The Goddess of Small Victories

by Yannick Grannec

  Anna felt her stomach heave, but she forced herself to keep chewing.

  “You’re today’s big attraction, along with the election of that old matinee idol. They’ll be talking about it for at least two weeks.”

  “I take it you’re not a Republican.”

  “I would rather believe in men than in ideas. Reagan does not inspire me with trust. Too many teeth. Too much hair.”

  The young woman arduously swallowed her mouthful of food. Adele handed her a glass of water.

  “You aren’t having a little depression, are you, dear girl?”

  “Carter had even more teeth. It’s not a reliable criterion.”

  “My dear child, if there is one aspect of people I can read, it is their state of mind. So stop pretending, please! Is that why you are so interested in my husband’s personal history? You don’t have to be ashamed to tell me. You are already lying down.”

  “Do you have a diploma for this?”

  “I studied at the source. Viennese specialty.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I know. I know it intimately. There are such pretty words for it in every language: mélancolie, spleen, the blues, saudade. The international hymn of sadness.”

  The old woman poked the treats with a trembling finger. Anna repressed a shiver of disgust.

  “I’ve tracked this nasty creature all my life. It never disappeared for very long. For Kurt, anxiety was a motor. It was an uneven fight, and a useless fight, but I fought. Today, you have chemistry. Every person takes a pill for his heart or liver. Why not one for your soul? Go on, have a second one! You’re not going to cry, are you? I don’t like it when other people cry.”

  Anna ate another cookie, trying to screen off the image of Adele’s yellow fingernail scraping the food.

  “I didn’t entirely escape melancholy myself.”

  “I thought you were always unaffected, Adele.”

  “Holding my own weakness at arm’s length was one thing. Not letting Kurt’s contaminate me was a war I had to fight at every moment. I sometimes got out of bed without the strength to face the day. Or even the next hour. And then … a smile would come to his face. The sun would shine down on the tablecloth. A reason would appear for putting on a new dress. I would reconnect with the world. Each minute of pain and suffering was erased by a hope of happiness. Like a dotted line with nothingness in the intervals. Oops! I’m starting to blather poetry! It is making me soft, having you here.”

  “Are mathematicians more fragile than we are?”

  Adele picked at a crumb before pushing the plate away to where her greed could no longer reach it.

  “Because of the heights they reach, the fall seems all the harder to the general public. People like to hear stories about mad scientists. It reassures them to think that great intelligence is offset by something else. That there’s a trade-off. If you raise yourself up, you must fall a long way down.”

  “Life is an equation. What you gain on one side is taken away on the other.”

  “It’s simply guilt, my dear. I don’t believe in this idea of cosmic balance or karma. Nothing is written, everything needs to be accomplished.”

  “I’m not as optimistic as you.”

  “There was this fellow in Princeton, John Nash, a mathematical genius as well.11 He was no longer teaching, but he still had access to the buildings. They called him the ‘phantom of the library.’ I came across him a few times, wandering around in his wrinkled clothes. At the start, in the 1950s, his career was dazzling, and then he imploded. He wasted a good part of his life either in hospital or getting electroshock treatment. Now I hear he has gone back to work. He managed to conquer his demons.”

  “Were you hopeful that your husband could be saved?”

  Adele hesitated for a moment. The young woman was sorry she had pressed the issue.

  “Kurt, unlike John Nash, never suffered from schizophrenia. The doctors diagnosed him as paranoid. Mathematics may have killed him but it also saved him from depression. Thinking kept him in one piece. But he exercised his mind to the exclusion of his body. It was his fuel but also his poison. He couldn’t live with it or without it. To stop his research would only have hastened his end.”

  Anna lifted her arms, which had grown numb, to scratch her head. She could feel how tangled her loosened hair had become. Adele rummaged in her bedside stand and pulled out a hairbrush.

  “Don’t worry, it’s clean. I never use it.”

