The Constant Heart Read Online Free Page B
the butt of a cigarette, up to the window where the woman stood. This was the one place where the wire-filled glass could be opened, like a normal window.
The twig-shaped joint hit the bars, fell to the sill, rolled to the edge, and stopped. The woman inside moved her head one way and then the other, her mass of hair swinging like
a flag of desire, and then she reached out, between the bars with just two fingers. They trembled and she pushed them against the concrete of the sill. Slowly and with great patience, as though she were playing chess, her fingers came out like something that usually is hidden in a burrow. But she couldnât reach the joint. So she disappeared and then came back with a little clip that women used to use in their hair, and with that she reached out and took the joint like a small tube with a pair of pliers. Sara waved.
Saraâs voice was lost in the traffic but the womanâs lips moved a little, and then Sara made a motion with her hand, a sort of âIâll see you tomorrowâ movement, and went down the street, her hips swaying in those dark jeans of hers. Her movement had a kind of certainty to it, like someone jumping out of an airplane, and right then I knew she wasnât kidding. She meant to get me in there.
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I FOUND THE book about Einsteinâs Constant in the comforting odor of a library shelf. How could it be that Einstein had a momentâs doubt? What was he worried about? The universe suddenly changing? Not remaining static anymore, but flying apart? I turned to the shelf, reaching upward, and felt the weight of the book, the tug of gravity in the muscles along my side. But no matter what, scared or not, he had taken action. Wasnât that the critical thing? Of course, it took a while, after I became an astronomer, but, maybe because of what happened with Sara, I began to understand what Einstein was doing when he made what he called his biggest mistake by adding the Constant. I have often wondered if Einstein knew
or suspected that if the universe was expanding, and now, as we know, accelerating, that large parts of the universe would seem to disappear, that they would move beyond the horizon of observation. The disappearance of galaxies, and everything in them, too. This disappearance and the struggle against it, the fear of loss, particularly of love, are how the Constant and Sara are bound together. And maybe the trouble in all this, that dark well, the knife, Sara at the side of that river . . . Well, I was only more afraid than ever of something I cared about simply vanishing. Einstein, of course, was only concerned with math, with physics, with cosmology, but sometimes I wonder if something else wasnât at work, some darkness he felt when he woke at three in the morning and was unable to sleep.
Mrs. Kilmer didnât move as I left, although she said, âSee you soon.â It wasnât cheerful, so much as a challenge: I could bring my stupidity here and try to break it against the igneous stones of physics. That, she seemed to say, would be my punishment. I could try. We would see where it left me. She glanced over at me. Wouldnât we see how much disappointment I could take, and only she, she seemed to suggest, would know how much I had been hurt? She dropped her head, the movement seeming feral. Her hand went to the first figure in the column of library fines, and on to the next. Her pen, which was the kind with a sharp nib she dipped into ink, cut into her ledger with a scratch, and when she wrote, it was more as though she were giving the paper a tattoo, a mark of an indelible crime. She did this next to the Dell computer with the library software that sat right on the desk, next to that little door like you see in the movies when they show someone going up to the front of a courtroom. Then, after she had cut
into the paper, sheâd enter the fines and print out the notices and put them in the mail. She was just waiting
The twig-shaped joint hit the bars, fell to the sill, rolled to the edge, and stopped. The woman inside moved her head one way and then the other, her mass of hair swinging like
a flag of desire, and then she reached out, between the bars with just two fingers. They trembled and she pushed them against the concrete of the sill. Slowly and with great patience, as though she were playing chess, her fingers came out like something that usually is hidden in a burrow. But she couldnât reach the joint. So she disappeared and then came back with a little clip that women used to use in their hair, and with that she reached out and took the joint like a small tube with a pair of pliers. Sara waved.
Saraâs voice was lost in the traffic but the womanâs lips moved a little, and then Sara made a motion with her hand, a sort of âIâll see you tomorrowâ movement, and went down the street, her hips swaying in those dark jeans of hers. Her movement had a kind of certainty to it, like someone jumping out of an airplane, and right then I knew she wasnât kidding. She meant to get me in there.
Â
Â
I FOUND THE book about Einsteinâs Constant in the comforting odor of a library shelf. How could it be that Einstein had a momentâs doubt? What was he worried about? The universe suddenly changing? Not remaining static anymore, but flying apart? I turned to the shelf, reaching upward, and felt the weight of the book, the tug of gravity in the muscles along my side. But no matter what, scared or not, he had taken action. Wasnât that the critical thing? Of course, it took a while, after I became an astronomer, but, maybe because of what happened with Sara, I began to understand what Einstein was doing when he made what he called his biggest mistake by adding the Constant. I have often wondered if Einstein knew
or suspected that if the universe was expanding, and now, as we know, accelerating, that large parts of the universe would seem to disappear, that they would move beyond the horizon of observation. The disappearance of galaxies, and everything in them, too. This disappearance and the struggle against it, the fear of loss, particularly of love, are how the Constant and Sara are bound together. And maybe the trouble in all this, that dark well, the knife, Sara at the side of that river . . . Well, I was only more afraid than ever of something I cared about simply vanishing. Einstein, of course, was only concerned with math, with physics, with cosmology, but sometimes I wonder if something else wasnât at work, some darkness he felt when he woke at three in the morning and was unable to sleep.
Mrs. Kilmer didnât move as I left, although she said, âSee you soon.â It wasnât cheerful, so much as a challenge: I could bring my stupidity here and try to break it against the igneous stones of physics. That, she seemed to say, would be my punishment. I could try. We would see where it left me. She glanced over at me. Wouldnât we see how much disappointment I could take, and only she, she seemed to suggest, would know how much I had been hurt? She dropped her head, the movement seeming feral. Her hand went to the first figure in the column of library fines, and on to the next. Her pen, which was the kind with a sharp nib she dipped into ink, cut into her ledger with a scratch, and when she wrote, it was more as though she were giving the paper a tattoo, a mark of an indelible crime. She did this next to the Dell computer with the library software that sat right on the desk, next to that little door like you see in the movies when they show someone going up to the front of a courtroom. Then, after she had cut
into the paper, sheâd enter the fines and print out the notices and put them in the mail. She was just waiting