In Pursuit of the Gene

268 ¨ TRIUMPH OF THE MODERN GENE
the cause. To avoid the perception that he was using the trip to Spain as a
way to “sneak out,” he would then return to Russia, and, only after he’d
been back for a reasonable period, then announce that he intended to leave
permanently.
¨ WHEN HE ARRIVED in Madrid in the middle of March, the city was
under siege, subject to daily bombing raids from freshly minted German
fighter planes. Drawing on his study of physiology, Muller assisted in the
blood transfusion studies designed to extract blood from the recently killed.
After one air attack, Muller helped a fellow scientists remove his equipment
from a bombed building, and, as he’d hoped, a Moscow paper ran a
story about his exploits. 86 After eight weeks on the front lines, Muller
stopped briefly in England where he lobbied his influential British friends,
including Huxley, Haldane, and Cyril Darlington, who was head of the
John Innes Horticultural Institution, to accept the Soviet invitation to hold
the genetics conference in Moscow in 1938. 87 In May he took a boat to the
United States and arrived unannounced in Texas, where he immediately began
proceedings to regain partial custody of David in the hopes that he
would be able to take him to England the following summer. By early July
he was back again in England awaiting a reentry visa from the U.S.S.R.,
where he planned to spend the summer before making his final exit. 88
However, word leaked of his intention to leave the country, and his reentry
visa was delayed for two months. Finally after protracted negotiation he
was granted a visa in early September and arrived in Moscow on September
10. 89 With only two weeks left before he was due in Paris to chair a meeting
on mutation and radiation, he rushed to make subcultures of some 250
Drosophila stocks, many of which were irreplaceable. 90
Muller spent his last night in Leningrad, where Vavilov had arranged a
farewell banquet in his honor. After the dinner, the two friends went to the
newly released movie Peter the First, which chronicled the life of Peter’s son,
Aleksei, who had died after being subject to interrogation and torture for
aiding the anti-Petrine conspirators. After the movie, the two men wandered
around the city until after midnight, when Vavilov dropped Muller
off at his hotel. Vavilov returned at 5 a.m. the next morning looking com-