Maker of Patterns

WHEN I WAS appointed a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, I used to say that my real job was to be a psychiatric nurse, giving consolation and comfort to the young visiting members when they suffered from loneliness or depression. The visiting members were in a highly stressful situation, facing a year or two of complete freedom, with the expectation that they should do something brilliant. If they failed to perform, given this unique opportunity, there was a real danger of psychological collapse. In my time as a professor I lost three young people whom I had invited as members, one by suicide and two who ended up in mental institutions. I do not know how many I saved. I only know that the institute is a dangerous place for young people, and as a professor, I bore a heavy responsibility for their mental health. The letters are as usual arranged chronologically, beginning with family affairs and then telling stories of psychological disasters.

JUNE 18, 1971

Helen Dukas had a delightful letter from Svetlana. Helen had said, if Svetlana will come to visit Princeton, Helen will be glad to baby-sit for her, having so much good experience as a baby-sitter with us. Svetlana replied that the one thing she does not need now is a baby-sitter. With her two babies in Russia, she always had so many nurses and maids that she hardly saw the children except for official occasions. With this last baby she is determined to do everything herself. She nurses it, has it with her twenty-four hours a day, and is blissfully happy. She said she is also glad to see the baby looks more like her father than her grandfather.

NOVEMBER 13, 1971

The week has been full of Einstein. I have been reading the new Life of Einstein [1972] by Ronald Clark, an Englishman who was here last year. I think Clark’s book is good, but Helen Dukas is deeply angry at Clark because of what she considers betrayal of her confidence. Clark printed a number of stories about Einstein which Helen had vetoed. The book is already a best-seller here, but Helen and Otto Nathan, the trustees of the Einstein estate, have refused permission for all English and European publication. Their lawyers and Clark’s lawyers are now fighting it out.

Meanwhile Banesh Hoffmann, an old friend of Helen, is at the end of another biography of Einstein [1972]. Yesterday I spent the whole day with Hoffmann going over it. Hoffmann will print nothing that Helen does not agree to, and in return he gets a magnificent supply of illustrations and documents taken from Helen’s collection. It is now a race to see whether Hoffmann or Clark gets there first with the European public. The two books hardly overlap, and there is no reason why they should not both be successful. Clark’s book is fat, crowded with colour and detail, and gives the first honest account of Einstein’s many squabbles. He is on the whole fair to Einstein, but not every one of the stories he prints on the basis of other people’s memories need be totally correct. Hoffmann has two advantages. He worked with Einstein and knew him well, and he understands the physics. Hoffmann’s book gives a personal view of Einstein as a working scientist, something that is outside Clark’s compass. Also his book is about a quarter of the size of Clark’s, which I consider an advantage.

Into this tense and acrimonious situation walked a third character, an Indian friend of mine called Jagdish Mehra. Mehra is a historian of science who has one quality that both Clark and Hoffmann lack, a gift for languages. He has talked at length with European relatives of Einstein, some of whom talk only German and some only French. As a result, he discovered last year in an attic in Belgium the manuscript of Einstein’s first written work, an essay on electromagnetism which Einstein sent to an engineer uncle when he was sixteen years old. Nobody else had known that this existed. It was written in a difficult Gothic script which Mehra is able to read. Mehra was excited with his discovery. But from that moment his troubles began. He behaved carefully and correctly. He first copied the paper, sent the copy to Otto Nathan, and asked for permission to publish it in a scholarly journal. Nathan replied giving the permission. Then Mehra translated it into English and sent it with a commentary to the American Journal of Physics. There he ran foul of another historian of science called Gerald Holton. Holton advised the editor of the journal that Mehra’s paper was inadequate and ought not to be published. Holton also claimed that the translation was faulty. So the paper was rejected. At this point, Mehra decided to send the thing to Physikalische Blätter, the German magazine, and so avoided the problem of translation. Physikalische Blätter accepted it gladly. Mehra was happy to have the thing finally settled when he suddenly got a brief note from Nathan saying, “Permission to publish withdrawn” without any explanation. Mehra sent this note to the editors of PB, but they decided it was too late to change their minds, and the Einstein paper appeared in September. Helen and Nathan regarded this as a direct defiance of their authority, and they have excommunicated Mehra from any further contact with any Einstein papers which they control.

