If VOLI pun hast this book without a <_over you should he
dVtdre that this book may have been stolen property and
reported as 'unsold and destroyed to the publisher In
su( h < ase neither the author nor the publisher has received
din pdvmeiil for this "stripped book '

%<irner Books Edition

( opvnghl © 199^ by Alan Lightman

^11 rights reserved

This %dmer Books edition is published bv arrangement
with Pantheon Books d division of Random House, Inc .
\fv. 'York

Wdrner Books, ln<.  1271 Avenue of the Anieruds. New
York, NY 10020

^^A Time Warner Company

Printed in the United Sidles of America

i'lrst Vtarner Books Printing Februdry 1994

13

I ibrar\ of Congress Cataloging-in Publication Ddtd

1 ighlmdii Aldll P

Linstein s dredins / Alctn Lighlmdii

p  <.m
ISBN 0-446-67011 1

1 Einstein AlberI 1879-1955—h lUion
2 PhysKists—ri<tion   i Dreams—
1'Ktion   4. Time—rii-lion   I Title
[PSi562 ^^Pr 18 1994|
8H' 54—di20                 93-27403

C1P

Coier de'-.ign b^ Mar/one Anderwn
Coi er photograph b') Maria Ferriin

EINSTEIN'S DREAMS

-PROLOGUE

In some distant arcade, a clock tower calls
out six times and then stops. The young
man slumps at his desk. He has come to the
office at dawn, after another upheaval. His
hair is uncombed and his trousers are too
big. In his hand he holds twenty crumpled

• 3

pages, his new theory of time, which he will
mail today to the German journal of physics.

Tiny sounds from the city drift through
the room. A milk bottle clinks on a stone.
An awning is cranked in a shop on
Marktgasse. A vegetable cart moves slowly
through a street. A man and woman talk in
hushed tones in an apartment nearby.

In the dim light that seeps through the
room, the desks appear shadowy and soft,
like large sleeping animals. Except for the
young man's desk, which is cluttered with
half-opened books, the twelve oak desks are
all neatly covered with documents, left from
the previous day. Upon arriving in two
hours, each clerk will know precisely where
to begin. But at this moment, in this dim
light, the documents on the desks are no
more visible than the clock in the corner or
the secretary's stool near the door. All that
can be seen at this moment are the shadowy
shapes of the desks and the hunched form
of the young man.

. 4

Ten minutes past six, by the invisible
clock on the wall. Minute by minute, new
objects gain form. Here, a brass wastebas-
ket appears. There, a calendar on a wall.
Here, a family photograph, a box of paper-
clips, an inkwell, a pen. There, a type-
writer, a jacket folded on a chair. In time,
the ubiquitous bookshelves emerge from
the night mist that hangs on the walls. The
bookshelves hold notebooks of patents. One
patent concerns a new drilling gear with
teeth curved in a pattern to minimize fric-
tion. Another proposes an electrical trans-
former that holds constant voltage when the
power supply varies. Another describes a
typewriter with a low-velocity typebar that
eliminates noise. It is a room full of practi-
cal ideas.

Outside, the tops of the Alps start to glow
from the sun. It is late June. A boatman on
the Aare unties his small skiff and pushes
off, letting the current take him along Aar-
strasse to Gerberngasse, where he will de-

• 5

liver his summer apples and berries. The
baker arrives at his store on Marktgasse,
fires his coal oven, begins mixing flour and
yeast. Two lovers embrace on the Nydegg
Bridge, gaze wistfully into the river below.
A man stands on his balcony on Schifflaube,
studies the pink sky. A woman who cannot
sleep walks slowly down Kramgasse, peer-
ing into each dark arcade, reading the post-
ers in half-light.

In the long, narrow office on Speicher-
gasse, the room full of practical ideas, the
young patent clerk still sprawls in his chair,
head down on his desk. For the past several
months, since the middle of April, he has
dreamed many dreams about time. His
dreams have taken hold of his research. His
dreams have worn him out, exhausted him
so that he sometimes cannot tell whether he
is awake or asleep. But the dreaming is fin-
ished. Out of many possible natures of time,
imagined in as many nights, one seems
compelling. Not that the others are impos-

• 6

sible. The others might exist in other
worlds.

The young man shifts in his chair, wait-
ing for the typist to come, and softly hums
from Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

. 7

A APRIL  1905

Suppose time is a circle, bending back on
itself. The world repeats itself, precisely,
endlessly.

For the most part, people do not know
they will live their lives over. Traders do not
know that they will make the same bargain
again and again. Politicians do not know

• a

that they will shout from the same lectern
an infinite number of times in the cycles of
time. Parents treasure the first laugh from
their child as if they will not hear it again.
Lovers making love the first time undress
shyly, show surprise at the supple thigh, the
fragile nipple. How would they know that
each secret glimpse, each touch, will be re-
peated again and again and again, exactly
as before?

On Marktgasse, it is the same. How
could the shopkeepers know that each
handmade sweater, each embroidered
handkerchief, each chocolate candy, each
intricate compass and watch will return to
their stalls? At dusk, the shopkeepers go
home to their families or drink beer in the
taverns, calling happily to friends down the
vaulted alleys, caressing each moment as
an emerald on temporary consignment.
How could they know that nothing is tem-
porary, that all will happen again? No more
than an ant crawling round the rim ofacrys-

• 9

tal chandelier knows that it will return to
where it began.

In the hospital on Gerberngasse, a
woman says goodbye to her husband. He
lies in bed and stares at her emptily. In the
last two months, his cancer has spread from
his throat to his liver, his pancreas, his
brain. His two young children sit on one
chair in the corner of the room, frightened
to look at their father, his sunken cheeks,
the withered skin of an old man. The wife
comes to the bed and kisses her husband
softly on the forehead, whispers goodbye,
and quickly leaves with the children. She is
certain that this was the last kiss. How
could she know that time will begin again,
that she will be born again, will study at the
gymnasium again, will show her paintings
at the gallery in Zurich, will again meet her
husband in the small library in Fribourg,
will again go sailing with him in Thun Lake
on a warm day in July, will give birth again,
that her husband will again work for eight

• 10

years at the pharmaceutical and come home
one evening with a lump in his throat, will
again throw up and get weak and end up in
this hospital, this room. this bed, this mo-
ment. How could she know?

In the world in which time is a circle,
every handshake, every kiss, every birth,
every word, will be repeated precisely. So
too every moment that two friends stop be-
coming friends, every time that a family is
broken because of money, every vicious re-
mark in an argument between spouses,
every opportunity denied because of a su-
perior's jealousy, every promise not kept.

And just as all things will be repeated in
the future, all things now happening hap-
pened a million times before. Some few
people in every town, in their dreams, are
vaguely aware that all has occurred in the
past. These are the people with unhappy
lives, and they sense that their misjudg-
ments and wrong deeds and bad luck have
all taken place in the previous loop of time.

In the dead of night these cursed citizens
wrestle with their bedsheets, unable to rest,
stricken with the knowledge that they can-
not change a single action, a single gesture.
Their mistakes will be repeated precisely in
this life as in the life before. And it is these
double unfortunates who give the only sign
that time is a circle. For in each town, late
at night, the vacant streets and balconies fill
up with their moans.

• 12

6 APRIL 1905

In this world, time is like a flow of water,
occasionally displaced by a bit of debris, a
passing breeze. Now and then, some cosmic
disturbance will cause a rivulet of time to
turn away from the mainstream, to make
connection backstream. When this hap-
pens, birds, soil, people caught in the

• 13

branching tributary find themselves sud-
denly carried to the past.

Persons who have been transported back
in time are easy to identify. They wear dark,
indistinct clothing and walk on their toes,
trying not to make a single sound, trying not
to bend a single blade of grass. For they fear
that any change they make in the past could
have drastic consequences for the future.

Just now, for example, such a person is
crouching in the shadows of the arcade, at
no. 19 Kramgasse. An odd place for a trav-
eler from the future, but there she is. Pe-
destrians pass, stare, and walk on. She
huddles in a corner, then quickly creeps
across the street and cowers in another
darkened spot, at no. 22. She is terrified
that she will kick up dust, just as a Peter
Klausen is making his way to the apothe-
cary on Spitalgasse this afternoon of 16
April 1905. Klausen is something of a dandy
and hates to have his clothes sullied. If dust
messes his clothes, he will stop and pains-

• 14

takingly brush them off, regardless of wait-
ing appointments. If Klausen is sufficiently
delayed, he may not buy the ointment for
his wife, who has been complaining of leg
aches for weeks. In that case, Klausen's
wife, in a bad humor, may decide not to
make the trip to Lake Geneva. And if she
does not go to Lake Geneva on 23 June
1905, she will not meet a Catherine d'Epi-
nay walking on the jetty of the east shore
and will not introduce Mile. d'Epinay to her
son Richard. In turn, Richard and Cather-
ine will not marry on 17 December 1908,
will not give birth to Friedrich on 8 July
1912. Friedrich Klausen will not be father to
Hans Klausen on 22 August 1938, and with-
out Hans Klausen the European Union of
1979 will never occur.

The woman from the future, thrust with-
out warning into this time and this place and
now attempting to be invisible in her
darkened spot at no. 22 Kramgasse, knows
the Klausen story and a thousand other sto-

' 15

ries waiting to unfold, dependent on the
births of children, the movement of people
in the streets, the songs of birds at certain
moments, the precise position of chairs, the
wind. She crouches in the shadows and
does not return the stares of people. She
crouches and waits for the stream of time to
carry her back to her own time.

When a traveler from the future must
talk, he does not talk but whimpers. He
whispers tortured sounds- He is agonized.
For if he makes the slightest alteration in
anything, he may destroy the future. At the
same time, he is forced to witness events
without being part of them, without chang-
ing them. He envies the people who live in
their own time, who can act at will, obliv-
ious of the future, ignorant of the effects of
their actions. But he cannot act. He is an
inert gas, a ghost, a sheet without soul. He
has lost his personhood. He is an exile of
time.

Such wretched people from the future

• 16

can be found in every village and every
town, hiding under the eaves of buildings,
in basements, under bridges, in deserted
fields. They are not questioned about com-
ing events, about future marriages, births,
finances, inventions, profits to be made. In-
stead, they are left alone and pitied.

• 17

9 APRIL 1905

It is a cold morning in November and the
first snow has fallen. A man in a long leather
coat stands on his fourth-floor balcony on
Kramgasse overlooking the Zahringer Foun-
tain and the white street below. To the east,
he can see the fragile steeple of St. Vin-
cent's Cathedral, to the west, the curved

• is

roof of the Zytgloggeturm. But the man is
not looking east or west. He is staring down
at a tiny red hat left in the snow below, and
he is thinking. Should he go to the woman's
house in Fribourg? His hands grip the metal
balustrade, let go, grip again. Should he
visit her? Should he visit her?

He decides not to see her again. She is
manipulative and judgmental, and she
could make his life miserable. Perhaps she
would not be interested in him anyway- So
he decides not to see her again. Instead, he
keeps to the company of men. He works
hard at the pharmaceutical, where he
hardly notices the female assistant man-
ager. He goes to the brasserie on Kocher-
gasse in the evenings with his friends and
drinks beer, he learns to make fondue.
Then, in three years, he meets another
woman in a clothing shop in Neuchatel. She
is nice. She makes love to him very very
slowly, over a period of months. After a
year, she comes to live with him in Berne.

• 19

They live quietly, take walks together along
the Aare, are companions to each other,
grow old and contented.

In the second world, the man in the long
leather coat decides that he must see the
Fribourg woman again. He hardly knows
her, she could be manipulative, and her
movements hint at volatility, but that way
her face softens when she smiles, that
laugh, that clever use of words. Yes, he
must see her again. He goes to her house in
Fribourg, sits on the couch with her, within
moments feels his heart pounding, grows
weak at the sight of the white of her arms.
They make love, loudly and with passion.
She persuades him to move to Fribourg. He
leaves his job in Berne and begins work at
the Fribourg Post Bureau. He burns with
his love for her. Every day he comes home
at noon. They eat, they make love, they
argue, she complains that she needs more
money, he pleads with her, she throws pots
at him, they make love again, he returns to

• 20

the Post Bureau. She threatens to leave
him, but she does not leave him. He lives
for her, and he is happy with his anguish.

In the third world, he also decides that
he must see her again. He hardly knows
her, she could be manipulative, and her
movements hint at volatility, but that smile,
that laugh, that clever use of words. Yes,
he must see her again. He goes to her house
in Fribourg, meets her at the door, has tea
with her at her kitchen table. They talk of
her work at the library, his job at the phar-
maceutical. After an hour, she says that she
must leave to help a friend, she says good-
bye to him, they shake hands. He travels
the thirty kilometers back to Berne, feels
empty during the train ride home, goes to
his fourth-floor apartment on Kramgasse,
stands on the balcony and stares down at
the tiny red hat left in the snow.

These three chains of events all indeed
happen, simultaneously. For in this world,
time has three dimensions, like space. Just

• 21

as an object may move in three perpendic-
ular directions, corresponding to horizontal,
vertical, and longitudinal, so an object may
participate in three perpendicular futures-
Each future moves in a different direction
of time. Each future is real. At every point
of decision, whether to visit a woman in Fri-
bourg or to buy a new coat, the world splits
into three worlds, each with the same peo-
ple but with different fates for those people.
In time, there are an infinity of worlds.

Some make light of decisions, arguing
that all possible decisions will occur. In
such a world, huw could one be responsible
for his actions? Others hold that each deci-
sion must be considered and committed to,
that without commitment there is chaos.
Such people are content to live in contradic-
tory worlds, so long as they know the reason
for each-

• 22

*24 APRIL 1905

In this world, there are two times. There is
mechanical time and there is body time.
The first is as rigid and metallic as a mas-
sive pendulum of iron that swings back and
forth, back and forth, back and forth. The
second squirms and wriggles like a bluefish
in a bay. The first is unyielding, predeter-

• 23

mined. The second makes up its mind as it
goes along.

