The Goddess of Small Victories

by Yannick Grannec

  She looked at her radio alarm clock: 6:05. Still a full hour before she could start her day. She reached over to her dressing table and took a novel haphazardly from the stack.

  Her parents had almost been pleased by her taste for books. Something might be made of the girl yet. Of course, she’d never be as brilliant as the Adamses’ son. But at least she didn’t call them from the police station. Leo was probably the child they would have liked to have. Their hopes for her had been modest, and she had not disappointed. She didn’t even have the excuse that she was lazy: she worked hard, eager for the half smile that greeted every A, but there were never enough of them. It would have been hipper to have a dunce to bemoan. Still, at fourteen Anna spoke several languages. Her mother corrected her too-colloquial German, and her father thought her French and Italian barely adequate for ordering in a restaurant. The adolescent buried her anger in little black notebooks, labeled by date and scrupulously aligned on the shelf in her room, describing the people around her in unvarnished terms. Since the day when Rachel had “inadvertently” read one of her notebooks, Anna had gotten into the habit of using the Gabelsberger shorthand that her grandmother had taught her for fun. She saved her rounded handwriting for her homework. At her graduation, her father looked at his watch, and her mother, in an offensively low-cut dress, eyed the male livestock. Among all these pimply youths, there had to be one who would take an interest in her daughter. Marriage might be a good solution: sometimes talent skipped a generation.

  Given her grades, she should have gone to a state college instead of Princeton. But the Roths hadn’t stood on their pride: a few quick phone calls and Anna was accepted at their alma mater. She had tried to hold out for a little more freedom, but she was made to see that such an opportunity came only once. In her junior year, Anna had unearthed that rare treasure, William, her tutor in literature. She presented him officially to her family in the second semester; they were engaged in the third. George Roth enjoyed the boy’s company, finding him a deferential listener. The academic prospects of the two young people might be limited—English literature of the nineteenth century was hardly a field to reward ambition—but they had at least shown good taste in following the family tradition. Will was reliable, punctual, and devoted to his family. Physically, he promised to age well, and he seemed mentally prepared to consent to it. To Anna, he had the particular merit—unlike her previous partners—of being an assiduous lover and of having a large library. Rachel made no comment about her daughter’s choice. She always acted politely toward him but without warmth. Anna would have felt relieved to know that her fiancé was safe from her mother’s usual attempts at seduction had this restraint not been further proof of Rachel’s contempt for him.

  It had taken years for Anna to accept the simple truth that her mother’s seeming disappointment was in fact relief. Anna would never be a remarkable woman. Unlike Rachel, whose sordid achievement had been to produce an absolutely ordinary daughter. Her father had other fresh-faced grads to fry. He had resigned himself long ago to his offspring’s relative mediocrity.

  “You’re a pain,” Leo had said when she declined to reenact the scene in the library. There was nothing complicated about it: she just wanted more from him than he could give. The arithmetic should have been obvious to him.

  Nothing would come of their meeting at Thanksgiving, only mutual embarrassment. She emptied the orange plastic container into the palm of her hand. She wouldn’t go to work that morning. She would say she’d visited Mrs. Gödel. She played with the pills for a while, arranging them into a star, then into a perfect square. She allowed herself two tablets and put the rest back in the tube, easily imagining what Adele would say. Self-indulgence, young lady. She lay back on her bed and looked up at the ceiling, which her insomnia had already made nauseatingly familiar. Her apartment was a wreck, and someday she would have to straighten it up. Even if no one ever visited.

  24

  1940

  Flight

  That the sun will rise to-morrow is a hypothesis.

  —Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

  BERLIN. JANUARY 5, 1940

  TO THE ATTENTION OF

  FRAU ADELE GOEDEL

  HIMMELSTR. 43. VIENNA.

  GERMAN PASSPORTS ISSUED. AMERICAN VISAS PENDING. CONFIRMATION TODAY AYDELOTTE. TAKE FIRST TRAIN TO BERLIN. IMPERATIVE. NEED WARM CLOTHES. ONLY ONE TRUNK. 8 KURT.

