The Sun Chemist (24 page)

‘He said that whoever took your case couldn’t be after your manuscript and it might easily turn up in the post. It’s true enough, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘He was thinking rather well last night, wasn’t he?’

‘Wasn’t he?’

Patel had been thinking well. It struck me on reflection that if he thought volume 15 might turn up, it very easily might.

*

Whether it did or not, something had obviously to be done about it. For months a pain in the neck, volume 15 now rapidly became a major one. Though it was true that a copy of all the edited material was around, it was around in London. The
burglars
had left it in a mess, which hadn’t properly been put right
by the time I’d left. An early call to Caroline produced first a silence and then profanity.

‘In
Israel
?’ she said. ‘You mean, you
got
the lab books?’

‘Partially.’

‘Partially! It was little old Kaplan, wasn’t it?’

‘What was?’

‘He rang, genius. Yesterday. Out of the blue. Asking how you were.’

‘Oh. Well, how was he?’

‘Don’t you trust me at all?’ she said wearily.

I thought about this. The tone of surprise seemed genuine. On the other hand, whoever had stage-managed it from Rehovot had needed someone in London. It seemed as well to keep an open mind. ‘Darling, what are you talking about?’ I said. ‘I was worried for you. Remember Hopcroft and poor Ettie.’

‘Is that true? You really worried about me?’

‘Well, what else?’

‘You’re a user. I cried last night.’

‘Darling –’

‘What do you want?’ she said.

I told her. The pages of edited letters, though a headache, didn’t add up to the mind-numbing kind provided by the
footnotes
. The uncopied ones had mainly been written in the last scrambled days at the P.R.O. However, the rough notes on which they were based ought to be kicking around somewhere. She said she’d look for them, and coldly rang off.

I made this call before going to the House on Saturday (rolling Saturday); I had my own key to the place again, and I was there on Sunday when Caroline rang back. Her disposition wasn’t any more kindly, but it had not stopped her getting on with the job. She had expressed half the pages off to me, but parts of 1932 were still in confusion. ‘I’m trying to put it together,’ she said.

‘Are you in the flat?’

‘I’ve hardly left the pissy place. I was at it till midnight.’

‘Darling –’

‘Stuff that. I’ve been thinking. You could easily have said something to – well, I’ll save it, too. How do they say “
au revoir
” out there?’

‘
L’hitraot
.’

‘That’s it.’ She hung up.

Sunday was trying, anyway. It brought the President, and the President an invitation to tea. Minutes later, Marie-Louise Wyke phoned to say they’d had one, too, and invited me to lunch. I was deep in 1932, but around one o’clock I biked there.

It was obvious at a glance how Ham had been spending his morning. A massive Scotch came my way from the bottle he held on greeting me. He was in high spirits. A friend had written him that a paper was soon to appear refuting the findings of his dreaded Japanese rival for the Prize. ‘He’s going to get the shit knocked out of him,’ he said gleefully.

‘It’s a fine thing, the brotherhood of science.’

‘Certainly is. Did you work yesterday, too?’

‘Yes.’ I’d worked with Marta yesterday.

‘Dedication.’

‘We have our disciplines.’

‘Well, let’s drink to them.’

‘Oh, don’t have another,’ Marie-Louise moaned.

We did have another. Rather late, we rolled over to lunch. Marie-Louise prided herself on her cooking, and wasn’t best pleased at the tough savory slab that her fancy veal had turned into. The dessert was a bigger success. It was her special, Southern strawberry fluff, and so stiff with cognac that Ham enthusiastically called for another, and insisted that I join him.

‘Oh, I don’t think I …’

‘Bottoms up,’ he said, and with bearish good humor ‘poured’ me one. The Southern strawberry fluff didn’t pour, and his aim looked uncertain. I got my chair back a second late. The contents of the bowl smacked wetly in my lap.

In the small pause he said, ‘Oh, Christ.’

‘For God’s sake!’ Marie-Louise said. ‘Igor!’

I was staring down at the stuff, now slithering through my legs It looked as if a dreadful accident had happened to me.

‘Jesus, I’m sorry,’ Ham said.

Marie-Louise had run to get a cloth, but seemed reluctant to apply it. I dried myself. A large bloodlike stain had settled over my crotch.

