He replaced his keys in his pocket: tonight we would sleep together, and she would be the one to wait.
“You’re finally being reasonable.”
“I only know one way to keep you quiet.”
He had brought his masters’ hopes crashing down—not the hopes they’d placed in him but those they’d entertained about their own omnipotence. His positivist friends wanted to boil down the unsayable, what human language cannot address. In mathematics, limiting research to the discipline’s mechanism was an illusion; Kurt had produced a corrosive result from the very language intended to provide consolidation.
He had never been a blind disciple of the Vienna Circle, even proving to be a wolf in their fold, but his world was a small one and he needed a place for himself in it. He needed the positivists for stimulation, to keep from being carried along by the zeitgeist. This might also have been what he liked about me: my candor. I accepted my intuition as a natural phenomenon. He was attracted by my legs, but he stayed with me for my radiant ignorance. He would say, “The more I think about language, the more astounded I am that people manage to understand each other.” He never spoke in approximations. Surrounded as he was by clever talkers, he preferred keeping silent to being in error. He liked humbleness in the face of truth. This virtue he had to the point of toxicity: unwilling to make a misstep, he would forget to take any step at all.
The bomb was truly a bomb, but its action was delayed. I wasn’t the only one who had trouble understanding it. The very tools he used in his proof were innovations, and even the most gifted mathematicians needed time to absorb their import. At the long-awaited conference, Kurt was overshadowed by the titans of physics—Heisenberg, for instance. The polymath von Neumann spoke in support of him, but a transcript of the conference didn’t even mention Kurt.
Within a few months, however, his discoveries started to gain notice and then became impossible to ignore, witnessed by the fact that any number of adversaries tried to find a flaw in his argument. The radius of the bomb extended across the Atlantic and came back to us in the form of a lecture contract at Princeton University, meaning we would probably be separated. Meanwhile I saw him invaded by a sense of doubt, which was never to leave him again.
He started to feel misunderstood. Him, the boy genius, the little ball of sunshine. The brilliant taciturnist among the wordy, the political, and the clever. He thought he had reached an island of peace and a gathering of the like-minded. He had made loyal friends there, no doubt, but he had also found hate in unexpected quarters and, just as painfully, indifference. I was at his side, tender and attentive, but I was entering a battle with few weapons to hand: you don’t fill a metaphysical vacuum with apple strudel.
The world around us was decaying. He had managed to remainder the century well before its term. Doubt and uncertainty were now to be its foundation. He was always ahead of his time.
9
Anna arrived at Adele’s room in a muck sweat; visiting hours were almost over.
“You’re late, it’s not like you.”
“I’m glad to see you too, Mrs. Gödel.”
Still wearing her raincoat, she held out a cardboard box printed with the name of a wonderful Princeton delicatessen. Adele lit up when she saw its contents. “Sacher torte!” The young woman handed her a plastic spoon decorated with a blue ribbon. Adele immediately carved into the cake and spooned an enormous wedge into her mouth.
“My Sacher torte was better. But you’ve got talent. You know how to talk to old ladies.”
“Only undeserving old ladies.”
“Show me even one who is deserving and I’ll eat the box as well! So, how are you coming along? Have you freed yourself from the nets and snares of this Calvin Adams?”
“I won’t hide the fact that he’s very worried.”
“Not about my health, that is certain. I am his black cloud, his little thorn.”
“You’re not exactly a planetary priority.”
“I’m well aware of that! And you? Why are you clinging to me as you do? Is your position so precarious?”
“I take great pleasure in our conversations.”
“Just as I enjoy your presents. Would you like some?”
Anna turned down the offer. Her altruism didn’t extend to sharing the old lady’s spoon.
“What is he like, this director?”
“He wears a turtleneck under his shirt.”
“I remember him. He has been cradle robbing at the Institute for some time. They say the secretaries all button up their blouses before they walk into his office.”