  The firm strokes of the stiff-bristled brush were delicious; Anna started to relax. She had no memory of her mother ever combing her hair, but she suddenly remembered Ernestine, the Adamses’ nanny, patiently tying her braids. A pang of guilt. She hadn’t contacted Ernestine in a very long time, though she lived only a short distance away.

  “You have such beautiful hair. What a shame to twist it into a bun like an old maid! You’re quite pretty, really, but you don’t present yourself well.”

  Anna stiffened. “I don’t care about being pretty. I’ve never had a problem attracting men. What worries me is that I’m not doing anything with my life.”

  “You’ve given up being attractive? But why, in God’s name?”

  “Haven’t you given anything up?”

  A hard brush stroke made Anna grimace.

  “Mein Gott! You won’t come clean unless we use forceps! I feel your brain wandering, looking for the emergency exit.”

  She concentrated on a particularly stubborn knot. The young woman resigned herself to the pain. Adele could never understand her. She belonged to a different generation. Having to be alluring was an archaism, and she, Anna, refused to submit to it. She had never shared her friends’ interest in window shopping or their hysterics before a party. She saw it as a revival of the Stone Age division of the sexes: the hunter-boys chase balls, and the gatherer-girls peel coat hangers. Her theory had made Leo laugh. He believed that Anna despised the dance of the sexes only because she didn’t have the courage to own her tiny breasts. Hiding away in nuns’ clothes revealed her entirely predictable fear of the phallus and her outsized ego. He congratulated her on her lack of sartorial effort since in any case he preferred her naked. She thanked her two-bit shrink for his analysis by throwing a dictionary at his head, proving that her reptilian brain had not altogether renounced being primal.

  Even the men she unwittingly attracted tried to smother her from the very first night. The curse of the Madonna. She was perfectly aware of her power. She had no interest in extending it.

  “I’m a very boring person,” said Anna.

  “If you were, I wouldn’t waste my time on you. What else? Say it without thinking.”

  “I used to like to write.”

  The brush slowed imperceptibly.

  “It never to came to anything. One day my mother read one of my notebooks. She laughed.”

  “Families have an unlimited genius for destruction.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. I would never have guessed on my own.”

  Adele caressed her cheek; the young woman felt a sudden flood of emotion, far beyond compassion.

  “My husband taught me this. Life confirmed it. A system cannot understand itself. Self-analysis is very difficult. You can only see yourself through others’ eyes.”

  “Submit to the judgment of others? That doesn’t sound like you.”

  “Indirect lighting is sometimes stronger. I may not be the person to turn on the lightbulb for you, but I am getting to know you. You’re a person who feels empathy, you’re observant, and you like words.”

  “Nothing to build a career around.”

  “I’m talking to you about pleasure. Find where your happiness is, Anna!”

  “And where is yours, Adele?”

  The old woman tossed the brush on the bed.

  “Mine is currycombing. I’m stopping for today, sweet pea. My arms ache!”

  28

  1944

  An Atomic Soufflé

  Some recent work by E. Fermi and L.
Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the administration … This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs …

  —Albert Einstein, letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, August 2, 1939

  “He’s still out there.”

  “They’ll be arriving at any moment, Kurt. Turn the lights back on! I have to set the table.”

  “See for yourself!”

  Irritated, I made my way to the side of the window, where he was hiding.

  “Be more discreet, Adele. He’ll see you.”

  I examined the quiet thoroughfare. A dank November gloom had settled over Alexander Street. I saw a single figure strolling by: a man lost in his thoughts.

  “I saw that man on the way to the Institute this morning. I recognize his hat.”

  “Princeton is such a small town, Kurt. It’s perfectly normal to see the same people more than once.”

  “He’s following me!”

  “Shut the damned windows! It’s freezing in here. Your guests will all be shivering.”

  He had bundled himself up in a thick woolen jacket, knitted by my own hands.

