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Every non-French person has their own image of France, literary, historical, gastronomic, architectural. When I was learning French as a child, I often looked at pictures of different neighborhoods of Paris and was unpleasantly struck by the “symbol” of this beautiful city, the Eiffel Tower, an ugly metal structure that spoiled a stunningly beautiful and original urban ensemble. No one shared my critical attitude towards this piece of iron in the heart of the French capital. Many years after my traumatic “encounter” with this tower in picture books, I finally found a like-minded person. He turned out to be the great French writer Guy de Maupassant. In the essay “Fatigue” shortly after the construction of the tower Maupassant wrote: “I left Paris and even France, because the Eiffel Tower bored me. It is not only visible from everywhere, but in general you get at every turn: it is made of every possible material and haunts you from all the windows, like an unbinding, agonizing nightmare. […] And how dare the newspapers speak of a new architecture about this metal hulk! […] But I ask myself: what will they think of our generation unless some uprising soon sweeps away this tall, skinny pyramid of iron staircases, this gigantic, ugly skeleton, whose base seems to be intended for a mighty cyclopean monument and instead ends in a shabby underbelly – the skinny and ridiculous profile of a factory chimney?”
French metal has played an interesting part in my life and has contributed curious metallic notes to the tunes played in my scholarly endeavors. The events set forth in this story actually occurred in France with people who wish to remain anonymous. I have therefore changed their names, but not the facts. Fictitious names are the only fiction in this story.
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My hero appeared late in science. He practiced Zionism for four years, living in an industrial settlement and repopulating Galilee. In so doing he increased its scarce Jewish population. He lived in a small settlement and labored. The four years of settling Galilee cost Fima dearly, and considering that he had been denied exit from the USSR for two years before that and had been persecuted in that life, the interruption in his scientific activity was enormous. He had to turn mountains to regain what he had lost. And he did it successfully.
His talents were revealed to me gradually, for he was a modest man. He drew beautifully, knew classical music and Pushkin’s poetry perfectly, had golden hands and a prominent nose. He laughed loudly, declared just as loudly that he was an honest man, and was at once trustworthy. After becoming a material research doctor, he married and had two children. He remained a loyal Zionist until the beginning of this story.
One day Fima said to me: “I don’t have a job in Israel. Maybe you could lift a finger and help me get a job abroad.” When I asked him about his wife, children and Zionism, he replied, “My wife and children are in the backpack, and Zionism doesn’t want me. I did not betray the Motherland, but the Motherland betrayed me by not taking me to work. Science is first and foremost for me.” He didn’t say “in the suitcase”, he said “in the backpack”. In Fima lived a contempt for suitcases. His settler simplicity and love of nature did not accept suitcases.
I helped him get a job in France, and one day he and I traveled to the birthplace of the great revolution, he for the first time and I as a guide and teacher of wisdom, he with a backpack and I with a suitcase. At the airport he asked me: “Why do you have such a big suitcase?“-”I’m putting in there what doesn’t fit in my head,” I replied. ”A lot of things don’t fit. It’s going to be hard for you,” he established. Even before the trip, he had asked me to show him Paris. When we arrived in the city, I took hold of the strap of the suitcase and pulled it behind me. The suitcase rolled on four wheels, and I, enthusiastic about my role as the discoverer of Paris, broadcast inspirationally about what the stones of the Parisian streets had seen. Fima listened attentively and laughed loudly at times. He was a gloomy, skeptical, and distrustful man, and, probably to compensate himself for the damage done by these qualities, he laughed loudly. His laughter did not always correspond to the meaning of the conversation, and I gradually came to regard his laughter as the coughing of others.
My suitcase was traveling down the Champs-Élysées, and mine, fascinated by the story of Paris, led to an accident, the extent of which became clear when we arrived at our destination the next day: all four of my suitcase’s plastic wheels had been wiped out. The much-traveled stones of the Parisian streets had destroyed the wheels of my suitcase. Now it was not me who was rolling the suitcase, but the suitcase was dragging me backwards, preventing me from moving forward and avenging my chatter. Fima laughed loudly and shouted: “I told you: don’t ride with suitcases!”. – “But the wheels are wiped off from my showing you Paris!” – I resented, “My dear, you should ride a bicycle, not a suitcase. Who buys a suitcase with plastic wheels? I’ll put wheels on your suitcase so that you’ll never be able to tear it down, wheels made of metal! I’m a metalworker and an honest man. You have to pay for walking on a suitcase with labor.