  January 15, 1940

  Berlin

  Dear Ones,

  We leave for Moscow this afternoon. From there we go to Vladivostok via the Trans-Siberian. In Vladivostok we expect to find a boat for Yokohama, in Japan, and from there, if all goes according to plan, we’ll board an ocean liner for San Francisco.

  Miraculously, the immigration visas to America were issued last week, expressly prohibiting passage on a transatlantic liner. Given our German passports, only the Soviet Union and Japan will still allow us to transit their territories. It would have been very dangerous to cross the Atlantic in any case. Our papers are valid only for a short time; we must leave as quickly as possible. Yesterday we had to be vaccinated against a long list of horrible diseases: plague, typhoid, smallpox … Kurt was in such a state. He hates needles!

  The apartment was left in total disorder. I didn’t have time to clean it before leaving. Would you make sure those dratted mice don’t get into the pantry? If she likes, Elizabeth can move in and use the place until we return. Otherwise, could you open the shutters from time to time to air it out? Kurt hates that musty smell. Has Liesl’s cough gotten better? She should continue using mustard plasters, even if it gives her burns.

  Take good care of yourself, dearest Mum. It will be a long winter, but I’ll come back for the first violets! We’ll have a good laugh about this whole adventure. Kurt sends his cordial regards.

  A big kiss,

  Adele

  I had never been so frightened in my life. I was crippled with pain, my insides knotted with anxiety. To spare his nerves, my panic had to be kept hidden. His apparent calm did not bode well. A few days before our departure from Berlin, while we were still uncertain whether our visas would be issued, he delivered a lecture on the continuum hypothesis. How could he think about mathematics in the middle of such a nightmare? Although the world outside was gangrenous with uniforms, from Vienna to Berlin, and from Vladivostok to Yokohama, he sturdily maintained that the war wouldn’t last.

  I was tormented by questions. Why were they letting us go? It had to be a mistake, and they would stop us at the border. How would we reach the Pacific Ocean, traveling on German visas through a Communist country? We would have to make our run while the German-Soviet nonaggression treaty kept the eastern route open. I didn’t understand how Stalin and Hitler could have signed this unholy pact. After all we’d read in Vienna about defending ourselves against the Red menace! Who would keep Hitler from attacking the Russian bear once he was done with Poland?

  I took refuge in practical matters: How do you pack the most into a single trunk? How do you rebuild a life from so little?

  Bigosovo

  Dear Ones,

  This letter is probably the last you will receive from me for a long time. We are near the Russian border. The train to Moscow is a little late. The town is flooded with refugees, many of them Jews escaping to the Soviet Union. The train platforms are chockablock with suitcases, crying children, and terrified men and women. The cold is already very intense—thanks, Mum, for giving me your fur coat. I’ll make good use of it! I used our day here to buy a few last-minute things. Everyone had the same idea. There is not a single blanket or pair of socks left in this town. I had to buy wool at an embarrassingly high price. It will give me something to do during the long trip.

  We met a family of Hungarian emigrants, the Mullers, who are trying to get to the United States too. They left with very little luggage. I suspect their papers of being false. The father is a doctor, which aroused Kurt’s curiosity until he learned that Muller’s speci
alty was psychoanalysis. The two found they had interests in common all the same. Muller knew about my husband’s work. Did you know that Dr. Freud died in London in September? The three children—two big boys and an adorable little girl—make an unbelievable amount of noise. Kurt finds it exhausting, but I’m delighted to fuss over little Suzanna, who is as cute as a button. She looks exactly like Liesl when she was a child! The children are very blond, like their mother, which will work in their favor as they’ll draw less attention to themselves. Kurt emptied the shelves of the last pharmacist who still had any stock. He has enough medical supplies in his bag to treat the entire Trans-Siberian train. The food is barely passable.

  Kurt says hello.

  A thousand big kisses from me. I miss you.

  Adele

  Making it through this moment and the next. Not panicking. Finding this other person inside me, the all-powerful one, and locking away the frightened little girl. All the while knowing that this little girl will yell so loudly that I’ll be forced to open the door for her eventually, only to find that she is inconsolable.

