Maker of Patterns

by Freeman Dyson

  SUNDAY NIGHT, FEBRUARY 11, 1957

  Just came home from singing the St. John Passion of Bach. What a wonderful work it is! Such a joy it was to sing for three hours and forget all problems and worries.

  After I came home I went to sit on Katrin’s bed for a while, and she had a good cry. Do you remember how as children Alice and I used to love to listen to you reading “The Forsaken Merman”? I have forgotten everything except the refrain “Children dear, was it yesterday?” Yesterday in fact it was, when Verena moved out. Today she came back for the afternoon while Imme had her free time, and she gave the children their supper while I was at the singing. But she is now definitely and officially moved out. On the whole we have come through this crisis very well. Yesterday was the worst day because we had to tell the children. It is worst for Katrin, but all three of them have been brave and cheerful. This makes it easy for me to be brave and cheerful too.

  The Oppenheimers gave a big party last night, and Verena and I went to it as our last public appearance together. I shall always be sorry we did not put on as good a show for our wedding as we did for our separation. During the party I took the opportunity to speak to Oppenheimer and told him it was good-bye for us. This was the first time we told anybody here outside the family. Afterwards when we were leaving, Mrs. Oppenheimer came with us to the door and kissed Verena, and tears were streaming down her face. Before I had always found Mrs. Oppenheimer tiresome, but I am grateful to her for those tears. After the party we went our separate ways home.

  FEBRUARY 14, 1957

  I feel like a man who has been condemned to death and led before the firing squad, has heard the order to fire and the report of the guns, and then discovered that all the cartridges were blanks and that he is still alive and well. He walks away from the scene of execution with a light heart, the earth is still beautiful, and the problems of life can never seem so frightening again. So much for myself. You are right, it is the children who suffer most in this business. But one thing you must remember, in our family the children always knew that Verena had walked out of her previous marriage. So this was accepted by them as an event in the normal run of events, of course not a desirable event, but still not unprecedented and not upsetting completely their feelings of stability. I think this was important in making it easier for them to accept what has happened.

  If you would see Esthi and George now as I see them every evening when I come home from my day in New York, you would not believe they had a care in the world. They are their usual noisy lively selves, shouting and squabbling and telling stories without beginning and without end. The only change in their behavior is that they are a little more affectionate to me and give me some of the goodnight hugs and kisses that used to be reserved for Verena. I never had any choice about what to do, nor any difficult decision to make. All I had to do was to take what came, and be brave and cheerful, for the sake of the children. With the children around to help, this was never difficult.

  FEBRUARY 18, 1957

  For heaven’s sake don’t think of our story as a tragedy. I much prefer the attitude of Mila Gibbons, the dancing teacher who is now taking care of Katrin. I went and had a long talk, both with Katrin and afterwards with Mila, on Saturday night. Mila told me how it happened that she invited Katrin to stay. Katrin came to her class on Monday a week ago in tears. Mila’s daughter Eve found out what was the matter and went to tell Mila. “Oh, only that,” said Mila. “I thought it was a death in the family, or a dog run over by a car.”

  Mila and I see very much eye to eye about the situation as it concerns Katrin, and I will not be surprised if Katrin stays with her for some months. Mila herself ran away from her husband many years ago and has brought up her two children single-handed.

  On my train rides from New York in the evenings I have been reading Ibsen’s Doll’s House [1879], which I had not read for many years. It is a grand story, and I think it explains why the word betrayal is quite wrong to describe what happened with me and Verena. What makes our situation different from the usual one is that the roles of Torvald and Nora are somehow mixed up, so that at the critical scene in the third act she is Torvald and I am Nora.

  Like thousands of other frustrated housewives before and since, Verena saw Ibsen’s Nora as a role model for herself. Nora was the first heroine in world literature who had the courage to abandon her husband and children and escape from the doll’s house in which she was imprisoned.

  MARCH 5, 1957,

  BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LAB, LONG ISLAND

  One of the many selfish advantages I have from kicking Verena out of the house is that now Esthi and George come to my bed each morning for half an hour before we get up. They come into my bed very quietly, one on each side, and either go to sleep there or start talking about all kinds of things. George now is passing through the first theological-philosophical stage. Yesterday he surprised me by saying, “You know there are two Gods.” I said, “What are their names?” He said “One is called Jesus and he makes people, and the other one is called Bacchus and he makes wine.”

  Verena found herself a job. I am happy and relieved about this. On Monday she went down to Philadelphia to be interviewed by the Remington Rand company, a big firm manufacturing and designing electronic computers for all kinds of mathematical applications. The same evening came a telegram with a firm offer of a job, at nine-tenths of the salary on which I was supporting the entire family during our years at Cornell. I do not know whether she will take this job, it is not exactly her cup of tea. But with this telegram in her pocket she can feel safe in bargaining for good conditions with any other outfit she chooses to work for. I am relieved to find she is in demand and can take care of herself. How can it be that I was so happy for seven years to be married to Verena, and now I am so happy not to be married to her?

