The Goddess of Small Victories (46 page)

“I’m confused, I thought we would talk shop.”

“Philosophy is not a sidelight to mathematics. On the contrary, it is its substantive marrow.”

“I’ll take your word for it, Dr. Gödel.”

I made a little face at our disoriented visitor. There was no avoiding Husserl now.

“Phenomenology is first and foremost a question. How should we think of thought itself? How do we free ourselves
from all the a prioris that clog our perception? How are we to grasp not what we
believe to be so
, but what
is so
?”

“My wife is taking a drawing course. She often says, ‘How can we transcribe not what we
know
is in front of us, but what
is
in front of us?’ ”

I crossed my arms to strangle my impatience. If the young man was going to join in Kurt’s game, then he’d better not complain about it afterward.

“Our brains transmit a portion of reality to us. Another portion is prerecorded. Like a lazy painter who places his subject against the same backdrop time after time.”

“But how do you free yourself from all preconception, Dr. Gödel? You would have to have extraordinary mental powers!”

“Husserl says that anyone who really wants to become a philosopher must at a certain point in his life shut himself away from others to try to overthrow all the presently accepted sciences. Then try to reconstruct them.”

“A kind of trance?”

“Husserl prefers to speak of ‘reduction.’ ”

“It’s all too esoteric for me! I am more intuitive.”

Our guest had spoken the fateful word. Reinvigorated, Kurt straightened in his chair. For several years now, his intuition had not been answering his call as often as in the past. He could no longer interrogate reality with the fresh eyes of youth. Experience had turned into a distorting filter, forcing him to retrace familiar paths. His venture into phenomenology held out the hope that his mind, lacking excitement, might find a new virginity. Must one unlearn in order to progress? I had never learned much to begin with, but it hadn’t advanced me much. He didn’t understand my irony: “Suspend your judgment, Adele. You must
learn to alter your attention to the world.” As if what I needed was to get away from this world.

“Intuition is too random a shortcut, Mr. Cohen. We should be able to disassemble our thought mechanisms to reach places that our lazy perception forbids us to go, either because of censorship or habit.”

Paul Cohen became absorbed in the pattern of the curtains. He was sorry that he had opened this valve and would have to endure a flood of observations only distantly related to his primary concern: receiving blessings from the master.

“There are no limits to the mind, Mr. Cohen. Only to its habits. Just as there are no limits to mathematics. Only to mathematics circumscribed by formal systems.”

“You seem to be saying that the mind is a simple mechanical object, which one needs to take apart, oil, and put back together.”

“Don’t confuse me with Turing. Human thought isn’t static. It is continually developing. You are not a machine.”

“Yet if the number of neurons is finite, the number of possible states of connection is also finite. Therefore a limit exists.”

“Is the mind exclusively a product of matter? That is a materialist preconception.”

“Why don’t you publish an article on this?”

“And open myself to polite mockery? The zeitgeist is as much against me now as ever! I prefer to study alone in my corner, although I am certain of being in the right.”

“Are you hiding?”

“I am protecting myself. I no longer have the strength for controversy. I am not the first, nor will I be the last. Even Husserl felt that he wasn’t understood. I am certain that he didn’t say everything, so as not to encourage his enemies.”

I took out my irritation on the tea biscuits; I knew the speech by heart. What was the point of being right in your own bedroom? He no longer had the strength for controversies? He never did have the strength. I interrupted them, because the television seemed to be broadcasting new images. Earlier that afternoon at a Dallas movie house, the police had arrested a suspect, a man named Lee Harvey Oswald. He was being sought for the murder of a patrolman a few minutes after the president’s assassination. His guilt was not in question.

“That didn’t take long! I hope they send him to the electric chair!”

“Isn’t it strange that they found the killer so soon? And why did the Secret Service not anticipate the shooting?”

Paul Cohen, who had little interest in conspiracy talk, rose to take his leave.

“I’m honored to have been invited into your home. May I ask whether you’ve had the chance to reread my article?”

“It’s in an envelope by the front door. If I have any other comments I’ll telephone you.”