Why did this happen? I think I know the true explanation. In Hoffmann’s book, which Mehra never saw, there is an episode in which Einstein said, “After the massacre of the Jews in Germany I will never allow my writings to be published in Germany again.” Such a statement would be for Nathan a command which he is pledged to carry out to the letter. Poor Mehra innocently committed the supreme sacrilege of publishing Einstein’s first paper in Germany. Now I am trying to straighten out this mess. At least I am happy about one thing, that I am not a historian. These historians are so jealous of each other, it is unbelievable. How Einstein would laugh if he could see them quarreling over his relics.

DECEMBER 9, 1971

The Einstein story had a surprising sequel. Imme and I were at supper at the Kaysens last week. I happened to mention that Mehra had been staying with us. Kaysen immediately looked startled. He said, “Do you mean the Mehra from Texas? Just a month ago I almost put that man in gaol,” and proceeded to tell us the details. Mehra came to Princeton in October and spent some time talking with Helen Dukas in the strong room where the Einstein papers are kept. Helen let Mehra look at the papers under her watchful eye. A few days later she came to Kaysen in terrible distress to tell him that one of the most precious manuscripts from the year 1914 was missing. She had seen the manuscript in its place only a week before. Kaysen went to a lawyer and got him to write a fierce letter to Mehra accusing him of the theft and threatening prosecution. Mehra wrote back nonchalantly denying any knowledge of the affair and protesting his complete innocence. A few days later Helen received a postal package containing the missing document, posted from Newark Airport. After that Kaysen decided he could not prosecute and wrote a personal letter to Mehra telling him that he should never again show his face at the institute. Kaysen put a detective on the job of tracing the origin of the package and determined that it had been brought from Texas to Newark by an Indian physicist who is a personal friend of Mehra. None of this could be proved in court, so Kaysen did not pursue the matter further.

Two weeks after this final letter from Kaysen, Mehra happily turned up at my office and stayed overnight at my house. He did not show a trace of nervousness when I took him to eat lunch and supper at the institute cafeteria. Helen must have been there at lunch at the same time but fortunately did not see us. The whole affair is to me completely baffling. There is no possibility that Mehra’s discovery of the first Einstein paper was fraudulent. Even his enemies do not deny that the paper is genuine and that Mehra found it honestly. What had he possibly to gain by stealing another well-known paper from Helen’s collection? The paper had been published long ago, so that the manuscript was not of historical importance. The thing seems to make no sense.

I have a theory which perhaps does make sense of it. The year 1914 was a crucial year in Einstein’s personal life, when his first marriage broke up, and in spite of strong political misgivings he moved from Zürich to Berlin. Helen has often told me that there are personal papers in her collection which she will not allow to be published under any circumstances. It is very likely that such papers might date from 1914. My theory is that Mehra had reason to believe that he could uncover some startling new information about Einstein if he could get a glimpse of some of these personal papers which Helen will not publish. He had only a few seconds to act while Helen’s back was turned, so he grabbed into the 1914 drawer and pulled out the wrong paper. Having pulled it out, he was unable to slip it back without being seen. This is an intelligible interpretation of the facts. There are then still two possibilities open. One possibility is that Mehra actually grabbed only the scientific manuscript which Helen reported to Kaysen. The other possibility is that he succeeded in grabbing what he was looking for, in addition to the scientific manuscript, but Helen did not mention the more personal items when reporting the loss to Kaysen. In the second case, Mehra will have kept copies of whatever it was he wanted before sending the package back to Helen. Perhaps someday we shall learn what it was he was after.

