In a few minutes on September 20, 1938, after ten years of shameful cohabitation, I, Adele Thusnelda Porkert, no profession, daughter of Joseph and Hildegarde Porkert, was married to Dr. Kurt Friedrich Gödel, son of Rudolf Gödel and Marianne Gödel, née Handschuh. I removed my white gloves to sign the register. Then Kurt took the fountain pen and flashed one of his contrite little smiles at me. He kissed me, looking away from his brother. I readjusted the flower in his buttonhole. I was happy. A tiny victory, but a victory all the same. The circumstances didn’t matter, the old coat, the unanswered questions. Why now? Why so quickly, two weeks before his departure? Kurt’s mother, who had stayed in Brno, filled the echoing room with her unspoken disapproval. Marianne Gödel had given her consent but not her blessing. At the same time, she had a good excuse: the Sudeten crisis made it difficult to travel. In palmier times, she still would not have made the trip. In palmier times, Kurt would not have married me.
Twenty years later, in the flowered courtyard of a church in Princeton, I would cry at the wedding of a radiant stranger. Not because I was jealous of her puffy white dress, her prosperous and self-congratulatory family, or her friends wrapped in lavender satin—I cried over the hope that I had harbored at my own wedding. Like this unknown bride, I had followed the tradition of “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a silver sixpence in her shoe.” I was in fact carrying something new under my blue vest—a little of him, a little of me. He was unaware of it as he signed the register. He was also unaware that I would not accompany him to the United States. This hope of mine, how could I give it short shrift? How could I get on a train, and then a boat, and risk losing the child when, at the age of thirty-nine, it was probably my last chance? Old Lady Gödel would likely consider a miscarriage the unfortunate but justly deserved punishment due to the divorcée who put the grapple on her son. But Kurt had always avoided the subject. Fatherhood was not part of his program. “Take care of the details,” he had said.
I let him run around and send telegrams in every direction trying to raise funds for a second ticket. His egotism and blindness were vast. He wanted me with him in the United States because he didn’t feel he could stand another academic year as an overaged bachelor student. The only way for us both to get visas was for him to marry me. I didn’t have any illusions. He was not troubled by the course of history, not terrified at leaving his mother alone in Czechoslovakia, and he was hardly concerned about our dicey finances. He had his work, his needs as a man, and the rest mattered very little. What were the world’s upheaval or the jeremiads of a woman in comparison with the infinity of mathematics? Kurt always placed himself outside the game. Here and now was an unpleasant point in space-time, an imperative I was assigned to handle so that we might survive.
He briefly considered emigrating officially but dismissed it without serious thought. Oskar Morgenstern and Karl Menger, who had been in the United States for several months, wrote that they planned to settle there. They urged him to weigh the possibility of expatriate life. I started to think about it. If he married me, Princeton’s invitation gave us an opportunity to go, leaving everything behind. I made two lists. Here: my family; his mother, who had taken refuge in a defeated Czechoslovakia; his academic career, already on a solid footing, and a university that still believed in him; his brother, who was our only financial guarantor; and a political situation that, while explosive, did not threaten us directly. There: his friends; temporary appointments; the unknown. Could we get a two-person visa? How would we live on his modest stipend? What would happen to me in a distant world whose language I did not speak, alone, and dependent on the ups and downs of his mental health? The balance tipped several weeks before our wedding when I started to vomit secretly in the morning. I would stay on in Vienna without him.
I had been his lover, his confidante, his nurse, but in Grinzing I discovered the loneliness of living together. His manias did not stop at measuring a spoonful of sugar a hundred times. They governed every one of his actions. I had to recognize that he had not left his obsessions behind in the room at Purkersdorf. They were alive and kicking in our midst. His egotism was not a side effect of his ill health but intrinsic to his character. Had he ever thought of anyone but himself? I hid my condition. Ten years of patience had certainly earned me a small lie of omission.
