The Goddess of Small Victories (17 page)

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.

1940

Flight

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 specialty 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.