The affair is a tragedy for Mehra no matter how it ends. Kaysen has talked about it freely, and it must become common knowledge among historians of science. Mehra’s career as a member of the community of scholars is irretrievably ruined. I am very sorry for him. What he did was crazy, but he had been badly treated. I assume he expected that he could slip the papers out of Helen’s drawer, and then on a later visit slip them back in again, without being caught. I wish he had succeeded. But he underrated our Helen. Helen is over seventy, but she is no fool, and she will keep watch over the Einstein papers until her dying breath.

AUGUST 5, 1972, TOKYO

In September 1971 there arrived in Princeton a Japanese couple called Taro and Sachiko Asano. Taro was one of the most brilliant of the young Japanese physicists. He had done one outstanding piece of work, and I invited him to Princeton. He came with his bride Sachiko, whom he had married two years before. She is very small. Both of them were quiet and withdrawn. Nobody knew them well. I was the only person to whom Taro came regularly to talk about his work. Sachiko kept herself separated even from the other Japanese people at the institute. They were devoted to each other, and they loved to go touring around America in their blue Ford car. They went on some long trips together.

Taro’s work did not go well at Princeton. He failed to repeat his great work of the year before. And I failed to give him the attention he needed. I was busy with one distraction after another. I listened to Taro politely but I did not join in his efforts. I was certainly a disappointment to him. In June and July he got a chronic cough, probably caused by a pollen allergy, and this made him even more depressed. He stopped coming to the institute and stayed shut up in the flat where they lived. All this time I did not see them and thought they were away touring the West. Sachiko did not tell anybody how worried she was. Imme’s mother and nephew were to fly from Germany on Sunday, July 29, and we had to be at Kennedy airport to meet them at five-thirty. On Saturday Sachiko telephoned to tell us that Taro was seriously sick. Imme and I went down to talk to Sachiko. Taro was asleep and we did not see him. Sachiko spoke only about his bronchitis but it was clear that some mental trouble was involved.

At nine on Sunday morning Sachiko called desperately worried, and this time we found Taro awake and could see how bad he was. He talked incoherently and had some kind of persecution mania. He said again and again, “Do not underestimate the power of the high society in Japan.” He said that they had hypnotized Sachiko and could make her do anything they wanted. Imme and I brought them to our house and sat in the garden for an hour trying to calm him down. It was clear that we would have to get Taro to return to Japan to find any adequate medical treatment. But there did not seem to be anything useful to do on a Sunday morning. Taro refused vehemently to see a doctor, and we did not pursue the effort to find one. I walked down to the Asano house with them and said good-bye to them there. I said Sachiko should call us if she needed help. I ought to have stayed with them, but it was difficult to sit around all day knowing that Frau Jung was already on her way. Imme wanted me to stay at the Asanos but instead I walked home. A few minutes later Sachiko called to say that Taro had grabbed the car keys and driven off in his car. We rushed down to her and called the police to stop the car on the road. But the police already had reports of a crash on Springdale Road nearby. I went to the scene and found a head-on collision of two cars, with Taro dead behind the wheel of one of them. He must have died instantly, and his face looked more peaceful than I had ever seen it. Luckily the other car was a heavy one and the eight people in it were all alive and on their way to the hospital. I went back to Sachiko and told her of Taro’s death while Imme sat with her crying. We stayed there till we had to drive away to the airport, and some Japanese neighbours took Sachiko to their house.

For the next five days we have been taking turns with the Iitakas and the Okabayashis keeping an eye on Sachiko and packing up her household. Mrs. Iitaka is a marvelous lady who is usually walking around and working with a two-month-old baby nursing at her breast. On Monday Taro was cremated, and on Tuesday there was the ceremony of carrying home the ashes. Imme and I and Mrs. Iitaka went with Sachiko to the crematorium. They brought out the tray of ashes from the furnace, just as it was, untouched by anybody. Then Sachiko came with a little white box and a pair of chopsticks. She carefully picked out of the ashes a selection of small pieces of bones. Then each of us in turn was given chopsticks and made additions to the box. The little white box of bones will be kept in the family shrine forever. Sachiko will not let it out of her sight until she has given it to Taro’s mother. The rest of the ashes were poured into a bigger box which is treated much less ceremoniously. It was packed in a suitcase and traveled with Sachiko’s heavy luggage. The ashes in the big box will be scattered somewhere in the country that Taro loved, near to his home in Kanazawa.

