Finally, all is calm if only for a short time. Hans has worn himself out with his grizzling and now lies contentedly on my lap in the depths of a baby nap. I am thankful that I had already seated myself comfortably on the sofa to soothe him into sleep. As I hold his warm body at rest, I feel the full weight of my own exhaustion. Hans is not one of those children who sleep easily. He wakes often, crying inconsolably. I know that this is not unusual in infants, but I cannot help but think that the spirit of my lost daughter still haunts the baby brother who was born after she had gone. Does he howl out of pity for Liesel because he does not yet know any words with which to console her spectre?
Now that all trace of earlier distress has left his face, I long to sleep as he does. Still, I fight the urge to close my eyes. These few moments of quiet wakefulness are so precious to me, and I know that Albert will soon be back. I rehearse the pitter patter of his quick tread on the steps to our first-floor apartment and picture him as he bursts upon us through the lobby and starts to speak immediately of the new paper he is writing. His mind transforms the mundane patent office hours into stepping stones over which he leaps to land effortlessly amidst the same fundamental rules of physics over which we pored as students. In science as in desire we believed that we had found a means to escape the confines of convention. How foolish we were to think that we could cross the lines set down for us by our parents and our tutors and get away with it.
I am struggling to keep myself awake. I need to sleep, but I long even more to think; to recollect, to seek to understand. And still, I cannot stand to think of Liesel, so I focus first on my surroundings and root myself in the present. I keep my mind within the confines of the pleasant room in which I sit, a married woman with my first-born boy. I admire the square solidity of the room with its comfortable sofa and central circular wooden table complete with lace tablecloth and plant. The table has been positioned directly underneath an elaborate stucco roundel from which polished metal chains dangle elegantly to support the gas lamp. This evening its light will pick out the lace designs painted round the ceiling. Its glow will catch the wreathed flower pattern of the wallpaper and the etched glass of the windows. It will also illuminate Albert as he sits straight under its brightness on a well-polished balloon-backed chair, moving his pen rapidly over the paper on which calculations have taken their shape. He will pause only to explain to me the process by which he has reached a tentative solution to some universal puzzle he has posed himself. I will cradle our child.
This is my world indeed. This is the place in which my time ticks away. Each day I look out of the street windows whilst I hold Hans across my shoulder so that he can watch the sunlight reflected in the mirror behind me. I crane my neck to catch a glimpse of the garish city clock down the street as it strikes the hour. I cannot help but smile to think that one day Hans will be able to stand and stare at it alongside me and be entertained by its moving mechanical pieces. On a hot day I will take him from there to the stone fountain nearby. I will amuse him by splashing up the water a little and letting it cool us. What simple pleasures we will have, strolling along the covered arcades that run alongside the shops to shelter us, and later preparing a simple supper whilst Albert tells us of his day. In my daydream world, I find that there is ample time to be content with our hard-salvaged little family life, but also, time enough for us to talk of particles, stars, and universes.
I feel myself succumbing to drowsiness and force myself not to give in to sleep. I decide that I must think about the present, or at least about the day that I have had. I test my alertness by remembering its small details, though in truth this day has been very little different to all my other recent ones. As usual I had carried little Hans carefully down the steep stairs to the entrance passageway and placed him in his perambulator so that we could take our customary airing in the afternoon. I had pushed him along the walkway past the various businesses, noting the little fractious noises he was making, but hoping that the steady movement across the flagstones might quieten him. As we reached the high town bridge I had paused for a moment and then, as Hans was by now asleep, I had dared to continue across it. I had looked down on the tightly packed houses by the riverbank; their tiny courtyards crammed with airing washing, planters of bright flowers and an occasional bicycle. When I looked ahead, there were the familiar mounds of the bear pits just after the end of the bridge. I knew that by legend the bears were there to guard the city against invasion, to protect Bern’s inhabitants, but I did not dare yet to wheel Hans any closer to them. I counted it a blessing that I could not remember the details of the nightmare I had suffered when Hans was only a few hours old. Apparently, I had woken up in terror, convinced that my second baby had somehow been attacked by one of those poor creatures that had somehow contrived to escape its confines.