Many are convinced that mechanical
time does not exist. When they pass the
giant clock on the Kramgasse they do not
see it; nor do they hear its chimes while
sending packages on Postgasse or strolling
between flowers in the Rosengarten. They
wear watches on their wrists, but only as
ornaments or as courtesies to those who
would give timepieces as gifts. They do not
keep clocks in their houses. Instead, they
listen to their heartbeats. They feel the
rhythms of their moods and desires. Such
people eat when they are hungry, go to their
jobs at the millinery or the chemist's when-
ever they wake from their sleep, make love
all hours of the day. Such people laugh at
the thought of mechanical time. They know
that time moves in fits and starts. They
know that time struggles forward with a
weight on its back when they are rushing an
injured child to the hospital or bearing the

• 24

gaze of a neighbor wronged. And they know
too that time darts across the field of vision
when they are eating well with friends or
receiving praise or lying in the arms of a
secret lover.

Then there are those who think their
bodies don't exist. They live by mechanical
time. They rise at seven o'clock in the
morning. They eat their lunch at noon and
their supper at six. They arrive at their ap-
pointments on time, precisely by the clock.
They make love between eight and ten at
night. They work forty hours a week, read
the Sunday paper on Sunday, play chess on
Tuesday nights- When their stomach
growls, they look at their watch to see if it
is time to eat. When they begin to lose
themselves in a concert, they look at the
clock above the stage to see when it will be
time to go home. They know that the body
is not a thing of wild magic, but a collection
of chemicals, tissues, and nerve impulses.
Thoughts are no more than electrical surges

• 25

in the brain. Sexual arousal is no more than
a flow of chemicals to certain nerve end-
ings. Sadness no more than a bit of acid
transfixed in the cerebellum. In short, the
body is a machine, subject to the same laws
of electricity and mechanics as an electron
or clock. As such, the body must be ad-
dressed in the language of physics. And if
the body speaks, it is the speaking only of
so many levers and forces. The body is a
thing to be ordered, not obeyed.

Taking the night air along the river Aare,
one sees evidence for two worlds in one. A
boatman gauges his position in the dark by
counting seconds drifted in the water's cur-
rent. ""One, three meters- Two, six meters.
Three, nine meters." His voice cuts through
the black in clean and certain syllables. Be-
neath a lamppost on the Nydegg Bridge, two
brothers who have not seen each other for a
year stand and drink and laugh. The bell of
St. Vincent's Cathedral sings ten times. In
seconds, lights in the apartments lining

Schifnaube wink out, in a perfect mecha-
nized response, like the deductions of Eu-
clid's geometry. Lying on the riverbank,
two lovers look up lazily, awakened from a
timeless sleep by the distant church bells,
surprised to find that night has come.

Where the two times meet, desperation.
Where the two times go their separate
ways, contentment. For, miraculously, a
barrister, a nurse, a baker can make a world
in either time, but not in both times. Each
time is true, but the truths are not the same.

« 27

• 26  AP Ri L  1905

In this world, it is instantly obvious that
something is odd. No houses can be seen in
the valleys or plains. Everyone lives in the
mountains.

At some time in the past, scientists dis-
covered that time flows more slowly the far-
ther from the center of earth. The effect is

• 26

minuscule, but it can be measured with ex-
tremely sensitive instruments. Once the
phenomenon was known, a few people, anx-
ious to stay young, moved to the moun-
tains. Now all houses are built on Dom, the
Matterhorn, Monte Rosa, and other high
ground. It is impossible to sell living quar-
ters elsewhere.

Many are not content simply to locate
their homes on a mountain. To get the max-
imum effect, they have constructed their
houses on stilts. The mountaintops all over
the world are nested with such houses,
which from a distance look like a flock of fat
birds squatting on long skinny legs. People
most eager to live longest have built their
houses on the highest stilts. Indeed, some
houses rise half a mile high on their spindly
wooden legs. Height has become status.
When a person from his kitchen window
must look up to see a neighbor, he believes
that neighbor will not become stiff in the
joints as soon as he, will not lose his hair

• 29

until later, will not wrinkle until later, will
not lose the urge for romance as early. Like-
wise, a person looking down on another
house tends to dismiss its occupants as
spent, weak, and shortsighted. Some boast
that they have lived their whole lives high
up, that they were born in the highest house
on the highest mountain peak and have
never descended. They celebrate their
youth in their mirrors and walk naked on
their balconies.

Now and then some urgent business
forces people to come down from their
houses, and they do so with haste, hurrying
down their tall ladders to the ground, run-
ning to another ladder or to the valley
below, completing their transactions, and
then returning as quickly as possible to
their houses, or to other high places. They
know that with each downward step, time
passes just a little bit faster and they age a
little more quickly. People at ground level

• 30

never sit. They run, while carrying their
briefcases or groceries.

A small number of residents in each city
have stopped caring whether they age a few
seconds faster than their neighbors. These
adventuresome souls come down to the
lower world for days at a time, lounge under
the trees that grow in the valleys, swim lei-
surely in the lakes that lie at warmer alti-
tudes, roll on level ground. They hardly look
at their watches and cannot tell you if it is
Monday or Thursday. When the others rush
by them and scoff, they just smile.

In time, people have forgotten the reason
why higher is better. Nonetheless, they con-
tinue to live on the mountains, to avoid
sunken regions as much as they can, to
teach their children to shun other children
from low elevations. They tolerate the cold
of the mountains by habit and enjoy the dis-
comfort as part of their breeding. They have
even convinced themselves that thin air is

• 31

good for their bodies and, following that
logic, have gone on spare diets, refusing all
but the most gossamer food. At length, the
populace have become thin like the air,
bony, old before their time.

•28 APRIL 1905

One cannot walk down an avenue, converse
with a friend, enter a building, browse be-
neath the sandstone arches of an old arcade
without meeting an instrument of time.
Time is visible in all places. Clock towers,
wristwatches, church bells divide years into
months, months into days. days into hours,

• 33

hours into seconds, each increment of time
marching after the other in perfect succes-
sion. And beyond any particular clock, a
vast scaffold of time, stretching across the
universe, lays down the law of time equally
for all. In this world, a second is a second is
a second. Time paces forward with exqui-
site regularity, at precisely the same veloc-
ity in every corner of space. Time is an
infinite ruler. Time is absolute.

Every afternoon, the townspeople of
Berne convene at the west end of Kram-
gasse. There, at four minutes to three, the
Zytgloggeturm pays tribute to time. High on
the turret of the tower clowns dance, roos-
ters crow, bears play fife and drum, their
mechanical movements and sounds syn-
chronized exactly by the turning of gears,
which, in turn, are inspired by the perfec-
tion of time. At three o'clock precisely, a
massive bell chimes three times, people
verify their watches and then return to their
offices on Speichergasse, their shops on

• 34

Marktgasse, their farms beyond the bridges
on the Aare.

Those of religious faith see time as the
evidence for God. For surely nothing could
be created perfect without a Creator. Noth-
ing could be universal and not be divine. All
absolutes are part of the One Absolute. And
wherever absolutes, so too time. Thus the
philosophers of ethics have placed time at
the center of their belief. Time is the refer-
ence against which all actions are judged.
Time is the clarity for seeing right and
wrong.

In a linen shop on Amthausgasse, a
woman talks with her friend. She has just
lost her job. For twenty years-she worked as
a clerk in the Bundeshaus, recording de-
bates. She has supported her family. Now,
with a daughter still in school and a hus-
band who spends two hours each morning
on the toilet, she has been fired. Her admin-
istrator, a heavily oiled and grotesque lady,
came in one morning and told her to clear

• 35

out her desk by the following day. The
friend in the shop listens quietly, neatly
folds the tablecloth she has purchased,
picks lint off the sweater of the woman who
has just lost her job. The two friends agree
to meet for tea at ten o'clock the next morn-
ing. Ten o'clock. Seventeen hours and fifty-
three minutes from this moment. The
woman who has just lost her job smiles for
the first time in days. In her mind she imag-
ines the clock on the wall in her kitchen,
ticking off each second between now and
tomorrow at ten, without interruption, with-
out consultation. And a similar clock in the
home of her friend, synchronized. At twenty
minutes to ten tomorrow morning, the
woman will put on her scarf and her gloves
and her coat and walk down the Schiff-
laube, past the Nydegg Bridge and on to the
tea shop on Postgasse. Across town, at fif-
teen minutes before ten, her friend will
leave her own house on Zeughausgasse and
make her way to the same place. At ten

• 36

o'clock they will meet. They will meet at ten
o'clock.

A world in which time is absolute is a
world of consolation. For while the move-
ments of people are unpredictable, the
movement of time is predictable. While
people can be doubted, time cannot be
doubted. While people brood, time skips
ahead without looking back. In the coffee-
houses. in the government buildings, in
boats on Lake Geneva, people look at their
watches and take refuge in time. Each per-
son knows that somewhere is recorded the
moment she was born, the moment she took
her first step, the moment of her first pas-
sion, the moment she said goodbye to her
parents.

• 37

• 3  MAY  1905

Consider a world in which cause and effect
are erratic. Sometimes the first precedes
the second, sometimes the second the first.
Or perhaps cause lies forever in the past
while effect in the future, but future and
past are entwined.

On the terrace of the Bundesterrasse is a

• 38

striking view: the river Aare below and the
Bernese Alps above. A man stands there
just now, absently emptying his pockets and
weeping. Without reason, his friends have
abandoned him. No one calls any more, no
one meets him for supper or beer at the
tavern, no one invites him to their home.
For twenty years he has been the ideal
friend to his friends, generous, interested,
soft-spoken, affectionate. What could have
happened? A week from this moment on the
terrace, the same man begins acting the
goat, insulting everyone, wearing smelly
clothes, stingy with money, allowing no one
to come to his apartment on Laupenstrasse.
Which was cause and which- effect, which
future and which past?

In Zurich, strict laws have recently been
approved by the Council, Pistols may not be
sold to the public. Banks and trading houses
must be audited. AU visitors, whether en-
tering Zurich by boat on the river Limmat
or by rail on the Selnau line, must be

• 39

searched for contraband. The civil military
is doubled. One month after the crack-
down, Zurich is ripped by the worst crimes
in its history. In daylight, people are mur-
dered in the Weinplatz, paintings are stolen
from the Kunsthaus, liquor is drunk in the
pews of the Miinsterhof. Are these criminal
acts not misplaced in time? Or perhaps the
new laws were action rather than reaction?

A young woman sits near a fountain in
the Botanischer Garten. She comes here
every Sunday to smell the white double vi-
olets, the musk rose, the matted pink gilly-
flowers. Suddenly, her heart soars, she
blushes, she paces anxiously, she becomes
happy for no reason. Days later, she meets
a young man and is smitten with love. Are
the two events not connected? But by what
bizarre connection, by what twist in time,
by what reversed logic?

In this acausal world, scientists are
helpless. Their predictions become post-
dictions- Their equations become justifica-

. 40

tions, their logic, illogic. Scientists turn
reckless and mutter like gamblers who can-
not stop betting. Scientists are buffoons,
not because they are rational but because
the cosmos is irrational. Or perhaps it is not
because the cosmos is irrational but be-
cause they are rational. Who can say which,
in an acausal world?

In this world, artists are joyous. Unpre-
dictability is the life of their paintings, their
music, their novels. They delight in events
not forecasted, happenings without expla-
nation, retrospective.

Most people have learned how to live in
the moment. The argument goes that if the
past has uncertain effect on-the present,
there is no need to dwell on the past. And if
the present has little effect on the future,
present actions need not be weighed for
their consequence. Rather, each act is an
island in time, to be judged on its own. Fam-
ilies comfort a dying uncle not because of a
likely inheritance, but because he is loved

• 41

at that moment. Employees are hired not
because of their resumes, but because of
their good sense in interviews. Clerks tram-
pled by their bosses fight back at each in-
sult, with no fear for their future. It is a
world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity.
It is a world in which every word spoken
speaks just to that moment, every glance
given has only one meaning, each touch has
no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of
immediacy.

• A  MAY  I ©05

It is evening. Two couples, Swiss and Eng-
lish, sit at their usual table in the dining
room of the Hotel San Murezzan in St. Mo-
ritz. They meet here yearly, for the month
of June, to socialize and take the waters.
The men are handsome in their black ties
and their cummerbunds, the women beau-

• 43

tiful in their evening gowns. The waiter
walks across the fine wood floor, takes their
orders.

"I gather the weather will be fair tomor-
row," says the woman with the brocade in
her hair. "That will be a relief." The others
nod. "The baths do seem so much more
pleasant when it's sunny. Although I sup-
pose it shouldn't matter."

"Running Lightly is four-to-one in Dub-
lin," says the admiral. "I'd back him if I
had the money." He winks at his wife-

"I'll give you five-to-one if you're game,"
says the other man.

The women break their dinner rolls, but-
ter them, carefully place their knives on the
side of the butter plates. The men keep
their eyes on the entrance.

"I love the lace of the serviettes," says
the woman with the brocade in her hair. She
takes her napkin and unfolds it, then folds
it again.

• 44

"You say that every year, Josephine,"
the other woman says and smiles.

Dinner comes. Tonight, they dine on lob-
ster Bordelaise. asparagus, steak, white
wine.

"How is yours done?" says the woman
with the brocade, looking at her husband.

"Splendidly. And yours?"

"A bit spicy. Like last week's."

"And, Admiral, how's the steak?"

"Never turned down a side of beef," says
the admiral happily.

"Wouldn't notice you've been at the lar-
der much," says the other man. "You've
not put on one kilo since last year, or even
for the last ten."

"Perhaps you can't notice, but she can,"
says the admiral, and winks at his wife.

