| PART I OF VI
| EINSTEIN AT PRINCETON by Jonathan Cohen Einstein sits and thinks under the dark trees surrounding a white cottage — where no war came, even during the years when young men flooded out from this campus, cold from tap like the beer they’d drunk at the Tiger- town Inn just before their first induction. He stirs, but no amount of induction can help him explain how these knotty trees survived pen-knives, like claws of a tiger, incising the names of loves pre-war. A stick falls to the ground — a muffled tap returns his thoughts from trees to absent men. The ones who carved their names were still young men, giddy with the thought of their induction into eating clubs — they called that night tap. Later, some found their food among the trees of some island, stunning birds, stunned by war, ready with clubs for enemy, tiger. Now, in stadiums, they praise the Tiger, shouting “Rah, Rah!” for their eleven men. “Fair Harvard’s come? Now this is truly war,” they say, not making the induction from their two experiences. The trees rustle, give Einstein’s memory a tap: With screwdrivers, his friends had gone to tap bits of uranium, tease the tiger until the tail lashed out, toppling trees with hot roaring breath. But first, other men would wire solenoids; by induction, the contacts would close, and with them the war. The birds and squirrels seem to be at war, imagining slights in an acorn’s tap, where one party claimed a clear induction. Einstein’s thoughts are broken off — a tiger might make a better arbiter than men, he thinks, dispensing peace beneath the trees. Make an induction: both man and tiger tap fury for their ends; yet only men think war ends, leaving them safe among trees.
Jonathan Cohen is a writer and editor living in Irvine, California, primarily working in creative non-fiction and memoir. His work has appeared twice in the Santa Monica Review, and he has been nominated for a 2005 Pushcart Prize.
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