The Goddess of Small Victories (3 page)

Anna drew back. She hated having her personal space invaded. Calvin Adams had the habit of showering his interlocutor with spittle whenever the tension mounted.

As soon as she’d returned to the Institute, the young woman had given the director a summary of her conversation with Gödel’s widow. She made sure not to underplay the old lady’s
aggression. Anna wanted her own skill to be recognized, and she had managed to pry the door open where her predecessor, a pedigreed specialist, had gotten it slammed in his face. But her boss was too annoyed at the ongoing standoff to pick up the nuance.

“What if Gödel himself destroyed the archive in a fit of paranoia?” asked Anna.

“Not likely.”

“The family hasn’t made any claims?”

“Gödel has no heirs except for his brother, Rudolf, who lives in Europe. He left everything to his wife.”

“Then he thought his wife fit to look after his moral rights.”

“Those papers belong in the Institute for their historical interest—whether they are his notebooks, his bills, or his medical prescriptions!”

“Or an unpublished manuscript, who knows?”

“We’re unlikely to come across anything fundamental. He lost his bearings somewhat in his last years.”

“The gropings of a genius still bear a trace of genius.”

“My dear Anna, in your line of work, romanticism is a mark of amateurishness.”

His contempt-laced tone of familiarity revolted her. Anna had known Calvin Adams since childhood, but she would never have the right to call him by his first name. Certainly not within the precincts of the Institute. Next he would be patting her on the thigh. And the mention of Gödel’s genius hadn’t been naïve, her fascination with him was genuine. In fifty years the mythical recluse had published little, yet by all accounts he had never stopped working. Why was it unreasonable to expect more from these documents than a daily reckoning? Anna was determined not to be just a go-between. She would get the
Nachlass
and make Calvin Adams choke on his condescension. “Would you happen
to know anything about bourbon, sir?” A superfluous question for anyone who came in contact with his breath in the morning.

Early that afternoon, Anna headed back to the retirement home, ready to renew her attack. The duty nurse stopped her short. Mrs. Gödel was undergoing treatment and Anna would have to wait. The young woman made her way to the waiting area and chose a seat where she could see Adele’s door. A woman well over a hundred years old called to her from the end of the hallway. “Did you bring any chocolates?” When Anna said nothing, she vanished.

Unwilling to become engrossed in her novel lest she miss Adele’s return, Anna found her impatience mounting. When she saw the housekeeper enter the room and leave the door open. Anna seized her chance.

Acting as though she belonged there, she dropped her coat and purse on a chair and washed her hands at the sink before quietly taking stock of the space. On her first visit, she had been too anxious to notice any details. The walls, painted a bold turquoise, managed to reconcile the dark-oak Formica of the bed and the dirty beige of the roller table. A brand-new armchair, also blue, stood ready to receive visitors, one at a time. She was shocked to find that the only reading material was a worn Bible and a few trivial magazines. She also noticed a few more personal objects: a crocheted bedspread, a pillow slip with a floral motif, and a bedside lamp with glass beads. Through the venetian blinds came a golden light. Everything was neatly in its place. Other than the intrusive presence of medical equipment and the television mounted high on a wall bracket, the room was cozy. Anna would have gladly sipped a cup of hot tea by the window.

A white plastic radio alarm clock reminded her that the day was shot. The cleaning lady wiped the floor with a damp cloth,
then set off to do other chores. On the nightstand were some fusty knickknacks, nothing of any value. Inside a tin whose faded colors announced violet candies from the Café Demel,
Produziert in Österreich
, nothing was left but a few withered, shapeless lumps. Anna set it down in disgust. She lingered over some photographs in tawdry frames. The profile of a very young Adele, her marcelled hair cut short, had a softness that no longer survived. She was pretty, despite the vapid expression that seems to have been required in old studio portraits. She must have been a chestnut blond, but the black-and-white photo resisted too precise a reading. Her eyebrows were darker and drawn with a pencil in the fashion of the times. In a wedding photo, no longer quite so attractive and once more in profile, she had become a platinum blonde. By her side, Mr. Gödel eyed the lens skeptically. A group shot with the Mediterranean in the background showed her, large and ebullient, without her husband.

“You’re taking an inventory before the auction?”

Anna cast about for an excuse. She was doing her work, after all. It was her job to distinguish between personal mementos and cultural heritage.

The nurse’s aide helped Adele into bed.

“There, Mrs. Gödel. You get some rest now.”

Anna got the message: Don’t rile her up, she has a weak heart.

“Do you imagine that I keep Kurt Gödel’s
Nachlass
in my nightstand, young lady?”

“Your room seems like a very pleasant one to live in.”

“It is a place to die, not to live.”

Anna felt a growing urge to have a good cup of tea.

“I’m willing to talk to you, but spare me your young woman’s pity!
Verstanden?
” Do you understand?

“I gave in to curiosity. I was looking at your photos. Nothing terribly bad.”

She walked toward the portrait of Adele as a young woman. “You were beautiful.”

“And I’m not now?”

“I’ll spare you my young woman’s pity.”

“Touché. I was twenty when my father took that photograph. He was a professional photographer. My parents had a shop in Vienna, across from where my future husband lived.”

She took back the frame from Anna. “I have no memory of ever having been that person.”

“I often feel the same thing.”

“It must be the hairstyle. Fashions change so quickly.”

“Sometimes people in old photographs seem to belong to a different species.”

“I live surrounded by a different species. That’s what it’s like to enter what is delicately called ‘old age.’ ”

Anna gave a show of savoring this aphorism while her mind searched for ways to approach the reason for her visit.

