The Goddess of Small Victories (36 page)

Adele’s words were coming out in a rush. Anna remembered what the clog-shod nurse had told her. It was time to slow things
down. She hoped their escapade hadn’t blown the last points of life in the elderly lady.

“Gladys did a good job.”

Anna tugged by reflex on a strand of her hair.

“ ‘I like your hair!’ is the female equivalent to the male ‘You’re so strong!’ Even a big girl with many diplomas falls for it. I may be a reactionary, my little tootsie, but my theorem is eternal all the same. You would do much better to think along practical lines. What are you going to wear for Thanksgiving? I see you in something red.”

1952

A Couch for Three

“This is not a session. Just think of it as a conversation.”

I clutched my purse to my stomach. Kurt avoided looking at me. We were not in the habit of opening ourselves up to a stranger, and in this case it wasn’t even really a stranger. Initially, I’d thought the consultation a good idea. In this odd office, though, sitting across from this even more bizarre man, I felt strongly inclined to take to my heels.

Kurt was still shaky after a recent hospitalization. The crisis might have had a familiar ring to it except that, since his release, Kurt had balked at eating anything I prepared. We had reached a dead end. He didn’t trust me. We lived like two strangers mired in a deadly silence, heavy with resentment and misunderstanding.

Albert, sensing our marital difficulties, had tactfully recommended a psychoanalyst: Charles R. Hulbeck, one of his many protégés. Kurt had followed his old friend’s advice, as he often
did. Hulbeck, whose real name was Richard Huelsenbeck, was a first-wave émigré from Germany who had received his visa on the recommendation of the ever-helpful Herr Einstein. Albert had described him as an odd duck: a crazy artist but a competent psychiatrist. Fantasy and science seemed incompatible to me: in general, people like to hold forth on what they don’t fully understand.

The walls of his study were all but invisible behind a collection of artworks. Abstract collages and large flat expanses of black paint vied for space with a grimacing assemblage of African figurines, Japanese theater masks, and carnival disguises. My eyes were drawn to a small watercolor in a more traditional style. I shuddered when I looked at it more closely: a delicate angel whose legs were engulfed in flames.

“Do you like William Blake, Adele?”

I shrugged uncertainly. What could this crackpot do for us? A simple conversation with him could keep a couple from going under?

“Kurt, I feel that you’re tense.”

My husband winced. He didn’t expect to be addressed so cavalierly.

“Would you enlighten me as to your method, Dr. Hulbeck? To what school do you belong? I’ve researched the different therapeutic courses.”

“I’m not a Freudian. And I’m only marginally Jungian. I would place myself outside of orthodox practice. If I had to name an influence, I would say that I am close to Binswanger, a neuropsychiatrist who distanced himself from classical Viennese psychoanalysis by creating
Daseinsanalyse
.”
³⁴

“What does that mean, ‘
Daseinsanalyse
’?”

“I’m not here to give you a lecture.”

My husband turned back to inspecting the walls. Knowing him as I did, I was sure that he would study Hulbeck’s references in close detail. His medical diplomas and navy surgeon’s insignia, framed as they were by the terrifying collection, hardly seemed to carry much weight. I wondered if the masks were travel mementos or trophies of psychiatric warfare, shrunken heads. He wouldn’t get mine.

“Take off your coat, Kurt. You’ll feel more comfortable.”

My husband made no motion. He clung to his overcoat as a young bride clings to her nightshirt. I had taken the appointed seat on the couch, where I sat stiff as a board, my back unsupported. The bench’s cold leather and chrome legs hardly seemed propitious for pouring out one’s heart. Kurt, to avoid touching me, had settled onto a low chair covered in the long-haired fur of some animal. He sat engulfed in a giant female sexual organ. The psychiatrist made the circuit of his office three times before sitting down with a small drum on his lap.
³⁵
Hulbeck looked somewhat like a Great Dane, appealing but dangerous. I almost expected him to urinate on the leg of his chair. Instead, he favored us with a thundering serenade on the drum.

“Could one of you articulate why you are here?”

Kurt darted a questioning glance at me. I invited him to go first.

“My wife is very hot tempered.”

Charles forestalled my rebuttal with a roll of the drum.

