The Sun Chemist (15 page)

We made our way to where the Western Christmas was being celebrated and found the church already crowded; it was after eleven. It held about a thousand, standing, which is what
everybody
was doing, shuffling and snuffling in heavy clothing in the chill.

The big white church was sumptuously decorated: pictures, statuettes, flowers. Red curtains hung on windows and doors. The white-and-gilt altar shone triumphantly. Six long candles, in enormous virginal candlesticks, flanked the cross, interspersed with vases of gladioli. A picture of the mother of Christ hung from the gallery, above which the gilded organ pipes thrummed sonorously. Candelabra hung from ceilings and walls; the place was a blaze of color and light, added to by the television arc lamps.

The Latin Patriarch was performing an office before the altar while the priests sang Jesus Redemptor. Then the Patriarch
recited
the lesson; and then everyone was singing again in Latin.

I was experiencing some confusion. Grignard had reacted at the turn of the century? I was not perfectly clear which century I was in. Rather too many appeared to be in evidence round here. In some bemusement I gazed at the gorgeous antique vestments of the Patriarch; he was just departing to change into some other vestments. I had seen a photo of him, in the afternoon paper, arriving at the church. He’d arrived in his Mercedes, which had struck me as odd at the time – a grander mode of arrival surely than that of the pregnant lady who now gazed calmly down at him from below the organ pipes. There was a faint smile on her face, not unlike that of Verochka in the photograph, as though waiting for something to happen.

Suddenly it happened. A voice sang:

It was midnight. The Midnight Mass could begin; which, with the return of the Patriarch, even more gorgeously attired, and to a perfectly glorious Gregorian chant, it did. In a moment, the chant was drowned by a wild clanging of bells and a thrilling peal from the organ, which had practically every hair on my head standing up. The miracle had occurred. He had been born.

Simultaneously, a semicircle of words lit up in blue above the organ pipes: ‘
GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO
’; and a Star of David flashed alight in electric bulbs overhead. The Star of David? A second blink showed that it was not. It was another six-pointed star, a representation of the one that had directed the Magi to this place. At the identical moment, it seemed to have directed me to one. I was still prickling all over with the miracle; and I got it then, or perhaps a moment later, when the procession of priests passed. Words were entwined in the embroidered hems of their silk garments, and I screwed my head sideways to read the words and, as I did so, recalled an earlier occasion when I had screwed my head sideways to read words.

The Gloria was succeeded by the Alleluia and the Gospel and the Credo; and then the Sanctus and the Benedictus and the Agnus Dei – marvelous all of them, not much marred by the Patriarch passing by with a doll in his arms.

‘Why are you smiling?’ Marta said to me.

‘The miracle.’

‘You don’t believe in miracles.’

‘I do.’

The Patriarch went below to put the doll back in the cave while Lauds went on. They went on for a long time. It was after two when we streamed out.

‘What was the problem with carotene?’ Ham said, yawning, as we went down the hill.

‘You can’t get chutney out of it.’

‘So?’

‘You get something else.’

‘Okay, I’ll buy it. What?’

‘God knows,’ I said happily, which was true enough. I didn’t, anyway. I thought I might, though, after a bit of a nap. It looked as if I’d only have a bit of one. Lots to do on Christmas Day, and tidings of joy for some, I shouldn’t wonder.

I skipped breakfast and just had a cup of coffee while waiting for Ze’ev to pick me up. I’d rung Beylis as soon as I’d got up, but he was in the shower and I couldn’t be bothered to wait. I was aflame with my idea and wanted to check it immediately.

‘
SUPPER – NO CHUTNEY
’ were the words in the margin; but in the body of the thing it had said something else. It had said, ‘He wishes for
GREENYARD’S PICKLES – CHUTNEY
.’ Well, he hadn’t. That was obvious. She had heard him say Grignard, and assumed it to be chutney; as I’d assumed the Star of Bethlehem to be the Star of David. But she had hung on to her assumption for rather longer.

