The nurses ushered Miri into the small kitchen off the women’s ward, Miri’s office, leaving Vanya to wait in the hall while she changed. As soon as he was alone, he pulled out the envelope from America, from Professor Eliot of Harvard University. They’d been corresponding for two years, since Vanya’s publication in which he’d challenged the German-Swiss physicist, Albert Einstein.
Einstein, a Jew himself, had been a young patent clerk about Vanya’s age when he first published a string of papers outlining brilliant new ideas about the laws of physics and the speed of light—and how they affected time. Soon, a critic, Alfred Bucherer, began to refer to Einstein’s work as “the theory of relativity,” and the title stuck.
Back then, nearly a decade ago, Vanya was a teenager, and he devoured Einstein’s work not only because his ideas were a leap forward from the foundations set by Galileo and Newton but also because they surpassed the work of his closer contemporaries, Michelson, Poincaré, and Lorentz. At first, most of the so-called experts dismissed Einstein. After all, the patent clerk wasn’t even able to secure a job as a professor, but those who took a closer look, like Vanya, understood Einstein’s principles were revolutionary, and he couldn’t keep himself away. Day and night he studied Einstein’s work.
Then in 1909, as Vanya sat at the window in his room watching a storm savage Kovno, he realized something that would change his life. Wind rattled the shutters. Thunder rumbled up through the floors, and lightning struck two trees in the forest near the city. According to Einstein’s favorite demonstration of relativity, a person watching lightning strike a moving train from a platform, centered at the midpoint, might see two bolts hit the train at the same time, while someone sitting inside the moving train might observe the strike in the rear a split second later than the bolt hitting the front. Meaning, the same event that was simultaneous for one observer was not for the other. Vanya thought about this as he watched one of the struck trees fall, watched a wagon on the road speed up to get out of the way, only barely escaping the path of the trunk in time. Any slower, Vanya thought, and that poor man and his horse would be dead.
That was when Vanya made the crucial connection. He jumped up, knocking books and papers everywhere. Of course! Einstein’s theory was based on objects moving at constant speeds—but that wasn’t an accurate representation of the universe. Some objects, like the wagon, were accelerating. Einstein’s theory wasn’t complete.
A monstrous clap of thunder rattled the windows. Vanya bent to retrieve his notebook, and as he did, he realized something else. “Gravity,” he said, looking at the papers that had fluttered to the ground. Acceleration and gravity were both missing from Einstein’s work. He had only accounted for special situations—not for realities like the accelerating wagon—which meant Einstein hadn’t finished. Even more, it meant Vanya could work to complete the theory, a broader general theory that would be just as groundbreaking as the one Einstein had already proposed.
Vanya plunged himself into the problem and soon discovered he wasn’t alone. Just three months later, Einstein published a paper in which he also declared his original theory was lacking, and by 1910, Vanya was spending every waking moment working through the details and implications of a general theory. Without realizing, he missed meals. And sleep. Baba and Miri prodded him to take better care of himself, but he couldn’t concentrate on his health—only on this idea that felt more powerful than any that had come before. An idea that changed the way the universe was understood because, Vanya discovered, it meant space wasn’t a flat plane. Space curved around the objects in it. That meant light didn’t travel in a straight line, rather it traced the divots created by the sun, the moon, and other matter.
Light bends.
How could Vanya prove it? He needed equations to describe it, to predict by how much it bent. And he needed physical evidence—like Einstein’s example of the train being struck by lightning—only it was more difficult to capture light bending. The only time to witness it was during a total solar eclipse. When the moon blocked the sun, its closest stars would be visible, and through a photograph he could capture it happening, measure it, and share it as his proof. The math would take time, but the photograph could be taken at the next solar eclipse, due in 1914. And while it could have fallen anywhere in the world, luck was with Vanya—it was due over Russia.
Vanya worked tirelessly to garner support for an expedition, for funding and equipment to photograph the eclipse, but wasn’t able to raise a single kopeck. Vanya tried to console himself by arguing that math was his specialty, not photography, and so he filled notebook after notebook with his attempt at equations, but his math wasn’t working. Nor was Einstein’s. The patent clerk, now finally a professor, published a series of field equations he said calculated distortions in space according to general relativity. Many in the scientific community seemed to accept them—but Vanya felt Einstein’s math wasn’t much better than what they already had from Newton. And both Newton and Einstein failed when it came to calculating Mercury’s changing orbit, the ultimate test. Yes, Einstein was off by only minuscule amounts, but correct equations, ones that captured the truth, wouldn’t be off by any measure.
Vanya published an article laying out his case that Einstein’s math was mistaken. Reactions were mixed. Those who’d already tried to discredit Einstein because of his religion, or because of what they thought was skewed scientific reasoning, continued to declare the entire theory of relativity worthless. Others called Vanya’s ideas desperate and self-aggrandizing, but Einstein himself published an article agreeing with Vanya. Even more, Einstein challenged Vanya and every other physicist in the world to a race. He wanted to see who could come up with the correct field equations the fastest—along with a photograph of light bending at a solar eclipse to check those equations.
Not long after that, Vanya received his first letter from Professor Eliot. It was transcribed in careful Russian, by a translator. Eliot praised Vanya for his math and arguments, declared that he, too, was working to correct Einstein’s field equations, only he was getting nowhere. Perhaps they could share notes, work together? They started a correspondence, and by his third letter, Eliot announced the math was beyond him but he believed in Vanya. “Only two men in the world are capable of this,” Eliot had written. “You, dear Abramov, and Einstein.” Furthermore, since Eliot couldn’t help with the figures, he’d gone ahead to help with what he called the “easy part,” mounting an expedition to Russia, an expedition to witness and photograph the eclipse. They would be a team in which Vanya solved equations and Eliot provided photographs. He expected Vanya to meet him in Minsk for the eclipse and to join him at Harvard afterward. Harvard’s president had already approved a position for Vanya—so long as he came with the prestige of correct field equations and photographs. Vanya was elated. So was Baba. Russia was becoming increasingly unsafe for Jews, and she wanted to leave before Kovno turned into another Odessa. Back then, he had had sixteen months to refine his work. The eclipse was coming on August 21, 1914, and he knew he could solve the math by then and take them all to America.
While Vanya toiled over the equations, dozens of other universities also announced expeditions to Russia for the eclipse—all set on beating Einstein. And while they all mustered equipment, none came close to the equations. Then came the rumble of cannons in the Balkans—war. One expedition was canceled after another. Eliot was the last holdout. It wasn’t until May that Vanya received the devastating letter announcing his Harvard funding had been frozen. After that letter, after Vanya recovered from the shock, he’d written to Eliot to ask if he was able to produce the field equations, would the offer to come to America, to Harvard, still stand. He hadn’t received a reply. Not yet. Not until this morning. And he hadn’t dared tell Baba he was worried because by now, she was set on leaving, convinced their lives depended on it. She and Miri fought about it often. Miri believed they still had a future in Kovno, a reason and an obligation to remain in their home—but Vanya sided with his grandmother. With war coming, with more Jews being beaten like the fishmonger, it was time to leave. Expecting bad news, he couldn’t bring himself to read the letter in front of her, didn’t want to admit he might have lost their way to safety. But now that he was alone, he tore the seal and ripped the envelope. The message was short.