Fima’s honesty took on threatening proportions in French life. It unfolded as soon as he crossed the threshold of the institute where we worked. At his first meeting with the director of the institute, he said: “Why are you making a crook out of me, an honest man? When I got my tourist visa, I wrote that I would not receive French money.” This was a time when the Arabs had carried out several bombings in Paris, and for balance, for all the Middle Eastern people, they introduced tourist visas. The Swiss director, who was unaware of the existence of visas to enter France, could not fathom the depth of his sinfulness. He gave Fima a job, but somehow it was not right, not according to Fima’s standards. Another would have thrown Fima out immediately, but the director, impressed by what he had said, began to say what an honest and principled man Fima was. He told Fima that he could be calm: the money he received was not French, but German, and his honesty had not suffered at all. The first time Fima survived the display of his fierce honesty. He survived the second time, too. At a meeting with the director of the laboratory under whom he was to work for a year, a neat and punctilious German, he asked: “Do you always have such a mess?”. The German cleaned the laboratory for a long time afterward and, I think, harbored a grudge against Fima.
On the first day of work, Fima shouted indignantly to me: “Where did you bring me? This France is a backward country! There are prehistoric computers here! I can’t do anything! My programs don’t work!”. – “You could have not gone to this ‘backward’ country and remained cheerfully scientifically unemployed.” – I objected, but Fima wasn’t listening. He had already scheduled a meeting with a representative of the American computer firm IBM, who was supposed to help him out of his work crisis.
Nuclear power is closely guarded everywhere, and in France, too. The canteen of our research institute did not work that summer, and we ate in the canteen of the nuclear reactor. The security was much better than in the fortress of the Chateau d’If, from which the Count of Monte Cristo escaped in the novel of the same name by Alexander Dumas. On the day of the meeting with the representative of the American firm, Fima was very lively, told many stories and jokes and laughed a lot. When we had eaten and returned from the reactor to our workroom, he suddenly turned very pale: “I have lost my passport”. We started looking everywhere, but there was no passport. “Where was it?” – I asked. “In a plastic envelope along with my raincoat,” he said. – “Did you carry the envelope to the dining room?” – I asked. – “I don’t remember what I did! In this cursed country you forget everything! Now the terrorists will use my passport. I know where it is! I forgot it in the reactor canteen!” – he shouted. – “Well, tomorrow we’ll go looking for it. They won’t let us in there today.” – I remarked. – “You don’t understand anything! It’s an Israeli passport! It’s going to be stolen! And it will cost the lives of many people! How can you risk the security of the Motherland?” – he shouted indignantly at me. – “I’m not risking it, but what can we do – the French are guarding their security. They won’t let us into the reactor today.” – I summarized. – “Come on! You know French. You’ll explain it to them.” I was convinced by his intense excitement. How would he go in such a state to meet the American representative? So, we went. I explained to the guards that the man had lost his Israeli passport in the canteen. If it wasn’t found, there would be terror. I gave the guard my Israeli passport. My inhuman efforts yielded results: we were allowed into the reactor area. We ran into the canteen in high spirits. The entire staff was mobilized by me to search for the passport. To no avail. I arranged with the canteen staff that tomorrow they would report the passport missing and the person who found the passport would return it. “Everything will be all right.” – I told him. – “You’ll get your passport tomorrow.” Fima was silent, and when we reached our office he asked: “Why are you so bad at French?” An hour or so passed and he came up to me with a smile, holding the passport in his hands. He shook it in front of my face as if he was rebuking me for something. “You know where he was? In our office. You piled him in the closet with a book. Look what you’re doing to me in this rotten country! What am I doing in it?” – “Working.” – I replied. “By the way, you need to hurry up to meet an IBM representative.” He waved his hand. – “I canceled it.” – “Why???” – I wondered. – “I couldn’t go. My programs are all stolen. In Israel they rewrite everything.” – he explained. “But you’re an honest man.” – I remembered. Fima answered nothing.
