The Last Page of the Notebook
Bora drove to Ankara with the notebook in the passenger seat, wrapped in the towel his father used for the teapot.
He had not planned to drive. The flight was four hours and the bus was cheaper, but the notebook was not a thing he would leave in cargo, and Sefa had said on the phone, “Bring it and we will talk,” which was Sefa’s way of saying she had already decided and wanted him to see her decide.
The notebook was a green hardcover, 1975, the year his father joined the Viking project. It smelled of cigarette smoke and the particular dust of a house that had not been lived in for three years. Bora had found it in the bottom drawer of the desk in the study, under a stack of gas bills and a photograph of his mother at Lake Van. The last page was loose. It had been torn out once and taped back in, the tape yellowed and brown at the edges.
On that page, in his father’s hand, small and careful, the words “not life.” Underlined twice. Then crossed out. Then written again in the margin, smaller, as if his father had not wanted to commit.
Bora parked outside Sefa’s building in Cankaya. He sat for a minute with the engine off. The notebook sat on the passenger seat. He thought about how his father had spent forty years saying the Viking labeled-release experiment found metabolism. Forty years of conference talks, of Turkish science magazines, of the framed printout in the hallway that Bora had grown up walking past every morning. The printout showed the count rate climbing after the nutrient was added to the Martian soil sample. The curve that proved, his father said, that something in that soil was breathing.
And then the last page of the notebook said not life.
He carried the notebook up. Sefa opened the door before he knocked. She was wearing the blue cardigan she wore when she was working, and her hair was pulled back, and she had the look she got when she had been thinking for a long time about something she had not told him.
“You brought it,” she said.
“I brought it.”
She led him to the kitchen. The table was cleared except for a plate of simit and a glass of tea. She set a chair for him and sat across from him. He put the notebook on the table between them and did not open it.
“So,” Sefa said.
“So.”
“You want to publish the last page.”
“I want to publish the last page.”
“And I want it to stay where it is. In the desk. In the past.”
Bora looked at the notebook. “Baba spent forty years telling people the experiment found metabolism. He published papers. He gave talks. He put that printout on the wall.”
“He believed it. He believed it because it was true.”
“The last page says not life.”
Sefa’s hand went to her cup. “The last page is a note. A private note. People write things in notebooks that they do not mean. He crossed it out.”
“He underlined it twice and then crossed it out. That is not a man who did not mean it. That is a man who meant it and then could not live with it.”
Sefa was quiet for a moment. “You left, Bora. You left for Berlin and you left this to me. I was the one who sat with him at the end. I was the one who heard him say the experiment was the great thing of his life. You want to take that from him now, from the grave.”
“I want to give him the truth he could not say.”
“You want to give yourself the truth. There is a difference.”
The simit sat on the plate. Neither of them touched it. Bora opened the notebook to the last page and laid it flat. The tape crackled. The handwriting was small, careful, the letters formed with the precision of a man who had learned to write in a language that was not his first.
“Not life,” Bora read.
Sefa looked at the page. Her jaw tightened. “It says that. Yes. And then it says nothing else. No method. No data. Just three words and a line through them. That is not science. That is a man in a bad night.”
“The margins,” Bora said. “The margins have the method. The temperature profile. The nutrient composition. The volumes.”
Sefa looked at him. “What?”
Bora turned the page over. The margins of the preceding pages were dense with small annotations in the same hand. His father had written in the margins of his own notebook, as he always did, as he had taught Bora to do in lab notebooks. Tiny numbers. Arrows. A temperature column. A note that said “14C-amino acids, 0.1 µCi per aliquot.” A note that said “perchlorate, 0.5% w/v.” A note that said “heat to 160, hold 3h, cool, re-add.”
Sefa leaned forward. “That is the sterilization control.”
“Yes.”
“The 160 degree control. The one that killed the response. The one that proved it was biological.”
“Yes. And the margins say he ran it. He ran it in the lab, on a hot plate, with a Geiger counter, before he ever published. And the margin note says the rate matched.”
Sefa picked up the notebook. She turned pages. She read the margins with her lips moving. Bora watched her. He had not expected her to read them. He had expected her to refuse.
“This is his handwriting,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You are sure.”
“I spent three years reading his handwriting, Sefa. I am sure.”
She set the notebook down. “You want to reproduce it.”
“I want to reproduce it. On a bench. With the same nutrients. With perchlorate. With a Geiger counter. If the rate matches, the page is true. If it does not, I will close it myself.”
“And if it matches, you publish.”
“If it matches, I publish the page and the margins and the run. Together.”
Sefa stood. She went to the sink and filled the kettle. She did not turn around. “You are asking me to help you unmake our father.”
“I am asking you to help me find out what he found.”
“You already know what he found. You read the page.”
“I read three words. I want the number.”
“The number.”
“The count rate. The Geiger counter. The thing that either matches or does not.”
Sefa poured the water. She set the kettle on the stove. “I will not help you.”
“Then I will do it alone.”
