The Goddess of Small Victories (25 page)

Herr Einstein threw a wad of bread at him.

“Stop pretending. Your life will be long, and you will have a prolific career, especially if you follow the advice of your charming wife. Eat!”

Staring into space, Pauli picked his teeth.

“So, Gödel, you have your white whale just as our illustrious Einstein does. A unified field theory and an axiomatized
philosophy? That will keep the two of you busy until retirement, dear colleagues! Don’t forget to send me a telegram when you succeed. I’ll bring flowers.”

“You think I’m a relic. But just wait! Albert still has juice!”

“What is this unified field theory?”

“Gödel, your little woman is insatiable!”

“Don’t feel any obligation, Herr Einstein. She won’t understand a thing.”

“Don’t be such a prude! I am happy to take part in this sort of exercise.”

He kneaded a morsel of bread.

“The physical world, dear woman, is subject to four major forces: electromagnetism; weak interaction, which is the source of radioactivity; strong nuclear force, which holds matter together; and—”

He tossed his bread ball at Pauli.

“Gravitation. Every body attracts every other body. I’m not referring, of course, to my young friend’s carnal attractions, which have little sway over me. The tiny force of gravity is an enormous pebble in the physicist’s shoe. We can’t manage to classify it in a coherent model next to the three others. And yet, we confirm its existence every moment of our lives. I fall, you fall, we fall from a height. Miraculously the stars do not fall on our heads. In short, you see me needling Pauli for the sport of it. We are both right, but not at the same time. We each propose an accurate description of the world, he for the infinitely small, and I for the infinitely large. We hope to be reconciled in a magnificent unified theory to the cheering of crowds and with garlands of flowers. I’m working on it like crazy, and Wolfgang loves flowers.”

Kurt, as though he’d missed an entire section of space-time, returned to the previous conversation.

“In any case, Russell doesn’t like Princeton. He’s so British. He claims that the neo-Gothic university buildings just ape the ones at Oxford.”

“He isn’t completely wrong! What about you, Adele, how are you settling in to Princeton?”

“I miss Vienna. Princeton is very provincial. The people look at me oddly because of my accent.”

“It’s easier to break an atom than to break a prejudice. They even arrested the son of my friend von Laue, who was just sailing his boat. They suspected him of sending signals to enemy submarines! Someone had denounced him to the authorities because of his accent.”

“My wife refuses to take an English course.”

“I don’t have time.”

“If you hadn’t fired the housekeeper, you would have time.”

I said nothing. I’d had to get rid of the cleaning lady because I suspected her of stealing. To be frank, I could never quite get used to the idea of having someone work for me, but I was embarrassed to spell out for them what I knew to be a working-class reflex.

“The two of you are restless. You keep moving house.”

“Here Kurt is closer to the Institute. We’re just a few steps from the train station. He chose this apartment because it has windows on both sides. We can cross-ventilate.”

“I’ve noticed that! Even I am cold, Gödel. Close the windows!”

My husband rose unwillingly.

“How do you pass the days?”

“I do the housework, I go to the movies, I prepare food for Kurt that he won’t eat. I knit things for the Red Cross.”

“You take part in the war effort.”

“I do next to nothing. It’s just something to keep my hands busy so that I won’t think too much.”

At this point, Pauli started playing with his bread. Our guests were getting bored.

“Don’t worry, this damned war is winding down. The Allied forces entered Germany in September. It’s only a question of months now.”

“We can do nothing but wait. Perhaps we should start knitting as well, eh Gödel?”

“I prefer to focus on my own research, Herr Einstein.”

Our Viennese guest smiled—through his mind had flashed the same image as through mine, of a logician struggling with his knitting needles.

“What idiocy to pass up the use of your two brains on the pretext that your passports are German!”

“What? They suspect Herr Einstein of spying for the Nazis?”

“Dear little lady, the Department of Defense suspects me of being a Socialist, not to say a Communist, which, to their way of thinking, is a kind of contagious disease. In their great generosity, they have authorized me to make ballistics calculations for the Coast Guard with my old friend Gamow.”

My husband’s eyes widened in fear. “You shouldn’t speak so openly, Herr Einstein. We are probably under surveillance.”

