Something’s happened to Kaspar, she thought as she hurried downstairs. Something terrible’s happened. And she was right, Mrs. Haven, though years would pass before she found out what it was.
She’d expected to find Waldemar on the stoop when she opened the door, but he kept to the chestnut trees’ shadow, still standing at some version of attention, his loden cap held out like a bouquet. It was his stillness, more than anything else, that convinced her that he’d come bearing bad news.
“Fräulein Silbermann.” It seemed more an observation than a greeting.
“What is it, Waldemar?”
“I wouldn’t have come here.” He jerked his head toward the house. “I never would have come here otherwise. But something has happened, you see.”
She’d known for a week — ever since that hideous dinner and the glorious night that came after — that the world would conspire to take Kaspar from her. Bliss on such a scale was never freely given. The Toulas had come by their family curse only recently, but the Silbermanns had nurtured theirs for generations, and had long since diagnosed it as pessimismus. Their fatalism endowed them with strength and clear-sightedness, up to a point — it enabled Sonja, for example, to flout the conventions of her sex — but it also placed a check on their ambitions, to say nothing of their hopes. And there were hours, in her most private thoughts, when Sonja pictured herself as a kind of lightning rod of circumstance: instead of simply bracing for the worst that might befall, as any self-respecting Silbermann would, she was actively calling it down.
Waldemar had been watching her silently, still clutching his cap, and now he laid his left hand on her shoulder. His face gave her a turn: his handsome features were as frantic as the rest of him was still. All his anxiety, all his confusion, all his passion seemed to find its focus there. But something else was present in Waldemar’s face, as well — an emotion she could in no way account for. His eyes were dark and heavy-lidded, like a martyr’s in some early Christian fresco, and his upper lip was sweating with excitement. He looked less the bearer of sad tidings, suddenly, than a rebel angel on his way to hell.
“What is it, Herr Toula? Has something happened to Kaspar?”
Waldemar’s laugh was percussive and sharp, not like Kaspar’s at all, and it burst out of him so fiercely that it scared her. “Nothing has happened to my brother, fräulein — you’ve made certain of that.”
She was wide awake now. “Please speak clearly, Herr Toula. What do you—”
“I need your help, Sonja. I need it tonight.”
She ought to have felt relief, gratitude that Kaspar was well, but she felt no such thing.
“Sit with me a moment, Herr Toula. Explain to me—”
“You wouldn’t understand, I’m afraid. It’s a scientific matter.”
“If it’s a question of physics, perhaps my father—”
“Your father would understand me even less.”
Nothing Waldemar said or did surprised her, not truly, because she’d always thought of him as alien. He was alien still, an unknown quantity, though he was struggling to disclose himself to her. She felt sympathy for him now — even tenderness, of a kind. The set of his jaw was as defiant as a child’s.
“It must be lonely for you, Herr Toula, having no one understand you.”
“It is, fräulein. It’s exceptionally lonely.”
He let himself be led, after some resistance, to a rusting iron bench between the chestnuts. Sonja waited to speak until he’d sat beside her. “Will you explain the source of your distress to me, Herr Toula, if only as an experiment? I promise that I’ll do my best to follow.”
“It’s strange,” he said, nodding. “We’ve sat like this before — we must have done — but I can find no remnant of it in my memory.”
“This seems familiar to me, too,” Sonja said, not entirely certain why she was agreeing. To reassure him, she supposed. But something in her gave a sort of quiver.
“Does it?” Waldemar whispered. “Then you must help me, fräulein.” He put a hand on her knee, gripping it roughly, nothing at all like a lover. “The villa is too far to walk, perhaps, but we can hire a carriage. You could come just as you are, in your nightgown and slippers.”
“Which villa do you mean? Not the widow’s, surely? Why on earth—”
“Don’t worry,” he said, already on his feet. “She’s at a spa in Baden, taking the waters. No one needs to be told.”
“Waldemar,” said Sonja, taking care to speak clearly, “if you don’t tell me — at once — what you need my help for, I’ll go straight back inside.”
“You require more information, of course. That’s only fair.” He smiled down at her. “I’ve found out about time, you see. That it travels in circles. Not in lines, but in circles — in spheres, to be more precise. This is happening everywhere, fräulein. All around us. Even now.” He squatted before her. “I haven’t managed to control it yet, that’s all.”
“Just a moment,” said Sonja. “Does this have something to do with those two Americans — Michaels and Murray?”
“To hell with Michelson and Morley. They’re still thinking in straight lines, fräulein. Everyone is. That’s why no one can make sense of their results.”
“I’m not sure you’re making sense just now, Herr Toula.”
“I’ve done the mathematics, fräulein. It comes out beautifully. I don’t need to make sense — not the kind that you mean. The numbers will do all that for me.”
Sonja looked hard at him. “But if time travels in circles—”
“In spheres.”
“—in spheres, as you say it does, then why hasn’t anyone noticed?”
“Excellent question! Because we’re all inside of them, you see.”
“Inside of what?”
“Of the chronospheres, of course. We’re trapped within them, stuck to their inner skins, like dust grains on the surface of a bubble.”
“Just a moment,” she repeated. “Did you say, just now, that you hadn’t managed to control it?”
“My work hasn’t advanced that far yet — I concede your point — but it follows from everything else. It’s a kind of observer-induced distortion: every action has consequences, even human attention. One can’t help affecting the phenomenon one studies, simply by studying it. Am I being clear?”
Sonja nodded uncertainly.
“All that’s required to affect time, by logical extension, is simply to begin observing it.” He waited impatiently for her to nod again. “The problem is that time is impossible, under normal conditions, for us to perceive. We can’t see it passing, and for exactly that reason — and for that reason only — it passes without conforming to our will. Do you follow?”
“I think so,” said Sonja. “What you’re saying is that, given the right set of conditions—”
“Exactly, Fräulein Silbermann! It’s like standing in the middle of an overcrowded city, or in the center of a maze: in order to understand where you are, to get a sense of the pattern, you need to attain a higher vantage point — the bell tower of Saint Stephen’s, say — to acquire perspective.” He rocked from side to side in his excitement. “That’s what I need your help for: to escape from the maze. I need your help to rise above the timestream.”
“I’ll be happy to assist you however I can, but I still don’t see how—”
“You can knock me out of time, Fräulein Silbermann. Kaspar told me that you did the same for him.”