  Thursday morning. Verena said yes to Remington Rand and will start work in Philadelphia on Monday.

  MARCH 12, 1957

  On Sunday I took Imme with me to sing Haydn’s Theresienmesse. This was a great success. Imme loves music and had sung this work before, so she had no difficulties. I was happy to find something she can do with me, so that I can introduce her to people.

  MARCH 27, 1957

  You ask about Verena’s work and about her new boyfriend. Both seem to be working out well. Her boyfriend is still in Princeton and still preserving a careful anonymity. Verena is determined to keep his existence a secret. I think this is foolish, but I am respecting her wishes in this matter, and I am glad you are doing the same. The desire for secrecy originates not with her but with him. I felt from the beginning this was a mistake. If he wanted to make her happy, he should have taken her off with a flourish of trumpets to Casablanca or some such place completely away from the children. But he wanted to have her love without the inconvenience and responsibility of acknowledging her publicly. So she has to suffer the misery of being separated from the children and still within reach. For this I despise him and consider him unworthy of her. I do not know how things are with them now, nor do I care. She is still living with him and will continue to do so for some time, but I think it is rather a question of faute de mieux. He will go back to England in August, and she intends to move to Switzerland sometime later in the year. After that they can see as much or as little of each other as they please.

  Now you can see how suddenly struck I was when I read the last act of A Doll’s House. Nora is sitting impatiently waiting for the “wonderful thing” to happen, that Torvald should take the blame for her forgery of her father’s name. For me, the “wonderful thing” was that Verena should be carried away to Casablanca in a cloud of romance and glory. Then the dénouement comes when the wonderful thing does not happen, and Nora finds out she has been worshipping a tin god for ten years. Then she says good-bye and walks out. And that is exactly what happened to me. Only I took the house and kids along too. You must not think, because I make jokes about Verena now, that I am not grateful to her for all the fine things she did
. It is just a relief not to keep up this solemn pretence of infallibility anymore.

  APRIL 2, 1957

  The night after George’s fourth birthday party was the institute spring dance. This is a great event which happens once a year, and everybody dresses up in black ties and evening dresses. I asked Imme to come as my partner, and she got a university student to baby-sit for us so we could dance through the night. It happened that this year it was Oppenheimer’s idea to have a dinner party of the institute professors and their wives before the dance, and Kitty Oppenheimer insisted that Imme should come to the dinner too. So Esther and I went into town to buy her a gardenia for her dress, and at seven-thirty Imme and I solemnly entered that majestic dining room with Van Gogh originals around the walls, to sit among the distinguished company of the learned. I felt like Higgins taking his Eliza to the ball; after all, Imme is extremely young and has little formal education. But she carried it off perfectly and seemed quite at her ease with everybody. Oppy especially went out of his way to be friendly to her.

  Kitty Oppenheimer was not trying to be a matchmaker. She had already visited Imme at our home to welcome her to the institute community. She had the good sense to see that Imme was alone with my children in a strange country and needed some grown-up friends. The dinner party was a great opportunity for Imme to get to know some of the famous institute people.

  After the dinner we went down to the institute where the dance was beginning. Very soon the whole mob arrived, about three hundred people, and there was a good band and lots of young people enjoying themselves. We danced from ten till four with an interval for supper at midnight, and neither of us seemed to get tired in the least. Imme had her fair share of attention from the other gentlemen who are friends of ours. She is light and graceful and could make a good dancer. I think I never in my life enjoyed a dance so light-heartedly as this one. Only one thing she said: “I wish there were some way to make all these people understand that I am your maid and not your mistress.” This is a real problem, and I see no solution to it.

  EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 21, 1957

  You ask me about Imme. Her father is a country doctor in a little town in West Germany, he works hard and makes a good living. Her mother came from a wealthy Berlin family which owned some kind of factory and lost everything during and after the war. Imme’s upbringing was impoverished gentility, combined with the chaos of war and Russian occupation. She had a year in England, as a guest in an English family. After that a year in Spain where she was governess to a family of nine kids ranging in age from one to fifteen. In English and Spanish she is completely fluent. We never talk anything but English.

  After sixty years I can see more clearly how lucky we all were to have Imme arrive at our home when she was needed. Verena found Imme herself and understood what a treasure she had found. Verena was always grateful to Imme for holding the family together when she walked out. For me, being a single dad was an ideal situation. Having Imme as a young and capable helper made the situation even better. I had always been better as a father than as a husband. When I first met Verena, it was Katrin who brought us together, and being father to Katrin was as important as being husband to Verena. When Verena left, Imme became to me like a grown-up daughter, a delightful companion without the complications of being married. We told the children that Imme would leave and go back to Germany after two years. They said later that they always hoped and suspected that Imme would stay. My parents had found Verena difficult and often hostile when I was married to her. They were secretly glad when Verena left and immediately gave a warm welcome to Imme. During my two years as a single dad, I held back from any display of affection for Imme, but it was obvious to us all that she would fit well into the role of wife to me and mother to my children.