I had begged my father to avoid talking about politics on my wedding day. At lunch, after a few glasses, he could restrain himself no longer. My fingers tightened on my napkin as he called for silence. After clinking his knife against his glass, he declared with wavering solemnity, “To the bride and groom, to our Czech friends, and to a lasting peace in Europe, finally!”
I watched Rudolf, our Czech “friend,” scowl and bite back a stinging retort.
Not long after the Anschluss, Hitler had declared his intention to “free the Sudeten Germans” from Czechoslovak “oppression.” The Nazis themselves had probably touched off the violent riots of the past few days. Rudolf was convinced that an invasion was imminent and that neither Daladier nor Chamberlain would raise a finger to stop it. The Munich Agreement, negotiated only a week after our wedding, would prove him right. Kurt, oblivious of this kind of tension, rose to offer a toast of his own: “To Adele, my beloved wife! To our honeymoon in the United States!”
I gave him my most radiant smile. As far as he was concerned, Princeton would soon send funds for a second ticket, despite the abruptness of our marriage. I thought it unlikely. I protected his unconcern, since all he wanted was peace.
I sipped my broth, stifling a wave of nausea. Whenever my mother, who had noticed my malaise, looked at me quizzically, I would pat my stomach distractedly. She didn’t catch on. Kurt must have ascribed my unaccustomed lack of appetite and silence to my emotions. He wouldn’t have noticed if Hitler had been dancing on the wedding table.
Having eaten our frugal meal, we left the Rathauskeller for a walk under a light rain. As we passed the little wooden stands where they sold grilled bratwurst, my father grumbled inopportunely, “If money was so tight, we could have had lunch on these benches or somewhere in Grinzing.”
My mother tugged on his arm to shut him up.
The façades of the buildings around the park, including parliament, carried banners with swastikas. Since March 12 when the Nazi troops entered the country, Austria had been called Ostmark, or East March, and Vienna had become German. The streets appeared strangely calm after the violence we had seen during the annexation.
My father refused to believe that Germany intended war, just as he’d refused to believe in the Anschluss. Yet our illusions had received a shock in the late winter of 1937. Although Chancellor Schuschnigg protested against the military maneuvers on our borders and the show of strength by the Austrian Nazis, he was forced under Hitler’s threats to accept the appointment of Seyss-Inquart as minister of the interior. Seyss-Inquart had tolerated, and perhaps secretly promoted, the pro-Nazi riots. The border towns, Linz, for example, were now thronged with uniformed men singing fervent Hitler songs. Austria’s youth, beset by economic problems and saturated with propaganda, jumped eagerly at the prospect of annexation with Germany. In early March, Schuschnigg called for a referendum on Austria’s independence—a pathetic effort to preserve our country’s freedom. Hitler responded by ordering Schuschnigg to cancel the referendum or he would send German troops into Austria. On the evening of March 11, we listened to our chancellor announce his resignation over the radio. A hysterically happy mob then invaded the streets, breaking shop windows and harassing shopkeepers. Lying low in Grinzing, I prayed all night for my parents’ shop to be spared. But the crowd’s destructive anger was far from blind; it targeted only Jewish-owned stores. By dawn, German boots were crossing the border. The chaos was an ideal pretext: order had to be restored. The Austrians were no longer able to regulate themselves. Neither France nor Britain tried to interpose. The Germans penetrated Austria to cheers and flowers. We almost begged them to come and save us f
rom ourselves. Invaders have never been more warmly greeted. And why shouldn’t they have been? They brought hope of stability and prosperity to a country on the brink of civil war and in a deep and lasting depression. It hardly mattered that the unrest had been fostered by the Nazis or that the economic recovery was the first step in a horrifying grand design. They offered an easy solution: “Death to the Jews.”
