The Goddess of Small Victories (13 page)

“Why would I do that? Before your letter, I didn’t even exist for you.”

“Kurt hates conflict. He is weak, he will never marry you without my consent. You’re not that young, and I might still live a long time.”

I did not rise to the bait.

“Then you are hiring me as a sort of nurse?”

“In a manner of speaking. Your wages will take the form of respectability and stability.”

“ ‘Respectability’ is a word that I long ago made up my mind to forget. And as for stability, Kurt is fragile, as you well know.”

“It is the reverse side of his gift. Fräulein, you don’t seem to realize the great opportunity before you. My son is an
exceptional person. We noticed marks of genius in him from an early age.”

Here was the beginning of the catalog of praises I had been expecting all along. The church tower seconded my thought by emitting a few opportune peals.

“Do you know the difference between a person with talent and a genius? Work, Fräulein, a great deal of work. He needs peace and quiet to fulfill his destiny. Up till now you have been a hindrance to his success in academia. That must change.”

“It isn’t true!”

She contorted the dry flesh of her mouth into a disdainful grimace.

“I have a few recommendations for you. Hold your tongue until I am done, if that lies within your powers.”

I readjusted my gloves, strangling my fingers, which itched to leap out at her. Kurt was certainly worth a little added humiliation.

“Kurt is driven by an unbounded urge to ask questions. When he was a child, we called him
Herr Warum
. In daily life, you must take on the role ‘Mrs. How.’ His ‘whys’ concern realms too vast for you.”

“But not for you?”

She raised her head, higher, it seemed, than the laws of anatomy would allow.

“The point is that you must smooth all the trivial obstacles out of his path so that he can devote himself to his calling. His focus is a double-edged sword. If a subject interests him, he loses himself in it entirely. Never let him drive a car. Absorbed in his inner world, he is distracted and dangerous.”

I modeled my pose on hers: back straight and hands crossed over my privates, the shoulder bag acting as a shield.

“Reassure him, tolerate his oddities, but pay attention to the signs. Make sure he gets medical attention in time. And don’t forget to flatter him, even if you don’t have a clue as to how it’s done. Some men have such an insatiable ego that the compliments of a half-wit send them into raptures.”

“Nothing about his favorite recipe and remembering his muffler in the winter?”

Her nostrils tightened.

“I believed for a long time that you would destroy his career. You won’t advance it, but you have allowed him to survive. I have to recognize one quality in you: you are unsinkable.”

“It’s never too late to admit it.”

“You are not without blame in Kurt’s … weakness. He needs peace. From what I have heard, you are a boisterous person. Concentrate on feeding him, protecting him, and not giving him dubious diseases.”

She was a lifetime ahead of me in self-control. I shook my shoulder bag at her.

“Don’t insult me! I could say a lot of things about where your little prodigy falls short!”

“Kurt will always be a child. His intelligence will make him unhappy, lonely, and poor. It is my task as his mother to provide for his future.”

“By finding a replacement for yourself? You’re forgetting one thing, Marianne.” I brought my face close to hers. “I’m the one who warms his bed at night!”

I don’t know what shocked her more: that I called her by her first name, that I had the presumption to put myself on her level, or that I said those words. But in point of fact I do know. We lived in a time when it was our duty to coordinate our shoes with our handbag and never leave the house without gloves and a hat.
I had the right to vote, but in her eyes I barely had the right to live.

“Your vulgarity hardly surprises me, coming from a divorcee and a juke-joint dancer. Outside his work, Kurt has always had rather appalling taste.”

“Not forgetting his taste for older women, Frau Gödel. You must have played some part in that!”

She studied me impassively. I saw the she-wolf under the loden coat, ready to rip me to pieces.

“There will be no children, will there? He never could stand for it. For you, it’s too late anyway.”

I teetered on my too-high heels.

“Will you come to the wedding?”

“You have a run in your stocking. Kurt is very sensitive to that sort of thing.”

She passed in front of me without even allowing herself a smile of victory. Not once had she called me by my name. There was an element of cliché to it. A woman and her mother-in-law are like two scientists arguing over the rights to a discovery. Every scientific advance issues from a womb, which is itself the fruit of another womb. We were the two sides of a coin: she had brought him into the world, I would likely see him out of it.

I had wanted to bring her to the Himmelstrasse, our aptly named Heaven Street, to open the door of our home to her, but she marched off as soon as the “business” was done. Maybe I should have bowed my head and declared my allegiance to her too. My life with Kurt deserved more than a pact made on the sly in a cemetery. I was tired of all the unspoken and partial truths. I’ve always been bad at this game for which she’d received a perfect education.

For consolation I went to visit the angel on my favorite grave. The statue had a man’s waist. Kurt and I had had an absurd discussion in front of this sculpture. Do angels have waists? Seated in prayer and surrounded by ivy, this one guarded the repose of an unknown family. We always greeted this figure on our Sunday walks. Kurt, too, liked angels.

Mrs. Gödel was putting her photographs back in their box, quietly watching the young woman, who could not bring herself to leave. The day had a feeling of finality that Anna was unwilling to accept.

“Why don’t we get a cup of tea, Adele?”

“It’s too late, they won’t serve you. They’re all too busy with their annual masquerade party.”

“You don’t like Halloween?”

“I hate false gaiety.”

“Yet you like liquor.”

Anna disciplined a strand of hair that was drooping at her temple. She needed a good shampoo. After this afternoon’s rain, her clothes gave off whiffs of old Labrador. She was within an ace of lying down on the floor and going to sleep. She tightened her ponytail. The sharp pain to her scalp gave her courage. She would have to steer Adele away from another fit of resentment. Truth seemed like the best option.

