Copenhagen - Michael Frayn [18]
Heisenberg Why did I come? And once again I go through that evening in 1941. I crunch over the familiar gravel, and tug at the familiar bell-pull. What’s in my head? Fear, certainly, and the absurd and horrible importance of someone bearing bad news. But … yes … something else as well. Here it comes again. I can almost see its face. Something good. Something bright and eager and hopeful.
Bohr I open the door …
Heisenberg And there he is. I see his eyes light up at the sight of me.
Bohr He’s smiling his wary schoolboy smile.
Heisenberg And I feel a moment of such consolation.
Bohr A flash of such pure gladness.
Heisenberg As if I’d come home after a long journey.
Bohr As if a long-lost child had appeared on the doorstep.
Heisenberg Suddenly I’m free of all the dark tangled currents in the water.
Bohr Christian is alive, Harald still unborn.
Heisenberg The world is at peace again.
Margrethe Look at them. Father and son still. Just for a moment. Even now we’re all dead.
Bohr For a moment, yes, it’s the twenties again.
Heisenberg And we shall speak to each other and understand each other in the way we did before.
Margrethe And from those two heads the future will emerge. Which cities will be destroyed, and which survive. Who will die, and who will live. Which world will go down to obliteration, and which will triumph.
Bohr My dear Heisenberg!
Heisenberg My dear Bohr!
Bohr Come in, come in …
Act Two
Heisenberg It was the very beginning of spring. The first time I came to Copenhagen, in 1924. March: raw, blustery northern weather. But every now and then the sun would come out and leave that first marvellous warmth of the year on your skin. That first breath of returning life.
Bohr You were twenty-two. So I must have been … Thirty-eight.
Bohr Almost the same age as you were when you came in 1941.
Heisenberg So what do we do?
Bohr Put on our boots and rucksacks …
Heisenberg Take the tram to the end of the line …
Bohr And start walking!
Heisenberg Northwards to Elsinore.
Bohr If you walk you talk.
Heisenberg Then westwards to Tisvilde.
Bohr And back by way of Hillerød.
Heisenberg Walking, talking, for a hundred miles.
Bohr After which we talked more or less non-stop for the next three years.
Heisenberg We’d split a bottle of wine over dinner in your flat at the Institute.
Bohr Then I’d come up to your room …
Heisenberg That terrible little room in the servants’ quarters in the attic.
Bohr And we’d talk on into the small hours.
Heisenberg How, though?
Bohr How?
Heisenberg How did we talk? In Danish?
Bohr In German, surely.
Heisenberg I lectured in Danish. I had to give my first colloquium when I’d only been here for ten weeks.
Bohr I remember it. Your Danish was already excellent.
Heisenberg No. You did a terrible thing to me. Half-an-hour before it started you said casually, Oh, I think we’ll speak English today.
Bohr But when you explained …?
Heisenberg Explain to the Pope? I didn’t dare. That excellent Danish you heard was my first attempt at English.
Bohr My dear Heisenberg! On our own together, though? My love, do you recall?
Margrethe What language you spoke when I wasn’t there? You think I had microphones hidden?
Bohr No, no—but patience, my love, patience!
Margrethe Patience?
Bohr You sounded a little sharp.
Margrethe Not at all.
Bohr We have to follow the threads right back to the beginning of the maze.
Margrethe I’m watching every step.
Bohr You didn’t mind? I hope.
Margrethe Mind?
Bohr Being left at home?
Margrethe While you went off on your hike? Of course not. Why should I have minded? You had to get out of the house. Two new sons arriving on top of each other would be rather a lot for any man to put up with.
Bohr Two new sons?
Margrethe Heisenberg.
Bohr Yes, yes.
Margrethe And our own son.
Bohr Aage?
Margrethe Ernest!
Bohr 1924—of course—Ernest.
Margrethe Number five. Yes?
Bohr Yes, yes, yes. And if it was March, you’re right—he couldn’t have been much more than …
Margrethe One week.
Bohr One week?