How fortunate I had been to be greeted by Katya who had been walking behind me across the bridge and had caught up with me as I lingered for a moment looking down on the glassy river. I knew so few people in Bern, and she had been kind enough to stop and talk to me. We had spoken first of her brother, a much-admired musician who had come with Katya to visit us last Sunday so that he and Albert might play violin duets together. As Katya had doted on Hans, I had hurried to our small kitchen to make coffee, glad that we had bought a little hazelnut cake yesterday to share with any friends who might call.
As Katya and I had stood on the bridge talking happily of that afternoon, a small dark haired young man had hurried past us, excusing himself as he brushed slightly against us. I had noticed how he smiled very slightly at Katya and raised his hat momentarily and that she had responded with an almost imperceptible blush. I had not needed to ask her more, for she was eager to tell me about the young man she called Paul; of how he had been a child prodigy, also a violinist, and of how he still played with her brother in the city orchestra. Apparently, he had defied all his parents’ musical expectations and plans for him and turned to painting. He had left Bern to travel to Munich and to Italy, but was back now, living with his parents and eking out a living as he struggled to find his way in life.
Katya had had no time to tell me more because Hans had begun to make his irritated, waking sounds again and so we had parted quickly in the hopes of meeting again on Sunday. I had turned the pram around to retrace my steps as she made her way in the opposite direction towards the suburbs beyond the bearpits. Fortunately, Hans had become quiet again, his little face smoothing again into sleep, and I had become lost in my thoughts as I wheeled him home. I had been thinking about the rather dishevelled young man who had rushed past us on his way to who knows where. How had he found the courage to move beyond the familiar joy of music, to embark upon the very different expression of painting?
Now seated on my sofa with Hans, I think of him still. I picture him seeking perhaps to reinvent himself, to prove himself all over again to his astonished, perplexed, disappointed parents? Art. Another world to me. I try to imagine what it might be like to pick up a pen, or even a brush, and to draw a line, or arc, or curve on the paper set before me, not to represent a number, or construct a formula, but simply for the sake of that act.
In any case, I know what it is to have been admired for my early accomplishments, becoming renowned as a child for my mathematical prowess and my precocious interest in physics. My parents had encouraged me and I, perhaps inevitably, had let them down. I had become pregnant before I was married, by a man who could never support me as they felt he should be able to. Of course, they could not have foreseen that little Liesel would sicken in the care of another when they sent her away. I cannot blame them for that, nor for their insistence that I must never acknowledge my daughter’s all too brief existence publicly to preserve my respectable reputation. What I cannot recapture, it seems, is the enthusiasm of my youth that helped me find an easy way through my studies. For how can I hope ever to pass my examinations, when I can no longer discern the rich patterns of the equations that I once lived for; their designs so beautiful, so satisfying?
I find myself returning to that brief image from the afternoon of the energetic young man who had declared himself forthwith an artist. How might it be, I wonder, to make my meanings out of different patterns, patched from colours and out of shapes that could move and blur? How might it be if I could sit with Albert in the evenings and talk not of cosmic rules, but of lines, of shades and even of perspectives – a new vision – a fresh venture – an original creation or merely a way to memorialise that first child who has gone forever from between us?
It is at that moment that Hans contorts in my arms, his face puckering up as he realises that he is hungry, and perhaps a little cold as the light from outside begins to fade. And when I hear my husband’s energetic footsteps. I am glad to leave the ghosts of my dreams behind, the remnants of that other life I might have known abandoned for the opportunities of the life I have, with all its passions and mundanities.
Hans stirs more as Albert enters the room and sees us sitting there in the late afternoon light in perfect companionship and closeness. He pauses only for a moment before striding towards the bureau to collect paper and smiling at me as he says that he must just work on something immediately and calling me his Mileva. He cannot wait to tell me all about it, he says, and to ask me how my day has been. Now, I can think only of the evening ahead with us seated at the table together for a while perhaps, his calculations in front of us, the years unrolling before us.
Yes. I see it clearly. Hans will grow up to be a fine boy and we will visit the bear pits together each week. There I will look danger in the eye as we come face to face with those creatures. I will calculate the power that they hold in their lurching amble, but I will not be afraid, knowing that their strength is there to protect our little world of Bern. We will be safe, dear little Hans, we must all be safe, somehow.
About the author
Jane lives in Woodbridge, Suffolk UK. With the encouragement of her local creative writing class, she has been writing stories since 2021, some of which have appeared on CaféLit.
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An unusual and thought provoking story.
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