“You do not have a lab.”
“I have a kitchen. I have a hot plate. I have a Geiger counter I bought in Vienna last month. I have the nutrient recipe in the margins.”
“You have a kitchen.”
“I have a kitchen.”
She sat down again. She looked at the notebook. Bora could see her reading the margins again, her eyes moving. He could see her doing the thing she had always done, which was to read a problem completely before saying anything, as their father had.
“The nutrient mix,” she said. “14C-labeled glycine, alanine, aspartic acid. What concentrations?”
“0.1 µCi per aliquot. The margin says the aliquot was 0.1 ml. The specific activity is on the next page.”
“And the perchlorate concentration.”
“0.5% w/v. Sodium perchlorate.”
“In water.”
“In water. With the nutrients.”
“And the soil simulant.”
“The margin says JSC Mars-1. But I do not have JSC Mars-1. I have a sample of basalt from Cappadocia that I crushed and sieved. It is not the same. It is close enough for a first run.”
Sefa looked at him. “You have thought about this.”
“I have thought about this for three years.”
She picked up a piece of simit. She tore it. She ate it. She chewed slowly. “I will watch,” she said. “I will not help. I will watch.”
“That is enough.”
“No, it is not enough. But it is what I am offering.”
The hot plate was in Bora’s kitchen in Berlin, not Sefa’s in Ankara. Sefa came to Berlin in November. She brought a suitcase and a box of her father’s books, which she had been storing, and she did not explain the books.
Bora’s kitchen was small and clean. He had set up the bench on the counter next to the stove. The Geiger counter was a Ludlum Model 3 with a pancake probe, borrowed from a colleague at the Freie Universität who asked no questions. The hot plate was a standard laboratory hot plate with a digital temperature display. The glassware was borrowed. The nutrients were from a supplier in Hamburg who shipped them in a box marked “research chemicals, non-hazardous,” which was true in the sense that they were not explosive and false in the sense that they were 14C-labeled amino acids and the customs form had lied about the contents.
Sefa stood in the doorway. She looked at the setup. “This is not a lab.”
“No.”
“The hood.”
“There is no hood. The amounts are tiny. The 14C is low energy. The pancake probe is for contamination monitoring.”
“You are using a pancake probe for counting.”
“I am using it for counting because it is what I have. The geometry is not ideal. The efficiency will be low. But the background is low too, and what I am looking for is a ratio, not an absolute.”
Sefa set her bag down. “Show me the margins.”
Bora opened the notebook. The page with “not life” was taped in, and the preceding pages had the margins. He had photographed them and printed them at 200% so they were readable without squinting. He laid the prints on the counter.
“Here,” he said. “The temperature profile. He starts at 20 C, ramps to 50 over ten minutes, holds at 50 for two hours, then ramps to 160 over thirty minutes, holds at 160 for three hours, then cools to 20 and re-adds nutrient.”
“That is the LR protocol.”
“That is the LR protocol. The same one Viking used. The 50 degree step is the metabolic step. The 160 degree step is the sterilization control.”
“And the margin note.”
Bora pointed. In the margin, in his father’s hand, the words “rate matches at 50. rate matches at 160. not life.” Then, below, “perchlorate. UV not needed at 160.”
Sefa read it twice. “UV not needed at 160.”
“The editor’s note said cut UV unless it is the actual protocol. It is not the actual protocol. The actual protocol is heat. Perchlorate oxidizes the 14C-labeled nutrients when heated. The CO2 released is 14CO2. The Geiger counter counts the 14C. That is the signal. That is the whole signal.”
“And the 160 degree step.”
“The 160 degree step is the sterilization control. In the original experiment, heating to 160 killed the response. That was taken as proof of biology, because biology dies at 160. But perchlorate does not die at 160. Perchlorate becomes more active. The response at 160 is not dead biology. It is faster chemistry.”
Sefa sat on the kitchen stool. She held the printed margin. “You are saying the sterilization control was not a control at all.”
“I am saying the sterilization control was the experiment. The thing that killed the biological interpretation was the thing that created the chemical one. And my father knew.”
“He crossed it out.”
“He crossed it out.”
The first run failed.
Bora prepared the sample in a 20 ml glass vial. He weighed 0.5 grams of the crushed basalt on the kitchen scale, which was not precise enough but was what he had. He added 0.5% sodium perchlorate solution. He added the nutrient solution, 0.1 ml, 0.1 µCi. He sealed the vial with a rubber septum and placed it on the hot plate.
He set the temperature profile. 20 to 50 over ten minutes. Hold at 50 for two hours. Ramp to 160 over thirty minutes. Hold at 160 for three hours. Cool to 20. Re-add nutrient.
The Geiger counter was positioned above the vial, the pancake probe held in a clamp at a fixed distance of 2 cm. Bora had measured the distance and written it on a piece of tape on the clamp. He had measured the background for an hour before starting. The background was 12 counts per minute.
