Nothing So Strange (11 page)

All in all, he looked settled and by no means unhappy, and after what had
been in my mind as a possibility I was much relieved. He also said, when I
asked, that his work was making progress, though of course it had so far
hardly more than begun.

“And how do you like Framm?”

“He’s remarkable. His sort of mathematics is beyond anything I could have
dreamed of.”

“So he’s teaching you?”

“He’s giving me time to learn. He has to, before I can be of any use to
him. It’s like a new language—in fact, that’s what it really is.”

“And what about him being of use to you?”

“Naturally that goes with it. I can’t ever be grateful enough to your
father for giving me such a chance.”

“You still haven’t told me how you like him, though. Framm, I mean.”

“He can be very charming.”

“But do you
like
him?”

“Well enough. And it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t. He’s the sort of man you
don’t have to like.”

I said I didn’t know what kind of man that was.

He laughed and said: “All women like him, anyhow.”

“That’s still not an answer.”

“All right … let’s change the subject. How’s Hampstead?”

“Fine…. Do you still manage to get your long Sunday walks?”

“I’ve been to the Semmering several times. That’s not far away. Very
beautiful country.”

“And altogether you’re quite happy in Vienna?”

“Oh yes.”

“Well, that’s fine too.” We sat over coffee and I told him about my
failure to pass the examination. He sympathized. “But you’ll try again next
year?”

“If I’m still in London. I don’t have any exact plans. I’m beginning to
think I’d like to earn a living.”

“How?”

“That’s the trouble. Journalism maybe. I’d like to get on a paper but the
fact that my father controls one inhibits me. I’ve a feeling I’d either be
favored or else never be given credit even if I deserved any. Perhaps I could
change my name.”

“The easiest way to do that would be to get married.” It was the sort of
remark he couldn’t possibly have made a year before, but there was still
naivete in it—a small boy’s approach to intimacy.

I said: “Yes, if there were anyone I
wanted
to marry.”

“Isn’t there?”

“Not at present…. What about you? Any nice
Fräuleins
?”

“Plenty, if I had time for them.” But he said it now with a smile and felt
the need to add: “I’m serious—I
don’t
have the time, I work ten
hours a day as a rule.”

“And then go home and dream mathematics?”

“Often.”

He looked at his watch, paid the check, and signaled a taxi for me on the
pavement outside. “Where do you live?” I asked, detaining him.

“Near the East Station. About the same kind of place I had in London, but
the plumbing makes a different kind of noise. A Viennese noise.”

“That ought to be quite musical.”

He laughed. “You could come and hear it if you were staying longer, but
since you’re leaving today—”

“Yes, it’s too bad. I wish I weren’t, but this is just a flying
visit— literally. I must try to manage another trip.”

“And your mother—she’s not with you?”

“No, she’s in Maine. I don’t think she’ll get across this year—she
probably thinks she owes America a summer.”

“Well, remember me to your father.”

“Of course. And you remember me to the charming Professor.”

“I will…. And have a good time in Budapest. I’ve not been there, but
they say it’s well worth seeing.”

“I’ll let you know,” I cried, out of the taxi window. “Good-
by——”

I did let him know, in a chatty letter, which rather to my
surprise he
answered, and for the next six months we corresponded fairly regularly,
though at longer intervals. They weren’t interesting letters, except one. He
usually mentioned the weather, any particular walk he had taken, the fact
that he was still very busy, and his progress with German. No reference ever
to theaters or concerts or operas. He might have been living in a village
instead of one of the world’s gayest capitals. Actually he had reverted to
the sort of life he had had before meeting my mother, except that the
background was different and he himself stood bigger in the foreground. But
once he wrote, quite exceptionally and rather astonishingly:

Scientists in movies and magazine ads are always shown examining test
tubes as if on the brink of some great discovery, but I guess the outside
world doesn’t know how rarely one ever discovers anything, the road to the
frontier is already so long and difficult, and when you get there you feel
rather lonely and undramatic like someone who finds himself off the trail on
a mountain at night, with just a small flashlight and an average amount of
nerve. I can’t push the metaphor any further because the mountaineer only
wants to find the trail again, whereas the scientist wants—well, what
does
he want? (You remember that argument with Julian Spee?) Anyhow,
if he gets it, even the smallest fragment of it, then there comes a moment of
sheer exhilaration comparable, I suppose, to what an artist feels when he
knows he’s done something good. Next comes the doubting period, the check and
countercheck, and- -as often as not—the disappointment. It wasn’t new
after all. Or else it wasn’t true. And the reason I’m writing all this is
that today, I think for the first time, I’ve had that exhilaration without,
so far, the disappointment. Of course that may come tomorrow. It’s just a few
lines of equations—a trifle, most people would think, to get so excited
about. But if it stands up after all the tests it will get, especially from
Framm, then I’m an inch or so into the unknown. That’s all. I didn’t feel
like celebrating at first, but I went into the streets for a breath of fresh
air, and the sight of all the people concerned with other
things—chiefly politics, these days—made me feel aloof and rather
pitying, until I realized how they’d pity me if they knew the hours I work
and what sort of a life I have. So I turned into that little restaurant we
had lunch at and drank a couple of beers. There happened to be a man there
who likes chess, and we played till two A.M., which was about an hour ago,
and that’s the full extent of my celebration. Not very thrilling,
perhaps?

… Perhaps not, but I still think those beers had something to do with
his sending me such a letter. He never wrote like that again, and
incidentally, it was the only time he ever mentioned Framm.

Later that year, 1937, our correspondence seemed to peter
out, probably my
fault as much as his. I didn’t try for my examination a second time, because
I hankered more and more after a journalist’s life; what I really wanted was
to travel and write about what I saw, especially the political and economic
side of things; but here again I was up against the curious obstacle of my
name. As this is not my family’s story, or even primarily my own, I can pass
over the matter briefly. My father has acquired that basic unpopularity in
public life which comes of personifying the wrong kind of myth for his age. A
century ago he might have been held as a model for American boyhood; a
century hence historians may give him his due, which won’t be overwhelming,
but may well be adjusted to the realization that he was no worse than others
whose reputations now stand higher. I think he knows all this, and it makes
him grateful for chance encounters on trains and park benches where people
listen to what he says because they don’t know who he is. He once called
himself the Forgotten Man whom everybody remembers, and another time he said
he hadn’t only backed the wrong horse, he
was
the wrong horse. Anyhow,
it’s ironical that I got my first job from people who were anxious to please
him, and was fired because the stuff I wrote didn’t show any similar anxiety
on my own part. Then I tried the people who weren’t anxious to please him,
but mostly they weren’t anxious to please me either, because I was his
daughter. However, I had money, so I traveled on my own, writing what I
liked, sometimes getting it into print, mostly not. I suppose I was too young
even to expect to free-lance successfully, but I didn’t feel I was; one never
does, at the time, though since then I have thought there was a certain
impertinence in a girl barely twenty bombarding editors with articles about
the state of the world. I did, however, discover by experience that my
reporting was preferred to my opinions, so I wisely concentrated on the
former, and tried to be where reportable events were happening. This was the
main reason I arrived in Vienna in the early part of 1938. The political
kettle there was coming to the boil, and all the signs were that Hitler would
make
Anschluss
with Austria the first big test of his rising
power.

I wrote to Brad ahead of my arrival, announcing it and giving details.
Because the weather was unsuitable for flying I traveled from Paris by train
through the Arlberg. I thought it just barely possible he might be on the
platform at the West Station to meet me, and when I couldn’t see him I had a
cup of coffee at the station restaurant in case he came late and would look
for me. While I was there, with my small suitcase and a portable typewriter
on the floor near by, I noticed that a young woman was eying them, as I
thought, suspiciously. Then she came over and asked me, in quite good
English, if I were Miss Waring.

