Copenhagen - Michael Frayn [4]
Bohr We heard, yes. I’m so sorry.
Heisenberg These things happen. The question is now resolved. Happily resolved. We should all have met in Zürich …
Bohr In September 1939.
Heisenberg And of course, sadly …
Bohr Sadly for us as well.
Margrethe A lot more sadly still for many people.
Heisenberg Yes. Indeed.
Bohr Well, there it is.
Heisenberg What can I say?
Margrethe What can any of us say, in the present circumstances?
Heisenberg No. And your sons?
Margrethe Are well, thank you. Elisabeth? The children?
Heisenberg Very well. They send their love, of course.
Margrethe They so much wanted to see each other, in spite of everything! But now the moment has come they’re so busy avoiding each other’s eye that they can scarcely see each other at all.
Heisenberg I wonder if you realise how much it means to me to be back here in Copenhagen. In this house. I have become rather isolated in these last few years.
Bohr I can imagine.
Margrethe Me he scarcely notices. I watch him discreetly from behind my expression of polite interest as he struggles on.
Heisenberg Have things here been difficult?
Bohr Difficult?
Margrethe Of course. He has to ask. He has to get it out of the way.
Bohr Difficult What can I say? We’ve not so far been treated to the gross abuses that have occurred elsewhere. The race laws have not been enforced.
Margrethe Yet.
Bohr A few months ago they started deporting Communists and other anti-German elements.
Heisenberg But you personally …?
Bohr Have been left strictly alone.
Heisenberg I’ve been anxious about you.
Bohr Kind of you. No call for sleepless nights in Leipzig so far, though.
Margrethe Another silence. He’s done his duty. Now he can begin to steer the conversation round to pleasanter subjects.
Heisenberg Are you still sailing?
Bohr Sailing?
Margrethe Not a good start.
Bohr No, no sailing.
Heisenberg The Sound is …?
Bohr Mined.
Heisenberg Of course.
Margrethe I assume he won’t ask if Niels has been skiing.
Heisenberg You’ve managed to get some skiing?
Bohr Skiing? In Denmark?
Heisenberg In Norway. You used to go to Norway.
Bohr I did, yes.
Heisenberg But since Norway is also … well …
Bohr Also occupied? Yes, that might make it easier. In fact I suppose we could now holiday almost anywhere in Europe.
Heisenberg I’m sorry. I hadn’t thought of it quite in those terms.
Bohr Perhaps I’m being a little oversensitive.
Heisenberg Of course not. I should have thought.
Margrethe He must almost be starting to wish he was back in the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.
Heisenberg I don’t suppose you feel you could ever come to Germany …
Margrethe The boy’s an idiot.
Bohr My dear Heisenberg, it would be an easy mistake to make, to think that the citizens of a small nation, of a small nation overrun, wantonly and cruelly overrun, by its more powerful neighbour, don’t have exactly the same feelings of national pride as their conquerors, exactly the same love of their country.
Margrethe Niels, we agreed.
Bohr To talk about physics, yes.
Margrethe Not about politics.
Bohr I’m sorry.
Heisenberg No, no—I was simply going to say that I still have my old ski-hut at Bayrischzell. So if by any chance … at any time … for any reason …
Bohr Perhaps Margrethe would be kind enough to sew a yellow star on my ski-jacket.
Heisenberg Yes. Yes. Stupid of me.
Margrethe Silence again. Those first brief sparks have disappeared, and the ashes have become very cold indeed. So now of course I’m starting to feel almost sorry for him. Sitting here all on his own in the midst of people who hate him, all on his own against the two of us. He looks younger again, like the boy who first came here in 1924. Younger than Christian would have been now. Shy and arrogant and anxious to be loved. Homesick and pleased to be away from home at last. And, yes, it’s sad, because Niels loved him, he was a father to him.
Heisenberg So … what are you working on?
Margrethe And all he can do is press forward.
Bohr Fission, mostly.
Heisenberg I saw a couple of papers in the Physical Review. The velocity-range relations of