"I may be mistaken, but it seems the
rooms are a bit draftier this year," says the
admiral's wife. The others nod, continue
eating the lobster and the steak, "I always

. 45

sleep best in cool rooms, but if it's drafty I
wake up with a cough."

"Put the sheet over your head," says the
other woman.

The admiral's wife says yes but looks
puzzled.

"Tuck your head under the sheet and the
draft won't bother you," repeats the other
woman. "It happens to me all the time in
Grindelwald. I have a window by my bed. I
can leave it open if I put the sheet over my
nose. Keeps the cold air out."

The woman with the brocade shifts in her
chair, uncrosses her legs beneath the table.

Coffee comes. The men retire to the
smoking room, the women to the wicker
swing on the great deck outside.

"And how's the business since last
year?" asks the admiral.

"Can't complain," says the other man,
sipping his brandy.

"The children?"

"Grown a year."

• 46

On the porch, the women swing and look
into the night.

And it is just the same in every hotel, in
every house, in every town. For in this
world, time does pass, but little happens.
Just as little happens from year to year, lit-
tle happens from month to month, day to
day. If time and the passage of events are
the same, then time moves barely at all. If
time and events are not the same, then it is
only people who barely move. If a person
holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers
unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions,
he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.

• 47




NTERLUDE

Einstein and Besso walk slowly down
Speichergasse in the late afternoon. It is a
quiet time of day. Shopkeepers are drop-
ping their awnings and getting out their bi-
cycles. From a second-floor window, a
mother calls to her daughter to come home
and prepare dinner.

• 51

Einstein has been explaining to his friend
Besso why he wants to know time. But he
says nothing of his dreams. Soon they will
be at Besso's house. Sometimes Einstein
stays there through dinner, and Mileva has
to come get him, toting their infant. That
usually happens when Einstein is possessed
with a new project, as he is now, and all
through dinner he twitches his leg under the
table. Einstein isn't good dinner company.

Einstein leans over to Besso, who is also
short, and says, "I want to understand time
because I want to get close to The Old

One."

Besso nods in accord. But there are prob-
lems, which Besso points out. For one, per-
haps The Old One is not interested in
getting close to his creations, intelligent or
not. For another, it is not obvious that
knowledge is closeness. For yet another,
this time project could be too big for a
twenty-six-year-old.

On the other hand, Besso thinks that his
friend might be capable of anything. Al-
ready this year, Einstein has completed his
Ph.D. thesis, finished one paper on photons
and another on Brownian motion. The cur-
rent project actually began as an investiga-
tion of electricity and magnetism, which,
Einstein suddenly announced one day,
would require a reconception of time. Besso
is dazzled by Einstein's ambition.

For a while, Besso leaves Einstein alone
with his thoughts. He wonders what Anna
has cooked for dinner and looks down a side
street where a silver boat on the Aare glints
in the low sun. As the two men walk, their
footsteps softly click on the-cobblestones.
They have known each other since their stu-
dent days in Zurich.

"Got a letter from my brother in Rome,"
says Besso. "He's coming to visit for a
month. Anna likes him because he always
compliments her figure." Einstein smiles

• 53

absently. "I won't be able to see you after
work while my brother is here. Will you be
all right?"

"What?" asks Einstein.

"I won't be able to see you much while
my brother is here," repeats Besso. "Will
you be all right by yourself?"

"Sure," says Einstein. "Don't worry
about me."

Ever since Besso has known him, Ein-
stein has been self-sufficient. His family
moved around when he was growing up.
Like Besso, he is married, but he hardly
goes anywhere with his wife. Even at home,
he sneaks away from Mileva in the middle
of the night and goes to the kitchen to cal-
culate long pages of equations, which he
shows Besso the next day at the office.

Besso eyes his friend curiously. For such
a recluse and an introvert, this passion for
closeness seems odd.

. 54

• 8  MAY 1905

The world will end on 26 September 1907.
Everyone knows it.

In Berne, it is just as in all cities and
towns. One year before the end, schools
close their doors. Why learn for the future,
with so brief a future? Delighted to have
lessons finished forever, children play hide-

• 55

and-seek in the arcades of Kramgasse, run
down Aarstrasse and skip stones on the
river, squander their coins on peppermint
and licorice. Their parents let them do what

they wish.

One month before the end, businesses
close. The Bundeshaus halts its proceed-
ings. The federal telegraph building on
Speichergasse falls silent. Likewise the
watch factory on Laupenstrasse, the mill
past the Nydegg Bridge. What need is there
for commerce and industry with so little
time left?

At the outdoor cafes on Amthausgasse,
people sit and sip coffee and talk easily of
their lives. A liberation fills the air. Just
now, for example, a woman with brown eyes
is speaking to her mother about how little
time they spent together in her childhood,
when the mother worked as a seamstress.
The mother and daughter are now planning
a trip to Lucerne. They will fit two lives into
the little time remaining. At another table,

• 56

a man tells a friend about a hated supervisor
who often made love to the man's wife in
the office coatroom after hours and threat-
ened to fire him if he or his wife caused any
trouble. But what is there to fear now? The
man has settled with the supervisor and rec-
onciled with his wife. Relieved at last, he
stretches his legs and lets his eyes roam
over the Alps.

At the bakery on Marktgasse, the thick-
fingered baker puts dough in the oven and
sings. These days people are polite when
they order their bread. They smile and pay
promptly, for money is losing its value.
They chat about picnics in Fribourg, cher-
ished time listening to their children's sto-
ries, long walks in mid-afternoon. They do
not seem to mind that the world will soon
end, because everyone shares the same
fate. A world with one month is a world of
equality.

One day before the end, the streets swirl
in laughter. Neighbors who have never spo-

• 57

ken greet each other as friends, strip off
their clothing and bathe in the fountains.
Others dive in the Aare. After swimming
until exhausted, they lie in the thick grass
along the river and read poetry. A barrister
and a postal clerk who have never before
met walk arm in arm through the Botan-
ischer Garten, smile at the cyclamens and
asters, discuss art and color. What do their
past stations matter? In a world of one day
they are equal.

In the shadows of a side street off Aar-
bergergasse, a man and a woman lean
against a wall, drink beer, and eat smoked
beef. Afterwards, she will take him to her
apartment. She is married to someone else,
but for years she has wanted this man, and
she will satisfy her wants on this last day of

the world.

A few souls gallop through the streets
doing good deeds, attempting to correct
their misdeeds of the past. Theirs are the
only unnatural smiles.

• 58

One minute before the end of the world,
everyone gathers on the grounds of the
Kunstmuseum. Men, women, and children
form a giant circle and hold hands. No one
moves. No one speaks. It is so absolutely
quiet that each person can hear the heart-
beat of the person to his right or his left.
This is the last minute of the world. In the
absolute silence a purple gentian in the gar-
den catches the light on the underside of its
blossom, glows for a moment, then dis-
solves among the other flowers. Behind the
museum, the needled leaves of a larch
gently shudder as a breeze moves through
the tree. Farther back, through the forest,
the Aare reflects sunlight, bends the light
with each ripple on its skin. To the east, the
tower of St. Vincent's rises into sky, red
and fragile, its stonework as delicate as
veins of a leaf. And higher up, the Alps,
snow-tipped, blending white and purple,
large and silent. A cloud floats in the sky. A
sparrow flutters. No one speaks.

* 59

In the last seconds, it is as if everyone
has leaped off Topaz Peak, holding hands.
The end approaches like approaching
ground. Cool air rushes by, bodies are
weightless. The silent horizon yawns for
miles. And below, the vast blanket of snow
hurtles nearer and nearer to envelop this
circle ofpinkness and life.

60

0  MAY  1905

It is late afternoon, and, for a brief moment,
the sun nestles in a snowy hollow of the
Alps, fire touching ice. The long slants of
light sweep from the mountains, cross a
restful lake, cast shadows in a town below.

In many ways, it is a town of one piece
and a whole. Spruce and larch and arolla

• 61

pine form a gentle border north and west,
while higher up are fire lilies, purple gen-
tians, alpine columbines. In pastures near
the town graze cattle for making butter,
cheese, and chocolate. A little textile mill
produces silks, ribbons, cotton clothes. A
church bell rings. The smell of smoked beef
fills the streets and alleyways.

On closer look, it is a town in many
pieces. One neighborhood lives in the fif-
teenth century. Here, the storeys of the
rough-stone houses are joined by outdoor
stairs and galleries, while the upper gables
gape and open to the winds- Moss grows
between the stone slabs of the roofs. An-
other section of the village is a picture
of the eighteenth century. Burnt red tiles
lie angled on the straight-lined roofs. A
church has oval windows, corbeled loggias,
granite parapets. Another section holds the
present, with arcades lining every avenue,
metal railings on the balconies, facades
made of smooth sandstone. Each section

• 62

of the village is fastened to a different
time.

On this late afternoon, in these few mo-
ments while the sun is nestled in a snowy
hollow of the Alps, a person could sit beside
the lake and contemplate the texture of
time. Hypothetically, time might be smooth
or rough, prickly or silky, hard or soft. But
in this world, the texture of time happens to
be sticky. Portions of towns become stuck
in some moment in history and do not get
out. So, too, individual people become
stuck in some point of their lives and do not
get free.

Just now, a man in one of the houses
below the mountains is talking to a friend.
He is talking of his school days at the gym-
nasium. His certificates of excellence in
mathematics and history hang on the walls,
his sporting medals and trophies occupy the
bookshelves. Here, on a table, is a photo-
graph of him as captain of the fencing team,
embraced by other young men who have

• 63

since gone to university, become engineers
and bankers, gotten married. There, in the
dresser, his clothes from twenty years, the
fencing blouse, the tweed pants now too
close around the waist. The friend, who has
been trying for years to introduce the man
to other friends, nods courteously, struggles
silently to breathe in the tiny room.

In another house, a man sits alone at his
table, laid out for two. Ten years ago, he sat
here across from his father, was unable to
say that he loved him, searched through the
years of his childhood for some moment of
closeness, remembered the evenings that
silent man sat alone with his book, was un-
able to say that he loved him, was unable to
say that he loved him. The table is set with
two plates, two glasses, two forks, as on
that last night. The man begins to eat, can-
not eat, weeps uncontrollably. He never
said that he loved him.

In another house, a woman looks fondly
at a photograph of her son, young and smil-

• 64

ing and bright. She writes to him at a long-
defunct address, imagines the happy letters
back. When her son knocks at the door, she
does not answer. When her son, with his
puffy face and glassy eyes, calls up to her
window for money, she does not hear him.
When her son, with his stumbling walk,
leaves notes for her, begging to see her, she
throws out the notes unopened. When her
son stands in the night outside her house,
she goes to bed early. In the morning, she
looks at his photograph, writes adoring let-
ters to a long-defunct address.

A spinster sees the face of the young man
who loved her in the mirror of her bedroom,
on the ceiling of the bakery, on the surface
of the lake, in the sky.

The tragedy of this world is that no one is
happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or of
joy. The tragedy of this world is that every-
one is alone. For a life in the past cannot be
shared with the present. Each person who
gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.

• 65

M AY  I 905

Walking on the Marktgasse, one sees a
wondrous sight. The cherries in the fruit
stalls sit aligned in rows, the hats in the
millinery shop are neatly stacked, the flow-
ers on the balconies are arranged in perfect
symmetries, no crumbs lie on the bakery

. 66

floor, no milk is spilled on the cobblestones
of the buttery. No thing is out of place.

When a gay party leaves a restaurant, the
tables are more tidy than before. When a
wind blows gently through the street, the
street is swept clean, the dirt and dust
transported to the edge of town. When
waves of water splash against the shore, the
shore rebuilds itself. When leaves fall from
the trees, the leaves line up like birds in
V-formation. When clouds form faces, the
faces stay. When a pipe lets smoke into a
room, the soot drifts toward a corner of the
room, leaving clear air. Painted balconies
exposed to wind and rain become brighter
in time. The sound of thunder makes a bro-
ken vase reform itself, makes the fractured
shards leap up to the precise positions
where they fit and bind. The fragrant odor
of a passing cinnamon cart intensifies, not
dissipates, with time.

Do these happenings seem strange?

• 67

In this world, the passage of time brings
increasing order. Order is the law of nature,
the universal trend, the cosmic direction. If
time is an arrow, that arrow points toward
order. The future is pattern, organization,
union, intensification; the past, random-
ness, confusion, disintegration, dissipation.

Philosophers have argued that without a
trend toward order, time would lack mean-
ing. The future would be indistinguishable
from the past. Sequences of events would
be just so many random scenes from a thou-
sand novels. History would be indistinct,
like the mist slowly gathered by treetops in
evening.

In such a world, people with untidy
houses lie in their beds and wait for the
forces of nature to jostle the dust from their
windowsills and straighten the shoes in
their closets. People with untidy affairs may
picnic while their calendars become orga-
nized, their appointments arranged, their
accounts balanced. Lipsticks and brushes

• S8

and letters may be tossed into purses with
the satisfaction that they will sort them-
selves out automatically. Gardens need
never be pruned, weeds never uprooted.
Desks become neat by the end of the
day. Clothes on the floor in the evening lie
on chairs in the morning. Missing socks
reappear.

If one visits a city in spring, one sees an-
other wondrous sight. For in springtime the
populace become sick of the order in their
lives. In spring, people furiously lay waste
to their houses. They sweep in dirt, smash
chairs, break windows. On Aarbergergasse,
or any residential avenue in spring, one
hears the sounds of broken glass, shouting,
howling, laughter. In spring, people meet at
unarranged times, burn their appointment
books, throw away their watches, drink
through the night. This hysterical abandon
continues until summer, when people re-
gain their senses and return to order.

• 69

A  MAY  1905

There is a place where time stands still.
Raindrops hang motionless in air. Pendu-
lums of clocks float mid-swing. Dogs raise
their muzzles in silent howls. Pedestrians
are frozen on the dusty streets, their legs
cocked as if held by strings. The aromas of

• 70

dates, mangoes, coriander, cumin are sus-
pended in space.