After the bones were in her care, Sachiko began to get more and more queer. It looked as if Taro’s unquiet spirit were haunting her. She drove the Iitakas almost to distraction by not sleeping at night and talking incoherently. We brought two doctors to see her, but she got worse day by day. We had arranged for her to fly alone to Tokyo where her family would meet her this afternoon. But we decided at the last moment this was unsafe. The plane has an hour stop in Anchorage with a complete change of crew, and we could not rely on anybody to take care of her during the stop. So at the last moment I hopped onto the plane with her, carrying only some official papers, a passport, and a toothbrush. The fourteen hours to Tokyo with Sachiko were the most harrowing I have ever spent. She was more crazy than ever. Some of the time crazy in a pathetic way, like Ophelia mourning for Laertes. She would look wildly around the airplane and say over and over, “I want to go back to Japan.” Some of the time she was crazy in a sharp way like Hamlet, so that you could not be sure she was unaware of the impression she was making. Some of the time she was as wild as a tiger.

The worst time began with a fight over the official papers which I was carrying to give to Sachiko’s father. Among them were four copies of the death certificate which we had gone to some trouble to have issued with the cause of death “auto accident” and no mention of possible suicide. Sachiko grabbed at these papers and began tearing all the death certificates into small pieces and throwing them around the airplane. I unwisely tried to stop her by physical force, which only made her more furious and did not save the certificates. She then stood up with the box of bones in her hands and shouted in a voice to be heard all down the airplane, in strong and fluent English. I had never heard her before talk English so well. “I am Sachiko Asano,” she shouted, “and I am taking my husband’s ashes back to Japan. And this Professor Dyson who is here is the man who killed him. He killed my husband and he is making plans to kill me too. He is planning to kill me by making me mad just as he did it to my husband. This Professor Dyson and his wife and his children were disturbed by Taro and Sachiko Asano and so they killed us. But they will regret. Professor Dyson’s children will die and he will regret. Professor Dyson’s wife will die and he will regret.” And so she went on and on and on. There was no way to stop her. After she had been through the speech several times in English, she repeated it in Japanese for the benefit of the other passengers. Of course there is a sense in which her accusations are true.

As the hours went by, she became more confused and less vehement. At one point she lay with her head in my lap and slept like a child. After we took off from Anchorage on the second seven-hour hop, she was suddenly playful, fed me by plopping grapes into my mouth, and laughed happily while she made a white beard under my chin with a pillow. Then for a few hours she was lucid and talked about the child she had hoped to have with Taro. Finally as we came close to Tokyo, she became cold and distant. She carefully went through every scrap of paper in her packages and in mine, giving me everything that had the slightest reference to me or to her own medical problems, and taking everything that had reference to Taro. On her package I had written my Princeton telephone number, and she carefully blacked the number over with black ink. Then at the last moment she asked me to write the number back on. Once we had landed in Tokyo she handled all the formalities herself with great competence, including a long argument with the health authority because she had the wrong kind of vaccination certificate.

After that was over we came out into the open, and there was Sachiko’s family, at least ten of them, waiting for her. She turned and said to me, “You are a very bad man,” then ran to them and was swept up in their embraces. Two of the family came up to me, bowed, and said thank you. I shouted good-bye to Sachiko and walked away, feeling as if the burdens of the whole world had fallen from my shoulders. I think there is a good chance that this volcanic outburst of hatred and malediction will have relieved Sachiko’s mind from the unspoken thoughts that were troubling her. I consider it likely that she will now settle down with her family and be her normal self, leaving behind forever the miseries of Princeton. I am glad that I had the final glimpse of her smiling face enveloped in the arms of that big warm Japanese family. I am now flying smoothly home. My charge is done, and I shall enjoy having twenty-four hours of solitary flying to meditate about what it all might mean.