Her spoon hovering in midair, a chocolate stain on her chin, Adele observed her visitor. Anna hid her confusion by rummaging in her purse. Its contents were impressive: a zippered pouch for pens, another for medications, two active file folders, a book in case she had to wait (Borges’s Aleph), a sewing kit, a bottle of water, a plump personal organizer, and a set of keys on a long chain. She walked around with such a heavy bag that her back was constantly in pain. At night she would tell herself to lighten its weight, only to take the whole business with her again in the morning. Eventually she found a handkerchief, which she laid flat on the bed next to the box of pastries. Adele ignored it.
“With a bag like that you could live through a siege. Is it hard not to be in control of everything, young lady?”
“You’re a shrink in your spare time?”
“Do you know the Jewish joke: What is a psychiatrist?”
Anna stiffened. As a Catholic in Austria in the 1930s, Adele would have a simple resolution to this equation with no unknowns.
“A psychiatrist is a Jew who studied to be a doctor to make his mother happy but who faints at the sight of blood.”
“Do you have a problem with Jews? It isn’t the first time you’ve probed me about this.”
“Don’t be so predictable! It was Albert Einstein who told me that joke.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I forgive you for it. And I understand your distrust.”
Anna dove back into her purse for an elastic band. She could hardly think without the tug of a ponytail. Adele watched her fondly.
“You should let your hair loose more often.”
“A shrink and a beautician?”
“They are one and the same, or nearly. Your complexion is quite extraordinary. Not one blemish! You’re immaculate, like a Madonna. You have a long nose and eyes that are too soft. You could fix that with a nice, bright lipstick.”
“Is the inspection over?”
“Why have you so little coquettishness? You’re pretty enough.”
“My family is not much for frivolity.”
“I think you dreamed of becoming a pom-pom girl and your mother had practically a heart attack. People who think of themselves as deep are often unhappy.”
“I never liked to doll myself up.”
In this, Anna was not lying. She had decided early on that feminine competitiveness would not be her chosen sport. But it wasn’t for lack of coaching. Her mother had been physically standoffish but ready enough with her advice. Barely had her little slip of a girl learned to walk than she set out to awaken her daughter’s femininity with vast dollops of pink wallpaper, dolls, and flounced dresses. At that point, Rachel had not yet joined the feminist movement; seduction was a natural weapon. She liked to theorize about her sporadic mothering; she took pride in not blighting her daughter’s development by exemplifying too perfect a womanly image, avoiding making herself up on Sundays. But she didn’t go so far as to remove her makeup on other days of the week. She wore gray eyeliner for lectures and seminars, opalescent eyelids and beige lips for formal evenings. Her extraordinary violet eyes were deeply shadowed in black for her unspecified nighttime rendezvous. The little girl waited at her bedroom window for her mother to return. The next morning, her mother’s pillowcase would be smeared with soot, and her father’s sometimes not even creased. At the age when her friends were all crazy about mascara, Anna had buttoned
her blouse to the top and lost herself in books.
She had quickly noticed that coquettishness was unnecessary. In fact, she didn’t know many boys who could resist the urge to penetrate her aloof exterior. Whether they were up to her hopes was another story.
“Pleasure is not something you should look at with contempt, my dear. It comes to us with life itself.”
Anna wiped the old lady’s mouth.
“So does pain.”
“Try a little Sacher torte. Hypoglycemia is the mother of melancholy.”
10
1931
The Flaw
If nature had not made us a little frivolous, we should be most wretched. It is because one can be frivolous that the majority of people do not hang themselves.
—Voltaire, Letters
I was frantic with worry. No news from Kurt for six days. The few friends of his that I’d managed to meet had already emigrated: Feigl to the United States, Natkin to Paris. At the university, they looked me up and down before informing me disdainfully that Kurt had taken a leave of absence. As a last resort, I decided to knock on the forbidden door at the Josefstädterstrasse, but I’d broken our agreement for nothing: the family wasn’t there. The concierge wouldn’t even open her window to me. I had to slip a schilling through the crack to get her talking. Then she told me everything: the comings and goings in the middle of the night, the men apologetic, the mother with swollen eyes, the brother even stiffer than usual.