After seeing our visitor out, I came back to the living room to find Kurt lost in contemplation of the television screen.

“That’s a very nice young man. So full of energy!”

“The fervor of youth. Speaking objectively, his method is sound, but plodding.
⁶²
His whole approach lacks elegance.”

“So you see him as a carpenter, whereas you’re a cabinet maker?”

“I don’t understand your insinuations, Adele. I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

He slammed his bedroom door by way of truncating the conversation; he didn’t want to confront the judgment of others. Mine especially. In the past months, that damned door had been
shutting earlier and earlier. It spoke of his failure and his loneliness. Day after day, year after year, I heard that noise. I still hear it.

I searched the stream of anxiety-producing images on the screen for a diversion from my sadness. How could America survive a tragedy like this? The Russians were no strangers to this kind of chaos. Nothing had exploded in ’62; I’d almost have welcomed it. A little Cuban bomb and presto! We’d have been able to erase the graying blackboard, redraw our course without losing the way. Time travel. Why had Kurt not given us that gift? Then all his knowledge would have been useful, for once. How I’d have liked to wake up in the morning with an array of possibilities! I’d be twenty-seven years old, have good legs, and be handing him his overcoat at the Nachtfalter’s hatcheck stand.

I wasn’t afraid of death. I invited it. I was afraid of this ending that had no end.

Anna waited until she was out of sight of the IAS buildings to vent her anger. She lashed out at a sodden clump of dirt, ruining her shoes. Around her, the empty expanse of lawns slumbered in the warmth of an overly mild winter. She cursed the blue sky and insipid town. She blamed herself for her lack of courage and resourcefulness. She’d lost any combativeness she ever had.

Calvin Adams had caught her unprepared. In the midst of an ordinary conversation, he had told her not to waste any more time on Gödel’s widow. According to his sources, she had only a month or two to live and was therefore in no position to do further damage. He needed Anna near at hand.

“I can’t stop now. I’m so close to the goal.”

“Put pressure on her. Cry. Those tough old broads are always sentimental at heart. Tell her your job is at stake.”

He’d fingered the buttons of his jacket. The young woman hardly believed what she heard next.

“Anna dear, I hold you in great affection, but you’re no longer showing enough commitment to your work. You’re only halfway here. For all that I’m a great friend of your father, I’m still your
boss. And I’m not happy with you. You have to make more of an effort. At the IAS we expect excellence.”

She had left the office fighting back tears. Her mind was numb with astonishment.
At the IAS we expect excellence
. It was a slap in the face. She’d never been more than an add-on. Hardly a week before, he’d greeted her as “almost a daughter.”

“Anna, you look like a woman ready to commit murder.”

Pierre Sicozzi was walking toward her, his hands in the pockets of his pea jacket. She quickly rearranged her face into a more human semblance and tried to smile. He mimed a torero making a pair of linked passes; she laughed in spite of herself, until a spasm of anger brought her back to the moment. She needed a cigarette. This bad day was going to get the better of her abstinence. Guessing her thoughts, he invited her for a drink. He had hardly been out of the Institute these past few days, and showing him around Princeton was one of Anna’s duties. From habit, she looked at her watch. She had no commitments, unless it was to that stupid cat. She suggested a pub on Palmer Square; their path would take them past Albert Einstein’s house. The Frenchman could hardly leave Princeton without seeing it.

“I’m hoping to find a snow globe with his photograph in it. My daughter Émilie collects the things.”

“They sell all sorts of Einstein-related oddments. You have a daughter?”

“She’s eight years old. She lives with my ex-wife in Bordeaux. Do you know the area?”

“No, but I love the wine.”

“
À la bonne heure!
I’m glad to hear it! Let’s see if we can’t find ourselves a good bottle of old Bordeaux. I hate the California monoliths.”

They walked toward Mercer Street in silence. Anna tried to repress her contradictory feelings, flattered to be in such brilliant company but disgusted by her interview with Adams. She was determined not to leave Adele alone and unattended. She would have to use her days off to see Adele and think up a subtle way to let her know it.

“I’ve thought a great deal about our conversation on Thanksgiving.”

