Violet

At breakfast, there’s no sign of Lionel Richardson. The coffee is brought in, the sweet rolls and fruit, Walter’s very English eggs and kidneys, and at every swing of the door behind her, Violet clenches the muscles of her abdomen and stops her head from turning.

“Lionel?” Jane covers a yawn with her long-fingered hand. “I saw him go off in his motor last night, just before I went to bed.”

“What a shame,” says Lise Meitner. “I had wanted to share some good results with him.”

Violet speaks in German. “What sort of results?”

“He and I had the most interesting discussion about alpha radiation before you left Berlin.” Lise leans forward over her plate. The coffee steams untouched by her elbow. “The problem of the heterogeneous patterns. Herr Hahn and I have managed to isolate a very pure sample of thorium that . . .”

Jane clinks her fork against her plate. “No secrets!”

“There’s no secret, Mama,” says Henry. “They’re only speaking about work.”

Violet says, “I’m sorry, Jane. It’s just easier in German, that’s all.”

“Hmm.” Jane’s gaze meets hers. Her eyes are bright and well-rested, her skin petal-of-rose, making Violet conscious of her own hollow strain, the listless knot with which she bound her hair this morning, before Walter had stirred. How she covered her alien limbs in an old dress and went outside, hoping to meet with fresh air and perhaps Lionel, but the morning air was already sticky and Lionel had not appeared.

Jane takes in the history of Violet’s morning with her purple-bright eyes. She lifts her eyebrows and looks around the rest of the table. At the other end, Walter mutely sips his tea, shielded by a week-old English newspaper. Herr Einstein sits between the Hahns, drinking milky coffee and eating black bread, mournful and preoccupied, his dark pomaded hair absorbing the morning light.

Jane steeples her fingers and says, “I have a terrific idea. Let’s go on a picnic.”

•   •   •

“MOTHER LOVES PICNICS,” says Henry Mortimer, in an apologetic tone, and as Violet finishes her fourth deviled egg, washed down with ice-cold champagne, she’s hardly in a position to disagree. She hasn’t begun to plumb the depth of cured meats and pickled vegetables, delicate sandwiches and exotic fruits, fragrant cheeses and chiffon desserts laid out upon the picnic cloth before her.

Picnic cloth. In fact, there are three picnic cloths, spread beneath the lindens on the hillside to accommodate them all without crowding. Violet reclines her long legs along the side of one; Henry sits to her right and Lise Meitner to her left. They’ve been discussing thorium, and possible explanations for why the measurements of alpha radiation in Lise and Otto’s latest experiments continue stubbornly to present themselves in a heterogeneous pattern, when everyone knows—everyone has accepted, anyway; certainty isn’t a commodity in which the chemists of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut regularly trade—that each radioactive isotope emits particles with its own precise signature. Henry’s remark comes a propos of nothing, during a pause in the discussion; Violet’s brain, which she has concentrated fiercely on the subject of thorium radiation, has begun to wander, and Lise has slipped into a familiar meditative trance.

“It was a good idea, this picnic,” Violet says. Both she and Henry speak in German, in courtesy to Lise, whose English is good but not quite fluent. “I’m glad we have someone here capable of organizing these things so well. I’m hopeless.”

“The perfect day for it.” Lise shakes off her reverie and stretches her arms high above her head. The sun, finding the holes between the leaves, strikes her dark hair in tiny dapples. “I find it’s always useful to think outside the laboratory from time to time. There’s nothing like fresh air when one has an intractable problem.”

Violet glances at Lise. She’s gazing into the distance, her feet with their sensible half boots crossed at the ankles, her skirt draped correctly over her legs. A ladylike woman, Lise Meitner, raised in an orderly intellectual household in Vienna. Has she ever been in love? Working all day in her laboratory with Herr Hahn: did she ever wish for something more than professional friendship between them? If she did, it’s too late now. Otto and his wife sit side by side on the second picnic cloth, his head bent solicitously next to her smiling face, perhaps sharing a joke, perhaps asking her what picnic delicacy he can select for her. Herr Einstein reclines on his back next to them with his hands knit across his stomach, staring through the leaves at the hazy sky.

“If you don’t mind,” Lise says, “I think I’ll go for a walk. The countryside is so beautiful here.”