‘Oh, the lunatic!’ Marie-Louise said. ‘Take him to the bathroom. Take them off, Igor. I’ll soak them.’

‘I don’t think you can wash these.’

‘Put on a pair of Ham’s.’

‘Well, I –’ He obviously took several sizes larger. I suddenly recalled, with a sense of providence, the pair I’d bought in Manchester.

‘He’ll get them for you. Take him to the
bedroom
– are you completely mad?’ she said to him.

Ham was terribly contrite; but when I took the trousers off in the bedroom and displayed what had happened to my shirt and underpants, he leaned against me and laughed feebly.

‘Christ, Igor, you look like you had your – You’d better take a shower.’

I went and took one while he went to the San Martin. He’d evidently told Marie-Louise about the shirt and the underwear, because she called to me to throw them out so that she could wash them and put them in the dryer. When I did this, she put a fresh towel and a dressing gown through the door; I finished showering and went out.

She’d made coffee, and was in a long chair on the terrace, rather thoughtful.

‘What is there to say?’ she said.

‘It’s all right.’

‘This drinking of his … His judgment has always been so good, but now –’

I groaned inwardly. A chat was on the way: the drink problem, the dropout son. However, it wasn’t this. She said, ‘He so hates gossip, but – Igor, how well do you know Ram Patel?’

‘Patel?’ I said, surprised. ‘I hardly know him at all.’

‘He seemed to know a lot about you. He dropped by this morning. He mentioned something about – well, about Marta,’ she said doggedly.

I didn’t say anything.

‘Stop me if you don’t want me to go on. He said he’d seen you with Marta on some occasions – apparently leaving the Weizmann House last night, and earlier in the – in the orange groves, Igor. He takes exercise at night, apparently.’

‘I see.’

‘Believe me, after a lifetime of campus gossip – I mean,
naturally
Ham said the hell with it. But I don’t know. He said a curious thing, Patel. He said you ought to be dissuaded from the relationship.’

The question of discreet Marta had to be considered, so I kept my mouth shut.

She looked at her watch. ‘We have some time. I told Ham to pick up some things for me in the village … Igor, did you know Marta’s husband was an oil engineer?’

‘I knew he was an engineer.’

‘An
oil
engineer, Patel says.’

I lit a cigarette.

‘He asked if you had told Marta where these lab books were in London.’

I drew on the cigarette and thought about this. How came Patel to know of lab books in London? How did Marie-Louise herself know? Husbands and wives were a special case, of course, but still. Apparently Meyer was right: people did gab.

‘Which lab books?’ I said.

‘I am telling you what
he
said. I know nothing of it.’

‘What did Ham say?’

‘He said he wasn’t your keeper.’

I didn’t say anything for a while. Marie-Louise watched me, troubled.

‘Igor, I’m telling you this because – you saw how he behaved today. I’m not sure of his judgment lately. If this is important, I thought you’d better know, however embarrassing.’

‘Thanks.’

‘We all love Marta,’ she said. Her eyes were still troubled. ‘I discussed it with Ham, whether we ought to tell you, and he just said …’

I could imagine Ham’s short reply. He returned just then, and not before time; we were due at the President’s in a quarter of an hour. I heard the car pull up, and he came up the path fairly steadily, my trousers over his arm.

Marie-Louise glared at him. ‘Take them in the bedroom.’ He
opened his mouth and closed it again, but meekly obeyed.

She said quietly, ‘Don’t mention this.’

‘Of course not.’

A few minutes later, we were at the Presidential tea party.

*

It wasn’t so very Presidential. Katzir was in a sports shirt, jovial, very friendly. I’d briefly met him once, but we had a lengthy chat this time. He seemed well up on the Pickles Effect, took down Kaplan’s details himself, and promised a suitable letter would go off.

All through the tea party, with something of a delayed shock, I wondered about Marta’s oil engineer, and about that man of many theories, Dr Patel, and his night exercises.

