The bomb was truly a bomb, but its action was delayed. I wasn’t the only one who had trouble understanding it. The very tools he used in his proof were innovations, and even the most gifted mathematicians needed time to absorb their import. At the long-awaited conference, Kurt was overshadowed by the titans of physics — Heisenberg, for instance. The polymath von Neumann spoke in support of him, but a transcript of the conference didn’t even mention Kurt.
Within a few months, however, his discoveries started to gain notice and then became impossible to ignore, witnessed by the fact that any number of adversaries tried to find a flaw in his argument. The radius of the bomb extended across the Atlantic and came back to us in the form of a lecture contract at Princeton University, meaning we would probably be separated. Meanwhile I saw him invaded by a sense of doubt, which was never to leave him again.
He started to feel misunderstood. Him, the boy genius, the little ball of sunshine. The brilliant taciturnist among the wordy, the political, and the clever. He thought he had reached an island of peace and a gathering of the like-minded. He had made loyal friends there, no doubt, but he had also found hate in unexpected quarters and, just as painfully, indifference. I was at his side, tender and attentive, but I was entering a battle with few weapons to hand: you don’t fill a metaphysical vacuum with apple strudel.
The world around us was decaying. He had managed to remainder the century well before its term. Doubt and uncertainty were now to be its foundation. He was always ahead of his time.
9
Anna arrived at Adele’s room in a muck sweat; visiting hours were almost over.
“You’re late, it’s not like you.”
“I’m glad to see you too, Mrs. Gödel.”
Still wearing her raincoat, she held out a cardboard box printed with the name of a wonderful Princeton delicatessen. Adele lit up when she saw its contents. “Sacher torte!” The young woman handed her a plastic spoon decorated with a blue ribbon. Adele immediately carved into the cake and spooned an enormous wedge into her mouth.
“My Sacher torte was better. But you’ve got talent. You know how to talk to old ladies.”
“Only undeserving old ladies.”
“Show me even one who is deserving and I’ll eat the box as well! So, how are you coming along? Have you freed yourself from the nets and snares of this Calvin Adams?”
“I won’t hide the fact that he’s very worried.”
“Not about my health, that is certain. I am his black cloud, his little thorn.”
“You’re not exactly a planetary priority.”
“I’m well aware of that! And you? Why are you clinging to me as you do? Is your position so precarious?”
“I take great pleasure in our conversations.”
“Just as I enjoy your presents. Would you like some?”
Anna turned down the offer. Her altruism didn’t extend to sharing the old lady’s spoon.
“What is he like, this director?”
“He wears a turtleneck under his shirt.”
“I remember him. He has been cradle robbing at the Institute for some time. They say the secretaries all button up their blouses before they walk into his office.”
Her spoon hovering in midair, a chocolate stain on her chin, Adele observed her visitor. Anna hid her confusion by rummaging in her purse. Its contents were impressive: a zippered pouch for pens, another for medications, two active file folders, a book in case she had to wait (Borges’s Aleph), a sewing kit, a bottle of water, a plump personal organizer, and a set of keys on a long chain. She walked around with such a heavy bag that her back was constantly in pain. At night she would tell herself to lighten its weight, only to take the whole business with her again in the morning. Eventually she found a handkerchief, which she laid flat on the bed next to the box of pastries. Adele ignored it.
“With a bag like that you could live through a siege. Is it hard not to be in control of everything, young lady?”
“You’re a shrink in your spare time?”
“Do you know the Jewish joke: What is a psychiatrist?”
Anna stiffened. As a Catholic in Austria in the 1930s, Adele would have a simple resolution to this equation with no unknowns.
“A psychiatrist is a Jew who studied to be a doctor to make his mother happy but who faints at the sight of blood.”
“Do you have a problem with Jews? It isn’t the first time you’ve probed me about this.”
“Don’t be so predictable! It was Albert Einstein who told me that joke.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I forgive you for it. And I understand your distrust.”
Anna dove back into her purse for an elastic band. She could hardly think without the tug of a ponytail. Adele watched her fondly.
“You should let your hair loose more often.”
“A shrink and a beautician?”
“They are one and the same, or nearly. Your complexion is quite extraordinary. Not one blemish! You’re immaculate, like a Madonna. You have a long nose and eyes that are too soft. You could fix that with a nice, bright lipstick.”
“Is the inspection over?”
“Why have you so little coquettishness? You’re pretty enough.”
“My family is not much for frivolity.”
“I think you dreamed of becoming a pom-pom girl and your mother had practically a heart attack. People who think of themselves as deep are often unhappy.”
“I never liked to doll myself up.”
In this, Anna was not lying. She had decided early on that feminine competitiveness would not be her chosen sport. But it wasn’t for lack of coaching. Her mother had been physically standoffish but ready enough with her advice. Barely had her little slip of a girl learned to walk than she set out to awaken her daughter’s femininity with vast dollops of pink wallpaper, dolls, and flounced dresses. At that point, Rachel had not yet joined the feminist movement; seduction was a natural weapon. She liked to theorize about her sporadic mothering; she took pride in not blighting her daughter’s development by exemplifying too perfect a womanly image, avoiding making herself up on Sundays. But she didn’t go so far as to remove her makeup on other days of the week. She wore gray eyeliner for lectures and seminars, opalescent eyelids and beige lips for formal evenings. Her extraordinary violet eyes were deeply shadowed in black for her unspecified nighttime rendezvous. The little girl waited at her bedroom window for her mother to return. The next morning, her mother’s pillowcase would be smeared with soot, and her father’s sometimes not even creased. At the age when her friends were all crazy about mascara, Anna had buttoned her blouse to the top and lost herself in books.
She had quickly noticed that coquettishness was unnecessary. In fact, she didn’t know many boys who could resist the urge to penetrate her aloof exterior. Whether they were up to her hopes was another story.
“Pleasure is not something you should look at with contempt, my dear. It comes to us with life itself.”
Anna wiped the old lady’s mouth.
“So does pain.”
“Try a little Sacher torte. Hypoglycemia is the mother of melancholy.”