As a traveler approaches this place from
any direction, he moves more and more
slowly. His heartbeats grow farther apart,
his breathing slackens, his temperature
drops, his thoughts diminish, until he
reaches dead center and stops. For this is
the center of time. From this place, time
travels outward in concentric circles—at
rest at the center, slowly picking up speed
at greater diameters.

Who would make pilgrimage to the cen-
ter of time? Parents with children, and
lovers.

And so, at the place where time stands
still, one sees parents clutching their chil-
dren, in a frozen embrace that will never let
go. The beautiful young daughter with blue
eyes and blond hair will never stop smiling
the smile she smiles now, will never lose
this soft pink glow on her cheeks, will never

• 71

grow wrinkled or tired, will never get in-
jured, will never unlearn what her parents
have taught her, will never think thoughts
that her parents don't know, will never
know evil, will never tell her parents that
she does not love them, will never leave her
room with the view of the ocean, will never
stop touching her parents as she does now.

And at the place where time stands still,
one sees lovers kissing in the shadows of
buildings, in a frozen embrace that will
never let go. The loved one will never take
his arms from where they are now, will
never give back the bracelet of memories,
will never journey far from his lover, will
never place himself in danger in self-sacri-
fice, will never fail to show his love, will
never become jealous, will never fall in love
with someone else, will never lose the pas-
sion of this instant in time.

One must consider that these statues are
illuminated by only the most feeble red

• 72

light, for light is diminished almost to noth-
ing at the center of time, its vibrations
slowed to echoes in vast canyons, its inten-
sity reduced to the faint glow of fireflies.

Those not quite at dead center do indeed
move, but at the pace of glaciers. A brush
of the hair might take a year, a kiss might
take a thousand. While a smile is returned,
seasons pass in the outer world. While a
child is hugged, bridges rise. While a good-
bye is said, cities crumble and are for-
gotten.

And those who return to the outer world
. . . Children grow rapidly, forget the cen-
turies-long embrace from their parents,
which to them lasted but seconds. Children
become adults, live far from their parents,
live in their own houses, learn ways of their
own, suffer pain, grow old. Children curse
their parents for trying to hold them forever,
curse time for their own wrinkled skin and
hoarse voices. These now old children also

• 73

want to stop time, but at another time. They
want to freeze their own children at the cen-
ter of time.

Lovers who return find their friends are
long gone. After all, lifetimes have passed.
They move in a world they do not recognize.
Lovers who return still embrace in the shad-
ows of buildings, but now their embraces
seem empty and alone. Soon they forget the
centuries-long promises, which to them
lasted only seconds. They become jealous
even among strangers, say hateful things to
each other, lose passion, drift apart, grow
old and alone in a world they do not know.

Some say it is best not to go near the
center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness,
but it is noble to live life, and without time
there is no life. Others disagree. They
would rather have an eternity of content-
ment, even if that eternity were fixed and
frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.

• 74

5  MAY  I 905

Imagine a world in which there is no time.
Only images.

A child at the seashore, spellbound by
her first glimpse of the ocean. A woman
standing on a balcony at dawn, her hair
down, her loose sleeping silks, her bare
feet, her lips. The curved arch of the arcade

• 75

near the Zahringer Fountain on Kramgasse,
sandstone and iron. A man sitting in the
quiet of his study, holding the photograph
of a woman, a pained look on his face. An
osprey framed in the sky, its wings out-
stretched, the sun rays piercing between
feathers. A young boy sitting in an empty
auditorium, his heart racing as if he were
on stage. Footprints in snow on a winter is-
land. A boat on the water at night, its lights
dim in the distance, like a small red star in
the black sky. A locked cabinet of pills. A
leaf on the ground in autumn, red and gold
and brown, delicate. A woman crouching in
the bushes, waiting by the house of her es-
tranged husband, whom she must talk to. A
soft rain on a spring day, on a walk that is
the last walk a young man will take in the
place that he loves. Dust on a windowsill. A
stall of peppers on Marktgasse, the yellow
and green and red. Matterhorn, the jagged
peak of white pushing into the solid blue
sky, the green valley and the log cabins.

• 76

The eye of a needle. Dew on leaves, crystal,
opalescent. A mother on her bed, weeping,
the smell of basil in the air. A child on a
bicycle in the Kleine Schanze, smiling the
smile of a lifetime. A tower of prayer, tall
and octagonal, open balcony, solemn, sur-
rounded by arms. Steam rising from a take
in early morning. An open drawer. Two
friends at a cafe, the lamplight illuminating
one friend's face, the other in shadow. A cat
watching a bug on the window. A young
woman on a bench, reading a letter, tears
of joy in her green eyes. A great field, lined
with cedar and spruce. Sunlight, in long an-
gles through the window in late afternoon.
A massive tree fallen, roots sprawling in air,
bark, limbs still green. The white of a sail-
boat, with the wind behind it, sails billowed
like wings of a giant white bird. A father
and son alone at a restaurant, the father sad
and staring down at the tablecloth. An oval
window, looking out on fields of hay, a
wooden cart, cows, green and purple in the

. 77

afternoon light. A broken bottle on the floor,
brown liquid in the crevices, a woman with
red eyes. An old man in the kitchen, cook-
ing breakfast for his grandson, the boy gaz-
ing out the window at a white painted
bench. A worn book lying on a table beside
a dim lamp. The white on water as a wave
breaks, blown by wind. A woman lying on
her couch with wet hair, holding the hand
of a man she will never see again. A train
with red cars, on a great stone bridge with
graceful arches, a river underneath, tiny
dots that are houses in the distance. Dust
motes floating in sunlight through a window.
The thin skin in the middle of a neck, thin
enough to see the pulse of blood under-
neath- A man and woman naked, wrapped
around each other. The blue shadows of
trees in a full moon. The top of a mountain
with a strong steady wind, the valley falling
away on all sides, sandwiches of beef and
cheese. A child wincing from his father's
slap, the father's lips twisted in anger, the

• 78

child not understanding. A strange face in
the mirror, gray at the temples. A young
man holding a telephone, startled at what
he is hearing. A family photograph, the par-
ents young and relaxed, the children in ties
and dresses and smiling. A tiny light, far
through a thicket of trees. The red at sun-
set. An eggshell, white, fragile, unbroken.
A blue hat washed up on shore. Roses cut
and adrift on the river beneath the bridge,
with a chateau rising. Red hair of a lover,
wild, mischievous, promising. The purple
petals of an iris, held by a young woman. A
room of four walls, two windows, two beds,
a table, a lamp, two people with red faces,
tears. The first kiss. Planets caught in
space, oceans, silence. A bead of water on
the window. A coiled rope. A yellow brush.

• 79

• 20  MAY  1905

A glance along the crowded booths on Spi-
talgasse tells the story. The shoppers walk
hesitantly from one stall to the next, discov-
ering what each shop sells. Here is tobacco,
but where is mustard seed? Here are sugar
beets, but where is cod? Here is goat's milk,
but where is sassafras? These are not tour-

• 80

ists in Berne on their first visit. These are
the citizens of Berne. Not a man can re-
member that two days back he bought
chocolate at a shop named Ferdinand's, at
no. 17, or beef at the Hot delicatessen,
at no. 36. Each shop and its specialty must
be found anew. Many walk with maps, di-
recting the map-holders from one arcade to
the next in the city they have lived in all
their lives, in the street they have traveled
for years. Many walk with notebooks, to
record what they have learned while it is
briefly in their heads. For in this world, peo-
ple have no memories.

When it is time to return home at the end
of the day, each person consults his address
book to learn where he lives. The butcher,
who has made some unattractive cuts in his
one day of butchery, discovers that his
home is no. 29 Nageligasse. The stock-
broker, whose short-term memory of the
market has produced some excellent invest-
ments, reads that he now lives at no. 89

• 81

Bundesgasse. Arriving home, each man
finds a woman and children waiting at the
door, introduces himself, helps with the
evening meal, reads stories to his children.
Likewise, each woman returning from her
job meets a husband, children, sofas,
lamps, wallpaper, china patterns. Late at
night, the wife and husband do not linger at
the table to discuss the day's activities,
their children's school, the bank account.
Instead, they smile at one another, feel the
warming blood, the ache between the legs
as when they met the first time fifteen years
ago. They find their bedroom, stumble past
family photographs they do not recognize,
and pass the night in lust. For it is only habit
and memory that dulls the physical passion.
Without memory, each night is the first
night, each morning is the first morning,
each kiss and touch are the first.

A world without memory is a world of the
present. The past exists only in books, in
documents. In order to know himself, each

• 82

person carries his own Book of Life, which
is filled with the history of his life. By read-
ing its pages daily, he can relearn the iden-
tity of his parents, whether he was born
high or born low, whether he did well or did
poorly in school, whether he has accom-
plished anything in his life. Without his
Book of Life, a person is a snapshot, a two-
dimensional image, a ghost. In the leafy
cafes on the Brunngasshalde, one hears an-
guished shrieking from a man who just read
that he once killed another man. sighs from
a woman who just discovered she was
courted by a prince, sudden boasting from
a woman who has learned that she received
top honors from her university ten years
prior. Some pass the twilight hours at their
tables reading from their Books of Life; oth-
ers frantically fill its extra pages with the
day's events.

With time, each person's Book of Life
thickens until it cannot be read in its en-
tirety. Then comes a choice. Elderly men

• 83

and women may read the early pages, to
know themselves as youths; or they may
read the end, to know themselves in later
years.

Some have stopped reading altogether.
They have abandoned the past. They have
decided that it matters not if yesterday they
were rich or poor, educated or ignorant,
proud or humble, in love or empty-hearted
—no more than it matters how a soft wind
gets into their hair. Such people look you
directly in the eye and grip your hand
firmly. Such people walk with the limber
stride of their youth. Such people have
learned how to live in a world without
memory.

• 84

•22  MAY  IQ05

Dawn. A salmon fog floats through the city,
carried on the breath of the river. The sun
waits beyond the Nydegg Bridge, throws its
long, reddened spikes along Kramgasse to
the giant clock that measures time, illumi-
nates the underside of balconies. Sounds of

• 85

morning drift through the streets like the
smell of bread. A child wakes and cries for
her mother. An awning creaks quietly as the
milliner arrives at his shop on Marktgasse.
An engine whines on the river. Two women
talk softly beneath an arcade.

As the city melts through fog and the
night, one sees a strange sight. Here an old
bridge is half-finished. There, a house has
been removed from its foundations. Here, a
street veers east for no obvious reason.
There, a bank sits in the middle of the gro-
cery market. The lower stained-glass win-
dows of St. Vincent's portray religious
themes, the uppers switch abruptly to a pic-
ture of the Alps in spring. A man walks
briskly toward the Bundeshaus, stops sud-
denly, puts his hands to his head, shouts
excitedly, turns, and hurries in the opposite
direction.

This is a world of changed plans, of sud-
den opportunities, of unexpected visions.
For in this world, time flows not evenly but

• 86

fitfully and, as consequence, people receive
fitful glimpses of the future.

When a mother receives a sudden vision
of where her son will live, she moves her
house to be near him. When a builder sees
the place of commerce in the future, he
twists his road in that direction. When a
child briefly glimpses herself as a florist,
she decides not to attend university. When
a young man gets a vision of the woman he
will marry, he waits for her. When a solici-
tor catches sight of himself in the robes of a
judge in Zurich, he abandons his job in
Berne. Indeed, what sense is there in con-
tinuing the present when one has seen the
future?

For those who have had their vision, this
is a world of guaranteed success. Few proj-
ects are started that do not advance a ca-
reer. Few trips are taken that do not lead to
the city of destiny. Few friends are made
who will not be friends in the future. Few
passions are wasted.

• 87

For those who have not had their vision,
this is a world of inactive suspense. How
can one enroll in university without knowing
one's future occupation? How can one set
up an apothecary on Marktgasse when a
similar shop might do better on Spitalgasse?
How can one make love to a man when he
may not remain faithful? Such people sleep
most of the day and wait for their vision to

come.

Thus, in this world of brief scenes from
the future, few risks are taken. Those who
have seen the future do not need to take
risks, and those who have not yet seen the
future wait for their vision without taking

risks.

Some few who have witnessed the future
do all they can to refute it. A man goes to
tend the museum gardens in Neuchatel
after he has seen himself a barrister in Lu-
cerne. A youth embarks on a vigorous sail-
ing voyage with his father after a vision that
his father will die soon of heart trouble. A

young woman allows herself to fall in love
with one man even though she has seen that
she will marry another. Such people stand
on their balconies at twilight and shout that
the future can be changed, that thousands
of futures are possible. In time, the gar-
dener in Neuchatel gets tired of his low
wages, becomes a barrister in Lucerne. The
father dies of his heart, and his son hates
himself for not forcing his father to keep to
his bed. The young woman is deserted by
her lover, marries a man who will let her
have solitude with her pain.

Who would fare better in this world of
fitful time? Those who have seen the future
and live only one life? Or those who have
not seen the future and wait to live life? Or
those who deny the future and live two
lives?

• 89

• 29  MAY  1905

A man or a woman suddenly thrust into this
world would have to dodge houses and
buildings. For all is in motion. Houses and
apartments, mounted on wheels, go careen-
ing through Bahnhofplatz and race through
the narrows of Marktgasse, their occupants
shouting from second-floor windows. The

• 90

Post Bureau doesn't remain on Postgasse,
but flies through the city on rails, like a
train. Nor does the Bundeshaus sit quietly
on Bundesgasse. Everywhere the air whines
and roars with the sound of motors and lo-
comotion- When a person comes out of his
front door at sunrise, he hits the ground
running, catches up with his office building,
hurries up and down flights of stairs, works
at a desk propelled in circles, gallops home
at the end of the day. No one sits under a
tree with a book, no one gazes at the ripples
on a pond, no one lies in thick grass in the
country. No one is still.