At 50 degrees, the counter began to click faster. At the two-hour mark, Bora recorded 47 counts per minute above background. He wrote it in the notebook, in the margin, below his father’s note. He did not think about the symmetry of that.
At 160 degrees, the count rate climbed to 89 counts per minute above background. Then it began to fall. By the end of the three-hour hold, it was at 31 counts per minute above background. Bora frowned. The Viking printout showed the rate continuing to climb at 160, not falling. He had expected a match. He had not gotten one.
Sefa was sitting at the kitchen table, reading one of her father’s books. She looked up. “Well.”
“It does not match.”
“Good.”
Bora looked at the vial. The liquid inside had turned slightly yellow. He had not expected that. “The rate fell at 160. In the original experiment, the rate at 160 was higher than at 50. Here it is lower.”
“Then the page is wrong.”
“Or my setup is wrong.”
“Or your setup is wrong. Which is more likely. A dead man’s private note, or a man in a kitchen with a bathroom scale.”
Bora did not answer. He sat down with the notebook. He read the margins again. He read them three times. He read the note about the aliquot volume. 0.1 ml. He read the note about the nutrient concentration. 0.1 µCi per aliquot. He read the note about the perchlorate. 0.5% w/v.
He stopped at a note in the margin of the second page. It was written smaller than the others, almost illegible. “aliquot added at 50, not 20. pre-warm nutrient.”
Bora stared at it. “He added the nutrient at 50 degrees. Not at 20.”
“What?”
“The nutrient was added at 50 degrees. I added it at 20. The nutrient was cold when it hit the sample. The reaction profile would be different.”
Sefa came to look. She read the note. She read it again. “That is not in the LR protocol.”
“No. The LR protocol adds nutrient at ambient. But my father added it at 50. He pre-warmed it.”
“Why?”
“Because the reaction at 50 is the metabolic step. If you add cold nutrient to a 50 degree sample, you get a temperature shock. The perchlorate oxidation rate depends on temperature. A cold aliquot would suppress the initial rate and change the kinetics.”
Sefa looked at the vial. “You think that is why the rate fell.”
“I think that is why the rate fell. The cold nutrient created a different temperature profile in the vial. The 160 degree step started from a different baseline. The perchlorate oxidized differently.”
Sefa went back to the table. She picked up her tea. “Run it again.”
“You are not helping.”
“I am telling you to run it again. That is not helping. That is watching.”
The second run took three days. Bora had to re-make the nutrient solution because he had used the first batch. He had to re-crush the basalt because the first sample had been consumed. He had to re-measure the background. He did all of this while Sefa watched and did not help and read their father’s books in the kitchen chair.
On the third day, he prepared the vial. He weighed the basalt. He added the perchlorate. He heated the nutrient solution in a water bath to 50 degrees. He added it to the vial at the 50 degree mark, not at the start.
The count rate at 50 degrees reached 52 counts per minute above background at the two-hour mark. Close to the first run. Bora wrote it down.
At 160 degrees, the count rate climbed. It climbed past 89. It climbed past 100. It reached 127 counts per minute above background and held there. It did not fall. It stayed at 127 for the full three-hour hold.
Bora stared at the counter. The clicks were steady and regular. He had the Viking printout taped to the wall above the counter. He had printed it from the NASA archive. The printout showed the original LR experiment count rate at the 160 degree sterilization control step. The rate in the printout was 127 counts per minute above background.
He looked at the printout. He looked at the counter. He looked at Sefa.
Sefa was standing. She had come to the counter without him hearing. She was looking at the counter. The clicks were steady. 127. The same number. The same rate. The same rhythm.
She did not speak.
Bora waited. He held the probe steady. The count rate held. 127. 127. 127.
Sefa opened her mouth. She closed it. She looked at the notebook. She looked at the page that said “not life.” She looked at the margin note. She looked at the counter.
She sat down on the kitchen stool. She did not say anything. She did not pick up her tea. She did not pick up her book. She sat with her hands in her lap and she did not speak.
Bora turned off the hot plate. He let the vial cool. He wrote the number in the margin of the notebook, below his father’s note. 127. He wrote the date. He wrote the conditions. He wrote the temperature of the nutrient when added. He wrote the distance of the probe. He wrote all of it, in his own hand, small and careful, in the margin, as his father had taught him.
Sefa was still sitting. She had not moved. The counter was silent now, the vial cooling on the bench. The kitchen was quiet.
Bora looked at her. She was looking at the wall, at the printout, at the curve that her father had framed and hung in the hallway of their childhood home. The curve that she had grown up walking past every morning. The curve that said metabolism.
The curve said 127.
Bora capped his pen. He closed the notebook. He did not say anything either. He sat on the other stool and he waited, and the kitchen was quiet, and outside the window the November light came in gray and thin over Berlin, and neither of them spoke, and the number was in the margin now, in two handwritings, father and son, and it was the same number, and Sefa did not speak, and Bora did not speak, and the simit on the plate from three days ago had gone stale, and nobody ate it.