“Let them watch me! I auctioned off my original manuscript on special relativity and gave them six million dollars! Hitler hates me more than he hates his own mother. I personally wrote to Roosevelt to alert him to the urgent need for nuclear research. And now they suspect me? How ironic!”

“Keep your voice down!”

“What can they do to me, Gödel?”

“You could be kidnapped by enemy agents. Have you ever thought of that?”

Einstein slapped his thigh as though it were the best joke.

“You should write spy novels! Watched as closely as I am? I can’t have prostate problems without J. Edgar Hoover hearing about it! They are much too frightened of having me speak out publicly against the use of this damned bomb! Roosevelt’s reelection reassures me only slightly.”

“Nothing indicates that nuclear technology will be ready anytime soon.”

“Dear Gödel, your naïveté is a delightful ray of sunshine. Believe me, it is ready! You haven’t felt a little lonely in Princeton recently? The army has called up Institute members of every shoe size. Oppenheimer has disappeared from view. Von Neumann only breezes through occasionally. You don’t need to be a genius to guess what they are doing! There’s nothing like a good little war to give technology a push.”

“Military supremacy is what will guarantee peace.”

“I don’t share your optimism, Pauli. The very concept of dissuasion goes against the military mind-set. I distrust anyone who likes to join a column and walk to music. Brains were given to the military by mistake, a spinal cord was really all they needed. Keep them from using a new toy? Might as well try leaving a wrapped Christmas present under the tree!”

“You prompted the research in the first place.”

“At the cost of great violence to my inner self! I am a committed pacifist. The horrible reports that have come from Europe forced me to rethink. If Hitler had that bomb, there would be no one to keep him from using it.”

Pauli was sculpting his bread ball, which by now had turned gray, with the tip of his knife.

“That madman has made every useful scientist take to his heels. By persecuting Jewish science, he has sawed off the rotten branch on which he was sitting.”

“You’re frightening my wife, Herr Einstein. All these horrors will soon be behind us.”

Albert wiped his mouth and patted his stomach before tossing his napkin onto the table.

“Never in the course of modern civilization have we had such a black future. Other conflicts will arise, war is mankind’s cancer.”

The men were quiet. My eyes were full of tears. “The war will soon be over,” that was all I could hear. When it ended, I could go home. Pauli set down in front of him the figure sculpted from bread. He stuck a little disk of wax that he had picked from the tablecloth behind its head: Saint Einstein, the patron saint of pessimists. His model smiled.

“I’m so sorry, dear Adele, I quickly get carried away. What have you planned for dessert?”

“Sacher torte.”

“Mazel tov! May I have your permission to light my pipe? This old friend of mine sweetens my thoughts.”

I went back into the kitchen. Tears welled up in my eyes in spite of myself. The men probably thought I was worried about the fate of mankind, but in fact I was feeling a wave of self-pity. I was a child in a world of adults. Their universe was not accessible to me: it couldn’t be explained with a simple drawing in the sand or a few pebbles in a line. I didn’t have the words, so I cried. I cried about my loneliness. My bad English kept me enclosed in a perpetual fog. At one point I’d hoped that by associating with my countrymen I could bring light into this dark and blurry world. I was still lost. No naturalization into their scientific country was
possible, there were only natives. All the same, I tried. I read a little, I paid attention. But every time I pulled on a thread, it just led to another. The weave was too dense, the fabric too big to be encompassed by the little dancer. I would never be from here; I would always be an exile in the midst of these geniuses. I was reaching an age where men would be more charmed by my cooking than my legs: the age of resignation. I wasn’t ready to give up—far from it.

Professor Einstein spluttered a few crumbs of cake toward my husband, who was cautiously sipping his hot water.

“How is your friend Morgenstern? I thought I would see him here tonight.”

“He is preparing the publication of his book with von Neumann.
¹⁵
And von Neumann has hardly been seen recently.”

“He’s much too busy playing with neutrons.”

“Is there anything von Neumann doesn’t take an interest in? The man is a menace. He never stops. And he is as fast at drinking as he is at calculating!”

“He is Hungarian, Herr Einstein.”