Why such a fixation on speed? Because
in this world time passes mere slowly for
people in motion. Thus everyone travels at
high velocity, to gain time.

The speed effect was not noticed until
the invention of the internal combustion en-
gine and the beginnings of rapid transpor-
tation. On 8 September 1889, Mr. Randolph
Whig of Surrey took his mother-in-law to

• 91

London at high speed in his new motor car.
To his delight, he arrived in half the ex-
pected time, a conversation having scarcely
begun, and decided to look into the phe-
nomenon. After his researches were pub-
lished, no one went slowly again.

Since time is money, financial consider-
ations alone dictate that each brokerage
house, each manufacturing plant, each gro-
cer's shop constantly travel as rapidly as
possible, to achieve advantage over their
competitors. Such buildings are fitted with
giant engines of propulsion and are never at
rest. Their motors and crankshafts roar far
more loudly than the equipment and people
inside them.

Likewise, houses are sold not just on
their size and design, but also on speed. For
the faster a house travels, the more slowly
the clocks tick inside and the more time
available to its occupants. Depending on the
speed, a person in a fast house could gain
several minutes on his neighbors in a single

• 92

day. This obsession with speed carries
through the night, when valuable time could
be lost, or gained, while asleep. At night,
the streets are ablaze with lights, so that
passing houses might avoid collisions,
which are always fatal- At night, people
dream of speed, of youth, of opportunity.

In this world of great speed, one fact has
been only slowly appreciated. By logical
tautology, the motional effect is all relative.
Because when two people pass on the
street, each perceives the other in motion,
just as a man in a train perceives the trees
to fly by his window. Consequently, when
two people pass on the street, each sees the
other's time flow more slowly .-Each sees the
other gaining time. This reciprocity is mad-
dening. More maddening still, the faster
one travels past a neighbor, the faster the
neighbor appears to be traveling.

Frustrated and despondent, some people
have stopped looking out their windows.
With the shades drawn, they never know

* 93

how fast they are moving, how fast their
neighbors and competitors are moving.
They rise in the morning, take baths, eat
plaited bread and ham, work at their desks,
listen to music, talk to their children, lead
lives of satisfaction.

Some argue that only the giant clock
tower on Kramgasse keeps the true time,
that it alone is at rest. Others point out that
even the giant clock is in motion when
viewed from the river Aare, or from a cloud.

. 94




NTERLUDE

Einstein and Besso sit at an outdoor cafe on
Amthausgasse. It is noon, and Besso has
talked his friend into leaving the office and
getting some air.

"You don't look so good," says Besso.
Einstein shrugs his shoulders, almost

• 97

embarrassed. Minutes go by, or perhaps
only seconds.

'"'I'm making progress,'' says Einstein.

"I can tell," says Besso, studying with
alarm the dark circles under his friend's
eyes. It is also possible that Einstein has
stopped eating again. Besso remembers
when he looked just like Einstein does now,
but for a different reason. It was in Zurich.
Besso's father died suddenly, in his late for-
ties. Besso, who had never gotten along
with his father, felt grief-stricken and
guilty. His studies came to a halt. To Bes-
so's surprise, Einstein brought him into his
lodgings and took care of him for a month.

Besso sees Einstein now and wishes he
could help, but of course Einstein does not
need help. To Besso, Einstein is without
pain. He seems oblivious of his body and
the world.

"I'm making progress," Einstein says
again. "I think the secrets will come. Did

« 98

you see the paper by Lorentz I left on your
desk?"

"Ugly."

"Yes. Ugly and ad hoc. It couldn't possi-
bly be right. The electromagnetic experi-
ments are telling us something much more
fundamental." Einstein scratches his mus-
tache and hungrily eats the crackers on the
table.

For some time the two men are silent.
Besso puts four cubes of sugar in his coffee
while Einstein gazes at the Bernese Alps,
far off in the distance and barely visible
through the haze. In actuality, Einstein is
looking through the Alps, into space. He
sometimes gets migraines from such far-
sighted vision and must then lie on his green
slip-covered sofa with his eyes closed.

"Anna wants you and Mileva to come for
dinner next week," says Besso. "You can
bring the baby if you need to." Einstein
nods.

• 99

Besso has another coffee, sights a young
woman at a neighboring table and tucks in
his shirt. He is almost as disheveled as Ein-
stein, who by this time is staring at galaxies.
Besso indeed worries about his friend, al-
though he has seen him this way in the past.
Perhaps the dinner will be a diversion.

"Saturday night," says Besso.

"I'm engaged Saturday night," Einstein
says unexpectedly. "But Mileva and Hans
Albert can come."

Besso laughs and says, "Saturday night
at eight." He is puzzled why his friend ever
got married in the first place. Einstein him-
self can't explain it. He once admitted to
Besso that he had hoped Mileva would at
least do the housework, but it hasn't worked
out that way. The unmade bed, the dirty
laundry, the piles of dishes are just as be-
fore. And there have been even more chores
with the baby.

"What did you think about the Rasmus-
sen application?" asks Besso.

• 100

"The bottle centrifuge?"

"Yes."

"The shaft will vibrate too much to be
useful," says Einstein, "but the idea is
clever. I think it would work with a flexible
mounting that could find its own rotation

axis."

Besso knows what that means. Einstein
will work up a new design himself and send
it to Rasmussen without requesting pay-
ment or even acknowledgment. Often, the
lucky recipients of Einstein's suggestions
don't even know who revises their patent
applications. Not that Einstein doesn't
enjoy recognition. A few years ago, when he
saw the issue of Annalen der Physik bearing
his first paper, he imitated a rooster for fully
five minutes.

• 101

• Z  JUNE  1905

A mushy, brown peach is lifted from the
garbage and placed on the table to pinken.
It pinkens, it turns hard, it is carried in a
shopping sack to the grocer's, put on a
shelf, removed and crated, returned to the
tree with pink blossoms. In this world, time
flows backward-

102

A withered woman sits in a chair hardly
moving, her face red and swollen, her eye-
sight almost gone, her hearing gone, her
breathing scratchy like the rustle of dead
leaves on stones. Years pass. There are few
visitors. Gradually, the woman gains
strength, eats more, loses the heavy lines in
her face. She hears voices, music. Vague
shadows gather themselves into light and
lines and images of tables, chairs, people's
faces. The woman makes excursions from
her small house, goes to the market, occa-
sionally visits a friend, drinks tea at cafes in
good weather. She takes needles and yarn
from the bottom drawer of her dresser and
crochets. She smiles when she likes her
work. One day her husband, with whitened
face, is carried into her house. In hours, his
cheeks become pink, he stands stooped
straightens out, speaks to her. Her

over,

house becomes their house. They eat meals
together, tell jokes, laugh. They travel
through the country, visit friends. Her

• 103

white hair darkens with brown streaks, her
voice resonates with new tones. She goes to
a retirement party at the gymnasium, be-
gins teaching history. She loves her stu-
dents, argues with them after class. She
reads during her lunch hour and at night.
She meets friends and discusses history and
current events. She helps her husband with
the accounts at his chemist's store, walks
with him at the foot of the mountains,
makes love to him. Her skin becomes soft,
her hair long and brown, her breasts firm.
She sees her husband for the first time in
the library of the university, returns his
glances. She attends classes. She graduates
from the gymnasium, with her parents and
sister crying tears of happiness. She lives at
home with her parents, spends hours with
her mother walking through the woods by
their house, helps with the dishes. She tells
stories to her younger sister, is read to at
night before bed, grows smaller. She
crawls. She nurses.

. 104

A middle-aged man walks from the stage
of an auditorium in Stockholm, holding a
medal. He shakes hands with the president
of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, re-
ceives the Nobel Prize for physics, listens
to the glorious citation. The man thinks
briefly about the award he is to receive. His
thoughts quickly shift twenty years to the
future, when he will work alone in a small
room with only pencil and paper. Day and
night he will work, making many false
starts, filling the trash basket with unsuc-
cessful chains of equations and logical se-
quences. But some evenings he will return
to his desk knowing he has learned things
about Nature that no one has ever known,
ventured into the forest and found light,
gotten hold of precious secrets. On those
evenings, his heart will pound as if he were
in love. The anticipation of that rush of the
blood, that time when he will be young and
unknown and unafraid of mistakes, over-
powers him now as he sits in his chair in the

• 105

auditorium in Stockholm, at great distance
from the tiny voice of the president an-
nouncing his name.

A man stands at the graveside of his
friend, throws a handful of dirt on the cof-
fin, feels the cold April rain on his face. But
he does not weep. He looks ahead to the
day when his friend's lungs will be strong,
when his friend will be out of his bed and
laughing, when the two of them will drink
ale together, go sailing, talk. He does not
weep. He waits longingly for a particular
day he remembers in the future when he
and his friend will have sandwiches on a low
flat table, when he will describe his fear of
growing old and unloved and his friend will
nod gently, when the rain will slide down
the glass of the window.

• 106

•3 JUNE  1905

Imagine a world in which people live just
one day. Either the rate of heartbeats and
breathing is speeded up so that an entire
lifetime is compressed to the space of one
turn of the earth on its axis—or the rotation
of the earth is slowed to such a low gear that
one complete revolution occupies a whole

• 107

human lifetime. Either interpretation is
valid. In either case, a man or woman sees
one sunrise, one sunset.

In this world, no one lives to witness the
change of the seasons. A person born in De-
cember in any European country never sees
the hyacinth, the lily, the aster, the cycla-
men, the edelweiss, never sees the leaves
of the maple turn red and gold, never hears
the crickets or the warblers. A person born
in December lives his life cold. Likewise, a
person born in July never feels a snowflake
on her cheek, never sees the crystal on a
frozen lake. never hears the squeak of boots
in fresh snow. A person born in July lives
her life warm. The variety of seasons is
learned about in books.

In this world, a life is planned by light. A
person born at sunset spends the first half
of his life in nighttime. learns indoor trades
like weaving and watchmaking, reads a
great deal, becomes intellectual, eats too
much, is frightened of the vast dark out-

. 108

doors, cultivates shadows. A person born at
sunrise learns outdoor occupations like
farming and masonry, becomes physically
fit, avoids books and mental projects, is
sunny and confident, is afraid of nothing.

Both sunset and sunrise babies flounder
when the light changes. When sunrise
comes, those born at sunset are over-
whelmed by the sudden sight of trees and
oceans and mountains, are blinded by day-
light, return to their houses and cover their
windows, spend the rest of their lives in half
light. When sunset comes, those born at
sunrise wail at the disappearance of birds in
the sky, the layered shades of blue in the
sea, the hypnotic movement of clouds. They
wail and refuse to learn the dark crafts in-
doors, lie on the ground and look up and
struggle to see what they once saw.

In this world in which a human life spans
but a single day, people heed time like cats
straining to hear sounds in the attic. For
there is no time to lose. Birth, schooling,

• 109

love affairs, marriage, profession, old age
must all be fit within one transit of the sun,
one modulation of light. When people pass
on the street, they tip their hats and hurry
on- When people meet at houses, they po-
litely inquire of each other's health and then
attend to their own affairs. When people
gather at cafes, they nervously study the
shifting of shadows and do not sit long.
Time is too precious. A life is a moment in
season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one
autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid
edge of a closing door's shadow. A life is a
brief movement of arms and of legs-
When old age comes, whether in light or
in dark, a person discovers that he knows
no one. There hasn't been time. Parents
have passed away at midday or midnight.
Brothers and sisters have moved to distant
cities, to seize passing opportunities.
Friends have changed with the changing
angle of the sun. Houses, towns, jobs, lov-
ers have all been planned to accommodate

• no

a life framed in one day. A person in old age
knows no one. He talks to people, but he
does not know them. His life is scattered in
fragments of conversation, forgotten by
fragments of people. His life is divided into
hasty episodes, witnessed by few. He sits at
his bedside table, listens to the sound of his
running bath, and wonders whether any-
thing exists outside of his mind. Did that
embrace from his mother really exist? Did
that laughing rivalry with his school friend
really exist? Did that first tingle of lovemak-
ing really exist? Did his lover exist? Where
are they now? Where are they now, as he
sits at his bedside table, listening to the
sound of his running bath, vaguely perceiv-
ing the change in the light.

• 5 JUNE  !905

From a description of the location and ap-
pearance of rivers, trees, buildings, people,
all would seem common. The Aare bends to
the east, is sprinkled with boats carrying
potatoes and sugar beets. Arolla pines dot
the foothills of the Alps, the trees' cone-

• 112

laden branches curving upward like arms of
a candelabrum. Three-storey houses with
red-tiled roofs and dormer windows sit qui-
etly on Aarstrasse, overlooking the river.
Shopkeepers on Marktgasse wave their
arms at all passersby, hawking handker-
chiefs, fine watches, tomatoes, sour bread,
and fennel. The smell of smoked beef wafts
down the avenues. A man and woman stand
on their small balcony on Kramgasse, argu-
ing and smiling while they argue. A young
girl walks slowly through the garden at the
Kleine Schanze- The large red-wood door of
the Post Bureau opens and closes, opens
and closes. A dog barks.

But seen through the eyes of any one per-
son the scene is quite different. For exam-
ple, one woman sitting on the banks of the
Aare sees the boats pass by at great speed,
as if moving on skates across ice. To an-
other, the boats appear sluggish, barely
rounding the bend in the whole of the after-

• N3

noon. A man standing on Aarstrasse looks
at the river to discover that the boats travel
first forwards, then backwards,

These discrepancies are repeated else-
where. Just now a chemist is walking back
to his shop on Kochergasse, having taken
his noon meal. This is the picture he sees:

two women gallop past him, churning their
arms wildly and talking so rapidly that he
cannot understand them. A solicitor runs
across the street to an appointment some-
where, his head jerking this way and that
like a small animal's. A ball tossed by a
child from a balcony hurtles through the air
like a bullet, a blur barely visible. The resi-
dents of no. 82, just glimpsed through their
window, fly through the house from one
room to the next, sit down for an instant,
shovel down a meal in one minute, disap-
pear, reappear. Clouds overhead come to-
gether, move apart, come together again
with the pace of successive exhales and
inhale s-

• 114

On the other side of the street, the baker
observes the same scene. He notes that two
women leisurely stroll up the street, stop to
talk to a solicitor, then walk on. The solici-
tor goes into an apartment at no. 82. sits
down at a table for lunch, walks to the first-
floor window where he catches a ball thrown
by a child on the street.