No one beyond a few misty-eyed dreamers like my father could still be misled by the Nazis’ posturing. Hitler would not stop at Austria or the Sudetenland. War was about to break out in Europe. On March 12, 1938, the Austrians welcomed the Germans as if they were distant relatives coming back into the fold. They might be a bit frightening, but they carried armloads of gifts. The Germans organized handouts of food to the neediest and promised to extend the social security network to all Austrians. They also promised payments to the unemployed and vacations to schoolchildren. The war over, we woke up with a major hangover and buried our shame under geraniums and furniture polish. When a new referendum was ordered by the Nazis, workers and bourgeois alike jumped at the chance to sit in their German uncle’s lap. He might have rapacious jaws and wandering hands, but his wallet was well stuffed.
Marianne Gödel had warned us in vain. The more clear-sighted among Kurt’s Jewish friends were already gone. I was blind and married to a man who was deaf. Giving in to my own panic would have dragged Kurt down into a deep and crippling anxiety. My job was to smooth things over. A minority was still sounding the alarm, but I belonged to the silent majority. How do you go against the current of history when your comfort and your hopes for personal fulfillment are not in any way altered by that current?
I can’t lie: I saw the broken shop windows, the families kneeling in the gutter, the abuse of the elderly, the street arrests. Like all the others, I reacted as though bobbing in a whirlpool where, to keep from drowning, you think of yourself first.
I’d asked Anna if I was making a mistake in not accompanying my future husband to America.
She simply shrugged. “I can’t tell the future, sweet cakes. What does your guy say about it?”
“Everyone is moving there. You should think about it yourself, Anna.”
“With what money? And how am I going to feed my son over there? I’m not going to start streetwalking in New York just to get away from these German hicks! Anyway, America is only for the rich.”
“Your Dr. Freud has left the country.”
“Then there will be plenty of work for us here.”
“My mother-in-law says the Nazis are going to eliminate the Jews.”
“So you have nothing to worry about. You aren’t Jewish. And I’ll be fine. They won’t come looking for me in Purk! Anyway, Wagner-Jauregg has always kept an eye out for me. And my kid is staying with good people. They would never rat him out.”
On April 10, the referendum ballots were inscribed with two circles: a big one for Yes and a tiny one for No. As if that weren’t enough, Nazi officials inspected every ballot as the voters emerged from the polling booth, passing the paper from hand to hand. The Reich had guaranteed itself an overwhelming majority in a rigged election. A staggering 99.75 percent of Austrians voted Yes. I did the same, then went and barricaded myself in our apartment in Grinzing. That evening, the news of the outcome would set off extraordinary violence in the streets. Kurt worked in the silence of his study. I touched his shoulder lightly. He emerged from his dream to say, “Adele, did you find any coffee? Yesterday’s was just terrible.”
21
The receptionist, a phone wedged to one ear and a tooth-marked pencil behind the other, motioned her to wait. Anna used the time to sign the register. She was surprised to notice that Adele had another visitor: Elizabeth Glinka, who had been the Gödels’ live-in registered nurse. Anna nibbled on the stub of a fingernail. Might she impose, or should she make herself scarce, as a courtesy? She’d have liked to meet this woman who had witnessed the Gödels’ last years together.
“I’m sorry, Miss Roth. No one is allowed to visit Mrs. Gödel today.”
“But I see that she has a visitor.”
“That person is waiting in the lobby.”
“Did something happen to Adele?”
The receptionist righted her coffee cup, which was tilting dangerously, and answered with a prim expression, “I’m afraid the information can only be given to a family member.”
“Mrs. Gödel has no family.”
The woman frowned. Her fingers, deprived of nicotine, worried at the already mauled pencil.
“She had a bad night. The doctor on duty didn’t like her chances this morning.”
Anna’s heart started racing. “Is she conscious?”
“She’s very weak. The best thing for her is to avoid any excitement.”
“I’m going to leave you my telephone number. Would you call me if there are any developments?”
“I’ll put the word out. Everybody likes you here. It’s so unusual for a young person to spend any time with our residents.”
Anna walked away in a daze. She’d known that Adele was in poor health, but the older woman had always seemed to have inexhaustible vitality. She couldn’t die like this. They had parted with bitter words. Anna had been short with her and felt responsible for the elderly woman’s sudden decline.
