ball runs down a slope because it is sloped, not because there is a force pulling it down. He ignores completely that the force has been measured and that the measurements show the force to be a powerful one. This thing is no different from any other story about the beginning of the universe. You know that myth, the myth of Ptah? It’s the Egyptian myth. Ptah spoke, and as he spoke, everything he said was created. Who’s to say that story isn’t true? Except for the fact that it can’t happen. Observations at Mount Wilson and the Lick will soon show that it can’t happen.”
“Einstein is a flash in the pan, then?” said Dora.
“A comet across the cosmological heavens, my dear.” Margaret saw that Andrew had made a joke. And a few days after this conversation, he took time away from his book to write a letter to a journal in England, out of Oxford, in which he said more or less what he had said to Dora, though without the illustrative references to Egyptian myth, and they published it in the winter.
It was Leonora Eliot who told Margaret that Dora was lobbying her editor to be sent back to Europe—didn’t she know? Everyone at the paper knew. It was almost a joke, the idea of little Dora wandering about the war zone with her pistol and her hat and her stylish shoes, scribbling about how to grow potatoes in the trenches.
Margaret said, “Dora’s never written about potatoes.”
“Survival is her subject,” said Leonora.
Pete Krizenko was Margaret’s only recourse. In the months since their supper, Margaret had seen Pete once, when he came upon Dora and her having tea in the Garden Court, and Dora, in spite of always pooh-poohing her affection for him, had outdone herself in smiles just to see him. At the time, Margaret had been both skeptical and disapproving. But as she lay awake in her bed the night after Leonora’s remarks and imagined her life without Dora’s vivaciousness (and money and shoals of friends), she decided that Pete was preferable, if the war in Europe was the alternative. The next day, she walked to Mrs. Wareham’s, but when she turned into that block she hesitated—were she to ask Mrs. Wareham about Pete, Mrs. Wareham would certainly tell Dora, and Dora would laugh and tease, deftly turn her aside, and end up in Europe just out of pure contrariness—and so she directed her steps to the Kimuras’ shop. She had no idea of the nature of the Kimuras’ friendship with Dora, but she felt she could rely on their secretiveness, or perhaps upon what was merely an appropriate sense of discretion.
A customer came out as Margaret went in. She found Mrs. Kimura behind the counter, putting some things away, and although Mrs. Kimura gave her a friendly smile and a small bow, Margaret suddenly quailed at her errand and, instead of asking after Pete Krizenko, picked up first a packet of noodles, and then a pair of chopsticks, and then a newspaper with Japanese writing on it. While she was holding these things, her eye was caught by a picture—a heron, it was, standing beside a stone near some sort of overhanging tree, one leg bent—and she gazed at the picture without taking it in, but pretended to take it in. Another customer came through the door, bought something, went out again. Margaret continued to stare at the picture. Mrs. Kimura walked around the counter and stood beside her. The top of her head came to Margaret’s chin. Mrs. Kimura said, “This painting from Japan. Mr. Pete gave to Mr. Kimura.” She pointed to the red seal on the upper left corner. “Famous painter.”
Margaret said, “I haven’t seen Pete in a while.”
“He come. He go.”
“How do you contact him?”
“Mrs. Margaret send note?”
Margaret saw that she was being understood perhaps better than she wished to be. She said, “Yes.” She turned away from the picture. Mrs. Kimura was looking up at her. She seemed amused, and so Margaret nodded. Mrs. Kimura handed her a pen and a small square of paper. She wrote her note. Mrs. Kimura held out her hand, and Margaret folded the note twice and gave it to her. Then there was the smiling and bowing, and Margaret set down the chopsticks and the noodles and the paper. Later, she thought she might have liked to buy the noodles. After that, she realized that in the shop she hadn’t thought of Alexander. Pete did