The Goddess of Small Victories (24 page)

“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 with 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.

“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.”