The Lost Time Accidents (11 page)

VII

ON SEPTEMBER 13, 1905
—three days after Waldemar’s midnight proposition—Sonja celebrated Kaspar’s return by taking him to a musical evening at the Alleegasse salon of Karl Wittgenstein, a schoolmate of her father’s and one of the wealthiest men in the empire. Professor Silbermann had only the vaguest of notions that his assistant and his daughter were acquainted, and was amused by the coincidence of their arriving simultaneously; he never relinquished the belief, in later years, that their romance had begun at the Wittgensteins’, and no one took the trouble to correct him.

When the two of them entered, the professor was sitting on a cowhide divan, smoking a pungent cheroot; he looked back and forth between them in bewilderment, then ushered Gretl Stonborough—née Wittgenstein—over to make introductions. “I think I ought to know your
daughter
, Herr Professor,” she laughed, extending a gloved hand to Kaspar, then kissing Sonja warmly on both cheeks.

All eight of the Wittgenstein children were brilliant—they were famous for it even then, when most of them were barely out of school—but Gretl was judged the most brilliant of all. She was long-limbed and thin, almost gaunt, with the dark-lidded eyes set far back in the skull that the Wittgensteins all had in common. She had a seriousness about her that Kaspar had never encountered in a woman of twenty-four, but she grinned whenever she caught Sonja’s eye, as though they shared some confidential joke between them.

“So
this
is the Herr Professor’s assistant,” Gretl said solemnly. “I hear you’ve become indispensable.”

“Professor Silbermann could dispense with me at any time,” Kaspar said, feeling his face go hot. That hadn’t been what he’d meant to say at all.

Gretl patted him on the arm and turned to Sonja. “I have a surprise for you, darling. The maestro is here.”

Now it was Sonja’s turn to redden. “Where is he?”

“In the Chinese room with Hermine, making utter mincemeat of her latest portraits.”

Kaspar looked from one girl to the other. Gretl was scrutinizing him thoroughly, which made it difficult to think; Sonja was fidgeting with the hem of her gown. “I didn’t expect to see him here, Gretl. I should have, I suppose, but I didn’t.” She hesitated. “I’m not wearing that smock of his, you see.”

That smock of
his
? Kaspar thought.

“Hermine isn’t wearing hers, either,” Gretl said, giving Kaspar a wink. “Come along now, both of you. If we ask nicely, His Eminence may grant us an audience.”

Kaspar followed the girls sheepishly through those splendid apartments, through music rooms and reading rooms and chintz-swaddled rococo parlors, until they arrived at an octagonal chamber with paint-spattered bedsheets thrown over chinoiserie tile. A woman with the same arched nose as Gretl was standing with her hand on the shoulder of a black-bearded bear of a man, bobbing her small dark head in rhythm with his voice. The man spoke softly, with his hands primly folded; the shapeless muslin tunic he wore would have dumbfounded Kaspar if he hadn’t seen it many times already. Catching sight of Sonja, he clapped and whistled like an organ grinder.

“Dovecote!”
the man bellowed, seizing Sonja by the arms. “Such a surprise! Such a shock! I barely recognize you in that uniform.”

“It’s not a uniform, maestro,” said Sonja, more red-faced than ever. “It’s only a dress.”

“It’s an
exquisite
dress.” He lifted Sonja’s right hand to his lips. “And it’s also a uniform, as you know very well.” He turned to Gretl. “Thank you for delivering my dovecote to me, fräulein.”

“I’ve also delivered the dovecote’s companion, maestro, as you may have noticed.”

“So you did. Pleased to meet you, Herr—?”

“Kaspar Toula, Herr Klimt.” Kaspar didn’t feel jealous, as such—only painfully conscious of his disadvantage. “I’m to blame for Fräulein Silbermann’s uniform, I’m afraid.”

“Ah!” The maestro squinted searchingly into Kaspar’s face, as though he’d misplaced his pince-nez. “Fräulein Silbermann has told you, no doubt, about this hobbyhorse of mine.” He hooked a thumb inside the collar of his tunic. “I simply believe that contemporary fashion imprisons a woman, and disfigures her shape—which is splendid enough, in my opinion, without our interference.”

“I certainly can’t argue with—”

“Clothing,” the maestro continued, “should be worn only when necessary, and gotten out of as quickly as possible. This
capuchinette
I have on, for example—”

“Gustav,”
warned Gretl.