“I won’t be celebrating Thanksgiving with you, Adele.”

“I don’t wait at the window for your return, my dear.”

Mrs. Gödel tortured one of the buttons on her loosely knit sweater jacket. Anna allowed her time to make a few small inner
readjustments. Her heart swelled. Where was the smart young woman in the photograph? Anna’s compassion encompassed the old woman before her and the one she might herself become one day, with a little bad luck. She still had claim to the luxury of childish illusions: better to die than grow old.

“I am a little rough at the edges sometimes.”

“Thank you for showing me the photographs. That was very thoughtful of you.”

“I was certain that you would like them. It doesn’t take much to amuse you, young lady.”

“I don’t like those gatherings either. Too much food, too much family.”

“I remember our first Thanksgiving in Princeton. The dean invited us to his superb house for dinner. The conversation was a complete blank to me. At the time, I barely spoke a word of English. I was fascinated by the abundance of food on the table. I hadn’t seen that since … Do you know, we had never seen anything of the kind. Will you take Thanksgiving dinner with your family?”

“I’ve been invited by the director of the IAS.”

“You stand in high favor with him!”

“It was more like a summons to appear.”

Anna poked a gap between the slats in the window blind. The puddles left by the afternoon rains shone with a warm light under the streetlamps. A group of shadows made their way in zigzags across the parking lot. The fateful dinner was approaching and she had not yet found a reasonable excuse to duck the confrontation with Leonard. There was a strong likelihood that he would appear for Thanksgiving—he had never missed a chance to poison a social occasion at Olden Manor.

“Pine Run has made me hate all these so-called family holidays. You have only two options: either receive the visits of
badly brought up children whose parents have somehow found the address of your retirement home, or go off and sulk in your corner expecting no one.”

Anna didn’t ask if she was hoping for visitors. The guest book at the front desk had given her insight into Adele’s solitude. She abandoned her observation post.

“I thought you liked children.”

“I’m past the age where you pretend. The old are always pressing pictures of their descendants on me. Or they wave a postcard as though it were a revelation from God! They are pathetic. Take Gladys. Her son, as she tells it, is a combination of Superman and Dean Martin. Why do you think she is all primped up? Not to attract another old wreck, whatever she might say. She is making herself ready for a visit that is constantly being put off. Better not to have kids than to suffer their ingratitude!”

“My mother, Rachel, claims that parenthood is a form of Stockholm syndrome. In spite of themselves, the parents develop an attachment to the children who are holding their life hostage.”

“She has an unusual sense of humor.”

“I’m not entirely sure it was meant as a joke.”

“You should be more forbearing! You are fortunate to have a family.”

Anna smiled; forbearance was her worst fault. She had renounced the benefits of a good adolescent crisis, wanting not to envenom further an already toxic divorce. In adulthood she did not allow herself to hate her parents as she would have liked. She loved them as she wanted to be loved herself: with constancy and without asking for ransom. She had persuaded herself that they were saving their demonstrations of affection for old age. As their departure from this world approached, they would surely feel an irrepressible urge to touch her. They always turned up late for things.

“One’s family can also be a poison.”

“Especially among your people.”

Anna stiffened. The allusion to her Jewish roots set off all her internal alarms.

“I cannot talk about your family without being taken for a Nazi?”

“I’m bothered by your prejudices.”

“This is not a prejudice. Jewish families are somewhat suffocating. I had many Jewish friends. Most of the Princeton community were fleeing the war in Europe.”

Anna twirled a strand of hair around her finger; she almost carried it to her mouth but her mother’s admonition, deeply anchored in her subconscious, stopped her: “Don’t chew on your hair! You look like a retard.”

“Are you embarrassed? You mustn’t be! I’m no fool, the question has been buzzing in your head since the beginning. I can read your thoughts: That Gödel woman, if you scratch a little, has the not very nice makings of a good Austrian Catholic. Am I not right?”

Leaving her hair alone, the young woman worried her lower lip. The story of the Jews in Europe, never discussed, had haunted her childhood.

“A member of your family died in the camps?” Adele pursued.

Anna repressed a painful feeling of nostalgia, remembering Grandmother Josepha and her gallery of photos of the beloved dead, the silver frames bordered in black. Her “Wailing Wall,” as her son teasingly called it. Dust on books in stacked piles; heat; the triple-locked door; apple strudel; the scraping of violin lessons; nursery rhymes in German: her memories formed an indigestible porridge.

“On my father’s side. Two of his uncles didn’t manage to leave Germany in time. And lots of others, but not as close.”

Adele made a gesture of helplessness. Anna, who had been ready to listen if not to forgive, felt the old woman’s casual acceptance as a slap in the face. This was her family’s history.

“In Vienna, in 1938, you didn’t see it coming? You didn’t find the whole thing revolting?”

“I had my own problems to deal with at the time.”

“How could you not do anything? There were mass arrests and people being massacred.”

“Is it excuses you want to hear? Shame? I can’t go back in time. I will not repudiate the person I was and still am. I wasn’t courageous. I saved my husband. I saved my own life. That was all.”

Anna struggled with herself not to make any response. She needed Adele to be a person she could admire, a person of superior wisdom, formed by a fate beyond the usual. No one escapes the bell, the Gaussian curse. The all too mediocre truth was staring right at her. She would have preferred to hate the woman.

“Don’t judge me. You don’t know how you would act if it was your back against the wall. Maybe you would be a heroine. Maybe not.”

“I’ve heard that line before. It doesn’t work for me.”

“I lost people close to me in the war also.”

It was no excuse to Anna, especially an excuse of this kind.