  “The apartment has a funny smell.”

  “Now don’t start! I aired it out all day. I burned sprigs of sage. Every room has been thoroughly scrubbed. I can’t do any more.”

  “I can still smell the previous renters.”

  “You’re too sensitive. Do something useful for once. Put out the plates and shut the windows!”

  I went back into the kitchen, shivering despite the heat from the oven. I lived my days with the windows open and my arms in the washing machine. Kurt had always been pathologically sensitive to smells, including those of the body. Since moving to Princeton, his reactions had become obsessive. I had to bathe scrupulously before joining him in bed. Sweat, strong perfume, or my morning breath disgusted him. He avoided me like the plague when I had my period. Of course, he never talked about it. How could he even touch on the subject? Yet I had to listen to a daily description of the changes in his body temperature and the consistency of his stools. My own internal machinery didn’t interest him. Every morning, I would sort through the wash, sniffing his clothes one by one, not so much for any trace of female contact as to inhale his smell in his absence. But he didn’t sweat. His skin had very little odor and his clothes didn’t get dirty.

  When I returned to the living room, he was still peering out into the street.

  “Damn it to hell, Kurt! Set the table!”

  “Don’t swear like that, Adele. And don’t get so agitated. This is not a formal dinner.”

  I stuck my tongue out at his back. I set the table and looked at it critically: no silver, no fine porcelain. The secondhand bride had not merited an elaborate trousseau.

  He stayed planted by the window.

  “Where are they? Did you tell them six o’clock?”

  “They had to bring Russell to the station first.”

  “I’m wondering when I should put the soufflé in the oven.”

  “You should have planned a simpler menu.”

  “Albert Einstein is coming to dinner! Of course I’m going the whole nine yards!”

  “His tastes are down-to-earth.”

  “He won’t be disappointed, given how primitive the apartment is.”

  “Don’t always complain, Adele. We’re a hop and a jump from the shuttle. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  “You and your mania for train stations. If they call the shuttle the ‘Dinky,’ it’s because it really deserves the name. What a flea bucket! In any case, we never go to New York.”

  “You’re free to go without me.”

  “And spend what money? Everything has started to get more expensive. I’m juggling every day just to make ends meet.”

  He put his hand over his stomach. I swallowed my resentment. I wanted this dinner to succeed.

  “Are you worried?”

  “Inviting Einstein and Pauli together might not have been wise. They often squabble. Relativity and quantum mechanics don’t make a good pair. It would take too long to explain.”

  “I like Pauli a lot. He’s ugly, but so charming!”

  “Don’t go by appearances, Adele. Wolfgang is a man of formidable intelligence. Some people call him ‘the scourge of God.’ His mind is like a scalpel!”

  “It didn’t stop him from marrying a dancer too. Even if he is divorced, like Albert. Also, Pauli is Viennese.”

  “Don’t be too familiar with Herr Einstein. No one calls him by his first name.”

  I was so happy to be receiving company—exalted company, no less! With Herr Einstein, I wasn’t afraid of my poor English: he spoke with an atrocious accent. I even suspected him of exaggerating it. I didn’t know him well at the time, but I felt at ease in his presence—he didn’t rank the people he was talking to. He listened with the same good nature, the same amused indifference, to everyone from the geniuses of this world to the cleaning ladies at the university. Kurt and he had become close when we first arrived in Princeton. More than one passerby turned to stare at the odd couple they formed, and not only because of the physicist’s enormous popularity. They were Buster Keaton and Groucho Marx, lunar man and solar man, one closemouthed and the other charismatic. My man, his hair brilliantined, stayed faithful to his impeccable suits, while Albert always looked as though he’d just fallen out of bed in his wrinkly clothes. He hadn’t darkened the door of a barbershop since the Anschluss. Their long, ambulatory conversations were punctuated by the physicist’s explosive laugh and my husband’s circumspect squeak. Einstein turned an almost paternal attention on him. He admired his work and was unquestionably happy to have found a comrade largely unimpressed by his demigod’s aura. To Kurt, Albert was a scientist like any other, not a headliner. And Albert, whose vital force was considerable, was sensitive to my man’s frailness. He perhaps saw in him something of his youngest son, Eduard, who at twenty had fallen into the black hole of schizophrenia. I didn’t belong to his close circle, of course, but knowing that Kurt was on good terms with such a huge celebrity reassured me about his chances in exile.

