Einstein's Dreams Read Online Free

act is an island intime, to be judged on its own. Families comfort a dying uncle not because of a likely inheritance, but because he is loved at that moment. Employees are hired not because of their résumés, but because of their good sense in interviews. Clerks trampled by their bosses fight back at each insult, 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.

• 4 May 1905
    It is evening. Two couples, Swiss and English, sit at their usual table in the dining room of the Hotel San Murezzan in St. Moritz. 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 beautiful in their evening gowns. The waiter walks across the fine wood floor, takes their orders.
    “I gather the weather will be fair tomorrow,” says the woman with the brocade in her hair. “That will be a relief.” The othersnod. “The baths do seem so much more pleasant when it’s sunny. Although I suppose it shouldn’t matter.”
    “Running Lightly is four-to-one in Dublin,” 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, butter 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.
    “You say that every year, Josephine,” the other woman says and smiles.
    Dinner comes. Tonight, they dine on lobster 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 larder 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 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.”
    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, little 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.

• I NTERLUDE
    Einstein and Besso walk slowly