The Goddess of Small Victories

by Yannick Grannec

  “A little coleslaw, gentlemen?”

  I let them fill their stomachs before breaking the silence. I was starved for compliments and conversation, two necessary foods withheld from me for years.

  “Herr Einstein, I’m truly delighted to welcome you to dinner!”

  “Ach! Another admirer!”

  “Kurt refuses to explain your work to me. He thinks I could never understand it.”

  My husband glared at me. I didn’t feel so impressed at having the greatest genius of the twentieth century at my table. I knew that lickspittling would leave him unmoved. I held to my method all the same, which was to make men talk either about their work or their prowess at sports. If the second was an option, the choice was automatic. Albert looked at me, amused. He pointed his fork at Kurt.

  “Gödel, do you call this fair? I have been obliged to explain your ideas any number of times, sweating buckets of blood.”

  “Please excuse my wife for importuning you in this way, Herr Einstein. Adele is sometimes thoughtless. She has no background in science, yet she is forever sticking her nose into my research.”

  “A charming nose it is, too! And I’m sure Adele would learn the basics of relativity more quickly than I could ever learn about cooking.”

  Pauli raised a doubting eyebrow. “Some fields don’t allow for simplification.”

  Einstein swept the objection aside with a forkful of veal.

  “You’re asking me to illustrate the theory of special relativity? I’m used to it! Over the last thirty years, I’ve developed a clear and precise answer.”

  He paused theatrically. His colleagues let their eating implements stop moving.

  “Go off and leave me face-to-face with Wolfgang … and it will seem an eternity. But with you beside me, Adele, this meal will appear to last only a minute. That is relativity!”

  This time, the younger physicist expelled his breath audibly. Einstein rewarded him with a punch in the arm.

  “To be entirely frank, little madam, I could explain relativity to you in simple terms, but it would take years for you to understand and master the ideas that underlie it.”

  Pauli massaged his bruised shoulder.

  “Everyone thinks they understand relativity nowadays. Too much vulgarization is bad for science.”

  “Relax, dear Zweistein.* You’ll get your turn. One day you, too, will be besieged by throngs of ecstatic college students. Are you ready for glory? How will you sell your exclusion principle to a schoolchild?”12

  “I’ll refuse, plain and simple.”

  “If you can’t explain an idea to a child of six, it’s because you don’t fully understand it.”

  “You should go back to being a vegetarian, Herr Einstein. Eating meat has warped your mind.”

  “I’m not asking you to go into every detail, Pauli. I am simply noting your inability as a young Turk of quantum physics to place your concepts in the realm of sensory experience, to provide an objective representation of reality.”

  “You’re arguing in bad faith, Herr Einstein! The ability to reduce a theory to simple terms is no proof of its robustness.”

  “Your elementary particles behave as chaotically as a crowd of women in Filene’s Basement. Although the women are more predictable. I see no coherence in this hodgepodge of complexity and randomness. For me, God is subtle, but he is not malicious.”

  “You still have to prove his existence.”

  “Talk to Gödel! That’s his hobbyhorse.”

  Kurt clenched his jaw and pushed his meager portion away.

  “I make no claims. People would take me for a crank.”

  Pauli finished cleaning his plate and noiselessly set his knife and fork on it. We all waited for his counterstroke.

  “My dear Einstein, our hostess must not be made to suffer through our quarrels. She will forgive me if I refrain from answering her question or crossing swords with you. I am not up to the task.”

  “Come, Pauli, you’re not good enough to play modest!”

  A leaden silence settled over the table, which Einstein dispersed with his booming laugh.

  “I love provoking you, Wolfgang. It is always an enriching experience. But don’t worry, you are the future and I am the past, no one doubts it. Help yourself to a little more of this superb coleslaw. It is wonderful for loosening the bowels.”

  My husband’s face was pale. The rivalry between the two physicists, masked as it was by jokes, was stressful to him. I cast about for another avenue of discussion.