  I was lost in uncharted territory with a man who took care of nothing. I had no choice. I had to break out the sails to outrace the ill wind, outstrip fear itself.

  In the midst of these disheartened travelers, I gave help, gave advice. I insulted the railroad staff whenever the need or the desire arose. I pretended to forget that we were hunted animals. The hideous beast at our heels was not the same as the one pursuing the Mullers: the one that haunted my dreams had no SS uniform. It lurked within Kurt, biding its time, feeding on the anxiety generated by this unsettling trip. I straightened my spine. I ordered my stomach to be quiet. I wrote letters stuffed with lies. I bribed the conductor to find us some reasonable tea. I performed miracles to get extra blankets for us. I knitted for hours to keep my hands from trembling.

  January 20, 1940

  Moscow

  Dear Ones,

  We are in Moscow for a few hours between trains. The cold is horrendous. I can’t leave the station to replenish our food. On the platform are a few vendors who will quietly sell us specialty goods at exorbitant prices. Mostly bad vodka. I am entrusting this letter to a Russian musician I met on the train. He has been to the Nachtfalter! I hope he’ll be honest enough not to spend the stamp money on drink. Despite the discomforts of the trip, the atmosphere is lively. People entertain themselves by making lots of music. Some of the carriages look like real drinking dens. Kurt is fine, working a bit when the noise and smoke don’t distract him too badly.

  I think about you so much I can see you, right here on the station platform. Soon there will another platform where we will all be brought together.

  All my love,

  Adele

  Even as I wrote these lines I didn’t believe them. I had leaned over toward Kurt. “Do you want to add a word?”

  He had refused. “Don’t worry about them so much!” He didn’t worry in the slightest about his own family. He was more concerned about what we would have for dinner.

  I left the carriage to smoke away from the others. The perfumed Turkish cigarettes made me nauseous, but I liked the sight of their gold tips between my fingers. The trip was a long one and moments alone rare. Having no intimacy with Kurt was hard on me.

  To pass the time, a group of musicians serenaded the indifferent crowd. I examined the passersby, seeing in them familiar figures: my mother, trotting hurriedly about her business; Liesl, always in the clouds; Elizabeth, bawling her out; my father, a cigarette forever between his lips, his Leica around his neck, looking at the world through its lens, hungry for details and never conscious of the whole. I wouldn’t ever see them again. The privations of the war years would take them from me, both my father and Elizabeth. My last image of him is as an old man, red faced and sweating, trying to keep up with a moving train that is carrying me away forever. He leans, old and spent, against a column to recover his breath. Beside him, three women who resemble me are making their handkerchiefs wet. My eyes are dry.

  Now, surrounded by a crowd of strangers, I was finally crying, blaming the flood of emotion on the damned Yiddish music that was piercing my heart.

  January 25, 1940

  Somewhere between Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk

  Dear Ones,

  I am writing this letter from the middle of Siberia. I hope I’ll be able to mail it when we get to Vladivostok. My fingers are numb, I have the hardest time holding the pencil. This trip just won’t end. It’s like a long night of insomnia. I have never been so cold in my life. The temperature outside is reportedly minus 50° Celsius. I didn’t think such a thing was possible. The toilets are frozen solid. For washing we use water from the samovars or else my eau de cologne. I’m almost out of it. What I crave is a hot bath, a bowl of vegetable broth, and a real night’s rest under a down comforter. The days and nights are indistinguishable—no light, as if the sun were avoiding this endless flat expanse.

  We spend our days dozing, lulled by the motion of the train. We press against each other like animals. There is nothing to do. I’ve used up my store of wool and handed out a few pairs of socks to the Muller children. Suzanna is sick. She coughs a lot and refuses to eat. I rub her feet to warm her. She is like a tiny bird. No one has the heart to make music anymore. Everyone is quiet, dulled by the cold or by vodka. Even the two Muller boys have stopped running around. At meals we are fed a disgusting borscht whose ingredients I prefer not to know. Kurt won’t let anything pass his lips. My vision of the Trans-Siberian was of something more luxurious! The resupplying of the train is chaotic and we are forced to make many stops. At this rate, we’ll never arrive in time to catch the boat.

