In This Hospitable Land Read Online Free Page B

drain water from the fields. Willow trees planted along the water courses, their tops cut off to allow the new growth to spring out from strong brown trunks as the weather warmed, stood thick and mottled with vertical ridges replicating, in nature’s way, the classic columns of the Greeks and Romans. The sturdy, browsing Charleroi cattle seemed so placid.
    Then André recalled again the December day of his American odyssey when, on a commuter train departing New York’s Pennsylvania Station for Princeton, New Jersey, he had heard a gentleman ask politely in English as heavily accented as his own, “Is this seat taken?”
    Looking up André had been dumbfounded to see that wild gray hair framing the world’s most famous face, Albert Einstein. André had previously run into the epochal figure at one of the famed Solvay conferences and had been profoundly affected watching the great man in action. That conference had brought André into direct contact with virtually all of the most important scientific minds of his intellectually tumultuous time, but none had impressed him as much as Einstein.
    And on the train in 1930? Incredibly, Einstein too was there to attend that night’s celebratory dinner at the brand-new Institute for Advanced Study.
    On the train in 1940 the Belgian conductor announced Bruges as the next stop. André was very far away, inside his memories.
    “Herr Einstein,” André had said humbly, switching to German, which was more comfortable for them both than English. “You wouldn’t remember me but…”
    “Of course I remember you! I refuse to forget you!”
    “I was at the Solvay conference when you debated Bohr…”
    “In October?”
    “No, the fifth Solvay. Three years ago.”
    Einstein chuckled, his devilish eyes sparkling with joy. “You would have loved it this time. I really gave it to Bohr. One of my thought experiments stumped him, poor man. Which strengthened my faith that the theories of quantum mechanics are far from conclusive…”
    “I wish I could have been there.”
    “But you had important work to do at the Research Foundation, no?”
    “You know I’m a fellow there?”
    “You think I would accept an invitation to this dinner without doing background research on guests of honor such as yourself?”
    “Guests of honor:” the phrase on Einstein’s lips had made André’s heart thump wildly. He couldn’t believe he deserved to be in such company as Einstein’s, let alone at the head of the table. And to find himself discoursing privately with the most influential scientist since Newton…
    Einstein had been neither stuffy nor proud. He had worn his greatness lightly and had seemed genuinely interested in the comparative youth he called “my dear colleague.”
    “All these ceremonies and honors,” Einstein had sighed, “are not for me. I always feel like a trained monkey in my tuxedo. Imagine a Jewish pacifist monkey: Hitler’s nightmare!”
    Though many details of this decade-old conversation had faded away, the substance remained vivid to André. In addition to discussing the latest scientific advances, André had been anxious to learn firsthand whether Einstein believed Hitler a threat to the world generally and to scientists like Einstein particularly.
    “You mean to a Jew?” Einstein had retorted chillingly with an odd, twisted smile on his face. He had taken the Nazi threat seriously from the first, having fled Berlin for Leiden in the Netherlands as soon as he had learned about the Beer Hall Putsch. Subsequently he had returned to Germany only reluctantly, because Max Planck had urged him to and because Berlin was still the center of modern physics.
    As the North Sea train entered the station in Bruges, André understood how Einstein had felt. Though he wasn’t yet sure what the next hour, let alone the next day, would bring, it pained him to leave behind his much-loved Brussels, one of the world’s great cities and arguably the best place for the pursuit