Fatal Inheritance (5 page)

He sighed and paused for a moment, then continued.

‘It is indiscreet of me, but may I ask you how Cavendish died?’

The sadness in his eyes communicated itself directly to my soul as Claire’s mourning had not. Love is essentially intimate, and although I could sympathise, I could not really share her sorrow at her loss. But music is for everyone, and although I am no more than a mildly appreciative member of the audience at the best of times, Herr Ratner had suddenly made me feel that a musician like Sebastian could bring people a sense of the power, the marvel, the sap of new life. I acutely regretted never having seen him, and never having heard him play. For the first time, I felt more than merely handicapped in my research by my ignorance of what he was: I felt a sharp pang of regret at not having known him. I wanted to comfort this old man, or at least explain to him simply and exactly how and why Sebastian had died, but I didn’t know! And the little I could say was anything but comforting. Sadly I was obliged to explain to him that Sebastian, his newly discovered fountain of life, had committed suicide for a reason that no one understood. I told him frankly that my quest in Zürich was to find out if that reason had anything to do with Sebastian’s visit. I told him about the words ‘I’ve found out something about myself’. I asked him if he, who had been acquainted with the grandfather that Sebastian himself had never known, believed that the connection with Joseph Krieger could have anything whatsoever to do with Sebastian’s suicide.

‘I cannot imagine how it could,’ replied the old gentleman in a subdued tone. ‘He knew of his grandfather already. What could he possibly have “found out” from our brief discussion?’

‘Perhaps he knew very little of his grandfather. Are you sure you told him nothing at all that might have been new to him?’

‘I told him that I had known his grandfather long ago and heard him play often, in the years just before his death. I mentioned being his student, frequenting his home over that space of two years. I cannot remember mentioning anything else in particular. Not one word, I repeat, of the things I have just told you. I spoke of Joseph Krieger only with admiration and respect.’

‘Since Sebastian’s name is not Krieger,’ I observed, ‘I presume that his mother must have been Mr Krieger’s daughter. Did you know her? She must have been quite a child when you were still taking lessons.’

‘Ah yes. I remember knowing that Professor Krieger had a wife and children, though I never met them that I can recall. I may have glimpsed his wife once or twice, but I have no clear memories. She must have been very self-effacing. I cannot imagine being able to live with a man like Joseph Krieger otherwise. I do not recall his children learning to play music, for example, as many musicians oblige their children to do. In fact, now that you mention it, I believe he had only daughters, because I recall his once telling me that it was a pity he had no son, as I would have been just good enough to serve as his practising tutor. That was the way he spoke in general. And mind you, many girls did learn to play musical instruments or sing even in those days. But that would not have been the way of a man like Professor Krieger. Women learnt music for the betterment of their lives and the lives of those around them, not as a profession, and Joseph Krieger was only interested in music as a life-dominating profession, and, even then, only in those who might have the capacity to reach the heights of genius. I do not believe his children were trained at all. It is all the more striking a miracle that the gift should survive intact into the next generation, is it not?’

Herr Ratner did not seem to recall anything further about his conversation with Sebastian Cavendish; it really seemed unlikely that he had said anything that could have produced such a tremendous shock as to drive a man to suicide. We were both somewhat disappointed by the paucity of the information we were able to provide to each other. But try as I might, I simply could not imagine why hearing any mention of the grandfather who had died so long before his birth should suddenly appear important to Sebastian now. Nevertheless, I noted down Herr Ratner’s address, ostensibly in order to write to him if any deeper understanding of Sebastian’s sad fate should be obtained, but also simply as a source of information about the past if such should be needed. And upon that we said goodbye, and I left to continue the round of calls with Frau Bochsler; without, however, discovering anything further of interest.

‘Whatever poor Mr Cavendish learnt, it was not said at my soirée,’ she pronounced finally, with a mixture of relief and disappointed curiosity, at the close of the wearisome and monotonous day. Wearisome and monotonous for me, at least. She, to be sure, had many more reasons to enjoy it than I; the people we had visited were her friends, and she had the benefit of a common language to communicate with them; and, being quite generously built, she had presumably suffered less from the ceaseless intake of pastries than had I.

