Vanya was thrilled. He practiced with Miri, writing and rewriting that lecture. Only a few professors attended, but word spread that the Jew’s work was astounding, and others began to approach him, asking for his advice or help. Vanya was happy to work with anyone he judged serious by their commitment to math. Those who wouldn’t sleep until they had a solution, or a hint of a solution, were those he gladly spent long hours with in the library, working through equations. He loved going over problems with them, much as he loved talking through his own ideas with Miri at home in Baba’s kitchen. Though Vanya didn’t bother with compliments when answers were correct, his colleagues were drawn to him, to his passion. Of course there were plenty who persisted in resenting him, but they didn’t concern him as long as they stayed out of his way.
After he was awarded his degree, he was elevated to professor, a position that made him formally “useful” and gave him the freedom that came with that status: higher pay, the chance for advancement, and the ability to travel anywhere in the empire. Useful Jews were part of the czar’s plans for Russification. To unify his empire, to assimilate its outliers, Nicholas needed modern, educated Jews, and the promotion meant the czar’s men gave not only him a wider berth, but Miri and Baba, too. It was how Vanya had helped Miri get her training to become a doctor and how they were able to remain in a house in the section of the city where they lived—where only useful Jews were now permitted. Every year, more students came to learn from him. And every time he gave a lecture, the auditorium was full. That day he walked in after Sukovich’s surgery was no exception. There wasn’t a free seat in the room. It was good he came, after all: his absence would have been noticed.
Vanya took hold of the chalk and put the folded piece of paper with his spare notes on the lectern. He decided since he wanted to work through the question of acceleration anyway, he might as well do so here. Perhaps if he could explain it to his colleagues, he’d figure out how to use it for himself.
The solution he needed for relativity held two sides, linked by an equal sign. On one side sat the distribution of matter and energy in space—the stars. On the other sat the geometry of space—the stage. The two were linked, not separate. He compared this relationship to apples bobbing in water. Every time the apples moved, the water also moved, putting the equation back into balance. One always affected the other—in different ways at different times. How could he express that? In his mind, Vanya ran through his notebook, ticking through pages and pages. He needed a framework, what mathematicians called a tensor, to represent all four dimensions. He focused on the Italian mathematician Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro because Ricci’s tensor accounted for acceleration. It was so new, Vanya figured no one in the audience had even heard of it.
He turned to the board and started working at a furious pace, sensing rather than calculating the curves and height of space as they changed under his chalky fingers. When he came up short, he knew it because he could feel it. Each time he erased his work and started again. A cloud of dust sent him into a coughing fit and he didn’t pause to recover. Nor did he take questions.
“Another way to understand this problem,” he said, rolling a clean board out from the corner. “Imagine you’ve put a blanket on a laundry line.” He thought about the tram stop earlier. “A child stands behind the blanket and sticks her hand into it so you see her fingers’ profile on the opposite side. That sheet is equivalent to space. That hand is equal to a star, or even a galaxy. The correct tensor, and equation, will define both and include time—marking when the hand and the blanket were in that position. And when she moves her hand, imagine it’s fused to the fabric. Just as a star can’t simply leave space, her hand can’t lose contact with the wool. It doesn’t matter how it changes, or accelerates, or when. The correct equations will still hold true.” That’s what he was after. That’s where Einstein had failed. “Watch,” he said when one person asked for clarification. It wasn’t until fifteen minutes past the hour that he noticed he’d run late. “Sorry,” he said, stopping abruptly, knowing he was no closer to a solution. He’d been so focused on the math that he was surprised when he turned to face the audience and found rows and rows of men working to keep pace, copying every notation he’d made—not seeming to care that he’d gotten nowhere.
Vanya took a bow, as was expected of him. Before he stood, he was swarmed. “Professor,” they all seemed to yell at once. “Why gravity? Why are you focused on gravity and acceleration?”
“To understand spacetime, we must understand gravity,” Vanya said. “It slows time.”
“Isn’t that what the German is saying?” one student asked.
“Professor Einstein?” Vanya asked. “He’s Swiss now.”
“He has German blood. How can we trust that?”
“He’s a worthless Jew,” another said. And the room went silent.
Vanya cleared his throat and tamped down his anger, steadied his voice even as his face turned red. “The country Einstein calls home doesn’t matter. Nor does his religion. Ideas matter. Science above politics,” Vanya said, knowing it was more of a wish than reality. The truth was that, like Einstein, everyone in that auditorium thought of Vanya as a Jew before they thought of him as a scientist. Even Vanya himself thought that way. That was likely what fueled his obsession with him, the fact that Vanya had more in common with Einstein than with any man in his field. Both were outcasts from the day they were born. This bond kept Vanya fascinated. Since he’d first read about the theory of relativity, he’d tried to dig as deeply as he could into Einstein’s life. All he found, all that was available in Russia, were tidbits he could learn from journals and newspapers. Back in those early days, most established professors around the world dismissed Einstein as a radical at best and a fool at worst.
Vanya taught himself to read German so he could master Einstein’s publications. He saw Einstein adopted a patent examiner’s approach to writing scientific papers—he didn’t cite foundational sources. And Vanya began to do the same. He was chastised for it but he refused to change. Why did it matter who inspired him or came before him? His work was replacing that entire foundation anyway.
Vanya once paid double the value of a journal just so he could own a photograph of Albert Einstein. He propped the picture up on his desk at home. In the photo, Albert stood in front of the Bern clock tower near his patent office. He had a thick mustache and curls. His eyes looked sleepy. His jacket was too large. His tie wasn’t straight, and his collar, was it crooked? Vanya was a fatherless eighteen-year-old when he found that photo, and afterward he tried growing his own mustache—unsuccessfully. He also stopped making sure his suits were well tailored and his own ties were straight. Baba hated it, said that, as a Jew, Vanya couldn’t afford to look the way he did, but he fought back, countered that what mattered was math not religion. He could be sloppy in appearance but not in work. Since he continued to progress, there was little she could do to stop him. But when he tried to convince Miri to do the same, to stop worrying about the tightness of her braids and the starch in her collars, Baba scolded him. His sister, Baba said fiercely, was a woman fighting for respect. She couldn’t afford to be sloppy anywhere.