Christmas Day was a workday at the Institute, and also at the House. Connie called down the stairs as soon as I arrived.

‘Igor – is that you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Professor Beylis on the phone. You called him?’

‘Coming.’

I raced up the stairs and took the phone in her room.

‘Emanuel?’

‘Yes.’

‘Rejoice, Emanuel!’ I commanded.

‘I am always ready,’ he said equably. ‘About what should I rejoice?’

‘In the glory and mystery of carotene.’

‘I rejoice in it.’

‘When did Weizmann work with it?’

‘Did I say that he did?’

‘
I
am saying that he did.’

‘Oh, it’s a quiz. Let me think.’

‘When would he have had occasion?’

‘Well, as I’ve told you, the authority is Kuhn, and Kuhn came 
to it through vitamins while working with Willstätter on protein, so –’

But we found nothing then. When else?’

‘There is an else, is there?’

‘There must be an else. It isn’t a quiz, Emanuel. I need to know when he
could
have worked on it.’

‘Well, carotene is a pigment. Coloring matter,’ he said slowly. But that would have been very early on.’

‘It could have been very early on.’

‘In that case, perhaps … his dyestuff work. I don’t know.’

‘When did his dyestuff work go on till?’

‘Oh, about 1910.’

‘And when did it start?’

‘That’s how he did start.’

‘What – the turn of the century?’

‘That sort of period.’

Ten years, then. ‘Where did he do most of it?’ I said.

‘In Manchester. He did dozens of papers there.’

‘What’s that – 1904?’

‘Yes. About then.’

Six years. ‘Could he have known about Grignard then?’

‘Oh, dear. Are we still with Grignard?’

‘Could he?’

‘Grignard, 1904? Yes. He could.’

‘What could he have done with Grignard then?’

‘Oh, now really, Igor, I can’t do it off the top of my head. If you’ve got the papers there – have you got the papers there?’

‘They will be here. I think so.’

So go through them. It’ll tell you – if you see the word “
magnesium
” somewhere, give me a ring. It might be an odd word with things in front or behind. Don’t worry about that. Just look for the magnesium.’

‘All right,’ I said, and put the phone down. I seemed to be panting slightly.

Connie was looking at me queerly.

‘What is all this?’ she said.

‘I want his published papers up to 1910.’

She got them for me. ‘Igor, sit down. For God’s sake, what is it?’

I couldn’t tell her what it was. I didn’t know. I took the papers from her, several sheets of them. The list started in 1899 with a paper in German. I went carefully with my finger down the first page and stopped.

‘Organomagnesiumbromides.’

It was at the end of a line, and I went to the beginning.

‘Oh, my God!’ I said.

‘
What
?
’ Connie said, in something of a frenzy.

‘He wanted Pickles.’

‘What pickles?’

‘Samuel Shrowder Pickles.’

‘What?
What?
’ On her neat little legs she was now jumping.

‘He didn’t want chutney.’

‘You know he didn’t. He wanted Grignard.’

‘He wanted
Pickles
. He wanted the Grignard he’d
done
with Pickles.’

‘Igor, what are you
talking
about?’

‘Oh, dear. Oh, dear me!’ I said, suddenly shocked. I’d just remembered something else, something absolutely incredible. I said, ‘Connie, we’ve got volume 3 of the published letters, haven’t we?’

Connie silently picked the volume off a shelf and gave me it, and I opened to the index. Pickles, S. S. Page 342.

I turned to page 342.

I looked up at Connie with staring eyes. I’d read this letter even
before I’d left London. I’d not only read it, I’d written it, in Russian, for little Kaplan in Manchester.

Connie read to the end, and looked at me. From my jumbled remarks, and from the letter, she had evidently made some kind of assessment. She reached for a packet of cigarettes, gave me one and herself one, and lit them.