“Not at all.”

Lise stands and shakes the crumbs from her skirts. She is strong and fit and sturdy, silhouetted by the white July sun. She pins her hat atop her neat waves of hair and says gravely, “Herr Mortimer, would you care to accompany me? Perhaps you help tease me out of this dilemma of mine.”

Henry’s eyes widen into moons, as if he’s found a ten-mark note in some forgotten pocket. He scrambles to his feet. “I’d be delighted.”

Violet leans back on her elbows and watches Lise and Henry stride out of the shade and into the heavy sunshine. At her back, she feels the presence of the third picnic cloth, occupied by Walter and Jane in a tête-à-tête even more tangibly intimate than that of the Hahns.

She has worked perseveringly to banish the thought of Walter from her head. She hasn’t looked in his direction all morning, not during the walk through the grass to Jane’s chosen picnic spot, not during the unloading of the baskets and the spreading of the cloths, not during the picnic itself. One or twice the sight of his uncovered gray head, his light summer suit, crossed her vision, and her belly went sick, her clear head felt dizzy. She hears him now, his voice lifting into laughter, and her throat clots with rage.

A hand falls on her shoulder. Violet leaps to her feet, spilling champagne and deviled egg, but it’s only the Comtesse de Saint-Honoré. Her beautiful face is lit by the sun, and her expression is serious. “Would you walk with me, Violet? We haven’t had a nice chat in ever so long.”

Not since Berlin.

“Of course.” Violet finds her hat.

Even in the shelter of the trees, the air is hot; out in the full throb of sunshine, Violet’s skin scorches under the thin and wilted linen of her dress. Her hair sticks unpleasantly to her neck and temples. Beside her, Jane’s cool composure seems to exist in a separate season altogether.

Jane’s arm loops through hers. She carries a parasol, as if they’re walking along some graveled path in the Tiergarten. “What heat! It reminds me of the summers back home.”

“Really? You look as if it doesn’t bother you at all.”

“Well, I was born to it, I guess. Among other things. Tell me, Violet, how are you and Lionel getting along these days?”

Violet’s throat closes. She makes a dismissive noise and tries to shrug.

“Oh, I don’t mean to pry! You see, I have a little problem of my own at the moment, and its name is your husband.”

“You seem to be getting along very well.”

“Too well. I’ve held him off as best I can, but . . .” She shrugs. “Well, he isn’t the kind of man who’s used to hearing the word no, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.”

“I don’t understand. I thought you and he . . . I thought he . . .”

Jane turned a curious expression toward her. “What, that we were lovers? I wouldn’t do that to you, Violet. He’s still your husband, and I like you. I told you that, didn’t I? I’ve done all I could to keep him going without it, for Henry’s sake, but last night . . . Well, we had a bit of a struggle. Had to take some stern measures, if you follow me, and while I’ve managed to smooth his poor little feathers this morning . . .”

Violet speaks slowly. “Do you mean to say that all this time—”

“Why, Violet! I do believe I’m insulted. Did you think I’d go to bed with him under your roof? I do have my code, you know, rickety as it is.”

Violet’s mind has ceased grasping. Ahead of them, the grass stands motionless, golden-brown tips pointed to the pale sky. The air is full of it, the stifling smell of hot summer grass. His poor little feathers, Jane said, so dismissive, so careless. “Well, you don’t need to bother. I mean, you’re quite free to . . . to indulge him. I don’t mind.”

“Yes, that’s what I was getting at, just now. Whether it would make things easier for everyone. But you see . . .” Jane gives her parasol a spin. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Yes.”

“You see, I brought Henry to Berlin to study with Dr. Walter Grant, but I don’t believe he’s the one. I think you are.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You’re doing all the work, the experiments, in that desperate little basement of yours in Berlin, in the laboratory you’ve set up here. Writing the articles. Don’t think I don’t notice. You’re the one on the cutting edge, you and the others. You’re the ones who give a damn about bringing in Henry. Walter, from what I can see, he’s gotten old. He’s given everything up, except to look in and criticize from time to time. He doesn’t give a damn for anyone anymore, except himself. And frankly”—another swirl of the parasol, another squeeze of the arm—“I don’t particularly like him. Not that I let that stand in my way, everything else being equal, but if there’s no use in it, why give myself the bother?”