The maestro laughed and let his collar loose. “Not to worry, my dear. I haven’t forgotten my place. But you’re lucky we’re not in my atelier!” He turned back to Kaspar. “I must tell you, Herr Törless—”

“Toula,” said Kaspar.

“—that Fräulein Silbermann is the most gifted of my models.”

“The most gifted of your
former
models, maestro,” Sonja murmured.

But the maestro was still taking Kaspar’s measure. “What’s your trade, sir, if I may presume to ask?”

“Herr Toula is a physicist,” Gretl put in graciously.

“Is that so,” said the maestro, scratching his beard. “I must confess, I took you for some sort of—”

“A physicist!” Hermine exclaimed. “In that case, Herr Toula, you
must
join the discussion that Papa is having with Professor Borofsky, from Göttingen. The professor is giving a lecture tomorrow, if I’m not mistaken, on the mathematics of the velocity of light.”

“I’ve studied Professor Borofsky’s work,” Kaspar stammered. “Where did you say—”

“In the smoking room,” Gretl cut in, shooing them off. “Sonja can take you. It’s a private meeting, but since you’re a student of physics…”

“You behaved very well, Kasparchen,” Sonja whispered to him as they retraced their steps. “Thank you for that.”

“No need to thank me,” said Kaspar, though he was secretly pleased with his show of restraint. “What’s a dovecote, exactly?”

“A birdhouse for pigeons,” she said, drawing him closer. “Please don’t ask me why he calls me that.”

Kaspar considered this a moment, then kissed her lightly just behind the ear. Somehow the nickname seemed appropriate.

*   *   *

They found Borofsky on a chaise longue in the smoking room, with Karl Wittgenstein on one side and Sonja’s father on the other, each of them clutching an unlit cigar. “The very boy we want!” Professor Silbermann bellowed, with a heartiness that took Kaspar aback. “
Fire
, Herr Toula, if you’d be so kind! A touch of the primordial spark!”

Kaspar obliged them with trembling fingers, thanking chance—and fate, and even Providence, for the sake of comprehensiveness—that he’d brought his matches along. His encounter with the maestro hadn’t shaken him unduly, but Karl Wittgenstein intimidated even his own children, and Hermann Borofsky was known far and wide as a wunderkind. He’d won the Paris Prize for mathematics at the age of eighteen, and now, in his thirties, was rumored to be testing the spatial implications of the Michelson-Morley experiment in a specially light- and soundproofed chamber beneath the Physikhalle in Göttingen. After lighting the cigars, Kaspar hovered a half step behind Silbermann’s armchair, making clear, as politely as possible, that he had no intention of leaving.

They were discussing a young man from the provinces—a difficult and eccentric physics prodigy—who’d developed a preposterous new theory. Kaspar’s legs began to buckle as he listened. A curious certainty took hold of him: a sensation akin to clairvoyance. He had no need to hear the young man’s name.

“Explain to me, Hermann, if you would,” Wittgenstein growled, “how the universe can take on shapes we can’t perceive.”

“I’m speaking purely mathematically, you understand,” Borofsky replied in his pebbly Russian accent. “But this young man—this boy, really—seems to have arrived at his ideas without using mathematics at all.”

“All the more reason to be skeptical,” Silbermann interrupted. “Not only does the theory—if you
must
call it that—countermand Newton, it flies in the face of basic common sense.”

Borofsky puffed at his cigar. “Unfortunately, Professor, the mathematics of his theory work out beautifully.”

Silbermann replied with a figure of speech that Kaspar was amazed to hear him use. “If neither time nor space is absolute, Herr Borofsky, you’re knocking physics back to Ptolemy, if not to Aristotle himself. We might as well be Hindus, living on an earth supported by six white elephants. We might as well be floating, all of us, inside a soap bubble!”

“That’s entirely possible.”

“I’m waiting, Hermann, for your explanation,” Wittgenstein said tersely.

“My apologies, Herr Wittgenstein. I’ll try to frame the idea as free of mathematics as possible, if you’ll indulge me.”

“By all means.”

“Let’s consider time in geometric terms. If
x
equals the longitude,
y
equals the latitude, and
z
equals the
altitude
of a given event’s location in space, then an additional coordinate—let’s call it
t
—could be said to describe its position in time. Each of these coordinates, needless to say, could easily be moved about, simply by addition or subtraction.” He stopped for an instant, as if at a sudden memory, then turned without warning to Kaspar. “The fourth dimension, in other words, is as mutable as any of the others.”

“
Four
dimensions now, is it?” Silbermann cut in.

Wittgenstein cleared his throat. “You must realize, my dear Hermann, that what you’re saying sounds absurd.”

