Free The Sun Chemist by Lionel Davidson Page B

showed him the long last memo, and he put his glasses on and carefully read it.
    ‘What prescience, eh?’ he said admiringly at last. ‘ Twenty-odd years ago, he saw this coming. Who else did? “Where the economies of even the developed countries may be dependent in a large degree on Arab oil.” I tell you!’
    ‘Yes. I don’t understand about the people in Bradford.’ I read it over his shoulder.
    I have been thinking. Perhaps the Bradford people will be able to let us know. I will think again later. That German would make a cat laugh. Never mind, he will prove the best internationalist of us all. It’s a funny world. We will celebrate the holiness of the day.
    ‘Well, you recognize the last sentence,’ he said.
    ‘I don’t.’
    ‘ Goy . It’s from the Yom Kippur service. It’s the last thing he read. Unetanah tokef kedushat hayom , et cetera. He had his prayer book there. Probably he looked at it just then. Yom Kippur. When this last war broke out. It’s a strange thing, isn’t it?’ His battered face was creased in a most solemn expression.
    ‘Yes. The German who made the cat laugh couldn’t be Vava, could it?’
    ‘How could it? Vava was not a German. He wouldn’t think of him as a German.’
    ‘Haber or Willstätter, perhaps?’
    ‘Certainly not. He had the greatest respect for them.’
    ‘Hmm.’
    ‘It’s a problem. Bradford people. Was he ever in Bradford?’
    ‘Well, Meyer, I am sort of asking you.’
    He took his glasses off, and put them on again, and read the whole thing through once more.
    ‘Bradford is a place in Yorkshire, England, right?’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘A textile place. I don’t recall anything from Bradford. Who the hell do we know in Bradford?’
    He was looking at me, so I shook my head. I didn’t know a soul in Bradford.
    He put his glasses on and off a couple of times and looked in frustration at the transcript. ‘This is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Who the hell took it down?’
    ‘Well, I thought I’d ask you that, too.’
    ‘Some goddam stenographer took it down, it’s obvious.’ He picked up the phone. ‘Give me Julian Meltzer.’
    He had a somewhat inconclusive chat with Julian. Julian didn’t know who’d taken it down either. It was established that the dictation books ought to be around somewhere, though. A whirlwind round of phone calls revealed that several of them were in the basement of the Wix Library; and about five minutes later, so was I.
    The Wix Library was another magnificent building; I picked my way down to the basement and found Dan in it.
    He said, ‘Cassius hath a lean and hungry look; he thinks too much … Mashed potato, Igor?’
    ‘Mashed potato.’
    ‘That’s the stuff.’
    These were the main Weizmann archives, embracing some scores of bays of shelving. In the House there were only typed copies of the outgoing letters, translated from Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, French, or German where necessary. Here were the originals, incoming and outgoing, plus everything else relating to the great man: photographs, certificates, drafts, invitations, telegrams, minutes, cuttings – every memento of his life, stacked in box files, shelf upon shelf. I’d done some work here, but it was an oppressive place to work in; the ceiling was low and the air heavy in the strongroom.
    Alizia, the librarian, expected me, but the notice had been short and she was somewhat flustered.
    ‘These are from 1952, Mr Druyanov. Would you like to check that everything is here?’
    ‘I wouldn’t know what to check. I will take your word for it, Alizia.’ This statement was the more heartfelt because a quick glance at the books showed they were all in shorthand.
    ‘If you would just sign here.’
    I signed, and on the off chance paused at Dan’s desk.
    ‘Dan, can you do shorthand?’
    ‘A little … Hmm. Pitman. I will tell you something disheartening, Igor.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘They do Gregg in Israel.’
    This turned out to be correct. But by the