I wasn’t clear what to do about it. Since Patel had been so explicit about the grounds for discouraging the relationship, he evidently intended me to know. Why hadn’t he told me himself? He was certainly making himself scarce. All Monday and Tuesday I didn’t see him. I heard him moving in his room, and wondered whether to beard him. Far better to ask Marta. But not very wise, of course, if he was right …

I tried to remember all she’d told me about her husband. They’d met in Stockholm. He’d worked in foreign parts,
Rumania
, Russia; last year in Norway. Hadn’t there been an oil strike in Norway? There was oil, of course, in Russia and Rumania … Well, it wasn’t a crime to marry an oil engineer. Only why hadn’t she told me? Perhaps because one engineer was very like another. She’d told me little more about any of her family. The family-mindedness hadn’t actually run to many details. I’d put it down to reticence, a sense of propriety.

There was also the odd matter of Patel himself. Hadn’t he been the one tying himself in knots to produce alternative theories, that it wasn’t, needn’t, be anyone at Rehovot? Why the sudden rethink?

I had a rethink: of the former ubiquity of this man. He’d
approached me at breakfast the morning after I’d arrived in December – a very late breakfast. I remembered the long length of him, uncoiling like a python after the mispplaced cucumber. After this, early or late, I’d scarcely moved without bumping into him: peering into the plant genetics lab, offering to
accompany
me to the Weizmann House, carefully reading the address on the back of Olga’s letter. Now, all of a sudden, no Patel.

I’d been brooding for a couple of days, and it was now Tuesday evening. I hadn’t told Meyer. There was the question of what to tell him. The extramural antics of a distinguished lady professor were at ticklish matter to set before the Chancellor. I heard a chair scrape next door and had a distinct impression of Patel thinking away in there, which suddenly decided me. I was
waiting
for a call from Caroline, but I picked up the phone and told them to put it through to Mr Weisgal’s house, and went there.

He was looking rather glum, which had become familiar. He had the daily list of those who had visited the archives. Only bona-fide researchers were on it (though anybody could go), and none had looked up 1933.

‘Well, I don’t know what you expected,’ I said.

‘Give him time. He’ll try.’

‘I wouldn’t.’

‘You don’t know what you’d do in his spot. People behave strangely.’

‘True,’ I said, pouring myself a drop of his Scotch, and after some hesitation told him of other behavior.

A rather stony look crossed his face at mention of the
Weizmann
House, but he didn’t ask what we were doing there. He didn’t ask anything at all.

‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Meyer,’ I said awkwardly.

‘The man’s a scandalmonger. Who asks him to go walking at night? People are human beings.’

‘Quite,’ I said, very relieved at his reaction.

‘So what is it – an oil engineer,’ he said mildly. He jotted himself a note and looked at it. ‘Did you arrange to see her again?’

‘Tonight, in fact, but that’s –’

The phone rang. It was Caroline, from London, a good deal
more cheerful. She’d put together the last of the pages. She had also managed to salvage almost half of my notes. Since this left over half missing, it didn’t seem so cheering to me. However, she gave me one or two items of information. ‘You should get everything by Thursday. I hurried,’ she said. ‘I’m going off for a few days.’

‘Oh.’

‘To a château or two on the Loire.’

‘I see.’

‘Yes, I expected this pent interest. You’ll never guess who rang, of course.’

Châteaux on the Loire spelled Willie the wine merchant.

‘No,’ I said.

‘There’s nothing here that can’t wait now, so I thought what the hell. A little inspection of the vintage … Is it all right?’ she said.

‘Of course.’

‘As I bloody thought … Burrowing away, are you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And missing me – a bit?’

‘I miss you a lot, darling. I think of you.’

‘I’ll spit out the vintage and think of you, then. You
would
like me to call again, wouldn’t you, even though the letters are away?’

‘Of course. I want to hear you, darling.’

‘All right, darling,’ she said more warmly. ‘I
will
reverse the charge.’

Meyer was looking at me, mouth a bit open, as I put the phone down. He studied his notes again.

‘What’s to be done?’ I said.

‘I’ll think it over. Carry on with your own affairs.’ He gave me another stony look. ‘Casanova.’

*

Affairs weren’t very lively that night. A pall of
Remembrance-eve
gloom hung over the place. Connie had invited us to a sober meal at Bat Yam. Ham picked Marta up first. The thing had been arranged before Patel’s revelations, and as if to overcompensate, Marie-Louise sat in the front while I shared the back seat with
Marta. I didn’t know what to say to her. Perversely she began asking a series of probing questions about the discovery in the archives.