That name has so often heralded me badly into fresh company and new
places, I’ve almost developed a suppression complex about it.

I answered rather rudely: “What do you want to know for?”

She said: “I’m Mrs. Bradley. He sent me here to meet you.”

I pulled the luggage aside and made her sit down and ordered more coffee,
all to gain time while I came to terms with any emotion in me that would
follow the shock. It didn’t prove to be too much, or at any rate whatever it
was surrendered to discipline. But the shock lingered; I kept looking at her,
trying to make my glance less scrutinizing; in the end I decided to be frank.
I said: “You must excuse me for staring—I’ve known Brad off and on for
several years—I always hoped he’d marry someone nice, and already I’m
thinking he has.”

She smiled a quiet, composed smile, as if she liked the compliment, but
was not going to be overwhelmed by it. No doubt she was just as curious about
me, as any wife is about her husband’s pre-marital girl-friends, but I was
slightly piqued that she was able to conceal it so well; I envied her the
achievement, knowing how incapable I was of matching it. She was attractive,
and the more so after you decided she was; you could then evaluate her good
features, dark timid-looking eyes, clear complexion, and exceptionally small
and beautiful hands.

I reached for one of them and pressed it. She kept on smiling. Then,
because I felt my emotion again needed disciplining, I flagged the waiter.
“Let’s go … and while we’re in the cab, tell me about him. How
is
he? I suppose he was too busy to come himself, so he sent you…. I’m
glad—it was a lovely surprise…. I’m so happy about it … but
tell
me about him….”

“He’s ill,” she said, as we left the table. “That’s why he sent me.”

“
Ill
?”

“Oh, nothing serious—just a high temperature. I thought he ought not
to go out.”

“Of course. Quite right. And you mustn’t let me bother him, if you think I
oughtn’t…. Perhaps it would be better if I saw him in the morning?”

“No. He sent me. He expects you.”

There was something both dutiful and inexorable in that.

During the taxi journey we discussed Vienna and general affairs, and
probably I began talking as freely as I might have done in London or New
York, for she interrupted: “It is best not to talk politics outside.”

“
Outside
?” There was no one who could have heard except possibly
the taxi driver.

“It is better to be careful,” she answered. “Especially when you mention
names.”

We drove along the boulevards and even though I had seen so little of the
city on my first visit I had an impression of deterioration. People looked
tired, peevish, strained; there were many signs of poverty and unemployment.
Soon I became aware that the taxi driver
was
listening, so I talked
trivialities for the rest of the journey. When he pulled up at the address he
carried my luggage across the pavement with almost excessive cordiality and
gave a sketchy version of the Nazi salute.

“Evidently he didn’t understand English,” I said when he had driven
off.

She answered judicially: “One cannot be sure. He may have.”

“Then why would he be so polite after what I said about Hitler?”

“He would know you are foreign and that might make him wish to be polite
so that you could go back to your country and say the Nazis are all right in
Austria because the taximen are so polite. Like the trains in Italy that run
on time. So many foreigners are impressed by things like that. But of course
I know you are too sensible. You will soon get underneath the surface of
things, and then you will realize how careful one has to be.”

I think I did realize that, fairly soon, but it led me into a
misunderstanding about Pauli that wasn’t cleared up until she, being careful
herself, trusted me sufficiently.

No doubt he was bound to look a little different. He was
sitting in an
armchair under a reading lamp, and that gave him a look of thinness and
pallor that wasn’t real. He seemed quite genuinely pleased to see
me—much more than when we had met a year earlier at that restaurant.
But the brightness of his eyes was probably due to temperature, I told myself
cautiously. I rallied him about being ill—I said I had always thought
he enjoyed the sort of health that is called rude. He said yes, that was true
in the main, and he had been perfectly well till a couple of days ago, when
he had caught a chill. His temperature had been at one time as high as a
hundred and three, but was now down to ninety-nine point five, which showed
that he was almost better.