Copenhagen by Michael Frayn Read Free Book Online Page B

arrival of the Allies that saved you!
    Heisenberg   We’d almost reached the critical mass! A tiny bit bigger and the chain would sustain itself indefinitely. All we need is a little more uranium. I set off with Weizsäcker to try and get our hands on Diebner’s. Another hair-raising journey all the way back across Germany. Constant air raids—no trains—we try bicycles—we never make it! We end up stuck in a little inn somewhere in the middle of nowhere, listening to the thump of bombs falling all round us. And on the radio someone playing the Beethoven G minor cello sonata …
    Bohr   And everything was still under your control?
    Heisenberg   Under my control—yes! That’s the point! Under my control!
    Bohr   Nothing was under anyone’s control by that time!
    Heisenberg   Yes, because at last we were free of all constraints! The nearer the end came the faster we could work!
    Bohr   You were no longer running that programme, Heisenberg. The programme was running you.
    Heisenberg   Two more weeks, two more blocks of uranium, and it would have been German physics that achieved the world’s first self-sustaining chain reaction.
    Bohr   Except that Fermi had already done it in Chicago, two years earlier.
    Heisenberg   We didn’t know that.
    Bohr   You didn’t know anything down in that cave. You were as blind as moles in a hole. Perrin said that there wasn’t even anything to protect you all from the radiation.
    Heisenberg   We didn’t have time to think about it.
    Bohr   So if it had gone critical …
    Margrethe   You’d all have died of radiation sickness.
    Bohr   My dear Heisenberg! My dear boy!
    Heisenberg   Yes, but by then the reactor would have been running.
    Bohr   I should have been there to look after you.
    Heisenberg   That’s all we could think of at the time. To get the reactor running, to get the reactor running.
    Bohr   You always needed me there to slow you down a little. Your own walking lump of cadmium.
    Heisenberg   If I had died then, what should I have missed? Thirty years of attempting to explain. Thirty years of reproach and hostility. Even you turned your back on me.
    Margrethe   You came to Copenhagen again. You came to Tisvilde.
    Heisenberg   It was never the same.
    Bohr   No. It was never the same.
    Heisenberg   I sometimes think that those final few weeks at Haigerloch were the last happy time in my life. In a strange way it was very peaceful. Suddenly we were out of all the politics of Berlin. Out of the bombing. The war was coming to an end. There was nothing to think about except the reactor. And we didn’t go mad, in fact. We didn’t work all the time. There was a monastery on top of the rock above our cave. I used to retire to the organ-loft in the church, and play Bach fugues.
    Margrethe   Look at him. He’s lost. He’s like a lost child. He’s been out in the woods all day, running here, running there. He’s shown off, he’s been brave, he’s been cowardly. He’s done wrong, he’s done right. And now the evening’s come, and all he wants is to go home, and he’s lost.
    Heisenberg   Silence.
    Bohr   Silence.
    Margrethe   Silence.
    Heisenberg   And once again the tiller slams over, and Christian is falling.
    Bohr   Once again he’s struggling towards the lifebuoy.
    Margrethe   Once again I look up from my work, and there’s Niels in the doorway, silently watching me …
    Bohr   So, Heisenberg, why did you come to Copenhagen in 1941? It was right that you told us about all the fears you had. But you didn’t really think I’d tell you whether the Americans were working on a bomb.
    Heisenberg   No.
    Bohr   You didn’t seriously hope that I’d stop them.
    Heisenberg   No.
    Bohr   You were going back to work on that reactor whatever I said.
    Heisenberg   Yes.
    Bohr   So, Heisenberg, why did you come?
    Heisenberg   Why did I come?
    Bohr   Tell us once again. Another draft of the paper. And this