"The Microscope": another character sketch

“Cliff, do you have a moment?”

The old man turned from the microscopes neatly arranged at his workbench and smiled when he saw Kathy.

“Kat!  Er, good morning, mum!  Anything for you, my dear!  How was your weekend?”

“Sopping wet and a bit sore.  I was out in Avon doing a bit of prospecting.”  Kathy picked up the heavy mahogany case that she had brought with her and placed on the bench.  Clifford Lowe had worked at the British Museum for decades and was a top-notch instrument technician.  “I’m afraid that this is not one of our pieces of equipment, but I was wondering if you might want to look it over anyway.”

“Well then, let’s see!”  Clifford gave a soft gasp as he opened the case to see the exquisite Leitz Wetzlar CMU polarizing microscope.  The case showed some hard wear, but the expensive microscope inside had been lovingly maintained.  He gently removed the heavy scope and began checking the movement of the focusing knobs and rotating stage.  “Eh, could use a bit of lubrication, but feels pretty good.  I had forgotten just how smooth these things are.  I didn’t know they paid you all well enough to afford one of these.  I’ll have to ask for a transfer!”

“It was one of my father’s microscopes.  I have a stereomicroscope as well in my flat, but it is a bit less temperamental than one of these things.”

“My dear, there is a difference between ‘temperamental’ and being insistent upon receiving well-deserved, loving care.  These beauties definitely fall among the latter!  And I am sure that you understand something of that yourself.”  Kathy smiled as she had long suspected that old Cliff had a bit of a crush on her, which he never made effort to hide.  With that, Cliff began a careful inspection of the gracefully curving lines of the heavy black microscope.  Now an older instrument, it still had a more modern feel than many of the newer scopes, particularly when compared to British instruments.  They were fine, fine instruments in their own right, of course, but the Germans had an unbreakable advantage in the seamless integration of form, function and style.  As he picked up the instrument to examine its base, he drew a breath and hesitated.  Setting it down, he scrutinized the serial number on the front of the instrument.  Looking suspiciously over his shoulder at Kathy, he said in a flat voice, “Where did you get this?”

Kathy felt her face flush, and suddenly she could not meet the older man’s eyes.

“Yes, of course.  I had forgotten.”  Clifford brightened his tone.  “C’mon love, of course I will look it over and have it back in proper working order.  Will Friday be okay?”

“Yes!  Thank you!  Thanks ever so much!  How much will I owe you?”

The old man had heard the stories, and knew Kathy’s background, “Kaia” by birth, as well as that of her father.  A shame for both of them, really.  Her father had been well-regarded in his day, before the war, and as for the lovely, sweet young woman before him…what a shame.  What a shame that no one thinks to look beyond that enthralling beauty to see the truly brilliant young woman who could have such a tremendous future ahead of her.  She really deserved to be much farther along than a laboratory technician at the museum, especially when compared to some of the young men who were earning their doctorates despite other dubious qualities, in some cases. 

“No charge, my dear.  Friday afternoon, then? I will bring it by your desk after lunch.”

Kathy acknowledged her thanks and retreated down the hallway.  Clifford stared at the microscope as her footsteps faded in the distance.  He gently turned the heavy instrument over once more to look at the markings on the underside of the horseshoe base of the instrument.  Stamped into the metal was an emblem of a stylized eagle grasping a tiny swastika in its talons.  Judging by the serial number, he surmised that the instrument had probably been manufactured in 1943.  As much as he adored the young girl like one of his own granddaughters, he could not shake the sense of dread as he touched the instrument.  Bloody hell.  Well, on with it, then…. 

Lost in her thoughts, Kathy walked through the doors and into the central hall of the museum.  She hardly noticed the visitors easing out of her way at the staccato sound of her heels as she strode past the giant Diplodocus skeleton, affectionately known as “Dippy”, over toward the opposite wing where the fossil fishes were housed.  A tall man in a blue suit, obviously lost and out of place, looked over at her as she strode by.  Reflexively, he rotated smartly on his heel to face her and their eyes met.  He was dressed in a military uniform, an American airman.  Another oversexed Yank.  Fabulous. Seeing the flash of irritation in her eyes, she noticed that he straightened and mouthed a silent “Ma’am” to her as she passed by.  He had sharp, angular features framing a face with a strange, slight tan, just around his piercing blue eyes, across the eyebrows and the bridge of his crooked nose, almost like a mask.  Not exactly handsome, but there seemed to be something rather sweet in his earnestness.  Kathy managed a slight smile as she brushed by and paid him no further attention. 

Returning to her small desk in the workroom just off of the exhibit hall, Kathy opened her old canvas field bag and took out the carefully wrapped specimens that she collected the day before.  She found the rock that she wanted to show to Doctor White, unwrapped it, and opened up the split cobble.  She turned on the illuminator next to her stereomicroscope and placed one of the halves under the objective.  At the apex of the tassel of bones, she peered through the low power lenses at a vaguely L-shaped, trapezoidal bone.  Examining it closely and adjusting the light, Kathy could make out the tiny facets, knobs, and ridges on the bone that, in life, had served as articulations for joints and attachment points for tiny muscles.  It was the fin from some sort of a sarcopterygean, or “flesh-finned” fish, more commonly known as “lobe-finned fishes” which included lungfishes and the recently-discovered coelacanth.  Her father had often spoken about them as she was growing up. 

As a child, before the war and the arrival of the Red Army, Kaia had accompanied her father on some of his frequent visits to the Aruküla caves just north of the university where he taught.  Searching among the white sandstone columns inside and the rock floor below, she often hoped to find something like this as her father searched for fossil fish remains in those Devonian rocks.  Her father would be so proud of her right now.  Kathy wanted nothing more than for him to be at her side, peering through the microscope and sharing in her joy at her discovery.  No matter what had happened since, or how others wanted to judge her father and her family, she could never be ashamed of him. 

Her father was the kindest, most humble, and most giving person she had ever known.  That their family had emigrated from West Germany ten years before and that her father had worked for the Nazis during the war was through no choice of his own.  Even after Kaia arrived in London as a new student at the University College of London in 1951, much of the terrible aftermath of the German Blitz remained, of nights filled with the sound of bombers and, later, of diabolical “buzz bombs” and at the end the soundless approach of dreadful V-2 rockets.  She could not blame the occasional hard stare or muttered curses under the breath of passersby when they found out where she and her family were from.  She understood, but they, thank God, would never know what she and her family had seen, what they had been so truly blessed to escape with their lives.  Her new countrymen had fought off occupation, but her country had been crushed by not one but two brutal totalitarian dictators.  The Germans had enslaved her people and turned their country into a charnel house, only to be followed by the Soviets who stole and ravaged what was left of her homeland, who tore the living soul out of her sister and murdered her.  Along with thousands of others who had taken refuge in Britain after the war, she feared that she would never see Estonia again.   And her father would never again see his collections at the university in Tartu, and be able to compare them with what she could see through the eyepieces of her microscope at that moment.  But he had given up everything so that she could be there, doing it all herself.  Kaia loved her father, Professor Janek Tamm, now nothing more to the world but a manager at a dingy wool factory up in Yorkshire.  And she remained proud of him.