“Don’t answer. Let him talk.”

“Adele can’t control herself. She yells over nothing at all. She disturbs me at my work.”

“Why are you angry with your husband, Adele?”

“Do you want an exhaustive list? He’s egotistical, childish, and paranoid. Everything revolves around his little health problems.”

“Hasn’t your husband always had a fragile constitution?”

“I can’t stand it any longer. He takes it too far. He’s using his frailty as an excuse!”

“Can you be more precise?”

This oddball was starting to prey on my nerves. He wanted to winkle words out of us? By God, I’d give him a plateful!

“Christ on a crutch! I’m fragile too! His genius, his career, his illnesses, his fears! No room for
my
fears!”

Kurt flinched. He couldn’t stand coarse language. I found it gave relief. People don’t all have the same way of expressing their discontent. He had never understood this. I yelled, I insulted. I got vulgar. Sadly vulgar. My melancholy might be less stylish than his, but it was no less real. His suffering couldn’t compete with mine, and his depressions had given him a good excuse not to become involved with others and never to take sides. He had constructed a magnificent Black Legend to protect himself, but the walls protecting him had become those of a prison.

“Why do you call your husband ‘paranoid’? It’s a clinical term with a precise definition.”

“He thinks he’s being followed. According to him, the FBI is bugging us. Perfect pretext not to talk at all!”

“How did you arrive at this conclusion, Kurt?”

“By simple deduction. I am a friend of Einstein and Oppenheimer. Both are being investigated by McCarthy’s subcommittee. In addition, I’ve received several letters from Europe that have been censored.”

“Do you work on sensitive topics?”

“They’ll grab at any excuse. The fact that we once traveled on the Trans-Siberian railway is enough to brand us as pro-Russian. Their illogic makes everything logical.”

“When you say ‘they,’ who do you mean?”

Kurt stared at him, genuinely surprised at his question.

“The Secret Service. The government. Princeton is full of all kinds of spies.”

“Does news of the Korean War make you anxious?”

“It disappoints me. I had hoped to live in a sensible country where I could pursue my research in peace. What I find is people digging bomb shelters in their gardens against nuclear attack and stocking up on sugar packets! I am a very sane national in a paranoid nation.”

Hulbeck thought quietly for a moment, one hand suspended in air.

“Adele, do you reproach your husband for not paying enough attention to you?”

“It was never part of our bargain from the start. I was hired as the sick nurse.”

Kurt rolled his eyes. Charles gave his tom-tom a few taps.

“What do you know of your wife’s anxieties?”

“He doesn’t know fuck-all!”

A loud
bong
put me back in my place. I would have to make him eat his goddamn drum.

“Adele complains all day long about our lack of money. She never has enough. I’m doing what I can. I’ve just accepted a teaching position. The workload and the responsibilities that go with it are very burdensome.”

I seethed on my couch. Another measly $4,000 per year! Not exactly swimming in champagne! The position had been offered to him thanks to Oppenheimer’s kindness and the twin support of Einstein and Morgenstern. His colleague Carl Siegel had always refused to ratify his appointment. He had even gone on record saying, “One madman at the Institute is enough!” I never knew who the other one was. Himself, maybe. And when it came
to his duties! He poisoned life at the Institute with his constant machinations. The agenda at every meeting started with: “Who is going to beat up on Gödel today?”

“I’ve received numerous honors in recent years. That should satisfy my wife. But she insists on her share of the glory. For instance, when I received my honorary diploma from Harvard. I personally hate this kind of occasion. Yet she insisted on being seated next to me at the ceremony. It was totally unreasonable. She caused a terrible flap with the organizers.”

The tom-tom sounded to stop him from continuing.

“What a liar! He has chased after recognition all his life! Even Albert knows this! Why do you think they gave you the first Einstein Award?
³⁶
Out of pity! To pay the hospital bill! How could we have managed otherwise?”

Bong! Bong! Bong!
Kurt, his face ashen, gripped the long fur of his chair as though hoping to claw his way into the womb. “It’s not as if you needed this, old friend,” Albert had whispered as he handed him the prize. It convinced no one, especially Einstein.