A pair of sparrows wings by, swooping unexpectedly close. Violet hears the flutter of feathers, the slight impact as a wingtip brushes the Comtesse de Saint-Honoré’s white lace parasol.

“Or so I asked myself, last night,” Jane adds softly.

“Jane,” says Violet. “I have a favor to ask you.”

•   •   •

NOT UNTIL after the lunch has been packed away does Violet find an opportunity to approach Herr Einstein. The Hahns have taken a walk with Jane and Walter; Lise and Henry have returned and fallen into an animated discussion, in which the squares of the picnic cloth serve as spaces on the periodic table; and Einstein sits alone under an apple tree, examining a blade of grass.

“Like Newton,” Violet says, nodding at the tiny green apples above.

Einstein looks at her and smiles. “I am honored. Please sit, Frau Grant.” He motions to the grass next to him.

“I’m not disturbing you, I hope.”

“I only wish you were. I seem unable to concentrate today.”

Violet kneels into the grass. “I’m sorry to hear that. Did you sleep well?”

“Not badly.” He grasps the blade between the thumb and forefinger of each hand and splits it delicately apart. “To be perfectly honest, Frau Grant, I am concerned about you.”

“Me.”

“You are unhappy.”

Violet does not reply.

“I’m sorry. Am I too familiar?” he asks.

“No. I’m grateful for your concern.”

“And is it misplaced?”

The white sun burns through the leaves of the apple tree from its zenith overhead. In a tiny channel between Violet’s stays and her skin, just to the right of her spine, a drop of perspiration trickles downward to disappear into the waistband of her drawers. The air is laden with ripe grass and fruit, toasting quietly in the still summer heat.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” she says.

Einstein continues to shred his blade of grass into fibers of minute width. “I have been thinking about the question you posed me, several weeks ago, just before one of Herr Planck’s little gatherings. Do you remember it?”

“I do.”

“You have an insightful imagination, Frau Grant. I took the liberty of looking into your latest article for the Journal. What a tedious task you have set yourself, and yet you cut no corners. Your observations were extensive, and your conclusions thorough.”

“I think it’s fair to say, Herr Einstein, that the task is not one I’ve set for myself. I have another line of inquiry I’ve been pursuing . . .” Violet catches her breath. In the distance, she can see Walter and Jane and the Hahns walking against a golden-green hillside. The Hahns have stepped ahead, and Jane’s arm is linked with Walter’s beneath the shelter of her parasol. Violet can’t distinguish any details, but she recognizes Walter’s elastic stride, his confident movement, his body like a whip.

“Yes, Frau Grant?” His gentle eyes are upon her face. “What sort of inquiry?”

She looks at him. “I want to break apart the atomic nucleus and see what’s inside.”

“Ah. Like your countryman Rutherford.”

“Not my countryman. I’m American, you remember.”

“But your husband is English.” Though he’s speaking in German, he says the word English in its native pronunciation, with great precision.

“I am not my husband.”

Hmm. Yes.” He opens his palm and lets the fibers of grass drift to the hot carpet beneath their legs. A bottle of sweating lemonade sits next to his knee; he lifts and drinks. “Frau Grant, I would not have accepted your invitation to stay here this week, without the hope to find a private moment with you.”

“Yes?”

Herr Einstein is watching the progress of the walkers against the hill. A rare breath of wind stirs the wild hair at the back of his head. “I want to make clear, Frau Grant, absolutely clear, that I stand ready to write a letter of recommendation on your behalf, should you find yourself in need of one.”

Violet blinks her eyes and looks down at her ringless hands, spread wide across the limp fabric of her linen dress. Her underarms are prickling, her heart beats relief into her chest.

“Frau Grant?”

She looks up and smiles into his somber face. “Herr Einstein, forgive me, but that is exactly why I asked you to stay.”

•   •   •

WAIT FOR ME, Lionel said, trust me, but Violet knows she can’t sleep another night in the villa. The afternoon deepens, and still no automobile growls up the long drive from the road. She must act for herself.