‘It is a pity that dear Dr Bernstein is not in Zürich at the moment,’ she said later, as we sat in her parlour, taking stock of the day. ‘He has been a dear friend of mine for decades, and of Herr Ratner’s as well. You would like him. He is so highly educated, so cosmopolitan, our dear doctor, and I did notice him speaking for some time with that poor young man. He seemed quite excited, but that is not surprising, such a lover of music as our Dr Bernstein is. You would have appreciated his intellect and knowledge. As a matter of fact, he wrote a book … I have it here somewhere. Ah yes, I remember, here it is. I have never read it, but I am sure that it is most interesting.’ She took from the mantelpiece a bound volume whose dustless state was obviously due to careful work on the part of the housemaids rather than to any effort at reading the contents by anyone whatsoever, given that the pages were still uncut. I read the title:
Automatische Schreibung: Diagnose und Bedeutung.

‘Diagnosis and meaning of automatic writing. What is that?’

‘Yes, our dear doctor is greatly fascinated by the phenomenon, and has been for as long as I have known him. Don’t you know about it? The patient writes down all kinds of nonsense in a state of unawareness, like a medium in a trance. Such things used to be all the rage and people were convinced that spirits were speaking through the writers, but Dr Bernstein insists that true understanding of the phenomenon is still lacking, though it has nothing at all to do with spirits from the other world. I know that he speaks of a patient of his own somewhere in the book. Take it, if you like. Perhaps you will enjoy it. You speak some German, as I heard. Do you also read?’

‘Haltingly, but with a dictionary I can manage,’ I said, thanking her and taking the book. Automatic writing! Either the doctor was a charlatan or – or he was not, and there was something interesting behind a phenomenon that my husband Arthur had taught me to consider essentially as a swindle. I felt intrigued, and determined to spell my way through at least part of the book before coming to a conclusion of my own.

‘Well, if the subject interests you, you may have a chance to meet Dr Bernstein in person, and then you can ask him the questions you wished. He moved from Zürich to Basel some years ago, but he travels quite regularly to London, to attend the meetings of the Society for Psychical Research there.’

‘Really!’ I exclaimed. During a previous case, I had already had some dealings with members of the SLR, in a manner that had deeply affected my natural scepticism. ‘Thank you so much for telling me about this. I shall certainly look for him at their next meeting.’

Sitting in the winter sunshine in my little Cambridge garden, I took Cecily’s small face between my hands and stared at it closely. Heredity! What was it? What secret lay behind Sebastian’s ‘cursed inheritance’? Was it material, or did he refer to the incorporeal conveyance of traits and features between the generations? Cecily wriggled and gave me a kiss, and all the mystery of motherhood, of the miraculous transmission of flesh to flesh and blood to blood lay revealed before me: her brown eyes, her soft hair, her little upturned nose, my features inexplicably reflected in the enigma of her face, radiant with love and the joy of being reunited.

The magical moment passed and the mystery sank into opaqueness once again; the children grasped my hands and pulled me into a dance of wild Indians about an improvised totem pole, and the capacity for rational thought melted away from my mind, leaving behind a mass of confused images and associations. The scales, which had fallen momentarily from my eyes and showed me the reflection of my own face in my child’s, returned and I perceived it no longer; Cedric’s resemblance to Arthur was pronounced (and he even looked a little like me – another mystery, as Arthur and I do not resemble each other in the least), but Cecily was once again nothing other than a little elf who had strayed into our garden by mistake.

As a matter of fact, as I watched her dancing about, I was reminded, not for the first time, of my own dearest sister, Dora. I used to think this was nothing but pure foolishness, since Dora and I are identical twins, and therefore I could hardly imagine a likeness to her and none to myself. But over time the impression persisted, and I came to understand that as Cecily’s character was closer to Dora’s (far sweeter, gentler and more thoughtful than I seemed to recall myself as ever having been!), I came to believe that the ephemeral similarities I sometimes fleetingly perceived arose as much from expressions and from movements as from the plastic features.

How often it is said that children have inherited their looks from Papa, their character from Grandmamma, and even their very troubles, which are imputed to Uncle James or Auntie Joan! But what can such a thing mean? How can a character, how can even a face be inherited in the same way that a material object, such as a violin, is inherited? How is it that we humans so freely confuse these two types of inheritance, even using the same word, although one is simple and the other complex and beyond all comprehension? That the face of a child can reflect both mother and father, and even back to the previous generations, is a phenomenon so familiar that we no longer question it. Although we do not understand it, we accept it and it seems natural to us; yet surely there must be some physical mechanism by which our physical attributes pass through our bodies to the child we create together.

I could not help mulling over the question, to the point of making theories whose expression would have been a perfect example of scandalous impropriety. It was a delicate subject to broach at dinner (for Arthur hates unseemliness), but I did so with tact, and encountered unexpected enthusiasm!