Too tired to retrace her steps immediately, she dropped into a Naugahyde chair. Nearby a woman in her sixties was knitting. Her hair haphazardly blow-dried, the visitor gave Anna a big smile. She had a hard face, but her brown, heavy-lidded eyes radiated an unmistakable kindness. Anna couldn’t tell whether the glow was meant for her specifically or for the world in general.
The woman stopped her rhythmic clicking and stowed her knitting away in a patchwork bag before coming to sit next to Anna. She held out a firm hand. “Elizabeth Glinka.”
“Anna Roth. I’m delighted to meet you. Although the circumstances …”
“Don’t worry. Mrs. Gödel has been through worse.”
She tilted her head, examining Anna with frank curiosity. The young woman sat straighter.
“Can I call you Anna? Adele has often spoken about you. She’s right. You’re pretty and you don’t know it.”
“That’s just the kind of compliment Adele would give.”
Elizabeth placed her calloused hand on hers. “It’s a good thing, what you’re doing for her.”
Anna felt a twinge of guilt. Their relationship was still ambiguous. She hadn’t made clear to herself where her interest ended and her affection began. Mrs. Gödel might have complained to her old nurse about their last discussion.
“Originally, I came to her with a specific goal in mind.”
“But you came back.”
“Have they told you anything?”
“She suffered a small stroke last night. It wasn’t the first. She’s let herself go into decline since her husband’s death. It’s over, she no longer wants to live.”
“Have you known the Gödels a long time?”
“I became their nurse full-time in 1973. Their gardener was a friend of mine, and one thing led to another …”
Reality flooded in through Anna’s locked doors. Tears welled up and her vision blurred. It was easier for her to cry over an unknown old lady than to summon the courage to say her final goodbyes to her grandmother.
Elizabeth pulled a clean handkerchief from her bag and handed it to her. “Adele hates crying. Just think what she’d say if she saw you.”
The young woman blew her nose and tried to smile.
“The end is not far off, but it won’t be today,” said Elizabeth.
From her bluntness, Anna guessed she was telling the truth. It would be too cruel for the Gödels’ nurse to lie to her just to make her feel better.
“I have a lot of affection for Adele,” said Elizabeth. “I hope she’ll slip away quietly, in her sleep. Without suffering. She’s earned that much. Even if she wasn’t always so easy to deal with! She had her moments. You must have noticed?”
Anna shuddered at the nurse’s use of the past tense, but she couldn’t keep from nudging the conversation toward the object of her quest. She berated herself for her lack of compassion.
“Did you talk with Mr. Gödel?”
“He didn’t exactly talk much! A nice man, though. Except when he wandered off the deep end …”
Mrs. Glinka examined her out of the corner of her eye. Her scruples were a matter of principle, but she, too, needed to confide.
“It wasn’t exactly a state secret that Mr. Gödel was a special case. Adele had to watch him day and night. When I was hired to help out, she seemed at the end of her rope. She had put on a lot of weight. She was struggling with the aftereffects of her first stroke. She had serious problems with high blood pressure and arthritis. Her joints were swollen from bursitis, and she was a wreck. She couldn’t cook or garden. It depressed her to be so useless. She was stuck in a wheelchair, and he couldn’t look after her. He couldn’t even look after himself! She worried so much about him that she neglected her own treatment. But what can you do? As far as she was concerned, he took precedence over everything, including her own health.”
“Didn’t he die while his wife was in the hospital?”
“Just after she got out. The poor woman had no choice, we made her go in. Her life was in danger but she refused to leave him. He would stop eating when she wasn’t there! I shuttled back and forth between them, knowing all along that it was too late. He wasn’t answering the door anymore, even for me. I would leave his food on the stoop. Most of the time he wouldn’t touch it.”
“With her gone, he let himself die?”
The Goddess of Small Victories Page 11