  Ugly rumors are circulating through the cars: the United States might now enter the war. Kurt thinks they have no reason to. Muller worries that a Japanese provocation might make the Americans abandon their neutrality, cutting off the Pacific route to us. My normal optimism is struggling. It must be the lack of sugar. What I wouldn’t give for a Viennese coffee and a slice of Sacher torte! Last night I was surprised to find myself praying. I pray for all of you, my thoughts are with you.

  Adele

  I couldn’t figure out how to wash even my underclothes. I was so grubby. Only the cold kept us from smelling our own unpleasant odor. Kurt survived by holding a handkerchief soaked in eau de cologne over his nose and wrapping himself in blankets, piling all his clothes on top. I debated with myself for hours, as I could see he had his eye on my fur coat. But I decided to give it to the little girl, who was breaking my heart with her bright blue lips. Her parents tried to refuse. Finally they agreed. We swaddled her in the fur and eventually she settled down. I listened to her mother sing a Yiddish lullaby to her, but the husband made her stop. He was pale with fright. Instead, I sang her a German children’s song that I remembered my mother singing to me. The words and melody came back all by themselves, although I’d thought them lost: Guten Abend, gute Nacht, mit Rosen bedacht, mit Näglein besteckt, schlüpf unter die Deck. Kurt made me be quiet too. It was as dangerous to be German on this train as it was to be Jewish. I hummed. No one dared say anything.

  Kurt’s complaining had finally stopped. He watched the endless countryside, raising an arm occasionally from his woolen sarcophagus to wipe the window clear. It was so dark out that nothing could be seen. He examined his own reflection, as if it might give him an answer. I drew an ∞ in the mist. He smiled before erasing it. To cover my embarrassment I drew a Russian doll for the little girl, then another inside it, and another inside that. She laughed. It was the first time I had heard her laugh.

  I wrongly took his silence for jealousy, as he never liked me caring for others. Nor was he particularly haunted by the secret that the physicist Hans Thirring had told him in Berlin to pass on to Albert Einstein, that Nazi Germany would soon be capable of nuclear fission. He didn’t really believe it. Not right away. Kurt knew that others, too, carried the message. From all over Europe, the identical information was crossing
the ocean and converging on Princeton.

  While I was wondering whether the trip would ever end, he was thinking of the infinite. He queried his double in the night while other men, his peers, fought against time. Not just to get the damn bomb but to get it before anyone else.

  February 2, 1940

  Yokohama, Japan

  Dear Ones,

  We’ve reached Yokohama and feel a great sense of relief. Finally we have air, water, heat! We arrived too late to take the Taft, for which we had reservations. We’ll have to wait more than two weeks to board another ship, the President Cleveland. In happier circumstances I would have been delighted: Japan is so amusing. Especially for me, never having traveled farther than Aflenz! The country is not as medieval as I thought, we have all the commodities we need. The streets are every bit as busy as the Ringstrasse: shiny cars, bikes going in every direction, horse carts and rickshaws, a kind of bicycle taxi drawn by poor wretches. I spend hours watching the people go by. Men in smart raincoats share the sidewalk with workers wearing funny shoes and even stranger hats. The women are mostly in traditional costume. I’ll try to bring you back one of these extraordinary silk confections. I have to be careful, though, because our reserves of cash are limited. Kurt has been trying for several days to get a money order from the Foreign Exchange Service but with no success. I need a new wardrobe, as we left with so little. Unfortunately, I find all the imported products much too expensive.

  The Asiatics are not lemon yellow, as I had thought. Actually, they are pale, with elongated eyes and no eyelids. The workers are even quite dark, tanned by the sun. Some of the women, supposedly of ill repute, walk down the street with their faces painted white and their teeth blackened. I’d like to talk to them but we have no language in common. Yesterday I tried to explain to two lovely creatures that their kimonos were magnificent—they fled, laughing behind their sleeves.