‘Why,’ he answered with the characteristic pleasure that exposure to new scientific ideas invariably gives him, ‘there is more known about the mystery of inheritance than you might think! In fact, I heard a very fascinating lecture on the subject some time ago, by a visiting German professor engaged in some research that I’m sure you would find very interesting. He told a story you would like, although I cannot quite remember the details, about someone having reached an extraordinary level of understanding of the subject and then having died and all his work having disappeared. Now, why would that have been? I’m sorry, I can’t recall; it’s the kind of thing you would remember better than me. What struck me in the lecture, the reason why I went, was the role of mathematics in the whole theory; probability, to be exact. For example, if a certain physical feature appears in the parents, then certain physical features may appear in the children with greater or lesser probabilities, which can be mathematically calculated, and certain other physical characteristics may be totally precluded in the children of a given couple. Theoretically, at least. Professor Correns’ studies concerned plants, which have a simpler constitution than human beings. But he strongly expressed the belief that humans, animals and plants function analogously.

‘But plants do not have children,’ I said. ‘What is the means of transmission?’

‘Ah, but they do! When you take a pea (I believe he spoke of peas) from a pea plant and plant it to obtain a new pea plant, that is considered to be a child, and, according to Professor Correns, it is not so different from …’

He paused and blushed, but I finished his sentence with a smile.

‘Than the planting done by us humans. So, the pea-plant plays the role of the father and the earth that of the mother?’

‘No, I believe there is a matter of two pea plants … Now you are getting me all interested! I can’t think how I managed not to seize the physical aspects of the theory, so interested was I by the mathematical.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me in the least. It is too bad, however,’ I remarked.

‘Well, it should be an easy affair to manage to encounter Professor Correns at some social event around Cambridge, if you would enjoy that. If it would compensate for my foolish distraction, I will be happy to speak to my friends in the department of biology and see if such an event cannot be arranged, or, if it is already arranged, if we cannot be allowed to join.’

‘I should love that!’ I exclaimed, with sudden impatience. Could it be that a light would suddenly be shone directly, and for me personally, upon one of the greatest mysteries of life? Could it be that scientists understood the secrets of heredity, if only for peas? It was, to be sure, a mystery that had never occupied my spirit particularly until that very day. But now that it appeared as one of the most important elements in a puzzle that concerned me, it suddenly seemed to me to be one of the essential secrets of nature, and I could not resist the desire to learn as soon as possible whatever there was to be known on the subject. I felt as impatient to meet fusty old Professor Correns as a young girl waiting for a midnight tryst with her first lover.

Professor Correns was being much celebrated in Cambridge, and as it happened, I was destined to meet him quite by chance on that very same afternoon, for as I was returning home along Silver Street carrying a few purchases of haberdashery, a carriage drew up in front of the Darwin house and a woman emerged with a very small girl, followed by two top-hatted gentlemen. One of them was familiar to me as one of Mr George Darwin’s brothers; I knew he was also a professor at the university, but could not remember of what subject. The other was a tall, dashing fellow, obviously a foreigner, with striking blonde hair and beard worn in a longer style than is usual hereabouts.

As these gentlemen approached the gate, the Darwin children appeared
en masse
from the stable where they often play, and greeted the newcomers effusively. The youngest one, William, spotted me as he was displaying his prowess to impress the visitors by climbing atop the high wall that separates the Darwin property from the road, and running eagerly back and forth along the top. Though I no longer live next door to them, the children still treat me cordially as a neighbour

‘Mrs Weatherburn!’ Willliam cried out with great enthusiasm, as an additional means of drawing attention to himself. ‘Here’s Uncle Francis and Aunt Ellen with a German for tea! Do come!’

I glanced through the gate, not certain whether an invitation proffered by a six-year-old was to be taken at face value, and encountered the welcoming smile of Mr Darwin’s lovely American wife, who had emerged from the house in her relaxed fashion, without a wrap, to take charge of her unruly brood, two more of whom had now joined their brother atop the wall.

‘Please, do join us if you can,’ she said. ‘Professor Correns must not be kept isolated amongst dons! He ought to meet as many as possible of the ladies of Cambridge as well, don’t you think? Such a different style of conversation!’

My heart leapt at the mention of his name; this was really a stroke of luck, for the satisfaction of my impatience, at least! Arthur being out for tea and the twins with their nanny, I accepted the invitation with pleasure. As I entered, another carriage drew up, and a couple of a certain age stepped out and entered the house behind me. Mrs Darwin’s maid took all the shawls and wraps, and we settled down in front of a roaring fire. Children ran in and out, tea was brought in and poured, various cakes were served, and introductions were made all around.