“I’m pontificating, aren’t I? The old are fond of doing that. The less we are sure about things, the more we blather on about them! It distracts us from our panic.”

“We pontificate at all ages, and we’re always an old person to someone.”

When Adele smiled, Anna glimpsed the luminous young lady hidden in the stout, acerbic old woman.

“With time, your chin starts to get closer to your nose. Age makes you look more doubtful.”

Anna brought her hand to her face instinctively.

“You’re still too young to see this happen. How old are you, Miss Roth?”

“Please call me Anna. I’m twenty-eight.”

“At your age, I was so much in love. Are you?”

The young woman didn’t answer. Adele looked at her with new tenderness.

“Would you like a cup of tea, Anna? They are serving it in the conservatory half an hour from now. You won’t mind a few more old biddies, will you? ‘Conservatory’ is the name they give that horrid indoor porch with all the plastic flowers. As if none of us knows how to tend a plant! But where are you from? You avoided my question the last time. Do you travel to Europe often? Have you been to Vienna? You must take that sweater off. Is beige in fashion now? It doesn’t suit you. Where do you live? Our house was in the north part of Princeton, near Grover Park.”

Anna removed her cardigan. It was very hot in purgatory. If she had to make a deal, the old lady’s life against her own, she was in for a very long haul.

Adele was disappointed to learn that her visitor had never been to Vienna, but she was gratified by the present Anna had brought, a bottle of her favorite bourbon.

1928

The Circle

Vienna brought us together. My city thrummed with such fever! It bubbled with fierce energy. Philosophers dined with dancers, poets with shopkeepers. Artists laughed in the midst of an amazing concentration of scientific geniuses. All these beautiful people talked nonstop in their urgency to rack up pleasures, whether women, vodka, or pure thought. The virus of jazz had contaminated Mozart’s cradle. We conjured the future and purified the past to the rhythms of black music. War widows, arm in arm with gigolos, tossed away their pension money. Veterans back from the trenches walked through doors that previously had been bolted shut. One last dance, one last drink before closing time. I had light-colored eyes and slender legs. I enjoyed listening to men. I could entertain them and, with one word, bring back to earth a mind that had wandered off into drunkenness or boredom. They blinked like sleepers dragged out of bed, surprised to be there, at this table, with all this sudden noise. They
would stare at the wine stains to find traces of a vanished thought before deciding finally to laugh it off, to bring the conversation back to where it had started in the first place: my cleavage. I was young and tipsy, part swell-looking girl, part mascot. I had my place in the world.

For our first real date, I pulled out all the stops. He had invited me to the Café Demel, an elegant place where many people from society went. Those smartly dressed ladies sipping their tea had nothing on me. I wore an asymmetrical cloche hat that cast a discreet shadow over my port-wine stain. The creamy silk of my dress quietly brought out my natural coloring—it cost me a good month’s salary, my father would have had a fit. I’d borrowed a stole from my friend Lieesa—it had wrapped the shoulders of every girl at the Nachtfalter who’d gone after a respectable husband. I had no interest in getting married again. My respectful college boy offered me a temporary reprieve from the would-be pimps I met at the club. We were doing the getting-to-know-you waltz, making tighter and tighter circles. In those days, I didn’t use words like “concentric.” Lieesa would have looked at me funny: “I know where you come from, girl, don’t play that game with me.” Kurt and I had enjoyed a drink together once or twice and gone for some nocturnal walks, during which I’d pried a few confidences from him. He was born in Brno, in Moravia, a province of Czechoslovakia. Not one for adventure, he’d chosen Vienna because it was the easy thing to do: his older brother, Rudolf, was already studying medicine there. The family, originally German, seemed not to have suffered much from the postwar inflation—the two brothers lived quite comfortably. Often Kurt would hardly say a thing, apologizing for his silence,
seductive without realizing it. He walked the tired, early-morning Adele home. He’d never seen me yet in the light of the sun.

At the Café Demel, he had chosen a table in the back room. I made my heels click across the floor, swaying my hips between the white tablecloths right up to where he sat. He had all the time in the world to look me over, except that his nose was in a book. When he looked up, I was struck by his youth all over again. He was so smooth—a baby’s skin and hair that was naturally orderly—and he wore an impeccable suit. He had nothing about him of the movie actors who were oohed and aahed over backstage at the club: his shoulders were made for desk work, not for rowing crew. But he was charming. His eyes, an impossible blue, were full of gentleness. And though his kindness wasn’t simulated, it was directed not toward the person he was talking to but somewhere deep within himself.

Barely had we said our greetings than one of the
Demelinerinen
appeared, austerely clad, to take our order, saving us the trouble of initiating a conversation. I ordered a violet sherbet, longing all the while for the indecent pastries on the counter. Our first date was not the time to show my gluttony. Kurt fell into a deep well of thought over the pastry menu. The waitress patiently answered his barrage of questions. The minute description of so many sweets awoke my appetite. I added a cream horn to my order. To hell with manners! Why be coy? In the end Kurt opted just for tea. The young woman fled, relieved.

“What use have you made of your afternoon, Herr Gödel?”

“I went to a meeting of the Circle.”

“A club in the British style?”

He pushed his glasses up his nose, his finger stiff.

“No, a discussion group, started by professors Schlick and Hahn. Hahn will probably be my thesis adviser at the university.”

“I get the picture … You sit around after a meal in big leather armchairs and admire the wood paneling.”

“We meet in a little room on the ground floor of the mathematics department. Or in a café. There are no leather armchairs, and I haven’t noticed any wood paneling.”

“You talk about sports and cigars?”