“I’ve hardly ever seen Leo so enthusiastic.”

“Leo is your boyfriend?”

She tripped over a clump of dirt; Sicozzi took her arm to steady her. Uncomfortable, she quickly pulled away. She wondered whether the mathematician wasn’t starting a flirtation with her. He’d already let slip the information about his “ex-wife.” She never knew with Frenchmen whether they were being polite or spinning her a line. When she lived in Paris, she’d had all sorts of trouble getting used to this perpetual ambivalence. She dismissed these ridiculous ideas: she’d just been handed a stinging reminder of how poorly she read people. Best not to repeat the mistake with an exotic specimen. If he was disappointed at her failure to respond to his question, he didn’t show it but moved on to another subject.

“I was thinking of your acquaintance with Mrs. Gödel. I’d be curious to know if anywhere in her husband’s papers there is an unpublished proof of his further work on the continuum hypothesis. The credit for it has always gone to Paul Cohen, but Gödel worked on it for a long time without ever publishing much on the subject.”

“I doubt whether Adele would have anything to say about it.”

“Ask her.”

“She gives nothing away for free. We have a kind of bargain. She talks to me about her life and I talk to her about mine.”

“Where’s the problem?”

“I’m coming to the end of my resources. My life is a barren landscape.”

“You can tell her about strolling with a charming Frenchman.”

So she hadn’t been dreaming: he was flirting.

“A Fields medalist!”

“Oh, prizes …”

“Only those who’ve won prizes can afford to despise them.”

“That would be pretentious on my part. Nothing fills me with greater joy than a nice little discovery!”

They walked together up Mercer Street. Anna matched her naturally rapid step to the mathematician’s long-legged stride. Sicozzi made no effort to fill the gaps in their conversation, and she thought the better of him for it. In front of 112 Mercer Street, he asked her to take his picture, apologizing for the absurdity of his pagan idolatry. She undertook the exercise with pleasure. They lingered a moment, contemplating the famous white house.

“I always make a mountain out of this kind of place. As though it still harbored the spirit of the dead. But it’s only a pile of old boards.”

“You’re disappointed.”

“I’m too much of a dreamer. My teachers at school criticized me for it often enough!”

“You’ve done pretty well for a dreamer.”

“Where do you live, Anna?”

“You’d like to visit my house too?”

He looked at her steadily and answered without equivocation. She hadn’t been propositioned directly for a long time. She
hadn’t readied herself for the sudden transition from bullshit to blitzkrieg.

“My hotel is right nearby, if you’d prefer. I’m at the Peacock Inn. It’s quite charming. They’ve preserved a graffiti by von Neumann in their dining room.”

“The job of a research librarian has its limits. My director wouldn’t approve.”

“We don’t have to invite him to take part. These are pretexts, not reasons. Are you with someone? I don’t see you wearing a ring.”

“I’m in recovery.”

“
Vous avez mis votre corps en jachère?
”

“Sorry, my French is a little rusty.”

“Your body must lie fallow? Anna, love is like riding a bicycle. Once you learn it, you never lose the ability. As I said to Leo, I nourish my inspiration with all my senses.”

His remark chilled her: a man who quotes himself, how horrible! It reminded her of her father.

“You ease your doubts with sex?”

“
Par la sensualité
, with sensuality. Don’t be so crude.”

“French has far too many words for the one concept. German is much franker.”

“Have you ever tried to talk about love in German?”

“The French are so arrogant! You claim to like poetry but you’ve never read Rilke.”

He resumed walking, his hands in his pockets. He maintained a disconcerting silence until they reached the next light.

“Please excuse me, Anna. That was inelegant of me. Join me for a drink all the same?”

“You wouldn’t have a cigarette, would you?

“You’re a pretty girl, Anna.”

“If you whisper that I have lovely hair, I’m out of here.”

He offered her a Gitane with a disarming smile, devoid of his usual irony. It must be the version he reserved for big occasions. Taking her first puff, which was less delicious than she remembered, she decided to accept his invitation. He was charming, brilliant, and—most important—a temporary visitor. What more could she hope for? She couldn’t spend her whole life waiting.