‘Have we got anything on him?’ I said.

‘I doubt it.’ We were still staring at each other, and for some reason. talking in hushed voices. ‘I mean, why would we? Is that all he did with him?’

I looked at the list again. There was another paper with Pickles.

That was all. He’d done a couple of papers with Perkin’s assistant.

‘Well, I’ll see. Maybe – There’s a pile of old correspondence somewhere. It’s from when the researchers were looking into sources. They made a general inquiry for letters in Manchester. It was sometime like the early 1960s.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Well, let me think. There is old stuff in that storeroom next to Harold upstairs. I will look into it.’

While she did, I looked into something else. I had an elusive impression: some other thing I’d read about Pickles, somewhere, at some time. Where? I hunted the shelves for Weizmann’s own
autobiographical notes, found a copy, dog-eared, no index. I thumbed through his Manchester days, his first days at the university, with the place almost to himself. Yes.

Connie returned just in time to see my expression. She didn’t say anything, but read where my finger was still placed. She didn’t say anything then, either.

‘Do you think his German would make a cat laugh?’ I said.

‘Well, I – I guess so.’

‘It’s him, Connie.’

‘But – we have been searching Bradford. This is Manchester.’

‘Connie, it’s him. I know it.’

‘Igor, stop shaking. Sit down. I’m having the storeroom cleared. If there’s anything there, we will soon know it. I will get you coffee.’

While she did it, I phoned Emanuel. He took down the details and said he’d call me back. Then I went to Chaimchik’s room and concentrated on the memorandum.

There was not now such an enormous area to concentrate on. With so many of the missing details supplied, the thing was beginning to read like a scenario, almost a comedy of errors. By only a small exercise of the imagination, it was possible to insert the stage directions.

He’d started off in fine style, pointing out that Vava’s apparent or projected difficulties with carotene could be turned to good account, could even become the ‘trigger to tremendously increased yields’; but almost immediately had run into the snarl-up with Grignard and Pickles.

No doubt confused by his grumbling over the milk, Miss Knowall had assumed he was still issuing general food
directions
.
He had triumphantly remembered Grignard and Pickles, and she had triumphantly translated it into a short order – evidently for immediate execution.

Well, that must have been the way of it, and I was still musing when Connie came in with a dusty box file. It was marked ‘Manchester,’ and in it was a bulging mass of papers.

The Manchester period had proved a knotty one for the researchers. With almost nine years of letters missing, a special effort had been thrown in. There were dozens of interviews with people who’d known him (including little Kaplan), recollections of old students. He’d shifted lodgings a good deal in his early days, and attics and cellars had been scoured with a little but not much result. A Professor G. N. Burckhardt, senior tutor of the university’s organic chemistry department, had undertaken to check all university documents, and a lengthy correspondence had followed.

The chemistry department had been known as Owens College in Weizmann’s day, and there were various abstracts from annual college reports in which his name figured (as Dr Charles
Weizmann
, his
nom de guerre
at the university). Burckhardt had also, from other records, compiled his own list of all those who must have worked with him. Several question-and-answer letters showed him digging up further particulars on specific people, with whom the researchers had then established their own
communications
. But nobody had raised any queries about Pickles. He was there, however, modestly, in the middle of a list, unticked, unringed, unqueried.

‘Bradford,
Wilts
?’ Connie said.

‘It’s another county, Wiltshire.’

‘Oh, well. That makes twelve of them.’

‘Yes.’

‘D. 1962.’

‘Quite.’ As with Vava.

We looked silently at the spare obituary, and I thought again of the empty university in the summer of 1904, and the pair of them working away in the basement, Chaimchik trying out his English, and the likable fellow his German. How differently their subsequent careers had gone: one embarking on the fierce tide that had carried him to a state funeral and the grassy plot below, the other on the quieter waters of the Avon to Spencer Moulton & Co. – and perhaps a grassy plot in Wilts.