The MANIAC

by Benjamín Labatut

in the beginning of September he visited Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, where he mediated a conference, at the end of which he opened up about his depression and suicidal thoughts to the least likely person imaginable, the English physicist Paul Dirac, a wild, unworldly genius who was portrayed by one of his colleagues as “the strangest man alive,” utterly unequipped to understand the intricacies and contradictions of Ehrenfest’s character. Paul opened up to him nonetheless, and spoke about his fears for the future of his family, and especially of young Wassik, for surely the influence of Nazism, with its loathing of Jews, eugenic pseudoscience, and murderous hate for all things “other,” would soon pour out from Germany and spread to all its neighboring countries, fueled, as it no doubt was, by a dark, unconscious impulse that was driving us to a future where our species would have no place, substituted, sooner than later, by something completely monstrous.