The Goddess of Small Victories (42 page)

“The ancient texts tell us that there exist an infinite number of evil spirits, and only seventy-two angels. I belong under the demonic auspices of Buer, a second-class demon. He champions philosophy, logic, and the properties of medicinal plants. Second class! I’m a little put out!”

“Do you believe in the deity, Mr. Gödel?”

“Yes. I consider myself a theist.”

At that point in my life, I almost preferred the folkloric aspect of religion to the core of faith itself: I liked Mass, its pomp and ritual. Kurt had bridled somewhat when I installed a Madonna at the end of the garden. In Protestant territory, I was declaring my Catholic roots. In any case, a little decorative devoutness couldn’t hurt. My husband leafed through the Bible from his bed on Sunday mornings. His faith was no doubt more exacting than mine.

“An awkward position for a modern philosopher.”

“It all depends on whether we are talking about faith or religion. Ninety percent of philosophers today believe that the task of philosophy is to expunge religion from people’s minds.”

“From what I’ve read, Kurt, you frequented the intellectuals of the Vienna Circle. They wanted to eradicate subjectivity. Even intuition. Isn’t that ironic? In the very city that gave birth to psychoanalysis?”

“I had friends and colleagues among the logical positivists, but I never declared myself a member. And I don’t think their work can be reduced to that. Furthermore, I would prefer to remain ‘Mr. Gödel’ to you.”

Overconfident, Theolonius had crossed the yellow line. Kurt was not allergic to the potty ideas of others, but his interlocutor’s two lapses were enough to make him withdraw into his shell: his overfamiliarity, and the fact that he had studied up on Kurt’s life before meeting him.

Oppenheimer, still a little dazed from his nap, came to join us at the table.

“I don’t object to the idea of analysis. As long as it doesn’t get me into trouble!”

“There is nothing shameful about it. Our friend Pauli has been undergoing psychoanalysis for a long time. He has maintained a correspondence with Jung for years.”

Oppenheimer was patting his pockets fruitlessly in search of cigarettes. I handed him mine. Kitty, too, was out.

“I am still debating with myself over the scientific legitimacy of your profession, Charles. The psychoanalytic pantheon, after all, is not that far from the world of angels we were discussing earlier.”

Oppie was a much tougher adversary than Theolonius Jessup. Hulbeck, who was decidedly not having a good day, decided against entering into a confrontation.

“Would you tell us about Jung’s ideas?”

Gauging my ignorance from my look of puzzlement, Charles undertook to act as my professor. Most significantly, it allowed him not to lose face. He explained to me that the psychoanalyst Carl Jung held that absolute knowledge existed, that it took the form of a collective unconscious made up of archetypes accessible to the unconscious of every individual. These archetypes were themes universally found across human cultures. One can find ogres, for instance, in the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen as well as in the legends of India and of Papua New Guinea. There exists a vast repertoire of ideas common to all mankind, transcending individual societies or epochs. Our personal experiences provide only the seasoning to this archaic soup. I saw no difference between this and religion, except that devils and angels were expelled from heaven to make room for fairies and witches. But if I had to communicate with this extrasensory world that my husband so cherished, I much preferred it to be one that included the Madonna. The arid kingdom of mathematics had never struck me as a barrel of laughs either. Whatever these overcultivated men might say, their verbal acrobatics mainly provided an excuse for not grappling with reality.

“Collective unconscious, God, concepts … Defining the world of ideas matters very little to me. My goal is to get there. By means of the mind. By means of logical bridges. Or following intuition. My unconscious tells me which path is most charged with meaning. It considers a less censored set of possibilities and spotlights ideas that my reason would never agree to explore.”

“Then what are the criteria that your unconscious uses in judging the relevance of an idea?”

“I stick to my own discipline, Mr. Jessup. I am susceptible to a certain kind of beauty. Mathematical elegance.”

“A very subjective notion and a perfectly obscure one to nonmathematicians.”

“I am not so sure, Robert. Every person is innately drawn to simplicity, perfection. Clearness. The need for contact with immanence is universal.”

Theolonius squirmed with pleasure in his chair.

“Magnificent how everything assumes embodiment, don’t you agree? An exploration of vibratory fields, with the physical sciences and the science of the soul in harness, intent on a single quest. The ultimate quantum communion!”

Oppenheimer squashed out his cigarette under Jessup’s nose.

“Quantum mechanics studies physical phenomena on the scale of the atom and of subatomic particles. Period. While Pauli and Jung may have noted correspondences between physics and psychology, they have never equated the two disciplines. Most of the time, it’s a question of semantic bridges. Not of substantial links. But I do understand that it can be very tempting to use our vocabulary to impress the untutored.”

“Are you calling into question the principle of synchronicity?”

“Don’t turn a subjective phenomenon into a postulate. Or a theorem. Any causal link between two personal experiences remains a happenstance, even if the particular resonance it sets up within a person’s unconscious is incontrovertible.”

“That resonance is the absolute proof of a manifestation of immanence! Our drive to find meaning in an event implies the preexistence of such a meaning. Why else would nature give us the ability to question ourselves?”

“The term ‘absolute proof’ is inappropriate. And are you sure you mean ‘nature’ and not ‘culture’? Why shouldn’t we hope for meaning where there is none? It wouldn’t be the first time mankind had gone on a vain quest.”

“God has injected a maximum of meaning into the world, giving multiple values to the same events, a function on a multitude of levels.”

“If you are going to bring God into the debate, then we can have nothing more to say to each other, Gödel!”

“I’ve known you to be more spiritual, Robert. Where have you put your copy of the Mahabharata?”