She enters the warm acid-scented quiet of the laboratory and packs her notes; the apparatuses and materials she must leave behind. As she leaves, she stands at the door and casts her gaze about: the clean surfaces, the singular motes of circling dust. In the center of the room sits the black box with its scintillation screen, its aperture, its chamber lined with lead.

•   •   •

VIOLET BATHES and dresses for dinner. No sign yet of Lionel; he has disappeared into the thick Prussian summer. Through the plaster walls comes the clatter of pots and china, the distinct high laugh of the downstairs maid.

Walter arrives as she’s sitting in the slipper chair, buckling her shoes. He’s still dressed in his summer linen suit, wrinkled from heat. “How are you feeling?” he asks, unbuttoning his jacket.

She straightens and says coldly: “Well enough.”

“Excellent.” He smiles, a slow and straight-edged smile in the middle of his neat beard. “I say, I was rather surprised when I happened to see the linens this morning.”

“Happened to see the linens.”

“You lied to me.”

“I had to tell you something, didn’t I? You weren’t going to stop otherwise.”

“You shouldn’t have provoked me.”

“I don’t recall provoking you.”

“Hmm.” He walks across the room, removing his cuff links as he goes, and drops them into the silver tray on his chest of drawers. “You do have an astonishingly handsome figure, child. I believe your bosom is a degree or two fuller than when I first met you in Oxford. More womanly. Don’t you think?”

“I was only nineteen then. I suppose it’s possible.”

He removes his jacket and waistcoat and hangs them in the wardrobe. “No, I’m quite certain. I can picture you clearly, lying on my sofa like a newly opened peach. Those months afterward. Do you remember them?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I took excellent care of you, do you agree?”

“You were attentive, if that’s what you mean.” Violet folds her hands behind her back, so Walter can’t see how her hands are shaking.

“Of course I was. My God, what a fresh young child you were. Entrancing. To take a girl for the first time, it’s the greatest joy a man knows. And you were as innocent as a newborn. I could think of nothing else.” Trousers, shirt, drawers. Violet stands by the wall with her hands pinned to her back, watching her husband undress, willing herself not to look at her own wardrobe, in which her battered leather valise sits, packed and ready.

“Yes, I was very young, wasn’t I?” she says clearly.

He is naked and monstrously erect. He walks back to the chest of drawers and finds his pipe and his tin of tobacco. “Do you have anything to tell me, Violet?”

Violet curves her fingernails into her palms. But her face is cool and without shame as she replies: “I kissed him.”

Walter, unhurried, strikes a match and lights his pipe. He turns and leans one elbow atop the bureau, sucking carefully to start the flow of smoke into his lungs, one loving hand cupping the bowl. His gray hair, ordinarily in perfect order, has come disheveled, and the electric light casts his lean body into a relief so stark as to be emaciated. He blows out a long cloud of smoke and smiles. “Is that all?”

“It was a lovely kiss. A tremendous kiss.”

“I hope you’re not hiding something from me, Violet.”

Violet rises from the chair, walks to the dressing table, and picks up the little pot of lip rouge she owns but rarely uses. “If there’s one thing I cannot abide about you, Walter, it’s your hypocrisy.”

My hypocrisy. And what do you think of a wife, Violet, who fucks another man and then refuses concourse to her own husband? Her husband who’s done everything for her.”

“I’d say she was in love, for the first time in her life.”

Walter’s image appears suddenly in the mirror, like an apparition, eyes narrowed and blazing. His hands close about her arms. The pipe nearly burns her skin. “You are an ungrateful idiot,” he says, between his teeth.

“Go away, Walter.”

“Do you think Richardson will stand by you? Do you think he loves you?”

“I know he loves me.”

“Do you know how many women he had in Oxford?”

Violet’s teeth cut into her lower lip. “Not as many as you, I’m sure.”

“He’s already left, you know. Packed his bags and left. Since he had what he wanted.”

Violet’s cup of rage runs over. In a swift jolt, she breaks one arm free of Walter’s enclosing hand and jams her elbow into his ribs.

He grunts and falls back. The pipe drops to the floor. Violet flies to the bathroom, where Walter’s things have been laid out already by the maid: soap, brush, towel, scissors, the razor he uses to create the crisp borders of his beard. She grasps the straightedge, flicks out the blade, and whirls around just as Walter invades the doorway.

