The schooling in Berlin only put off the most pressing question, and by the time he was finished, Andrew was ready to find a place for himself in Europe—even in Russia. A return to the U.S. he seemed to view as a last resort. He wrote, “I have sent off the letter to Struve in Dorpat. Mauritz read the letter for me and complimented me on my felicitous German. I know I could learn Russian with perfect ease, if given the chance.” An inquiry had been made at Yale, which resulted in the following remark: “Should I go to Yale (though I know this is a fond wish of yours, dear Mother), I would find myself teaching not only mathematics (and the highest level would be simple calculus), but also chemistry and geology (!), not to mention elementary biology. No astronomy, as there is no observatory! (Even Crete, Nebraska, now has a new observatory!) The great thing now, anyway, Mother, is to go south—to South America or South Africa. There is an observatory in Lima (PERU, not OHIO—I know Ohio would be preferable to you, Mother!) run by Harvard University. But we would be far away from my brothers, and so I hesitate. I will not hide from you that I am in a great quandary. For your sake, I’ve thought of BORDEAUX and BESANÇON, but the likelihood of the French accepting an American, especially one educated in Berlin, is altogether remote.”
These letters were dated with Andrew’s customary precision: “Operncafe, Unter den Linden, Berlin, April 2, 1894, 7:02 PM–7:22 PM.” The dates and addresses did give her a strange feeling. Margaret imagined him sitting “under the linden trees,” sipping an elegant cup of coffee and eating an apple tart of some kind in an impossibly fragrant world, surrounded not only by lindens, but by pots of geraniums and roses and daisies and other blooms of all kinds and colors, with mysterious notes of music floating among the various perfumes, and a horde of silent, graceful bicycles streaming by.
After she read this packet (and carefully replaced the letters where she had found them), she made up her mind that Andrew was not so different from other young men, after all. He had not left (many) implacable enemies behind him. He had gone to a different country and fit himself into it with some success. She said nothing in particular about her investigations to Mrs. Lear, but one day, after Captain Lear had been home for a month, and they were eating beef and mutton and potatoes every night and the boys were sitting up straight, speaking only when spoken to, and ending every sentence with “sir!,” Mrs. Lear remarked to Margaret it was a wife’s first duty not to be taken by surprise.
And it was true that now, when he said things like “People themselves are the problem,” she thought she understood what he was getting at. “The lens looks at something. The mirror refracts it. These instruments are not perfect, but they are more perfect than the eye, and the eye is more perfect than the mind.”
She asked him whether he planned to send his paper on the bullet holes in to a journal. He said, “Here is the paradox. It only takes one man to find out what is true, but he cannot live long enough or see widely enough to do it. Ten men see ten truths, and then they spend ten years arguing amongst themselves. A hundred men are ten times worse, and a thousand ten times worse than that. I’ve come to despair at how the truth is dissipated and distorted with every mind that turns upon it.” He shook his head. They were walking to get the San Francisco papers and some vegetables and bread. He squeezed her hand.
She said, “I looked at the paper, Andrew. It makes perfect sense to me.”
“My exile is the best thing that could have happened to me, after all. Here I am, out at the edge of the world.” He stared down at her. “Even though the physical world has no edge, my dear, the scientific world does! And at this edge, I am relieved of the constant necessity of human intercourse, and so my mind becomes freer by the day.” She nodded, and put her hand through his arm. He smiled and patted it in an affectionate manner. But the paper remained where it was.
• • •
MRS. LEAR guessed her condition before Margaret did, one