She looked the four of us over as if we were smugglers or criminals of some sort, her eyes lingering briefly on Albert, then turned without a word or even a nod and went back inside the café.
I stole a glance at Albert. His eyes were riveted on Kelvin, his lips parted as if he wanted to speak but could not work up the nerve. He ran a hand nervously through his thick mop of hair. Kelvin seemed perfectly at ease, smiling affably, his hands laced across his stomach just below his beard; he was the man of authority, acknowledged by the world as the leading scientific figure of his generation.
“Can it be really true?” Albert blurted at last. “Have we learned everything of physics that can be learned?”
He spoke in German, of course, the only language he knew. I immediately translated for him, exactly as he asked his question.
Once he understood what Albert was asking, Kelvin nodded his gray old head sagely. “Yes, yes. The young men in the laboratories today are putting the final dots over the is, the final crossings of the ts. We’ve just about finished physics; we know at last all there is to be known.”
Albert looked crushed.
Kelvin did not need a translator to understand the youngster’s emotion. “If you are thinking of a career in physics, young man, then I heartily advise you to think again. By the time you complete your education, there will be nothing left for you to do.”
“Nothing?” Wells asked as I translated. “Nothing at all?”
“Oh, add a few decimal places here and there, I suppose. Tidy up a bit, that sort of thing.”
Albert had failed his admission test to the Federal Polytechnic in Zurich. He had never been a particularly good student. My goal was to get him to apply again to the Polytechnic and pass the exams.
Visibly screwing up his courage, Albert asked, “But what about the work of Roentgen?”
Once I had translated, Kelvin knit his brows. “Roentgen? Oh, you mean that report about mysterious rays that go through solid walls? X-rays, is it?”
Albert nodded eagerly.
“Stuff and nonsense!” snapped the old man. “Absolute bosh. He may impress a few medical men who know little of science, but his X-rays do not exist. Impossible! German daydreaming.”
Albert looked at me with his whole life trembling in his piteous eyes. I interpreted:
“The professor fears that X-rays may be illusory, although he does not as yet have enough evidence to decide, one way or the other.”
Albert’s face lit up. “Then there is hope! We have not discovered everything as yet!”
I was thinking about how to translate that for Kelvin, when Wells ran out of patience. “Where is that blasted waitress?”
I was grateful for the interruption. “I will find her, sir.”
Dragging myself up from the table, I left the three of them, Wells and Kelvin chatting amiably while Albert swiveled his head back and forth, understanding not a word. Every joint in my body ached, and I knew that there was nothing anyone in this world could do to help me. The café was dark inside and smelled of stale beer. The waitress was standing at the bar, speaking rapidly, angrily, to the stout barkeep in a low, venomous tone. The barkeep was polishing glasses with the end of his apron; he looked grim and, once he noticed me, embarrassed.
Three seidels of beer stood on a round tray next to her, with a single glass of tea. The beers were getting warm and flat, the tea cooling, while she blistered the bartender’s ears.
I interrupted her viscous monologue. “The gentlemen want their drinks,” I said in German.
She whirled on me, her eyes furious. “The gentlemen may have their beers when they get rid of that infernal Jew!”
Taken aback somewhat, I glanced at the barkeep. He turned away from me.
“No use asking him to do it,” the waitress hissed. “We do not serve Jews here. I do not serve Jews, and neither will he!”
The café was almost empty this late in the afternoon. In the dim shadows, I could make out only a pair of elderly gentlemen quietly smoking their pipes and a foursome, apparently two married couples, drinking beer. A six-year-old boy knelt at the far end of the bar, laboriously scrubbing the wooden floor.
“If it’s too much trouble for you,” I said, and started to reach for the tray.
She clutched at my outstretched arm. “No! No Jews will be served here! Never!”
I could have brushed her off. If my strength had not been drained away, I could have broken every bone in her body and the barkeep’s too. But I was nearing the end of my tether and I knew it.
“Very well,” I said softly. “I will take only the beers.”
She glowered at me for a moment, then let her hand drop away. I removed the glass of tea from the tray and left it on the bar. Then I carried the beers out into the warm afternoon sunshine.
As I set the tray on our table, Wells asked, “They have no tea?”
Albert knew better. “They refuse to serve Jews,” he guessed. His voice was flat, unemotional, neither surprised nor saddened.
I nodded as I said in English, “Yes, they refuse to serve Jews.”
“You’re Jewish?” Kelvin asked, reaching for his beer.
The teenager did not need a translation. He replied, “I was born in Germany. I am now a citizen of Switzerland. I have no religion. But, yes, I am a Jew.”
Sitting next to him, I offered him my beer. “No, no,” he said with a sorrowful little smile. “It would merely upset them further. I think perhaps I should leave.”
“Not quite yet,” I said. “I have something that I want to show you.” I reached into the inner pocket of my jacket and pulled out the thick sheaf of paper I had been carrying with me since I had started out on this mission. I noticed that my hand trembled
