered himself and
began to apologize, but the sweat still gathered beads on his face. I told
him it didn’t matter, nobody else had been disturbed, and only I because I
was a light sleeper.