“Think of this evening’s party,” Borofsky went on, unfazed. “Your house stands at the intersection of Alleegasse and Schwindgasse; the intersection of those two streets provides us with our
x
and
y
coordinates. Furthermore, since we are gathered on the second floor above the ground, ‘second floor’ shall serve us as coordinate
z.
We have now fixed this event in space, in three dimensions.”

“Well said!” Silbermann muttered. “Here we sit, dead on target, with no earthly need for a fourth.”

“That’s where my distinguished colleague is mistaken, I’m afraid. The invitation for tonight’s festivities read ‘Palais Wittgenstein, Alleegasse and Schwindgasse, second-floor apartments,
at seven o’clock in the evening
.’” He shot Kaspar a wink. “Seven o’clock, gentlemen, was this party’s coordinate in the fourth dimension. And it was every bit as necessary—as I’m sure our host will agree—as the preceding three.”

Karl Wittgenstein was not a man given to laughter, but he was laughing now. “I agree wholeheartedly, Professor Borofsky. It was highly agreeable to have our guests arrive tonight, and not tomorrow morning.”

Silbermann’s mien, meanwhile, had grown steadily darker. “The simple fact, gentlemen, that time
can
be viewed in such terms doesn’t mean that it
must.
The idea that the speed of light should be the same for every observer, no matter how fast that observer himself may be traveling, is simply—”

“It’s simply the only explanation for the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment,” Borofsky broke in impatiently. “Time and space will have to bend a little, I’m afraid.” He turned to their host. “This young man is a genius, Herr Wittgenstein—mark my words. He’ll be hailed by the world as the greatest scientific mind of the century.”

No one spoke for a moment.

“And what about the young man himself?” Wittgenstein said finally. “Does he agree with your lofty opinion?”

“I couldn’t say, Herr Wittgenstein. Thus far he’s worked in obscurity. He hasn’t even taken his degree.”

“Excuse me, please,” Kaspar heard himself stammer. “Pardon the interruption, but I believe I know the man you’re speaking of.”

He stepped forward stiffly, automatically, like a mechanical toy, and drew in a whistling breath. It was the greatest moment of his duration to date, and the most terrifying. An eccentric young prodigy from the provinces, heretofore unknown, who’d developed a preposterous new theory. The ceiling seemed to bow toward him, its gilded fretwork low enough to touch; the rushing in his ears might have been the music of chronology itself. Wittgenstein and Borofsky sat as if trapped in amber, their mouths slightly open, their eyes round as coins. The floor was now Kaspar’s and he took it boldly. What he had to say was perfectly straightforward.

“I know the man of whom you’re speaking,” he repeated. “I’m privileged to inform you, gentlemen, that he is my brother.”

His words fell on the men like a blow. The look on their faces was hard to interpret, but it might very well have been awe. Their cigars hung slackly from their gaping mouths.

At last Silbermann spoke. “A small misunderstanding, I’m afraid.”

“What in blazes?” Wittgenstein got out at last. “Who is this person, Ludwig? Is he out of his wits?”

“My name is Kaspar Toula, sir. Waldemar Toula, as I’ve already mentioned—”

“Boy,” Borofsky said calmly, “the man we are discussing is a former student of mine at the Technical University in Zürich. Not your brother, unless I’m very much mistaken.”

“But the theory you describe,” Kaspar said, fighting for breath. “It must surely derive from the Accidents—I mean to say, the Lost—”

“It does nothing of the sort,” said Silbermann. “It’s a theory, not yet published, which Professor Borofsky refers to as ‘special relativity.’”

“I see,” answered Kaspar, though his voice made no sound. “I see that now. Yes, of course. Thank you kindly.” He bowed to all three men, who continued to goggle in astonishment, then promptly made his excuses to the sisters Wittgenstein, and to Sonja, and to everyone else he met on his way to the landing, then left as quickly as his shaking legs would take him. Before his feet had touched the pavement he was running.

*   *   *

Kaspar ran across Karlsplatz—as good as empty at that hour—then down past the Graben, with its grandly priapic monument to the plague, and out Rotenthurmstrasse to the bile-colored canal without pausing for breath. Time moved lethargically, thickening into a soup, the way it often did when he was frightened. At Ferdinandstrasse he spun clownishly on his heels, skidding slightly, and made for Valeriestrasse with all possible speed. He thought passingly of Sonja, and of the embarrassment he’d caused her.
Sonja will be just fine
, he said to himself, and of course it was true.