To yet a third person standing under a
lamppost on Kochergasse. the events have
no movement at all: two women, a solicitor,
a ball, a child, three barges, an apartment
interior are captured like paintings in the
bright summer light.

And it is similar with any sequence of
events, in this world where time is a sense.

In a world where time is a sense, like
sight or like taste, a sequence of episodes
may be quick or may be slow, dim or in-
tense, salty or sweet, causal or without
cause, orderly or random, depending on the
prior history of the viewer. Philosophers sit
in cafes on Amthausgasse and argue

• 115

whether time really exists outside human
perception. Who can say if an event hap-
pens fast or slow, causally or without cause,
in the past or the future? Who can say if
events happen at all? The philosophers sit
with half-opened eyes and compare their
aesthetics of time.

Some few people are born without any
sense of time. As consequence, their sense
of place becomes heightened to excruciat-
ing degree. They lie in tall grass and are
questioned by poets and painters from all
over the world. These time-deaf are be-
seeched to describe the precise placement
of trees in the spring, the shape of snow on
the Alps, the angle of sun on a church, the
position of rivers, the location of moss, the
pattern of birds in a flock. Yet the time-deaf
are unable to speak what they know. For
speech needs a sequence of words, spoken
in time.

• 116

• 9 JUNE  I 905

Suppose that people live forever.

Strangely, the population of each city
splits in two: the Laters and the Nows.

The Laters reason that there is no hurry
to begin their classes at the university, to
learn a second language, to read Voltaire or
Newton, to seek promotion in their jobs, to

' 117

fall in love, to raise a family. For all these
things, there is an infinite span of time. In
endless time, all things can be accom-
plished. Thus all things can wait. Indeed,
hasty actions breed mistakes. And who can
argue with their logic? The Laters can be
recognized in any shop or promenade. They
walk an easy gait and wear loose-fitting
clothes. They take pleasure in reading
whatever magazines are open, or rearrang-
ing furniture in their homes, or slipping into
conversation the way a leaf falls from a tree.
The Laters sit in cafes sipping coffee and
discussing the possibilities of life.

The Nows note that with infinite lives,
they can do all they c.in imagine. They will
have an infinite number of careers, they will
marry an infinite number of times, they
will change their politics infinitely. Each per-
son will be a lawyer, a bricklayer, a writer,
an accountant, a painter, a physician, a
farmer. The Nows are constantly reading
new books, studying new trades, new lan-

• 118

guages. In order to taste the infinities of life,
they begin early and never go slowly. And
who can question their logic? The Nows are
easily spotted. They are the owners of the
cafes, the college professors, the doctors
and nurses, the politicians, the people who
rock their legs constantly whenever they sit
down. They move through a succession of
lives, eager to miss nothing. When two
Nows chance to meet at the hexagonal pi-
laster of the Zahringer Fountain, they com-
pare the lives they have mastered,
exchange information, and glance at their
watches. When two Laters meet at the
same location, they ponder the future and
follow the parabola of the water with their
eyes.

The Nows and Laters have one thing in
common. With infinite life comes an infinite
list of relatives. Grandparents never die,
nor do great-grandparents, great-aunts and
great-uncles, great-great-aunts, and so on,
back through the generations, all alive and

• 119

offering advice. Sons never escape from the
shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters
of their mothers. No one ever comes into
his own.

When a man starts a business, he feels
compelled to talk it over with his parents
and grandparents and great-grandparents,
ad infinitum, to learn from their errors. For
no new enterprise is new. All things have
been attempted by some antecedent in the
family tree. Indeed, all things have been ac-
complished. But at a price. For in such a
world, the multiplication of achievements
is partly divided by the diminishment of
ambition.

And when a daughter wants guidance
from her mother, she cannot get it undi-
luted. Her mother must ask her mother,
who must ask her mother, and so on for-
ever. Just as sons and daughters cannot
make decisions themselves, they cannot
turn to parents for confident advice. Par-

• 120

ents are not the source of certainty. There
are one million sources.

Where every action must be verified one
million times, life is tentative. Bridges
thrust halfway over rivers and then abruptly
stop. Buildings rise nine stories high but
have no roofs. The grocer's stocks of ginger,
salt, cod, and beef change with every
change of mind, every consultation. Sen-
tences go unfinished. Engagements end just
days before weddings- And on the avenues
and streets, people turn their heads and
peer behind their backs, to see who might
be watching.

Such is the cost of immortality. No per-
son is whole. No person is free. Over time,
some have determined that the only way to
live is to die. In death, a man or a woman is
free of the weight of the past. These few
souls, with their dear relatives looking on,
dive into Lake Constance or hurl them-
selves from Monte Lema, ending their infi-

• 121

nite lives. In this way, the finite has
conquered the infinite, millions of autumns
have yielded to no autumns, millions of
snowfalls have yielded to no snowfalls, mil-
lions of admonitions have yielded to none.

122

0 JUNE  I 905

Suppose that time is not a quantity but a
quality, like the luminescence of the night
above the trees just when a rising moon has
touched the treeline. Time exists, but it
cannot be measured.

Just now, on a sunny afternoon, a woman
stands in the middle of the Bahnhofplatz,

• 123

waiting to meet a particular man. Some
time ago, he saw her on the train to Fri-
bourg, was entranced, and asked to take
her to the Grosse Schanze gardens. From
the urgency in his voice and the look in his
eyes, the woman knew that he meant soon.
So she waits for him, not impatiently, pass-
ing the time with a book. Some time later,
perhaps on the following day, he arrives,
they lock arms, walk to the gardens, stroll
by the groupings of tulips, roses, martagon
lilies, alpine columbines, sit on a white
cedar bench for an unmeasurable time.
Evening comes, marked by a change in the
light, a reddening of the sky. The man and
woman follow a winding path of small white
stones to a restaurant on a hill. Have they
been together a lifetime, or only a moment?
Who can say?

Through the leaded windows of the res-
taurant, the mother of the man spots him
sitting with the woman. She wrings her
hands and whines, for she wants her son at

• 124

home. She sees him as a child. Has any
time passed since he lived at home, played
catch with his father, rubbed his mother's
back before bed? The mother sees that boy-
ish laugh, caught in candlelight through the
leaded windows of the restaurant, and she
is certain that no time has passed, that her
son, her child, belongs with her at home.
She waits outside, wringing her hands,
while her son grows older quickly in the in-
timacy of this evening, of this woman he has
met.

Across the street, on Aarbergergasse,
two men argue about a shipment of phar-
maceuticals. The receiver is angry because
the pharmaceuticals, which- have a short
shelf life, have arrived aged and inactive.
He expected them long ago and, in fact, has
been waiting for them at the train station for
some time, through comings and goings of
the gray lady at no. 27 Spitalgasse, through
many patterns of light on the Alps, through
alterations of the air from warm to cool to

t25

wet. The sender, a short fat man with a
mustache, is insulted. He crated the chem-
icals at his factory in Basle as soon as he
heard the awnings open over the market.
He carried the boxes to the train while the
clouds were still in the same positions as
when the contract was signed. What more
could he do?

In a world where time cannot be mea-
sured, there are no clocks, no calendars, no
definite appointments. Events are triggered
by other events, not by time. A house is
begun when stone and lumber arrive at the
building site. The stone quarry delivers
stone when the quarryman needs money.
The barrister leaves home to argue a case
at the Supreme Court when his daughter
makes a joke about his growing bald. Edu-
cation at the gymnasium in Berne is con-
cluded when the student has passed his
examinations. Trains leave the station at
the Bahnhofplatz when the cars are filled
with passengers.

. 126

In a world where time is a quality, events
are recorded by the color of the sky, the
tone of the boatman's call on the Aare, the
feeling of happiness or fear when a person
comes into a room. The birth of a baby, the
patent of an invention, the meeting of two
people are not fixed points in time, held
down by hours and minutes. Instead,
events glide through the space of the imag-
ination, materialized by a look, a desire.
Likewise, the time between two events is
long or short, depending on the background
of contrasting events, the intensity of illu-
mination, the degree of light and shadow,
the view of the participants.

Some people attempt to quantify time, to
parse time, to dissect time. They are turned
to stone. Their bodies stand frozen on street
corners, cold, hard, and heavy. In time,
these statues are taken to the quarryman,
who cuts them up evenly in equal sections
and sells them for houses when he needs
the money.

• 127

JUNE  1905

On the corner of Kramgasse and Theater-
platz there is a small outdoor cafe with six
blue tables and a row of blue petunias in the
chefs window box, and from this cafe one
can see and hear the whole of Berne. People
drift through the arcades on Kramgasse,
talking and stopping to buy linen or wrist-

• 128

watches or cinnamon; a group of eight-year-
old boys, let out for morning recess from
the grammar school on Kochergasse, follow
their teacher in single file through the
streets to the banks of the Aare; smoke
rises lazily from a mill just over the river;

water gurgles from the spouts of the Zahrin-
ger Fountain; the giant clock tower on
Kramgasse strikes the quarter hour.

If, for the moment, one ignores the
sounds and the smells of the city, a remark-
able sight will be seen. Two men at the cor-
ner of Kochergasse are trying to part but
cannot, as if they would never see each
other again. They say goodbye, start to walk
in opposite directions, then hurry back to-
gether and embrace. Nearby, a middle-aged
woman sits on the stone rim of a fountain,
weeping quietly. She grips the stone with
her yellow stained hands, grips it so hard
that the blood rushes from her hands, and
she stares in despair at the ground. Her
loneliness has the permanence of a person

• 129

who believes she will never see other people
again. Two women in sweaters stroll down
Kramgasse, arm in arm, laughing with such
abandon that they could be thinking no
thought of the future.

In fact, this is a world without future. In
this world, time is a line that terminates at
the present, both in reality and in the mind.
In this world, no person can imagine the
future. Imagining the future is no more pos-
sible than seeing colors beyond violet: the
senses cannot conceive what may lie past
the visible end of the spectrum. In a world
without future, each parting of friends is a
death. In a world without future, each lone-
liness is final. In a world without future,
each laugh is the last laugh. In a world with-
out future, beyond the present lies nothing-
ness, and people cling to the present as if
hanging from a cliff.

A person who cannot imagine the future
is a person who cannot contemplate the re-
sults of his actions. Some are thus para-

• 130

lyzed into inaction. They lie in their beds
through the day, wide awake but afraid to
put on their clothes. They drink coffee and
look at photographs. Others leap out of bed
in the morning, unconcerned that each ac-
tion leads into nothingness, unconcerned
that they cannot plan out their lives. They
live moment to moment, and each moment
is full. Still others substitute the past for the
future. They recount each memory, each
action taken, each cause and effect, and are
fascinated by how events have delivered
them to this moment, the last moment of
the world, the termination of the line that is
time.

In the little cafe with the six outdoor ta-
bles and the row of petunias, a young man
sits with his coffee and pastry. He has been
idly observing the street. He has seen the
two laughing women in sweaters, the mid-
dle-aged woman at the fountain, the two
friends who keep repeating goodbyes. As he
sits, a dark rain cloud makes its way over

• 131

the city. But the young man remains at his
table. He can imagine only the present, and
at this moment the present is a blackening
sky but no rain. As he sips the coffee and
eats the pastry, he marvels at how the end
of the world is so dark. Still there is no rain,
and he squints at his paper in the dwindling
light, trying to read the last sentence that
he will read in his life. Then, rain. The
young man goes inside, takes off his wet
jacket, marvels at how the world ends in
rain. He discusses food with the chef, but
he is not waiting for the rain to stop because
he is not waiting for anything. In a world
without future, each moment is the end of
the world. After twenty minutes, the storm
cloud passes, the rain stops, and the sky
brightens. The young man returns to his
table, marvels that the world ends in sun-
light.

• 132

5 JUNE  1905

In this world, time is a visible dimension.
Just as one may look off in the distance and
see houses, trees, mountain peaks that are
landmarks in space, so one may look out in
another direction and see births, marriages,
deaths that are signposts in time, stretching
off dimly into the far future. And just as one

• 133

may choose whether to stay in one place or
run to another, so one may choose his mo-
tion along the axis of time. Some people fear
traveling far from a comfortable moment.
They remain close to one temporal location,
barely crawling past a familiar occasion.
Others gallop recklessly into the future,
without preparation for the rapid sequence
of passing events.

At the polytechnic in Zurich, a young
man and his mentor sit in a small library,
quietly discussing the young man's doctoral
work. It is the month of December, and a
fire blazes in the fireplace with the white
marble mantel. The young man and his
teacher sit in pleasant oak chairs next to a
round table, strewn with pages of calcula-
tions. The research has been difficult. Each
month for the past eighteen months, the
young man has met his professor here in
this room, asked his professor for guidance
and hope, gone away to work for another
month, come back with new questions. The

134

professor has always provided answers.
Again today, the professor explains. While
his teacher is speaking, the young man
gazes out the window, studies the way snow
clings to the spruce beside the building,
wonders how he will manage on his own
once he has received his degree. Sitting in
his chair, the young man steps hesitantly
forward in time, only minutes into the fu-
ture, shudders at the cold and uncertainty.
He pulls back. Much better to stay in this
moment, beside the warm fire, beside the
warm help of his mentor. Much better to
stop movement in time. And so, on this day
in the small library, the young man remains.
His friends pass by, look in -briefly to see
him stopped in this moment, continue on to
the future at their own paces.