I’d ended the round with a knockout. I fished my compact from my bag, refreshed my makeup, and favored my audience with the celebratory sound of my lips smacking. It was Kurt’s turn to make a move, but he had never been comfortable in the ring. In the silence that followed, Hulbeck rose to his feet and made a further triple circuit around his office.

“You should see your relationship as a dynamic system with a fragile equilibrium. Both of you are at the same time victims and perpetrators. My work will consist in helping you articulate your dissatisfactions without becoming aggressive. Do you mind if I smoke?”

Kurt shrugged. The therapist offered me a cigarette and lit it using a mushroom-shaped lighter from a side table. He left the
room to ask his secretary to prepare coffee. A pregnant silence. I felt myself relenting. I watched my husband out of the corner of my eye. Maybe I had gone a little far.

After pouring the coffee, Hulbeck resumed his seat at his desk and started fiddling with a strange object. I wasn’t about to ask him what it was, but he noticed my interest.

“A replica of Goethe’s death mask. I always keep it at hand.”

“Good God, whatever for? How morbid you are!”

“Do you have a problem with death, Adele?”

“Who doesn’t? But I don’t have to fiddle with disgusting objects because of it.”

His mouth contracted into a parody of a smile.

“How would you describe your private relations? Your sexuality. Kurt?”

I held back a nervous laugh. “Go to the blackboard, Gödel! Have you completed your homework?” Hairs, sex, lust—the words were foreign to his vocabulary. He hadn’t even noticed that I’d stopped having my period. But then he wouldn’t know that since he never touched me. Was it really necessary for our life to turn into this cold war? Sleeping in separate bedrooms. Eating meals alone, standing in front of the window. Somewhere in the world, somewhere in this town, there might be a man for me. A stranger who would make me laugh and dance. Who would take me into his bed. Why did I never follow a chance encounter to the hotel? For fear of gossip?

From a residual love of Kurt? Shame over my aging body? A lack of opportunity, probably.

“When did you go through menopause, Adele?”

It was my turn to feel discomfited. This was a low blow. Kurt hunched deeper into his chair.

“Might that not be the root of the problem? Your husband has his work, and you have … your husband. Couldn’t the marital dynamic be unbalanced by the fact that you have no child?”

I drew nervously on my cigarette. I had long ago shelved the idea of motherhood, even when my womb still shouted that it was possible. Kurt might eventually have given in, as he had with the house. I was so bored. He might at least have agreed to try and make me a child. Another item on his list of resolutions, where decision often counted as doing. But my biological clock had shut down the debate. No new soul had consented to appear in our house. We even thought of adopting a little girl after the war, but Kurt couldn’t bring himself to bestow the Gödel name on someone who didn’t share his blood. It had taken him ten years, after all, to share his name with me.

What would our son have been like? I’ve often asked myself, as a delicious exercise in mortification. I saw him as an only child. The kid of older parents. I never imagined us as having a “Miss Gödel.” The world is no place for girls. “Blessed art Thou, who has not made me a woman!” as my friend Lili Kahler-Loewy taught me, quoting the Torah.

I answered Hulbeck with all the calm I could muster. On this score, I was unwilling to display my emotions.

“We chose not to have a child.”

I would have wanted to call our son “Oskar,” in honor of our faithful friend Morgenstern, even though he irritated me. Marianne would have insisted on “Rudolf,” in tribute to her dead husband. In the end, he would have been called “Rudolf,” like Kurt’s brother and father. Einstein, von Neumann, and Oppenheimer would have attended his christening. His eyes would have been blue, like both of ours. Raised in America, he would have had
strong, white teeth set in the square jaws of a conqueror. Would he have liked chewing gum? It’s hard to think while you’re chewing; Kurt wouldn’t have allowed gum. Would he have been a scientist? He would have wrecked his life trying to live up to his father. How can you be a god’s son without being a god yourself? Barred from Mount Olympus, these kids have a choice between madness and mediocrity, or at least what is termed mediocrity by geniuses, although the rest of us call it “normality.” That’s what Albert’s sons had chosen: the more brilliant had ended up a schizophrenic, the other an engineer. What a disappointment! “One cannot expect one’s children to inherit a mind,” he’d said. Dear Albert, so kind and so cruel at the same time, like any self-respecting god.