  “How did your meeting with Mr. Russell go? And why didn’t you invite him to dinner, Kurt?”13

  I would have liked to meet this English lord with the exciting reputation. According to rumor, Bertrand Russell’s wife had had two children by her lover during their marriage. Russell divorced her to marry the governess. In the puritanical United States, he had been judged morally unfit for teaching. His libertarian principles made him persona non grata. Kurt, whose calling as a logician had been influenced by Russell’s Principia Mathematica, deeply respected this man who had been ostracized for his pacifist opinions. He had been dismissed from Cambridge and jailed for publicly opposing British participation in the First World War.

  “Believe me, Adele, Bertrand Russell would not have appreciated your Austrian cooking properly. And you’d have had one more relic at your table. It seems to me that Bertie has been surpassed by modern logic, just as I feel my backside being booted by your young colleagues. Pauli, pour me something to drink!”

  “He returns the compliment, Professor Einstein. He thinks you and Gödel are Platonist dinosaurs. In his words, you have a ‘German,’ a ‘Jewish’ weakness for metaphysics.”

  “Pauli, physics without philosophy is nothing more than engineering. Russell’s feeble quips will never persuade me of the contrary!”

  “Isn’t your own son an engineer?”

  “Yes, and if intelligence were hereditary, he would agree with me. My daughter-in-law is happy just to sculpt, it’s restful. Don’t try to change the subject, Pauli. I’m holding fast to it! When science moves away from philosophy, it loses its soul. The founders of physics were humanists. They didn’t abide by the modern dichotomy. They were physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers.”

  “Please don’t restart the quarrel over epistemology. Adele is going to ask me to explain it to her, and I haven’t got the energy!”

  “What is and what can be defined are closely related, of course, but it is my belief that what is far exceeds what we can at present define.”

  “In that case, don’t call quantum physics into question on the grounds that we can’t define the whole of it.”

  “I was talking about philosophy. Stop pulling all of the atomic covers to your side, Pauli! What’s your opinion, Gödel?”

  “Nothing keeps us from moving in Russell’s direction. I plan to work in that vein both as a logician and a philosopher. I believe in the axiomatization of philosophy. The discipline has, at best, reached the level of Babylonian mathematics.”

  “I recognize your love of Leibniz in that.14 But isn’t it too ambitious, even for you?”

  “My life will be too short to complete the program. I expect to die young.”

  Herr Einstein threw a wad of bread at him.

  “Stop pretending. Your life will be long, and you will have a prolific career, especially if you follow the advice of your charming wife. Eat!”

  Staring into space, Pauli picked his teeth.

  “So, Gödel, you have your white whale just as our illustrious Einstein does. A unified field theory and an axiomatized philosophy? That will keep the two of you busy until retirement, dear colleagues! Don’t forget to send me a telegram when you succeed. I’ll bring flowers.”

  “You think I’m a relic. But just wait! Albert still has juice!”

  “What is this unified field theory?”

  “Gödel, your little woman is insatiable!”

  “Don’t feel any obligation, Herr Einstein. She won
’t understand a thing.”

  “Don’t be such a prude! I am happy to take part in this sort of exercise.”

  He kneaded a morsel of bread.

  “The physical world, dear woman, is subject to four major forces: electromagnetism; weak interaction, which is the source of radioactivity; strong nuclear force, which holds matter together; and—”

  He tossed his bread ball at Pauli.

  “Gravitation. Every body attracts every other body. I’m not referring, of course, to my young friend’s carnal attractions, which have little sway over me. The tiny force of gravity is an enormous pebble in the physicist’s shoe. We can’t manage to classify it in a coherent model next to the three others. And yet, we confirm its existence every moment of our lives. I fall, you fall, we fall from a height. Miraculously the stars do not fall on our heads. In short, you see me needling Pauli for the sport of it. We are both right, but not at the same time. We each propose an accurate description of the world, he for the infinitely small, and I for the infinitely large. We hope to be reconciled in a magnificent unified theory to the cheering of crowds and with garlands of flowers. I’m working on it like crazy, and Wolfgang loves flowers.”