At no. 27 Viktoriastrasse, in Berne, a
young woman lies on her bed. The sounds
of her parents' fighting drift up to her room.
She covers her ears and stares at a photo-
graph on her table, a photograph of herself

• 135

as a child, squatting at the beach with her
mother and father. Against one wall of her
room stands a chestnut bureau. A porcelain
wash basin sits on the bureau. The blue
paint on the wall is peeling and cracked. At
the foot of her bed, a suitcase is open, half-
filled with clothes. She stares at the photo-
graph, then out into time. The future is
beckoning. She makes up her mind. With-
out finishing her packing, she rushes out of
her house, this point of her life, rushes
straight to the future. She rushes past one
year ahead, five years, ten years, twenty
years, finally puts on the brakes. But she is
moving so fast that she cannot slow down
until she is fifty years old. Events have
raced by her vision and barely been seen. A
balding solicitor who got her pregnant and
then left. A blur of a year at the university.
A small apartment in Lausanne for some
period of time. A girlfriend in Fribourg.
Scattered visits to her parents gone gray.
The hospital room where her mother died.

. 136

The damp apartment in Zurich, smelling of
garlic, where her father died. A letter from
her daughter, living somewhere in England.

The woman catches her breath. She is
fifty years old. She lies on her bed, tries to
remember her life, stares at a photograph
of herself as a child, squatting at the beach
with her mother and father.

• 137

7  JUNE  1905

It is Tuesday morning in Berne. The thick-
fingered baker on Marktgasse is shouting at
a woman who has not paid her last bill, is
flailing his arms while she quietly puts her
new purchase of zwieback in her bag. Out-
side the baker's shop, a child is skating
after a ball tossed from a first-floor window,

• 138

the child's skates clicking on the stone
street. On the east end of Marktgasse,
where the street joins Kramgasse, a man
and woman are standing close in the
shadow of an arcade. Two men are walking
past with newspapers under their arms.
Three hundred meters to the south, a war-
bler is flying lazily over the Aare.

The world stops.

The baker's mouth halts in mid-sentence.
The child floats in mid-stride, the ball hangs
in the air. The man and woman become
statues under the arcade. The two men be-
come statues, their conversation stopped as
if the needle of a phonograph had been
lifted. The bird freezes in flight, fixed like a
stage prop suspended over the river.

A microsecond later, the world starts
again.

The baker continues his harangue as if
nothing had happened. So, too, the child
races after the ball. The man and woman
press closer together. The two men con-

• 139

tinue debating the rise in the beef market.
The bird flaps its wings and continues its
arc over the Aare.

Minutes later, the world stops again.
Then starts again. Stops. Starts.

What world is this? In this world time is
not continuous. In this world time is discon-
tinuous- Time is a stretch of nerve fibers:

seemingly continuous from a distance but
disjointed close up, with microscopic gaps
between fibers. Nervous action flows
through one segment of time, abruptly
stops, pauses, leaps through a vacuum, and
resumes in the neighboring segment.

So tiny are the disconnections in time
that a single second would have to be mag-
nified and dissected into one thousand parts
and each of those parts into one thousand
parts before a single missing part of time
could be spotted. So tiny are the disconnec-
tions in time that the gaps between seg-
ments are practically imperceptible. After
each restart of time, the new world looks

• 140

just like the old. The positions and motions
of clouds appear exactly the same, the tra-
jectories of birds, the flow of conversations,
thoughts.

The segments of time fit together almost
perfectly, but not quite perfectly. On occa-
sion, very slight displacements occur. For
example, on this Tuesday in Berne, a young
man and a young woman, in their late twen-
ties, stand beneath a street lamp on Ger-
berngasse. They met one month ago. He
loves her desperately, but he has already
been crushed by a woman who left him
without warning, and he is frightened of
love- He must be sure with this woman. He
studies her face, pleads silently for her true
feelings, searches for the smallest sign, the
slightest movement of her brow, the vaguest
reddening of her cheeks, the moistness of
her eyes.

In truth, she loves him back, but she can-
not put her love in words. Instead, she
smiles at him, unaware of his fear. As they

• 141

stand beneath the street lamp, time stops
and restarts. Afterwards, the tilt of their
heads is precisely the same, the cycle of
their heartbeats shows no alteration. But
somewhere in the deep pools of the wom-
an's mind, a dim thought has appeared that
was not there before- The young woman
reaches for this new thought, into her un-
conscious, and as she does so a gossamer
vacancy crosses her smile. This slight hesi-
tation would be invisible to any but the clos-
est scrutiny, yet the urgent young man has
noticed it and taken it for his sign. He tells
the young woman that he cannot see her
again, returns to his small apartment on
Zeughausgasse, decides to move to Zurich
and work in his uncle's bank. The young
woman walks slowly home from the lamp-
post on Gerberngasse and wonders why the
young man did not love her.

• 142




INTERLUDE

Einstein and Besso sit in a small fishing boat
at anchor in the river. Besso is eating a
cheese sandwich while Einstein puffs on his
pipe and slowly reels in a lure.

"Do you usually catch anything here,,
smack in the middle of the Aare?" asks

• 145

Besso, who has never been fishing with Ein-
stein before.

"Never," answers Einstein, who contin-
ues to cast.

"Maybe we should move closer to the
shore, by those reeds."

"We could," says Einstein. "Never
caught anything there, either. You got an-
other sandwich in that bag?"

Besso hands Einstein a sandwich and a
beer. He feels slightly guilty for asking his
friend to take him along on this Sunday
afternoon. Einstein was planning to go fish-
ing alone, in order to think.

"Eat," says Besso. "You need a break
from pulling in all those fish."

Einstein lowers his lure into Besso''s lap
and starts eating. For a while, the two
friends are silent. A small red skiff passes
by, making waves, and the fishing boat bobs
up and down.

After lunch, Einstein and Besso remove
the seats in the boat and lie on their backs,

• 146

looking up at the sky. For today, Einstein
has given up fishing.

"What shapes do you see in the clouds,
Michele?" asks Einstein.

"I see a goat chasing a man who is
frowning."

"You are a practical man. Michele." Ein-
stein gazes at the clouds but is thinking
of his project. He wants to tell Besso about
his dreams, but he cannot bring himself
to do it.

"I think you will succeed with your the-
ory of time," says Besso. "And when you
do, we will go fishing and you will explain it
to me. When you become famous, you'll re-
member that you told me first, here in this
boat."

Einstein laughs, and the clouds rock
back and forth with his laughter.

• 147

8 J u N E  1905

Emanating from a cathedral in the center of
Rome, a line of ten thousand people
stretches radially outward, like the hand of
a giant clock, out to the edge of the city,
and beyond. Yet these patient pilgrims are
directed inward, not out. They are waiting
their turn to enter the Temple of Time.

• 148

They are waiting to bow to the Great Clock.
They have traveled long distances, even
from other countries, to visit this shrine.
Now they stand quietly as the line creeps
forward through immaculate streets. Some
read from their prayer books. Some hold
children. Some eat figs or drink water. And
as they wait, they seem oblivious to the pas-
sage of time. They do not glance at their
watches, for they do not own watches- They
do not listen for chimes from a clock tower,
for clock towers do not exist. Watches and
clocks are forbidden, except for the Great
Clock in the Temple of Time.

Inside the temple, twelve pilgrims stand
in a circle around the Great Clock, one pil-
grim for each hour mark on the huge config-
uration of metal and glass. Inside their
circle, a massive bronze pendulum swings
from a height of twelve meters, glints in the
candlelight. The pilgrims chant with each
period of the pendulum, chant with each
measured increment of time. The pilgrims

• 149

chant with each minute subtracted from
their lives. This is their sacrifice.

After an hour by the Great Clock, the
pilgrims depart and another twelve file
through the tall portals. This procession
continued for centuries.

Long ago, before the Great Clock, time
was measured by changes in heavenly
bodies: the slow sweep of stars across the
night sky, the arc of the sun and variation
in light, the waxing and waning of the moon,
tides, seasons. Time was measured also by
heartbeats, the rhythms of drowsiness and
sleep, the recurrence of hunger, the men-
strual cycles of women, the duration of
loneliness. Then, in a small town in Italy,
the first mechanical clock was built. People
were spellbound. Later they were horrified.
Here was a human invention that quantified
the passage of time, that laid ruler and com-
pass to the span of desire, that measured
out exactly the moments of a life. It was
magical, it was unbearable, it was outside

150

natural law. Yet the clock could not be ig-
nored. It would have to be worshipped. The
inventor was persuaded to build the Great
Clock. Afterwards, he was killed and all
other clocks were destroyed. Then the pil-
grimages began.

In some ways, life goes on the same as
before the Great Clock. The streets and al-
leyways of towns sparkle with the laughter
of children. Families gather in good times to
eat smoked beef and drink beer. Boys and
girls glance shyly at each other across the
atrium of an arcade. Painters adorn houses
and buildings with their paintings. Philoso-
phers contemplate. But every breath, every
crossing of legs, every romantic desire has
a slight gnarliness that gets caught in the
mind. Every action, no matter how little, is
no longer free. For all people know that in a
certain cathedral in the center of Rome
swings a massive bronze pendulum exqui-
sitely connected to ratchets and gears,
swings a massive bronze pendulum that

• 151

measures out their lives. And each person
knows that at some time he must confront
the loose intervals of his life, must pay hom-
age to the Great Clock. Each man and
woman must journey to the Temple of
Time.

Thus, on any day, at any hour of any day,
a line of ten thousand stretches radially out-
ward from the center of Rome, a line of pil-
grims waiting to bow to the Great Clock.
They stand quietly, reading prayer books,
holding their children. They stand quietly,
but secretly they seethe with their anger.
For they must watch measured that which
should not be measured. They must watch
the precise passage of minutes and de-
cades. They have been trapped by their own
inventiveness and audacity. And they must
pay with their lives.

• 152

•20 JUNE  1905

In this world, time is a local phenomenon.
Two clocks close together tick at nearly the
same rate. But clocks separated by distance
tick at different rates, the farther apart the
more out of step. What holds true for clocks
holds true also for the rate of heartbeats,
the pace of inhales and exhales, the move-

• 153

ment of wind in tall grass. In this world,
time flows at different speeds in different
locations.

Since commerce requires a temporal
union, commerce between cities does not
exist. The separations between cities are
too great. For if the time needed to count a
thousand Swiss franc notes is ten minutes
in Berne and one hour in Zurich, how can
the two cities do business together? In con-
sequence, each city is alone. Each city is an
island. Each city must grow its own plums
and its cherries, each city must raise its
own cattle and pigs, each city must build its
own mills. Each city must live on its own.

On occasion, a traveler will venture from
one city to another. Is he perplexed? What
took seconds in Berne might take hours in
Fribourg, or days in Lucerne. In the time
for a leaf to fall in one place, a flower could
bloom in another. In the duration of a thun-
derclap in one place, two people could fall
in love in another. In the time that a boy

• 154

grows into a man, a drop of rain might slide
down a windowpane. Yet the traveler is un-
aware of these discrepancies. As he moves
from one timescape to the next, the travel-
er's body adjusts to the local movement of
time. If every heartbeat, every swing of a
pendulum, every unfolding of wings of a
cormorant are all harmonized together, how
could a traveler know that he has passed to
a new zone of time? If the pace of human
desires stays proportionally the same with
the motion of waves on a pond, how could
the traveler know that something has
changed?

Only when the traveler communicates
with the city of departure does he realize he
has entered a new domain of time. Then he
learns that while he has been gone his cloth-
ing shop has wildly prospered and diversi-
fied, or his daughter has lived her life and
grown old. or perhaps his neighbor's wife
has just completed the song she was singing
when he left his front gate. It is then the

• 155

traveler learns that he is cut off in time, as
well as in space. No traveler goes back to
his city of origin.

Some people delight in isolation. They
argue that their city is the grandest of cities,
so why would they want communion with
other cities. What silk could be softer than
the silk from their own factories? What
cows could be stronger than the cows in
their own pastures? What watches could be
finer than the watches in their own shops?
Such people stand on their balconies at
morning, as the sun rises over the moun-
tains, and never look past the outskirts of
town.

Others want contact. They endlessly
question the rare traveler who wanders into
their city, ask him about places he has
been, ask him about the color of other sun-
sets, the height of people and animals, the
languages spoken, the customs of court-
ship, inventions. In time, one of the curious
sets out to see for himself, leaves his city to

• 156

explore other cities, becomes a traveler. He
never returns-

This world of the locality of time, this
world of isolation yields a rich variety oflife-
For without the blending of cities, life can
develop in a thousand different ways. In one
city, people may live together closely, in an-
other far apart. In one city, people may
dress modestly, in another they may wear
no clothes at all. In one city, people may
mourn the death of enemies, in another they
may have neither enemies nor friends. In
one city, people may walk, in another they
may ride in vehicles of strange invention.
Such variety and more exists in regions only
one hundred kilometers apart. Just beyond
a mountain, just beyond a river lies a differ-
ent life. Yet these lives do not speak to each
other. These lives do not share. These lives
do not nurture each other. The abundances
caused by isolation are stifled by the same
isolation.

. 157

•22  JUNE  1905

It is graduation day at Agassiz Gymnasium.
One hundred twenty-nine boys in white
shirts and brown ties stand on marble steps
and fidget in the sun while the headmaster
reads out their names. On the front lawn,
parents and relatives listen halfheartedly,
stare at the ground, doze in their chairs.

. 158

The valedictorian delivers his address in a
monotone. He smiles weakly when handed
his medal and drops it in a bush after the
ceremony. No one congratulates him. The
boys, their mothers, fathers, sisters walk
listlessly to houses on Amthausgasse and
Aarstrasse, or to the waiting benches near
the Bahnhofplatz, sit after the noon meal,
play cards to pass time, nap. Dress clothes
are folded and put away for another occa-
sion. At the end of the summer, some of the
boys go to university in Berne or in Zurich,
some work in their fathers' businesses,
some travel to Germany or France in search
of a job. These passages take place indiffer-
ently, mechanically, like the-back-and-forth
swing of a pendulum, like a chess game in
which each move is forced. For in this
world, the future is fixed.