  “Here they are, Adele! I can see Herr Einstein’s mop. My God but he must be cold! He is hardly wearing anything, poor man.”

  I glanced out into the street, where I recognized the scientist’s already legendary silhouette. At sixty-five, he had the alert step of a much younger man. He had thrown on a light overcoat—a concession, no doubt, to his faithful secretary, Helen Dukas—but he had as usual neglected to put on socks. Pauli, in his prosperous forties, wrapped in an ample coat, had a high forehead and a receding hairline. The two physicists were well known for their appetite. I planned to satisfy it. You didn’t leave Mrs. Gödel’s table without a full stomach!

  “So you’ll have to close the windows. I’m going to put the soufflé in the oven.”

  I stopped a moment in front of the bedroom mirror. My hair had grown; I had let it curl a little and swept it up at the sides with combs. One of my first big purchases had been a sewing machine. I’d made myself a dress for special occasions: cream-colored wool, gathered in at the waist by a long row of pearl buttons. The puffy sleeves hid the flab on my arms. I stretched back the skin of my temples. Other than a few crow’s-feet, time had been good to me; I was still attractive for my age. I adjusted my best bra, gave my port-wine stain a little extra powder, reapplied my lipstick, and smacked my lips together. The noise irritated Kurt no end. He could say whatever he wanted tonight! I was happy to be entertaining. I felt alone in Princeton, a long way from my family, and cut off from all news by this endless war. I had to stop thinking about it. “Worry causes wrinkles,” my mother used to say. How those wrinkles must have eroded her looks these past few years! I recapped my tube of lipstick wi
th a small decisive gesture.

  Half an hour later, I was setting my collapsed soufflé on the table.

  “It’s a disaster! I never have a problem with it, normally.”

  Wolfgang Pauli cocked his ugly turtle head to the side, and Kurt pursed his lips. Herr Einstein, though, loosed a thunderous laugh that made the candle flames flicker.

  “It has nothing to do with you, Adele. The truth is, you’re providing a scientific confirmation! We were just talking about the ‘Pauli effect.’ Our friend only has to appear in a laboratory to make an experiment fail. He has the same effect on your cooking! You should never have dabbled in French organic chemistry, dear lady. Give me good solid German food!”

  “I’ll make Wiener schnitzel.”

  “An excellent plan.”

  I went back to the kitchen distraught. I had so wanted to make a good impression.

  I returned carrying an enormous steaming platter and saw Professor Einstein’s eyes sparkle with greed.

  “Look at that, Pauli! You have no power over Austrian cooking!”

  Not waiting for the younger man’s response, Albert rose to his feet to help me.

  “According to my doctor, I must be careful about what I eat. My heart is starting to flounder.”

  “Mine as well. I’m on a very strict diet.”

  “Gödel, if you continue being too careful, you will become transparent.”

  “I thought you were vegetarian, Herr Einstein.”

  “Master Pauli, I know how to pay my respects to the lady of the house! I was well brought up.”

  I dished out quantities of food onto the guests’ plates, then, with a quick smile, set a portion of white, unbreaded meat in front of my spouse.

  “My husband doesn’t appreciate my culinary talents.”

  “Gödel, I am your elder. Do me a favor and listen to your wife!”

  Without looking up, Kurt minced his small portion into tiny pieces, most of which he would never eat.

  “Adele will kill me with her cooking.”

  The two men looked at him in astonishment.