The day of my departure and the promised revival of the suitcase wheels was approaching. Seeing that Fima was not doing the wheels, I told him: “I’ll buy new plastic wheels. There’s nothing for you to mess around with.” He laughed: “You have no idea how much new wheels cost! You could buy a new suitcase with that money! It’s just depraved to spend that much money! I’ll make you wheels!”.
The day of the wheel making had arrived. I was invited to the testing ceremony. It was seven o’clock in the evening. In the workshop on the first floor, four metal wheels for my suitcase were to be born. Fima was diligently grinding them out of a piece of aluminum. They turned out to be the same diameter, but of different thicknesses. Now I was on wheels again…
When the wheels were bolted to the suitcase and I was back on foreign trips with it, I realized what was behind the sturdiness of my aluminum wheels. My suitcase rumbled like an old Soviet-style streetcar. People looked around and gave me perplexed looks. I couldn’t go out in the street with my suitcase at this late hour, otherwise I would have been arrested for disorderly conduct. By that time Fima had betrayed Zionism with Germany and was working in a large institute located in a small German town, to which my suitcase arrived one day, accompanied by me. When I played colorful sound pages to Fima and described the episodes in which his product was involved, he listened with great interest and laughed loudly. On the day of my departure he went to see me off at the bus station and found himself listening to my loud-sounding suitcase. When he heard the first sounds, he laughed so hard he couldn’t stop holding his sides for a long time. “You have a singing suitcase! What a sol note it has! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” But no one around him was laughing. People stopped and looked at us. “I’m talking loud.” – Fima realized. – “People are paying attention.” He spoke more softly and stopped laughing. But passersby kept looking at us. “Look, we’ve laughed and that’s enough. Get your suitcase and carry it, or it’s making too much noise. Today is Sunday. The Germans have a day of rest.” I refused to carry the suitcase, saying that the wheels were to make my life easier-the suitcase was heavy. He insisted. I said the wheels were for me, not I for the wheels. He pleaded. I disagreed. In his heart he said: “It’s a small town. Tomorrow the local paper will print that I let Russian tanks into Germany.” But I was as hard as the wheels of my suitcase. He didn’t laugh. Finally, he swore, grabbed the suitcase and carried it to the intercity bus. But that was a few years later….
Fima worked hard and thoroughly. Although the time was late, there were quite a few employees at the institute. The rumble of grinding wheels attracted them, and they came and gave advice on how to sharpen better. It was fun until the head of the laboratory, who had a grudge against Fima, came in. He came in without saying hello, stood there, looked at it and said: “So, you’re turning wheels out of institute aluminum for your suitcase. That’s your honesty!” Dropping this grave accusation, he walked away. Fima was taken aback: “He told me I was a thief!!!” – he shouted. – I recoiled fearfully.
In science, everything is connected. Above the workshop was a superconducting magnet. Liquid nitrogen to cool it was poured through a tube that started in the workshop. It was through this tube that I struck, knocking back Fima, who had been wounded by the accusation of dishonesty. The tube broke, and the nitrogen supply stopped. In a world of low temperatures, this was a serious accident. The tube had to be sealed immediately. All the laboratory staff who had not yet gone home fled to the workshop. They saw Fima, grinding wheels for his personal suitcase out of the institute’s aluminum. When everyone left, he said to me quietly and sadly: “What have you done to me, you, this damned country and this stupid suitcase? No one believes that I am an honest man!”
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Alex Gordon is a native of Kiev and graduate of the Kiev State University and Haifa Technion (Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Science). He is a Full Professor (Emeritus) of Physics in the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Haifa and at Oranim, the Academic College of Education, Israel. He is the author of 10 books and about 900 articles, and has been published in 92 journals in 17 countries in Ukrainian, Russian, Hebrew, English, French, and German.