  APRIL 29, 1957

  Did you see the comet? Tonight at nine o’clock it was a beautiful sight, with a clear moonless night to show it at its best. I pulled the children out of their beds and took them out in the garden with the telescope to look at it. We also saw three moons of Jupiter. The comet was magnificent in the telescope. I am happy the children could see it, and they will long remember it as something special.

  On Friday I rushed down to Washington to be chairman of a meeting of the American Physical Society. This was exciting because there was announced the result of an experiment at Columbia for which I worked out the theory. The experiment has succeeded beautifully and gives a result exactly opposite to what everybody expected. So I shall have a good time defending my theory against people who want to disbelieve the result. I am confident my part of it is right. The world is not so simple as our friends Yang and Lee had hoped. Their main idea still stands and is a permanent step forward of great importance. On Sunday Imme and I sang the Brahms Requiem.

  TUESDAY, MAY 14, BROOKHAVEN

  Yesterday I had a telephone call from [Ed] Creutz in La Jolla saying that he has just been given $10 million by some Texas oil millionaires to establish a big program of research in the fusion energy problem. As a result of this Creutz said he must have me at La Jolla for a week in June to talk over how the program should be set up. I agreed to spend a week in La Jolla before we go to Berkeley. This is a convenient arrangement. I am happy to have the children for a while in La Jolla where we shall stay in a hotel with a swimming pool, and they will enjoy themselves thoroughly. I am also happy about the fusion program which sounds hopeful.

  Ed Creutz was the chief scientist at General Atomic, the company that I was working for in 1956. He started a fusion program there that still survives after sixty years. I never worked on fusion myself, but I stayed in touch with the fusion experts at General Atomic and at Princeton.

  On Saturday morning I took George to a psychologist to be tested for admission to the township kindergarten next September. This was a serious affair, more like an entrance examination to Winchester than the usual American-style personality test. They kept George busy answering questions for more than an hour, while Esther and I sat outside and read stories to each other. At the end the psychologist had to do a big calculation to find out George’s mental age. The reason for all this is that the township decided they will admit children up to six months under the normal age if they show superior ability in such an intelligence test. Esther being born in July got in automatically at 5-5 (five years and five months). George will be 4-6 and so he is a borderline case. It will be a great pity if he is two years behind Esthi all the way through school. The result of the calculation was that George has a mental age of 5-7. [His true age at that time was 4-2.] The psychologist was highly impressed with him and says he has not only a high intelligence but also exceptional ability to listen and concentrate. He said he will give him a strong recommendation to the school board. However, the school board will decide the admissions only in June, and it is not certain he will get in. If he doesn’t get in this year, he will have another chance to try for early admission to first grade at the same time next year. George was not at all worried by the whole procedure and also not very interested. When I asked him what questions he had been asked, he replied, “Oh I forgot already.”

  MAY 19, 1957

  Imme and I just came home from singing the B Minor Mass. This is a magnificent work. Unfortunately we were not quite up to singing it decently the first time through. The conductor stupidly refused to cut any of it, so we had no time for a second run-through. Still we improved as we went along, and by the time we reached the Sanctus, we were quite impressive.

  The last two days in New York were good, and I feel nostalgic about leaving my job at Columbia. My students gave me a warm sendoff after the last lecture, and I was pleased to see that of the original thirty who had come to the first lecture, about eighty percent stuck the whole course through. That is a good average for such an advanced course. Then on Friday we had a final seminar meeting with Wu and Lee, the Chinese wonders, and a big Chinese lunch to go with it. They spoke generously of the help they had had from my minor contributions. Altogether it
has been a good term, and I hope in a few years they may invite me again.

  MAY 30, 1957, CHILLICOTHE, MISSOURI

  Now we are three days and 1,240 miles away from home. The trip goes smoothly. We are not in a hurry and today stopped at five-thirty so we could have a leisurely supper and read a story to the children. The country is green and fresh after heavy rains. This afternoon we crossed the Mississippi, swollen and muddy grey, flowing rapidly to keep pace with the rain. We hear they are having enormous floods to the south in Texas and elsewhere. Up here the floods are comparatively minor. Imme and I drive two hours each at a stretch, and so we do not get too tired. The children are a little bored and have periodical fights and are otherwise charming and amusing.

  This evening in the car they started a conversation which kept Imme and me in speechless astonishment. George said, “When I am grown up, I am going to have a station wagon, and I am going to have nobody coming with me. I shall drive across the country, and I shall have just luggage and luggage in the back but no children.” And Esthi: “But you know that you have to be careful never to ask anybody to marry you, and then you will not have any children. It is more difficult for me, because some people might ask me to marry them. But anyway I shall never say yes to them.” George: “And I shall live in a house all alone and keep the door locked so that children cannot get into it. And when you come to see me, you must knock on the door, and I will look at you through the window and make sure you don’t have any children before I let you in.” Esthi: “Just think of all the troubles we shall save by not having any children. And so much money we shall save too. Only it is a pity for Daddy because he will never be a grandfather.”