  Kurt, as though he’d missed an entire section of space-time, returned to the previous conversation.

  “In any case, Russell doesn’t like Princeton. He’s so British. He claims that the neo-Gothic university buildings just ape the ones at Oxford.”

  “He isn’t completely wrong! What about you, Adele, how are you settling in to Princeton?”

  “I miss Vienna. Princeton is very provincial. The people look at me oddly because of my accent.”

  “It’s easier to break an atom than to break a prejudice. They even arrested the son of my friend von Laue, who was just sailing his boat. They suspected him of sending signals to enemy submarines! Someone had denounced him to the authorities because of his accent.”

  “My wife refuses to take an English course.”

  “I don’t have time.”

  “If you hadn’t fired the housekeeper, you would have time.”

  I said nothing. I’d had to get rid of the cleaning lady because I suspected her of stealing. To be frank, I could never quite get used to the idea of having someone work for me, but I was embarrassed to spell out for them what I knew to be a working-class reflex.

  “The two of you are restless. You keep moving house.”

  “Here Kurt is closer to the Institute. We’re just a few steps from the train station. He chose this apartment because it has windows on both sides. We can cross-ventilate.”

  “I’ve noticed that! Even I am cold, Gödel. Close the windows!”

  My husband rose unwillingly.

  “How do you pass the days?”

  “I do the housework, I go to the movies, I prepare food for Kurt that he won’t eat. I knit things for the Red Cross.”

  “You take part in the war effort.”

  “I do next to nothing. It’s just something to keep my hands busy so that I won’t think too much.”

  At this point, Pauli started playing with his bread. Our guests were getting bored.

  “Don’t worry, this damned war is winding down. The Allied forces entered Germany in September. It’s only a question of months now.”

  “We can do nothing but wait. Perhaps we should start knitting as well, eh Gödel?”

  “I prefer to focus on my own research, Herr Einstein.”

  Our Viennese guest smiled—through his mind had flashed the same image as through mine, of a logician struggling with his knitting needles.

  “What idiocy to pass up the use of your two brains on the pretext that your passports are German!”

  “What? They suspect Herr Einstein of spying for the Nazis?”

  “Dear little lady, the Department of Defense suspects me of being a Socialist, not to say a Communist, which, to their way of thinking, is a kind of contagious disease. In their great generosity, they have authorized me to make ballistics calculations for the Coast Guard with my old friend Gamow.”

  My husband’s eyes widened in fear. “You shouldn’t speak so openly, Herr Einstein. We are probably under surveillance.”

  “Let them watch me! I auctioned off my original manuscript on special relativity and gave them six million dollars! Hitler hates me more than he hates his own mother. I personally wrote to Roosevelt to alert him to the urgent need for nuclear research. And now they suspect me? How ironic!”

  “Keep your voice down!”

  “What can they do to me, Gödel?”

  “You could be kidnapped by enemy agents. Have you ever thought of that?”

  Einstein slapped his thigh as though it were the best joke.

  “You should write spy novels! Watched as closely as I am? I can’t have prostate problems without J. Edgar Hoover hearing about it! They are much too frightened of having me speak out publicly against the use of this damned bomb! Roosevelt’s reelection reassures me only slightly.”

  “Nothing indicates that nuclear technology will be ready anytime soon.”

  “Dear Gödel, your naïveté is a delightful ray of sunshine. Believe me, it is ready! You haven’t felt a little lonely in Princeton recently? The army has called up Institute members of every shoe size. Oppenheimer has disappeared from view. Von Neumann only breezes through occasionally. You don’t need to be a genius to guess what they are doing! There’s nothing like a good little war to give technology a push.”

  “Military supremacy is what will guarantee peace.”

  “I don’t share your optimism, Pauli. The very concept of dissuasion goes against the military mind-set. I distrust anyone who likes to join a column and walk to music. Brains were given to the military by mistake, a spinal cord was really all they needed. Keep them from using a new toy? Might as well try leaving a wrapped Christmas present under the tree!”