Professor Francis Darwin, I learnt with some excitement, was a naturalist, and Professor Carl Correns from Tübingen his guest in Cambridge!

‘I am very honoured to meet you,’ the eminent professor said to me in that respectful and somewhat weighty tone that a German accent always appears to lend to the English language.

‘And I to meet you,’ I said with an enthusiasm that he probably found surprising. ‘My husband was at your lecture on heredity, and what he told me has made me very eager to meet you and learn more about it.’

‘So, you have a scientific mind?’ he answered pleasantly. ‘It is something of a rarity to meet a woman with true scientific curiosity in the tradition of old, such as the legendary Marquise du Châtelet.’

‘I am honoured by the comparison!’ I laughed. ‘I have heard about the marquise, who brought the discoveries of Newton to the scientists of the French court. It is said that she studied day and night. I only wish I possessed such capacities!’

‘Yet you are interested by the sciences, and perhaps often like to meet and discuss with the scientists who work or visit the university?’

‘Yes, well,’ I said. ‘I do get very curious about some of the discoveries I learn of through my husband. I admit to a certain interest, even if my understanding must necessarily remain superficial. But I was particularly intrigued by what my husband described to me of your lecture. I must say that heredity is a topic that fascinates me deeply. However, he was only able to tell me just enough to whet my appetite for more, without giving satisfactory answers to any of my questions.’

‘Perhaps I can do better,’ responded Professor Correns with delighted gallantry. ‘At any rate, I am quite ready to try, and where I fail, my colleagues will certainly help me.’

Mrs Darwin was chatting quietly with her sister-in-law during this conversation and Professor Bates was standing at the sideboard together with the two Professors Darwin. Mrs Bates, seated on the same sofa as myself, was following our conversation without participating.

Professor Correns settled into an armchair that he drew up nearer the sofa. I took advantage of his proximity to examine him more closely.

He looked no older than Arthur, and his eyes were of a bright Teutonic blue with a merry twinkle. He seemed to be playing at a very entertaining game, yet there was an air of melancholy behind his laughter. I found him an intriguing and attractive personality, but my desire to know about his science was stronger than my desire to draw him out.

‘Well then,’ I said, ‘let us see if you can possibly explain the secrets of heredity to an ignorant being such as myself.’

He sat back and smiled.

‘Part of the secret of heredity is beyond my own knowledge,’ he said, ‘and another part must always remain mysterious to us humans because it is dependent on no other laws than the laws of chance, which as you know are unpredictable. I don’t know if you are aware that the laws of chance give precise predictions only over very large numbers, but never over a single occurrence of some event. For example, if I flip a die, I cannot make any prediction about which number will come up, but if I flip it six thousand times, I can predict that the number of times that a one will appear will be quite close to one thousand. Do you see?’

‘Yes, I do see,’ I said. ‘I see it for a die, because there are only six possibilities and we know them all and we know that there is an equal chance for any of them to occur. But it doesn’t seem possible that those simple rules could apply to a situation as complex as that of heredity in living beings, where it would seem that the number of possibilities are absolutely endless and impossible to enumerate.’

‘Very true, for complex living beings like humans. But there are much simpler living beings whose study has allowed us to understand the grand discovery, namely that the rules of chance governing the dice are the same identical rules which govern heredity; it is simply the number of possible combinations which is infinitely greater.’

I paused to think for a moment.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I can conceive somehow that such a thing might be true. It seems to us that the possibilities for two human beings to create another one are endless, but perhaps, as you say, they are really only in the many millions and that seems like an infinite number to us because we cannot tell the difference. Theoretically, I can see that what you are saying might be the case. But I must admit that I have not the faintest idea of how, even having conceived of this theory, it could possibly ever be proven.’

‘It takes a genius, madam,’ said the German professor with a sudden ponderousness, and I glanced at him in surprise, wondering if he could possibly be using this term in reference to himself. But no. This sudden earnestness was of that which is inspired by the contemplation of an extraordinary phenomenon.

‘I will tell you how it was done,’ he explained, ‘but I must first tell you by
whom
it was done. It is a surprising story, and a sad one. The story is about a monk in a monastery in Brünn who, some thirty-five years ago, published a paper which was misunderstood and utterly ignored and forgotten, until I myself discovered it barely one year ago – and it has changed my life, so that I now consider my scientific mission to be the bringing of this seminal work to the light of day!