He halts respectfully at the sight of the razor. “Violet, really. Don’t be melodramatic.”

“I will if I have to.”

“I’m your husband, Violet. I have your interests at heart. Richardson is a scoundrel.”

He stands before her, wiry and watchful, smiling and aroused, muscles flexing gently. There is a curious light in his eyes, a primal excitement.

What a fool she was. What a fool, to think that Lionel was the predator of which she must beware. She has never felt more hunted than this moment.

Walter takes a step toward her. “Put down the razor, Violet. Don’t be ridiculous. Would I ever hurt you?”

“You tried, last night.”

“Because you refused me. After all I’ve done for you, Violet.”

“Am I not allowed a choice? I thought we had a partnership. A marriage of equal minds.”

Walter’s fingers twitch. “You can’t lie with Richardson in the grass like a whore, and deny your own husband in his bed. That is a fact, Violet, the bedrock of our agreement. Did I ever neglect you, whatever my other adventures?”

“I see. Then it’s all right if I take lovers, as long as I let you have me, too? Perhaps we should all get in bed together. Wouldn’t that be daring and modern!” The metal razor warms in her hand, light and agile. She wonders why Walter doesn’t simply turn around and leave her alone.

“Violet, my dear. You’re being ridiculous. Put down the razor.”

“You cannot touch me, Walter. Never again.”

“Trust me, child. Put down the razor. You’re overwrought.”

“I am not—”

But Walter strikes in a flash, knocking the razor from her hand. He pins her hands neatly behind her back and forces her from the bathroom. She struggles against him, but his hold on her is expert, perfectly placed to lever her across the bedroom, as if he’s done this sort of thing before. He turns her over the bed and places his knuckles in the small of her back, atop her kidneys. He smells of sweat.

“You’re a brute.” She locks her legs together, but he inserts his knee exactly in the center of her thighs and forces her open.

“You do not refuse me, Violet.” Walter’s breath invades her ear, and she braces herself, shuts her eyes and mouth, shuts down every sensation and thought in her body so she will live through the next two minutes.

Because of this, because she’s concentrating so hard on severing her mind from the workings of Walter’s brusque hands, she doesn’t hear the knock on the door, the rattle of the locked knob. She hardly notices the crash of wood as a booted foot forces it open.

Then Walter is gone: his hands, his heavy body, his sweaty breath. Shouts, thumps. A hard grunt. With effort, Violet pushes herself up and turns around, bracing herself on the mattress.

Walter lies on the floor. Lionel stands above him, rumpled and unshaven, rubbing his fist. “Christ, Violet.” He turns and pulls her against him. He is as thick as a pillar, as solid as a tree. “I’m sorry, Christ, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Did he hurt you?”

“Not . . . not yet.”

“I’m sorry. Christ. What an idiot. I’m sorry.”

“Is he dead? Is he dead?” Violet shoves her nose into his scratchy tweeds, full of outdoors and automobiles and Lionel. Her nerves jump, her head spins.

“Dead? No, damn him. If I’d had my revolver he would be.”

She pushes away and stumbles over Walter’s body to the wardrobe. “Is your motor outside?”

“Yes, but—”

“Take me to Berlin.”

“Violet, wait—”

“Now, Lionel. Before he wakes up.” She finds the valise and yanks it out from behind her dresses with a spring of her electric muscles. Her brain is a blur, coalesced around a single overriding thought: flight. “For God’s sake.”

“We can’t just leave . . .”

She drags the valise across the floor and drops it at Lionel’s feet and takes his jacket into her fists. She stares up at him to communicate the desperation in her babble of words. “We can. We can. We can. Jane will take care of everything. Take me to Berlin, Lionel. Now. We can. We can.”

Lionel’s hands find her elbows. His brow is worried, his cheekbones pink with a sunburn that disappears under the new prickles of his beard. The skin around his eyes is heavy with exhaustion.

He looks down at Walter and back at Violet. She wants to touch his face, but her fingers have stiffened around Lionel’s lapels, the only way she can hold herself still, and she doesn’t dare open them.

Lionel releases her elbows and pries her hands from his jacket. He keeps one firmly in his palm and reaches down for her valise.

“Right, then. Berlin.”