“They took him to Purkersdorf, to the sanatorium. Where they put the nut jobs from the society pages. Never looked too sturdy to me, that young man. But since you know the Gödels, maybe you can tell me—are they Jewish? I’ve never managed to find out. Usually I can spot them a mile off.”
I fled without a word. I wandered for hours, bumping into other pedestrians, before deciding to return to my parents’ apartment on the Lange Gasse. I couldn’t stand the idea of being at my place alone.
It wasn’t possible, wasn’t acceptable. It wasn’t him. I’d have seen it coming. We’d had dinner together that Saturday. No, I’d eaten and he’d watched. How could I have been so blind? Recently he hadn’t taken pleasure in anything. He wasn’t even interested in me. I’d attributed his indifference to exhaustion. He’d worked so much. But that was behind him; he had said himself that his ideas were starting to gain acceptance. He’d received his doctorate, he’d been published, the road was open. I hadn’t wanted to see. Where I came from, this kind of illness was treated with stiff doses of alcohol. Sanatoriums were for TB cases.
I couldn’t find any particular reasons for his breakdown. Just a little too much pressure. Too many all-nighters. Too much of me, too much of her. Too much darkness after the great light. At the first difficulty, I was ejected from his life. His family had thought it best not to keep me informed. Marianne and Rudolf knew of our relationship, but I didn’t really exist as far as they were concerned. To his acquaintances I was just “that girl from the club.” The broad whose existence you accept. Two worlds separated by the service stairs.
I left a note on my parents’ kitchen table and rushed to the Westbahn, where I caught the last train to Purkersdorf. I collapsed on a seat and only then began to think. How was I going to contact him? I had no rights. His mother could have me ejected like a vagrant. I was part of his life, there was nothing she could do about that. This time she wouldn’t win. I wouldn’t let the old cow wreck her son’s life with her jealousy and guilt making.
My parents didn’t understand me either. I was no longer at home in their world, but I would never completely belong to his. And if I missed the call at the Nachtfalter that night, I wasn’t sure I’d still have a job when I got back. I’d already logged more hours of flight than was good for a cabaret girl. I didn’t care. Even if no one wanted to hear it, I was certain that I could save him from himself. I’d have to remind him of this if he’d forgotten.
During the trip, I straightened out my creased outfit and repaired my ravaged face as best I could. Before long, the high façades of Vienna gave way to greenery. All that nature made me sick.
I presented myself at the sanatorium’s personnel office. The building was immaculate, looking more like a luxury hotel than a hospital despite its austere modernism. This kind of establishment has a constant need for girls like me, but as I had no references and times were hard, they politely turned me away. I loitered at the edges of the park, avoiding the main door. The cool swaths of lawn, the silence punctuated by the cawing of crows, a faint odor of soup and clipped hedges: I didn’t yet know it, but it was a foretaste of the years we would spend in purgatory.
One of the nurses was taking her break at the delivery entrance. I asked her if she had any tobacco. My fingers refused to roll a decent cigarette.
“You’re having one of those days.”
I managed to counterfeit a smile.
“At Purk, we’re used to seeing people who are unhappy. You could even say it’s the house specialty. They come in droves. It’s what keeps the place going!”
“My friend is being treated here. I don’t have permission to visit him.”
She picked a fleck of tobacco from her mouth.
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“Kurt Gödel. I’ve had no news from him for days now.”
“Room 23. He’s taking a sleep cure. It’s going pretty well.”
I squeezed her arm. She pushed me away gently.
“Still, he’s in pretty bad shape, your guy. He’s skinny as a rake. I like him. He thanks you when you do his room. Not everyone does. But he doesn’t say anything beyond that. His mother, now, she’s a handful. She’ll start cussing the staff up one side and down the other, bawling the nurses out. A first-class pain in the rear!”
