Morning exercise completed, and dressed to his satisfaction, he shuffled downstairs. His housekeeper, Helen Dukas, was already awake. Bustling about the kitchen, she poured a cup of coffee from the stainless-steel percolator as Einstein sat down at the cluttered kitchen table. After the cup was placed in front of him, he sipped the steaming liquid slowly, all the while curiously examining a flower Dukas had placed in a glass on the table.
As she had every morning for the last seventeen years, Dukas prodded him to eat a good breakfast, begged him in fact, but the old man just wanted a slice of toast. Finishing the toasted bread, Einstein began arranging the crumbs into intricate patterns on the smooth Formica of the table. As he sipped his coffee, he stared at the crumbs. Slowly reaching for a scrap of paper, which happened to be one of his paychecks that lay atop a jumbled pile of mail on the table, he quickly began scribbling equations on the back.
For his celebratory day off, Einstein had requested a car and driver from the Princeton University motor pool. Though he possessed one of the greatest analytical minds of all time, he had yet to operate a motor vehicle. The driver, a student named Mike Scaramelli, arrived promptly at seven. He slid the car to a stop in Einstein's driveway. After pausing to wipe a handprint from the passenger window with his handkerchief, he walked up the steps and knocked on the front door of Einstein's home at 112 Mercer Street. Hearing the knock, Einstein rose from the table and stuffed the check, the back now covered with equations, into the pile of letters on the counter.
"I will be back before dark," he said to Dukas as he walked from the kitchen.
"Be sure to take a light jacket, Albert," Dukas said as she began to wash Einstein's breakfast dishes in the sink. "One can never tell how the weather may turn." Walking across the hardwood floors of his living room, Einstein paused at the coat rack and removed a jacket. Placing the thin cloth coat under his arm, he opened his front door, then smiled at Scaramelli. As he walked out the door, he paused to tuck the newspaper lying on his porch under his other arm. In the driveway, he climbed into the rear seat of the automobile.
"Is the fuel tank full?" Einstein asked once-he was settled.
"I topped it off this morning, Dr. Einstein," ScarameUi noted.
"Good, gasoline is scarce, what with the war and aU."
"Yes it is, Dr. Einstein," Scaramelli said. "The director of the motor pool was unsure where you wanted to be driven."
Einstein reached across the front seat and pointed out his destination on the map Scaramelli held. Tracing the best route to take with his fingertip, Scaramelli placed the map next to him on the front seat, then put the 1939 Packard into gear and began driving east, toward the ocean. Einstein settled back again in the rear compartment and began to read the comics in die newspaper.
It was 7:12 A.M. The pair would reach their destination, a marina on the New Jersey coast, in just over an hour.
Einstein was a man tied to his work. He had few hobbies, but he truly loved to sail. He would often struggle mentally with his formulas while at sea, claiming that he could think more clearly in the salt air. Today's voyage, however, was to be strictly recreational; the Unified Field Theory was left locked in a far part of his mind, the solution a secret he was not ready to share. He had yet to tell a soul that the theory was now complete. There was time enough for that.
Einstein treasured his sailboat as he did few physical possessions. The vessel allowed him the opportunity and freedom of being truly alone. Away from the closed classrooms and laboratories where he had spent most of his life. Alone with the deep thoughts that clouded his every waking moment.
Ernest Hartley, the owner of the marina where Einstein moored his boat, kept the physicists twenty-seven-foot-long mahogany sloop perfectly maintained. He understood that his genius friend was not always comfortable with simple mechanics and was easily puzzled by things others might consider commonplace.
At eleven minutes before eight, the car carrying Einstein was still fifteen miles from the marina. Although Einstein was not due for another half-hour, his sailboat's heavily varnished wood was already gleaming in the morning sun, awaiting its owners arrival. Hartley finished hosing the vessel off with fresh water and rubbed the last of the brightwork to a dull glow. Hoisting the sails, he gave them a quick visual inspection, then checked the sailboat's lines for frayed ends. He tested the rudder and found it moving smoothly. Hartley wiped his hands on a towel and walked back inside to await Einstein's imminent arrival.
Rolling down the tree-lined road leading to Hartley's Marina, Einstein folded the newspaper in half and placed it on the leather-covered seat next to him. Nowadays the newspaper only depressed him. The news was only of death and dying, of a long war he hoped would soon end. Instead, he listened to the mechanical sounds coming from the Packard as he stared out the window at the farmers' fields just inside the border of trees. Cranking down the window he listened as the flock of Bob Whites in the bushes near the trees chirped the song that gave them their name.
With World War II sapping most of the industrial production of Detroit, it was very difficult, even for prestigious Princeton University, to purchase any new automobiles. That was fine with Einstein. The dark gray Packard had long been his favorite, and the man who ran the motor pool was well aware of that fact. When Einstein requested a car, it was usually the Packard that arrived.
Elegant yet understated, the Packard-designed coachwork was finished in a lacquer color the factory called mourning dove gray. The entire length of the body sported a pair of thin red accent lines that ended on the front fenders in a rolling wave. The hood was long and hinged in the middle, with a chrome strip down the center. To each side of the hood sat fenders, the passenger side featuring a rounded hump where the sidemount spare tire was stored. Huge round headlights, mounted inside the flowing sheet metal of the fenders, pointed the way forward. The vehicle was powered by an eight-cylinder engine that operated so quietly it was nearly impossible to tell when the engine was running. Its power was channeled though a hydrostatic transmission that required no shifting of the gears. The seats were finished in red leather, the headliner was made of gray mohair, and the thick felt carpets muffled any road noise. Set inside the massive dashboard of the Packard was a radio that sent the sound to a speaker in the driver's area as well as to a single chrome-covered speaker mounted on the dividing wall to the rear compartment and facing to the rear. On the radio an orchestra performing works by Beethoven was playing lightly as Scaramelli slowed, then turned off the pavement and started down the dirt road to the marina.
Braking the Packard sedan to a stop on the gravel parking lot of the marina, Scaramelli scurried to open the rear door, then waited as Einstein climbed slowly from the leather-trimmed rear compartment. On the gravel next to the Packard, the physicist stood and breathed deeply of the salt air for a few moments.
"What a glorious day," he noted, his words still thick with his native German accent. Scaramelli nodded silently. The student was still in awe of the great man and found ordinary conversation with him difficult. He walked respectfully behind as Einstein entered the marina building.
Hartley looked up from the fishing magazine he was reading on the counter as the door swung open. He smiled, folded the magazine closed, and greeted Einstein warmly.
"Good to see you, Doctor. Your boat is all ready to sail." Einstein returned the smile and nodded slowly. "Thank you, Ernie," he said simply, his eyes squinting slightly from the dim light inside the building. With Hartley leading the way, Einstein and Scaramelli walked through the marina building. The shelves lining the marinas walls were crammed floor to ceiling with dusty chandlery. Boxes of oil were piled next to wooden crates containing bottles of soda. Spools containing the material to sew new sails sat alongside shelves stacked with freshcut hardwoods that tinted the air with their scents as they aged. A polished brass antique binnacle with round balancing weights sat off to one side.