“I am sometimes distrustful of these ideas, because they provide a basis for charlatanism. The thirst for meaning, which everyone feels, makes some people an easy prey. It is too easy to go from synchronicity to coincidence and premonitions, to mediums …”

“Then you take me for a charlatan, Mr. Oppenheimer.”

“I also don’t set much store by labels. In the best case, you imagine a spiritual door where others are looking for a nice, neatly packaged answer. If memory serves, there is even a pathology associated with this. Apophenia. The tendency to see symbols or meaningful patterns in random data.”

Charles could see his own goods being sold at clearance prices. He opted for irony.

“Apophenia is a natural tendency. We distort reality to make it conform with our vision of the world. I know a specialist in this. My wife!”

Putting both hands around her husband’s neck, Beate tried to strangle him. For a moment, I had had the impression that he was implicating Kurt, who was a past master at distorting reality. I had often enough seen him build cathedrals out of sand, mixing trivial details with great principles. He created a universe in his own image, both powerful and fragile, logical and absurd.

“Before Beate kills me for real, I would like to point something out to you, Robert. Which is that psychoanalysis does
not propose pretty answers. Quite the opposite, it gives us solid questions!”

“It hardly gives them to us, dear friend. Your sessions are far from being free.”

I decided to lead the conversation onto smoother terrain. The first commandment for a harmonious meal had been broken long before: Never talk about religion or money at table! If they started to discuss politics, our little lunch would be totally ruined. I assumed the role of silly entertainer and suggested that we attempt some actual experiments in parapsychology. Kurt would go along with this. We often indulged in this kind of game. He used to say that in the distant future, people would be surprised that twentieth-century man had discovered elementary physical particles without ever imagining the existence of elementary psychical factors. I had no idea exactly what he meant, but I was very good at telepathy. After living with a man for thirty years, guessing his thoughts is a question of simple survival. Not surprisingly, all the guests were enthusiastic.

“I have been training for some time in ptarmoscopia … predicting the future with sneezes. I get excellent results.”

Everyone laughed. I’d managed to put Carl Jung back on the shelf of dubious ideas where he belonged.

“And what do you call divination based on our wives’ moods?”

Erich Kahler suddenly appeared at the table, invigorated by his nap.

“Good sense, Charles, plain good sense! Did I miss anything?”

“Adele, I think I hear the telephone ringing.”

Running toward the living room, I tripped over Penny, who was sleeping on the doorstep. I patted her in apology. What a
lovely afternoon! It gave me enormous pleasure to see Kurt so lighthearted and talkative. I looked back to savor his smile again.

I put the phone down softly. I stood there motionless, listening to the happy sounds of voices from the garden, breathing in these last minutes of happiness.

When the shade of the poplar reached the dog, I went to Kurt. I put my hand on his shoulder. Everyone was silent. Before I’d even spoken, I saw two large tears form in my friend Lili’s eyes.

“Albert has ruptured an aortic aneurysm. He’s been taken to the Princeton hospital.”

When the last of the dessert tarts had disappeared, Virginia invited her guests to regroup around the living room sofas. Anna decided to slip away from the crowd of smokers and visit Ernestine in her lair. The pantry had been renovated: it glistened with chrome and stainless steel. Only Tine’s collection of old china had survived. Anna had learned her first words of French there:
sucre, farine, sel
, sugar, flour, salt. The kitchen was spotless. To all appearances indolent, Tine organized her domain with military precision. No one was allowed to get in her way when she was cleaning up. But Anna enjoyed preferential treatment; as a child she had spent long hours watching Tine’s rubber-gloved hands at work. She had listened to Tine talk about her country, about poetry and the latest neighborhood gossip, and she had sat and read beside her, lulled by her Creole songs. She also liked Tine’s little ritual: once the dishes were all put away, Ernestine allowed herself a small glass of punch and a cigarette.

Removing her apron, Ernestine enumerated all her age-related aches. Anna protested as a matter of form. Tine had complained of being old even when she was still the buxom nurse who terrified visiting schoolkids.

“Have you opened my present?”

“Don’t be daft! I haven’t had a minute to myself all evening.”

She fished the package from a drawer and her reading glasses from another. She unwrapped the present carefully; in one of her treasure cabinets she kept a supply of neatly folded paper. She caressed the leather-bound volume:
Anthologie de la poésie française
. Anna had always known how to please her.

“
Comment vas-tu, mon bel oiseau?
How are you, my pretty bird? You look pale.”

There was no need for Anna to embark on a long confession, as Tine had followed every move in the war of nerves between Anna and Leonard, her two adopted children.

“Have you spoken to Leo?”

“Spoken about what?”

“There you go again! Why make it simple when you can complicate it?
Si c’est pas malheureux, vous deux!
The two of you are hopeless! I never understood what you saw in that idiot from New York. What was his name anyway?”

“William. He got married last year.”

Leonard burst into the kitchen.

“This is a private conversation, young man. What brings you poking around here?”

“I refuse to hold a tin cup under Richardson’s nose.”

Tine tried to smooth Leo’s hair with the flat of her hand; he skipped out of reach, too tall for her now. A last pencil mark on the doorjamb attested to it. Ernestine had had to bully the painters to keep the measurements from being erased.

The French mathematician poked his Roman nose into the kitchen, looking for seconds on dessert. Ernestine simpered at his compliments; twenty years earlier she would have eaten him alive for an afternoon snack. Though she had always been
discreet, the neighborhood buzzed with rumors about her appetites. Virginia Adams, despite her suspicions, had never caught Tine red-handed. And she was less concerned about her husband’s infidelities than she was about losing a gem of Ernestine’s caliber. For his part, Calvin was too concerned with his reputation to embark on an adventure of this kind; he made do with hotel bars in the wake of conferences.