  “You prompted the research in the first place.”

  “At the cost of great violence to my inner self! I am a committed pacifist. The horrible reports that have come from Europe forced me to rethink. If Hitler had that bomb, there would be no one to keep him from using it.”

  Pauli was sculpting his bread ball, which by now had turned gray, with the tip of his knife.

  “That madman has made every useful scientist take to his heels. By persecuting Jewish science, he has sawed off the rotten branch on which he was sitting.”

  “You’re frightening my wife, Herr Einstein. All these horrors will soon be behind us.”

  Albert wiped his mouth and patted his stomach before tossing his napkin onto the table.

  “Never in the course of modern civilization have we had such a black future. Other conflicts will arise, war is mankind’s cancer.”

  The men were quiet. My eyes were full of tears. “The war will soon be over,” that was all I could hear. When it ended, I could go home. Pauli set down in front of him the figure sculpted from bread. He stuck a little disk of wax that he had picked from the tablecloth behind its head: Saint Einstein, the patron saint of pessimists. His model smiled.

  “I’m so sorry, dear Adele, I quickly get carried away. What have you planned for dessert?”

  “Sacher torte.”

  “Mazel tov! May I have your permission to light my pipe? This old friend of mine sweetens my thoughts.”

  I went back into the kitchen. Tears welled up in my eyes in spite of myself. The men probably thought I was worried about the fate of mankind, but in fact I was feeling a wave of self-pity. I was a child in a world of adults. Their universe was not accessible to me: it couldn’t be explained with a simple drawing in the sand or a few pebbles in a line. I didn’t have the words, so I cried. I cried about my loneliness. My bad English kept me enclosed in a perpetual fog. At one point I’d hoped that by associating with my countrymen I could bring light into this dark and blurry world. I was still lost. No naturalization into their scientific country was possible, there were only natives. All the same, I tried. I read a little, I pai
d attention. But every time I pulled on a thread, it just led to another. The weave was too dense, the fabric too big to be encompassed by the little dancer. I would never be from here; I would always be an exile in the midst of these geniuses. I was reaching an age where men would be more charmed by my cooking than my legs: the age of resignation. I wasn’t ready to give up—far from it.

  Professor Einstein spluttered a few crumbs of cake toward my husband, who was cautiously sipping his hot water.

  “How is your friend Morgenstern? I thought I would see him here tonight.”

  “He is preparing the publication of his book with von Neumann.15 And von Neumann has hardly been seen recently.”

  “He’s much too busy playing with neutrons.”

  “Is there anything von Neumann doesn’t take an interest in? The man is a menace. He never stops. And he is as fast at drinking as he is at calculating!”

  “He is Hungarian, Herr Einstein.”

  I was bored. I’d heard them yammer on about von Neumann’s eccentricities already. He had the reputation for being quite a practical joker. One day when Einstein was supposed to go to New York, von Neumann had offered to accompany him to the station. On the way there, he told him one funny story after another. The elderly physicist boarded the train crying with laughter, only to realize later that he had been deliberately put on the wrong train. According to Kurt, von Neumann was a terrible example to the students. Some of them thought that, like him, they could spend the night drinking in clubs and then go straight to their early-morning courses as fresh as ever. But von Neumann was not human. Kurt was especially appalled by the amount of food the Hungarian could put away. His hyperactivity exhausted my husband before the fact. I had met him at the house of our former neighbor on Stockton Street, Mrs. Brown. She was drawing the illustrations for the book he was coauthoring, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. I looked after her baby; John looked after Mrs. Brown. His appetite knew no bounds. Kurt had explained to me that he and Morgenstern described social and economic phenomena using games of strategy such as Kriegspiel. That all these gray cells should be assigned to military projects struck Kurt as a great shame. Meanwhile, the von Neumanns had a very pretty house in Princeton. John was a consultant for the U.S. Navy, and the military paid well.