I was bored. I’d heard them yammer on about von Neumann’s eccentricities already. He had the reputation for being quite a practical joker. One day when Einstein was supposed to go to New York, von Neumann had offered to accompany him to the station. On the way there, he told him one funny story after another. The elderly physicist boarded the train crying with laughter, only to realize later that he had been deliberately put on the wrong train. According to Kurt, von Neumann was a terrible example to the students. Some of them thought that, like him, they could spend the night drinking in clubs and then go straight to their early-morning courses as fresh as ever. But von Neumann was not human. Kurt was especially appalled by the
amount of food the Hungarian could put away. His hyperactivity exhausted my husband before the fact. I had met him at the house of our former neighbor on Stockton Street, Mrs. Brown. She was drawing the illustrations for the book he was coauthoring,
Theory of Games and Economic Behavior
. I looked after her baby; John looked after Mrs. Brown. His appetite knew no bounds. Kurt had explained to me that he and Morgenstern described social and economic phenomena using games of strategy such as Kriegspiel. That all these gray cells should be assigned to military projects struck Kurt as a great shame. Meanwhile, the von Neumanns had a very pretty house in Princeton. John was a consultant for the U.S. Navy, and the military paid well.

I poured myself another little glass of vodka in memory of my wild Hungarian pals from the Nachtfalter. The pipe’s aromatic fog made me nostalgic. I lit a cigarette right under my husband’s disapproving gaze. I had recently started smoking again to cope with the long, lonely days. When he came home, Kurt would complain of the smoke, even if I had spent all day airing the apartment. He’d always hated the way my clothes reeked after a shift at the nightclub.

“It would be surprising if von Neumann didn’t win a Nobel or two with all the work he has done!”

“If doing physics were a question of proving theorems, von Neumann would be a great physicist.”

“Don’t be jealous, Pauli. Your turn will come!”

“It’s easy enough to dismiss plaudits when you’re covered in glory.”

“I had to wait a long time.
¹⁶
It was the big joke every year! Who could they give the Nobel Prize to so that they wouldn’t have to give it to me? One of the judges was blatantly anti-Semitic.”

“Your popularity is worth ten Nobel Prizes, Professor Einstein.”

“The one benefit is that it provides you with an audience. I can at least try to get across a few ideas.”

I swept the crumbs from the table; the conversation was flagging. I was annoyed at Kurt for not making a better show.

“Why haven’t you received the Nobel Prize, Kurt? I’d like to have a beautiful house like von Neumann. He claims that you’re the greatest logician since Aristotle!”

“There is no Nobel Prize for mathematics. Nobel’s wife had an affair with a mathematician.”

“A myth! The truth is that the Nobel Prize is awarded for the work that gives the most benefit to mankind.”

“And mathematics offers none, Herr Einstein?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out, Adele. But there are other prizes.”

“Gödel is too old for the Fields Medal.”

“I don’t chase after prizes.”

“You should! With the pitiful salary you make at the IAS, we live like paupers! All your intelligence, and it doesn’t even get us a little comfort!”

Kurt looked daggers at me. His colleagues hooted with laughter.

“What good is your powerful logic, Kurt Gödel, if your little woman is unsatisfied?”

Pauli scribbled a short equation in his notebook and waved it in front of Kurt tauntingly.

“Why not apply yourself to this good old conjecture? The University of Göttingen is offering one hundred thousand marks to anyone who can prove it before the end of the millennium.”

“Fermat? You’re nuts, Pauli. I’m not a trained monkey. Before even starting I would have to spend three years in intensive preparation. I don’t have time to waste on a project that would probably end in failure.”
¹⁷

Herr Einstein grabbed the notebook and showed me the conundrum that was so lucrative. I was disappointed. It consisted of only three variables.

“You’re no gambler. You see, dear Adele, Fermat was a French mathematician who liked to play jokes. He jotted down this diabolical conjecture in the margins of a book, saying there was not enough space to write out the proof.
¹⁸
The implication was that he had found one but wasn’t giving it. For three centuries our great mathematical minds have been tearing their hair out over it! No one has come close to a solution. But then, your husband has never tried his hand at the problem. You would be famous, Gödel! The continuum hypothesis won’t bring you wealth and glory. You should join the times. Think advertising! Leave infinity to its lonely fate.”