Then the French and Prussian officers laughed; they put their hands on each others' arms; they were no longer clicking and bowing: the incident was over. And so for a moment there was not the renewed enmity between the Prussians and the French. But it was as if the men who had their heads together had still noticed nothing; they were content to show to the outside world just the backs of their large, vulnerable necks.
When my father and I were walking back through the Tiergarten — it must have been late summer because there were a few falling leaves — my father hit at the leaves with his stick and said 'Oh dear, oh dear!' I knew that this time he had been watching the whole of the incident in the hoteclass="underline" it did not seem sensible now not to talk about it. I said 'What was all that?' He said 'What was all that?' He sat down on a seat by the path and stretched out his legs. He said 'How much do you know about that sort of thing?'
I thought — You mean, about the Prussian officer and the waiter with blond hair: that sort of thing?
He said 'You know your mother is Jewish?'
I said'Yes.'
He said 'And you are half Jewish.'
My father had his hands in his pockets. He had stretched his feet so far out that he was almost horizontal.
I thought — Oh you mean, that sort of thing.
He said 'Perhaps it is one of the things impossible to talk about.'
I said 'You once promised to tell me anything I wanted to know.'
He said 'What do you want to know?'
I thought — How can I tell you if I don't know?
Then — You mean, those men in the Adlon Hotel were Jewish?
Then — They are not what I call Jewish!
My father said 'The Jews are the most remarkable people in the world. It is difficult even to say this, because for some reason it is taken to be condescending. But they have some sort of knowingness that other people have not got. They know this themselves; other people know it. But no one quite knows what it is. Something has
gone wrong. Jews should be running the world, but they are not. I think they know this, but don't want to talk about it.'
I said 'Why not?'
My father said 'I don't know; and I mean, even if I thought I did — '
Then he sat upright and hit at the leaves with his stick. He said 'Damn!'
I said 'Professor Einstein is a Jew.'
He said'Yes.'
I said 'And my mother's friends — '
He said 'Some of them.' Then he murmured as if to himself 'They won't take the responsibility.'
I said 'For what?'
He swung his stick to and fro on the ground as if it were a mallet. He said 'For being the children of God, for taking a chance to be the grown-ups of God: but then, how can you grow up if you are the children of God?
I said 'And can't you help them?'
He said 'Help them?' He seemed puzzled.
Then he turned to me and said 'Your mother is a fighter.'
I thought — But I know my mother is a fighter!
He said 'One day you will see the point of your mother.'
I thought — But of course I see the point of my mother!
I suddenly felt very tired. I wanted to go home.
I thought — When things get too difficult, it is as if there is a bright light coming down.
I said 'Is that why people don't like them?'
He said quickly 'Oh of course, people are envious of them.'
I thought — Anyway, people do like them!
I said 'Let's go home.'
It was during that autumn of 1919 that there occurred the event that my father had so long awaited — the publication of the results of the observations that the British expeditions to Africa and South America had made to test Einstein's theory: to see whether light was bent by gravity, whether space was curved, and whether it was this that we understood as gravity. My father came back from the university one evening carrying a file of papers under his arm and went straight to his study, and although I hung about outside to see if he would talk to me he did not come out or call me in. My mother, as usual, had to summon him to supper. I remember him
in the dining-room at first not speaking; then turning to me and saying 'It's true, I've got the results. Light is affected by gravity.'
My mother said 'I thought you might have some interesting news to tell us.'
My father said 'Such as what?'
My mother said 'Such as whether President Ebert has made a deal with General von Liittwitz.'
My father said to me 'But there's still something not quite right. It's not in the measurements. It's in the language.'
I said 'What is in the language?'
My father said 'What is true, is usually in the form of a myth.'
It is difficult now to imagine the interest that was in fact aroused by the publication of the results that seemed to confirm Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. The earlier Special Theory had, as I have said, made little public impact; then for a time the General Theory had been no more than a conjecture. But there was something in the mood of the times, I suppose, that required a liberating vision — a longing in the aftermath of war for old patterns to be broken up — and it was felt that this had in some way been achieved by the confirmation of the General Theory. Also there was something romantic, I suppose, in the story of the conjectures of a comparatively obscure German physicist being confirmed at great trouble and expense by British expeditions to the tropics. Whatever the background, there were headlines in the papers the next day: 'Revolution in Science'; 'Ideas of Newton Overthrown'; 'New Theory of the Universe'. The evidence was, yes, that light from a distant star had been bent as it passed close to the sun; it was thus as if light had weight and mass; 'gravity' was a word for the curvature of the universe. The language used to describe all this might not exactly seem to make sense; the sense was in the mathematics. Language, it was suggested, was after all a second-rate way of trying to explain what in mathematics could be trusted.
All the reports seemed to agree that something liberating had occurred; old systems in which minds had been trapped had been broken; thoughts were freed to wing this way or that round the universe. I remember kneeling on the floor of my father's study and trying to understand the newspaper reports spread out on the floor. I said to my father 'But I thought you said that, if the theory were proved, it would mean something quite different.'
He said'Yes.'
I said 4 — That everyone would see that they could never see anything much beyond the backs of their own heads.'
My father said 'Something like that.'
I said Then what has happened?'
My father said 'I suppose it might be by seeing that they can't get out of their own vision, that people might get out.'
I said 'And that was what you were saying?'
He said 'Yes.' Then — 'You're brilliant!'
I thought — What's brilliant? I said 'So they haven't got out.'
He said 'Not if they don't see, they haven't.'
I said 'That's difficult.'
He said'Yes.'
I remember my mother being somewhat grimly humorous during these days. She would move in and out of the apartment with baskets of groceries both for her own family and for others; she would walk with her shoulders slightly hunched like Rosa Luxemburg. It was as if she were battling against a world gone slightly mad: she even made jokes, which she did not often do. She said 'So it is light that has weight: perhaps it is that which explains the heaviness of these groceries!' My father would say 'Yes, my dear, you are quite right to make jokes.'