This is a world in which time is not fluid,
parting to make way for events. Instead,
time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extend-
ing infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing

• 159

the future as well as the past. Every action.
every thought, every breath of wind, every
flight of birds is completely determined,
forever.

In the performing hall of the Stadttlieater.
a ballerina moves across the stage and takes
to the air. She hangs for a moment and then
alights on the floor. Saut, batterie, saut.
Legs cross and flutter, arms unfold into an
open arch. Now she prepares for a pir-
ouette, right leg moving back to fourth po-
sition. pushing off on one foot, arms coming
in to speed the turn. She is precision. She
is a clock. In her mind, while she dances,
she thinks she should have floated a little
on one leap, but she cannot float because
her movements are not hers. Every interac-
tion of her body with floor or with space is
predetermined to a billionth of an inch.
There is no room to float. To float would
indicate a slight uncertainty, while there is
no uncertainty. And so she moves around
the stage with clocklike inevitability, makes

• 160

no unexpected leaps or dares, touches down
precisely on the chalk, does not dream of
unplanned cabrioles.

In a world of fixed future, life is an infi-
nite corridor of rooms, one room lit at each
moment, the next room dark but prepared.
We walk from room to room, look into the
room that is lit, the present moment, then
walk on. We do not know the rooms ahead,
but we know we cannot change them. We
are spectators of our lives.

The chemist who works at the pharma-
ceutical on Kochergasse walks through the
town on his afternoon break. He stops at the
shop selling clocks on Marktgasse, buys a
sandwich at the bakery next door, continues
toward the woods and the river. He owes
his friend money but prefers to buy himself
presents. As he walks, admiring his new
coat, he decides he can pay his friend back
the next year, or perhaps never at all. And
who can blame him? In a world of fixed fu-
ture, there can be no right or wrong. Right

• 161

and wrong demand freedom of choice, but
if each action is already chosen, there can
be no freedom of choice. In a world of fixed
future, no person is responsible. The rooms
are already arranged. The chemist thinks
all these thoughts as he steps along the path
through the Brunngasshalde and breathes
the moist air of the forest. He almost per-
mits himself a smile, so pleased is he at his
decision. He breathes the moist air and
feels oddly free to do as he pleases, free in
a world without freedom.

. 162

•25 JUNE  1905

Sunday afternoon. People stroll down Aar-
strasse, wearing Sunday clothes and full of
Sunday dinner, speaking softly beside the
murmur of the river. The shops are closed.
Three women walk down Marktgasse, stop
to read advertisements, stop to peer in win-
dows, walk on quietly. An innkeeper scrubs

• 163

his steps, sits and reads a paper, leans
against the sandstone wall and shuts his
eyes. The streets are sleeping. The streets
are sleeping, and through the air there floats
music from a violin.

In the middle of a room with books on
tables, a young man stands and plays his
violin. He loves his violin. He makes a
gentle melody. And as he plays, he looks
out to the street below, notices a couple
close together, looks at them with deep
brown eyes, and looks away. He stands so
still. His music is the only movement, his
music fills the room. He stands so still and
thinks about his wife and infant son, who
occupy the room downstairs.

And as he plays, another man, identical,
stands in the middle of a room and plays his
violin. The other man looks to the street
below, notices a couple close together,
looks away, and thinks about his wife and
son. And as he plays, a third man stands
and plays his violin. Indeed, there are a

. 164

fourth and fifth, there is a countless number
of young men standing in their rooms and
playing violins- There is an infinite number
of melodies and thoughts. And this one
hour, while the young men play their vio-
lins, is not one hour but many hours. For
time is like the light between two mirrors,
Time bounces back and forth, producing an
infinite number of images, of melodies, of
thoughts. It is a world of countless copies.

As he thinks, the first man feels the oth-
ers. He feels their music and their thoughts.
He feels himself repeated a thousand times,
feels this room with books repeated a thou-
sand times. He feels his thoughts repeated-
Should he leave his wife? What about that
moment in the library of the polytechnic
when she looked at him across the desk?
What about her thick brown hair? But what
comfort has she given him? What solitude,
besides this hour to play his violin?

He feels the others. He feels himself re-
peated a thousand times, feels this room re-

• 165

peated a thousand times, feels his thoughts
repeated. Which repetition is his own, his
true identity, his future self? Should he
leave his wife? What about that moment in
the library of the polytechnic? What com-
fort has she given him? What solitude, be-
sides this hour to play his violin? His
thoughts bounce back and forth a thousand
times between each copy of himself, grow
weaker with each bounce. Should he leave
his wife? What comfort has she given him?
What solitude? His thoughts grow dimmer
with each reflection. What comfort has she
given him? What solitude? His thoughts
grow dimmer until he hardly remembers
what the questions were, or why. What sol-
itude? He looks out to the empty street and
plays. His music floats and fills the room,
and when the hour passes that was count-
less hours, he remembers only music.

* 166

• 27 JUNE  1905

Every Tuesday, a middle-aged man brings
stones from the quarry east of Berne to tl?e
masonry on Hodlerstrasse. He has a wife,
two children grown and gone, a tubercular
brother who lives in Berlin. He wears a gray
wool coat in all seasons, works in the quarry
until after dark, has dinner with his wife

* 167

and goes to bed, tends his garden on Sun-
days. And on Tuesday mornings, he loads
his truck with stones and comes to town.

When he comes, he stops on Marktgasse
to purchase flour and sugar. He spends a
half-hour sitting quietly in the back pew of
St. Vincent's. He stops at the Post Bureau
to send a letter to Berlin. And as he passes
people on the street, his eyes are on the
ground. Some people know him, try to catch
his eye or say hello. He mumbles and walks
on. Even when he delivers his stones to
Hodlerstrasse, he cannot look the mason in
the eye. Instead, he looks aside, he talks to
the wall in answer to the mason's friendly
chatter, he stands in a corner while his
stones are weighed.

Forty years ago in school, one afternoon
in March, he urinated in class. He could not
hold it in. Afterwards, he tried to stay in his
chair, but the other boys saw the puddle
and made him walk around the room, round
and round. They pointed at the wet spot on

• i6S

his pants and howled. That day the sunlight
looked like streams of milk as it poured
whitely through the windows and spilled
onto the floorboards of the room. Two dozen
jackets hung from hooks beside the door.
Chalk marks stretched across the black-
board, the names of Europe's capitals. The
desks had swivel tops and drawers. His had
"Johann" carved in the upper right. The air
was moist and close from the steam pipes.
A clock with big red hands read 2:15- And
the boys hooted at him, hooted at him as
they chased him around the room, with the
wet spot on his pants. They hooted and
called him "bladder baby, bladder baby,
bladder baby."

That memory has become his life. When
he wakes up in the morning, he is the boy
who urinated in his pants. When he passes
people on the street, he knows they see the
wet spot on his pants. He glances at his
pants and looks away. When his children
visit, he stays within his room and talks to

• 169

them through the door. He is the boy who
could not hold it in.

But what is the past? Could it be, the
firmness of the past is just illusion? Could
the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of im-
ages that shift with each disturbance of a
sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought? And if
the shift is everywhere, how would we
know?

In a world of shifting past, one morning
the quarryman awakes and is no more the
boy who could not hold it in. That afternoon
in March long gone was just another after-
noon. On that afternoon forgotten, he sat in
class, recited when the teacher called him,
went skating with the other boys after
school. Now he owns a quarry. He has nine
suits of clothes. He buys fine pottery for his
wife and takes long walks with her on Sun-
day afternoons. He visits friends on Amt-
hausgasse and Aarstrasse. smiles at them
and shakes their hand. He sponsors con-
certs at the Casino.

• 170

One morning he wakes up and . . .
As the sun rises over the city, ten thou-
sand people yawn and take their toast and
coffee. Ten thousand fill the arcades of
Kramgasse or go to work on Speichergasse
or take their children to the park. Each has
memories: a father who could not love his
child, a brother who always won, a lover
with a delicious kiss, a moment of cheating
on a school examination, the stillness
spreading from a fresh snowfall, the publi-
cation of a poem. In a world of shifting past,
these memories are wheat in wind, fleeting
dreams, shapes in clouds. Events, once
happened, lose reality, alter with a glance,
a storm, a night. In time, the past never
happened. But who could know? Who could
know that the past is not as solid as this
instant, when the sun streams over the
Bernese Alps and the shopkeepers sing as
they raise their awnings and the quarryman
begins to load his truck.

. 171

•28 JUNE 1905

"Stop eating so much," says the grand-
mother, tapping her son on the shoulder.
"You'll die before me and who will take
care of my silver." The family is having a
picnic on the bank of the Aare, ten kilome-
ters south of Berne. The girls have finished
their lunch and chase each other around a

• 172

spruce tree. Finally dizzy, they collapse in
the thick grass, lie still for a moment, then
roll on the ground and get dizzy again. The
son and his very fat wife and the grand-
mother sit on a blanket, eating smoked
ham, cheese, sourdough bread with mus-
tard, grapes, chocolate cake. As they eat
and drink, a gentle breeze comes over the
river and they breathe in the sweet summer
air. The son takes off his shoes and wiggles
his toes in the grass.

Suddenly a flock of birds darts overhead.
The young man leaps from the blanket and
runs after them, without taking time to put
on his shoes. He disappears over the hill.
Soon he is joined by others, who have spot-
ted the birds from the city.

One bird has alighted in a tree. A woman
climbs the trunk, reaches out to catch the
bird, but the bird jumps quickly to a higher
branch. She climbs farther up, cautiously
straddles a branch and creeps outward. The
bird hops back to the lower branch. As the

• 173

woman hangs helplessly up in the tree, an-
other bird has touched down to eat seeds.
Two men sneak up behind it, carrying a
giant bell jar. But the bird is too fast for
them and takes to the air, merging again
with the Hock.

Now the birds fly through the town. The
pastor at St. Vincent's Cathedral stands in
the belfry, tries to coax the birds into the
arched window. An old woman in the Kleine
Schanze gardens sees the birds momentar-
ily roost in a bush. She walks slowly toward
them with a bell jar, knows she has no
chance of entrapping a bird, drops her jar
to the ground and begins weeping-

And she is not alone in her frustration.
Indeed, each man and each woman desires
a bird. Because this flock of nightingales is
time. Time flutters and fidgets and hops
with these birds. Trap one of these nightin-
gales beneath a bell jar and time stops. The
moment is frozen for all people and trees
and soil caught within.

• 174

In truth, these birds are rarely caught.
The children, who alone have the speed to
catch birds, have no desire to stop time. For
the children, time moves too slowly already.
They rush from moment to moment, anx-
ious for birthdays and new years, barely
able to wait for the rest of their lives- The
elderly desperately wish to halt time, but
are much too slow and fatigued to entrap
any bird. For the elderly, time darts by
much too quickly. They yearn to capture a
single minute at the breakfast table drink-
ing tea, or a moment when a grandchild is
stuck getting out of her costume, or an
afternoon when the winter sun reflects off
the snow and floods the music room with
light. But they are too slow. They must
watch time jump and fly beyond reach.

On those occasions when a nightingale is
caught, the catchers delight in the moment
now frozen. They savor the precise place-
ment of family and friends, the facial
expressions, the trapped happiness over a

. 175

prize or a birth or romance, the captured
smell of cinnamon or white double violets.
The catchers delight in the moment so fro-
zen but soon discover that the nightingale
expires, its clear, flutelike song diminishes
to silence, the trapped moment grows with-
ered and without life.

176

•EPI LOG U E

A clock tower strikes eight times in the dis-
tance. The young patent clerk lifts his head
from his desk, stands up and stretches,
walks to the window.

Outside, the town is awake. A woman
and her husband argue as she hands him
his lunch. A group of boys on their way to

• 177

the gymnasium on Zeughausgasse throw a
soccer ball back and forth and talk excitedly
about the summer vacation. Two women
walk briskly toward Marktgasse carrying
empty shopping sacks.

Shortly, a senior patent officer comes in
the door, goes to his desk and begins work-
without saying a word. Einstein turns

m

around and looks at the clock in the corner.
Three minutes after eight. He fidgets with
coins in his pocket.

At four minutes past eight, the typist
walks in. She sees Einstein across the room
holding his handwritten manuscript and she
smiles. She has already typed several of his
personal papers for him in her spare time,
and he always gladly pays what she asks.
He is quiet, though he sometimes tells
jokes. She likes him.

Einstein gives her his manuscript, his
theory of time. It is six minutes past eight.
He walks to his desk, glances at the stack
of files, goes over to a bookshelf, and starts

• 178

to remove one of the notebooks. He turns
and walks back to the window. The air is
unusually clear for late June. Above an
apartment building, he can see the tips of
the Alps, which are blue with white tops.
Higher up, the tiny black speck of a bird
makes slow loops in the sky.

Einstein walks back to his desk, sits
down for a moment, and then returns to the
window. He feels empty. He has no interest
in reviewing patents or talking to Besso or
thinking of physics. He feels empty, and he
stares without interest at the tiny black
speck and the Alps.

• 179

•ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alan Lightman was born in Memphis, Tennes-
see, in 1948 and was educated at Princeton and
at the California Institute of Technology. He has
written for Cranta, Harper's, The New Yorker,
and The New York Review of Books. His previous
books include Time Travel and Papa Joe's
Pipe, A Modern-Day Yankee in a Connecticut
Court, Origins, Ancient Light, Great Ideas in
Physics, and Time for the Stars. Einstein's
Dreams is his first book of fiction. He teaches
physics and writing at the Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology and currently directs the
MIT program in writing and humanistic studies.