“What can they do to help him?”
“It depends on Dr. Wagner-Jauregg, honey. If he’s in a good mood, your friend will get some water therapy and some hanky-wetting sessions before they send him home. The man in charge is a close pal of your Dr. Freud. A star. He brings us lots of clients. Most of his patients come out of his consulting room with their handkerchiefs sopping. It’s supposed to help. For the others, Wagner prefers stronger methods.”
I took a deep drag on my badly rolled cigarette.
“No one has ever called Wagner a softy. In his view, all means are fair in science. He treats his special cases with electricity.”
“What for?”
The maid flicked her cigarette end toward the hedge.
“To bring them back to reality. As if they would need reminding that all this crap is real. I like to say that parts of their brain go off on holiday. The good thing with electricity is that they stop yelling and beating their heads against the wall. So that’s an advantage. But they shit their beds. Makes work for us. I gotta go. Work calls.”
She straightened the white cap on her mop of red hair and held out her tobacco pouch to me.
“One more for the road? Don’t go having a cow. Your lover boy is like a lot of others. He has what they call melancholia. When a man is sad. The times are like that. Come back at the same time tomorrow and I’ll get you in. His mother won’t be around. She riled the nurses up so bad they banned her from the floor for two days. For therapeutic reasons.”
“Thanks. Thanks a million. What’s your name? I’m Adele.”
“I know, hon. That’s the name he mutters in his sleep. I’m Anna.”
11
“A little outing in the garden?”
“It’s cold. I’m tired.”
“It almost feels like spring! I’ll bundle you up and we’ll go out.”
Anna carefully wrapped the old lady in layers of clothing. She unlocked the brake and navigated the wheelchair out the bedroom door. Despite the deft handling, Adele gripped the armrests.
“I don’t like being carted around in this damn contraption. It gives me the feeling that I’m already dead.”
“You’re much too curmudgeonly. Death is probably afraid of coming ne
ar you.”
“Let death come, I’ll stand my ground. If my legs still hold me. I had lovely legs, you know?”
“You danced like a queen, I can well imagine.”
Adele relaxed her grip and slipped her hands under the blanket. “Go a little faster, I’m not made of sugar candy.” They moved at a fast clip down the hallway, barely missing a gaunt old man loitering there.
“Don’t apologize to him, Anna. Roger can’t hear you. He has spent the last several years looking for his suitcase. If he finds it before the final journey, he will hardly need it anymore.”
“Poor man.”
“And what about me? I am stuck here with these drooling relics who have no more memory than a goldfish. What person would ever want to end up like this?”
“We should die young, then?”
“Going before those you love is the only way to avoid suffering.”
“That’s horrible for those who are left behind, Adele.”
“My one remaining luxury is to say horrible things. Some people approve and hear it as wisdom, the rest as senility.”
“Or cynicism.”
“When I had my first stroke, I thought, ‘All right, that’s it, and what’s so terrible anyway?’ But I remembered Kurt. I asked myself what he would become without me. So I came back. And found a world of pain. I was immediately sorry.”
“Going out into the fresh, green world will chase away your black mood.”
“Now you’re spouting two-penny poetry at me. Watch out! Make an immediate U-turn! Pink sweater attack on the left flank!”
The tiny figure of Gladys was bearing down on them.
“Miss Roth, how are you? And how is our darling little Adele?”
Mrs. Gödel, who must have weighed twice as much as Gladys and been her elder by five or six years, rolled her eyes.
“Machen Sie bitte kurz!” Cut this short, for God’s sake!
“What did she say?”
“She needs to go to the bathroom.”
They set off at a gallop toward the elevators. The doors opened on a phalanx of white coats in a cloud of cigarette smoke and disinfectant. The young woman hesitated over the worn letters before choosing a floor. Adele punched the right button with a practiced thumb.
The Goddess of Small Victories Page 5