Einstein's Dreams Read Online Free Page A

down Speichergasse in the late afternoon. It is a quiet time of day. Shopkeepers are dropping their awnings and getting out their bicycles. From a second-floor window, a mother calls to her daughter to come home and prepare dinner.
    Einstein has been explaining to his friend Besso why he wants to know time. But he says nothing of his dreams. Soon they will be at Besso’s house. Sometimes Einstein stays there through dinner, and Mileva has to come get him, toting theirinfant. That usually happens when Einstein is possessed with a new project, as he is now, and all through dinner he twitches his leg under the table. Einstein isn’t good dinner company.
    Einstein leans over to Besso, who is also short, and says, “I want to understand time because I want to get close to The Old One.”
    Besso nods in accord. But there are problems, which Besso points out. For one, perhaps The Old One is not interested in getting close to his creations, intelligent or not. For another, it is not obvious that knowledge is closeness. For yet another, this time project could be too big for a twenty-six-year-old.
    On the other hand, Besso thinks that his friend might be capable of anything. Already this year, Einstein has completed his Ph.D. thesis, finished one paper on photons and another on Brownian motion. The current project actually began as an investigation of electricity and magnetism, which, Einstein suddenly announced one day, would require a reconception of time. Besso is dazzled by Einstein’s ambition.
    For a while, Besso leaves Einstein alone with his thoughts. He wonders what Anna has cooked for dinner and looks down a side street where a silver boat on the Aare glints in the low sun. As the two men walk, their footsteps softly click on the cobblestones.They have known each other since their student days in Zürich.
    “Got a letter from my brother in Rome,” says Besso. “He’s coming to visit for a month. Anna likes him because he always compliments her figure.” Einstein smiles absently. “I won’t be able to see you after work while my brother is here. Will you be all right?”
    “What?” asks Einstein.
    “I won’t be able to see you much while my brother is here,” repeats Besso. “Will you be all right by yourself?”
    “Sure,” says Einstein. “Don’t worry about me.”
    Ever since Besso has known him, Einstein has been self-sufficient. His family moved around when he was growing up. Like Besso, he is married, but he hardly goes anywhere with his wife. Even at home, he sneaks away from Mileva in the middle of the night and goes to the kitchen to calculate long pages of equations, which he shows Besso the next day at the office.
    Besso eyes his friend curiously. For such a recluse and an introvert, this passion for closeness seems odd.

• 8 May 1905
    The world will end on 26 September 1907. Everyone knows it.
    In Berne, it is just as in all cities and towns. One year before the end, schools close their doors. Why learn for the future, with so brief a future? Delighted to have lessons finished forever, children play hide-and-seek in the arcades of Kramgasse, run down Aarstrasse and skip stones on the river, squander their coins on peppermint and licorice. Their parents let them do what they wish.
    One month before the end, businesses close. The Bundeshaushalts its proceedings. The federal telegraph building on Speichergasse falls silent. Likewise the watch factory on Laupenstrasse, the mill past the Nydegg Bridge. What need is there for commerce and industry with so little time left?
    At the outdoor cafés on Amthausgasse, people sit and sip coffee and talk easily of their lives. A liberation fills the air. Just now, for example, a woman with brown eyes is speaking to her mother about how little time they spent together in her childhood, when the mother worked as a seamstress. The mother and daughter are now planning a trip to Lucerne. They will fit two lives into the little time remaining. At another table, a