The city fathers and ‘men of order’ were appalled when they learned that the great physicist was hob-nobbing with anarchists and cenetistas. That wasn’t all. He had booked himself into a dilapidated old pensión, the Grand Hotel of the Four Nations — Le Quatre Nations — at No 35 Las Ramblas, on the corner of Escudellers and the Plaça del Teatro. The city fathers tried to move him to the Ritz, but Einstein would have none of it, insisting that he preferred to remain where he was. When I asked him what was so special about that particular hotel, he said he specifically wanted to stay there, because it was where Michael Bakunin had lodged in 1869, just prior to the Lyons uprising and the Paris Commune. Einstein was an admirer of Bakunin and had specifically asked for the Russian anarchist’s old room. I wonder what his wife made of the hotel, or the room; it hadn’t changed much in the intervening fifty years — not that his wife’s opinions appeared to matter much to him. ‘Einstein’s first port of call after checking in at the Quatre Nations was to the Soli office where he found me writing my column. In he walked, unexpected and unannounced, asking to speak to Ángel Pestaña. At first I didn’t know who he was and assumed, because of his violin case and dishevelled appearance, that he was a street or café musician, a busker. He was in his mid-forties at the time, but even then he had an air of permanent distraction — other-worldliness — about him. He wore a shabby brown woollen suit with a cardigan, a white shirt with a high plastic collar and a red tie topped by a mop of tousled, unruly brown hair that stuck out in all directions making him look as though someone had stuck a live 2,000 volt electrode up his arse. His hair was already greying at the temples and roots — as was his droopy moustache, and his round, cheery face bore an expression of permanent, pleasant surprise; and his eyes shone with mischief and humour. ‘Salud!’ he said, seizing my hand warmly with both hands. ‘Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Albert Einstein and I, too, am a revolutionary, an anti-authoritarian: I am the original valiant and fearless Swabian. You, the anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists, of the CNT are also valiant Swabians, revolutionaries of the streets; I, however, am a new-generation revolutionary operating in the field of quantum physics and I will disprove the reactionary quantum theorists and carry the banner of the quantum revolution into ever-stranger territory and provide the final triumphant synthesis of unified field theory.’ ‘I looked at him blankly, dumfounded, and — I’m embarrassed to admit — all I could think of to say to the great man was: ‘Really? Fascinating! Would you like some coffee? Pestaña wasn’t in, so I explained, briefly who I was and what I was doing in Barcelona, and offered to take him to the union offices in the nearby Carrer Nou, where we would probably find him. We hit it off really well and chatted away like old friends as we walked. The reason he wanted to meet Pestaña was because his anarchist friends in Berlin — Rudolf Rocker, Fritz Kater and Augustin Souchy — said he was the best person to explain what was happening in Spain. ‘Einstein was a delight to be with — sympathetic and supportive of everything we were doing. We chatted for hours in Pestaña’s office before heading off for supper. It was a memorable evening, full of little insights into the physical and metaphysical universe — and the man himself. Shared by my friend Hagbard C.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 05:34:07 +0000
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